Quote:
Originally Posted by Cotton Hill
By historic standards almost nobody in the US lives in actual poverty.
How many people in the US starve to death? Well, throughout human history, that happened, a lot.
How many "poor" people in the US have cars? Cell phones? Televisions? Access to medical care (even if it's crappy or expensive)?
"Poor" people in America have access to more wealth than probably 99% of human beings who have ever lived.
As long as your definition of poor is simply people on the bottom, there will always be poor people. However it's clear the bottom is rising in developed countries.
You chose to use the word poverty in your post and I made the distinction that it isn't equivalent to inequality. The meaning of poverty is pretty clear even if we can't accurately measure it or define the exact cutoff point. I'd agree that there're a lot of people who show up as living in poverty on some metrics when in reality they're living a pretty high quality of life off the grid via an exchange economy, but that doesn't mean there aren't large numbers who have terrible lives.
Saying that there're periods of time when it's been worse doesn't mean it's not worth improving.
And we do give generously when the people who're struggling are a part of our own family/network/community. If your kid pops out semi tarded, you don't say "well, if you can't figure it all out on your own, gtfo". Even if you're not generous in terms of money (though who are we kidding, people always heavily subsidize the lives of their own children when money is no object), it's the time and effort put towards teaching the lessons / guiding them on a life path that people from the ****tiest situations will never get which is the difference between them ending up in a comfortable white collar career instead of sucking dick on a street corner.
Nobody really puts any stock in that survival of the fittest mentality when push comes to shove. It's just a lie people tell themselves to avoid the guilt of living a great life while there're huge numbers living in poverty who if given the right environment would likely have done just as well.