We need not worry about Bartimaeus mooching off the tax-payers. Only kings and emperors got to do that. His family should have taken care of him. But apparently he was not given generous relatives. Or maybe there was just not enough to go around.
People are only as generous as they can afford to be.
Actually most people are less generous than they can afford to be. Bartimaeus was reduced to living off the uncertain charity of strangers. And in first century Palestine, there was not much mercy to be had, until Jesus of Nazareth came. Bartimaeus sits by the roadside, blind, begging, having nothing but his cloak and his pride. I don't know what your problem is.