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Comment by Fauntleroy | Hacker News Reader

It's sickening to me that most US citizens seem to prefer watching people die on the street than give them things they "do not deserve".

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I have good news for you. US citizens don't actually like watching people die on the street, not even the ones on the right.

Right, they close their doors and avert their gaze

That's very easy to say on your very comfortable chair.

Arguments on both sides here are about what people "like to do" - with hyperbole in both directions. But the fundamental problem is with what people actually do - and given the scale of the problem, and apparent lack of solution, it doesn't seem unfair to say that not enough is being done. Quite a large chunk of the non-homeless population in the US is living in a relatively precarious situation[1], which leaves them both practically unable to help and presumably also afraid of ending up on the street themselves. Hence it's not unreasonable to expect the response to come from governments, like Utah's did.

1: https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-...

Well, it is important to avoid creating a culture of dependence. We've seen how that can backfire on us in Africa. So it's not totally irrational.

bourgeois ideology is contagious, sadly.

And why?

Maybe some of us prefer not deincentivizing work and creating an even larger subpopulation which is entirely dependent on government and won't be employable for generations?

We live in a reality where resources still require effort and capital to extract from the environment. A society can only support so many through welfare before it collapses.

The subject is a little more nuanced than watching people die out of some kind of jealousy.

And an economy can only be so rapacious of honest hard-working citizens before it collapses.

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