It is because so many people are excluded from the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families. There was a near panic when the unemployment figures were released last month and they were at new lows. The President signed one of the most inhumane bills in recent history, that demands that people, in order to live, should work at jobs that are not available. Jim Bane's sister, who was a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services, was among those who resigned in protest - not because they support an inefficient system, but because the replacement is immoral. The Biblical tradition indeed praises hard work, diligence, patience, and related virtues, but it also teaches that the fruits of labor produced by these virtues are meant to be shared by society as a whole.
Selfish individualism is condemned.
Individuals must view themselves as part of a greater organic whole, a community, a family that works together and shares the common abundance. A society that ignores the poor for the sake of productivity may soon lose than productivity, for it has stolen from the poor the right to livelihood that the poor have by virtue of their humanity. But neither should we allow property and its accumulation to remain more important than persons, which is demonstrably where it stands today. The status quo is not sustainable. There are those who insist that our society is disintegrating because of a lowering of moral standards and the loosening of authoritarian structures.