Why should you care about unemployed?

Okay, you have a job. Others don't. They're hungry. And you say, "so what? What's it to me?"

Thing is, I keep trying to tell folks, human beings don't just starve to death without doing something about it. Usually something that the "so what?" folks aren't going to like. And now we have proof -- actual data showing that if you condemn a large segment of your population to starve to death, the inevitable result is violence, unrest, and eventually revolution, typically followed by a draconian dictatorship that is, as you might think, rather bad for business as well as being rather nasty to live under.

I mean, I shouldn't have to even point this out. Every system of religious morality on this planet holds that we are our brother's keeper, and that if our brother is in need, it is our religious duty to do whatever we can to help. Every long-term system of non-religious morality also insists upon such a duty to care for our fellow man. It is only the newbie "greed is good" lizard people philosophies that insist that if a man is hungry, the correct thing to do is to kick his feet out from under him and laugh at him. But the thing is, these newbie "greed is good" philosophies never seem to last long for a simple reason: reality just doesn't work that way. See paragraph 2, above.

Caring for our fellow man isn't just the moral thing to do just because some religious book says so, in other words. It's also the right thing to do because reality says so. Yet some delusional morons insist that kicking the unemployed while they're down is the right thing to do, because even though there's four unemployed people for every job opening, kicking the unemployed will somehow make the Austerity Fairy swing his magic wand and create jobs. Eh. Youse guys and your Austerity Fairy. Bah humbug.

-- Badtux the Caring Penguin

Ugh. Me austerity fairy. Bend over. Ugh.