It's not a zero sum game.

When governments invest in their poor communities, they get the following, in order:

1) Stability

At a minimum, a community needs to receive enough investment that it doesn't get destroyed at regular intervals. Or if disasters occasionally happen, this level of investment should help bring about a speedy recovery. This is the level at which FEMA is supposed to operate. Terry Pratchett's Boots parable fits into this category nicely. [1]

2) Opportunity

Beyond that, you can invest by paying to deliberately bring opportunities to a community that wouldn't normally be available. This can include education, public works projects, financial incentives for companies to operate in poorer areas where they otherwise wouldn't, etc.

If you pay to educate people, they'll be able to do higher quality work for an employer (presumably bringing more value to the employer than unskilled labor), and those people will be able to receive better wages for their work in order to save, support their families, and spend at other businesses in their community (supporting those businesses).

If you improve public infrastructure, you make it easier for people to get to work, and make it easier for companies to access members of the community in order to sell their services.

If you provide incentives for companies to move in, they can provide both education / training and better paying jobs, which allows community members to begin to prosper and can eventually encourage other businesses to move in on their own in order to tap some of the newly created talent, or sell to a community with newly disposable income.

3) Prosperity

Go through (2) enough times, and it will eventually become self-sustaining. The community will be able to grow and produce new economic opportunities on its own.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...

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Since apparently your dig was at me personally, I'll give you the honest answer that I guess you thought I'd find too shameful to share, but really just highlights the point I was making earlier. I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city. I have resources that I can provide to my family, and I have family in other areas that can provide resources for me, should the need arise. I don't expect to rely on FEMA personally.

But who do you consider to be part of my community? Is it close friends that I work with or went to school with and know well? Or is it the working poor a few blocks closer to the freeway? Because while I'm more than happy to provide similar levels of support to my close friends -- they're all rich techies like me, who also have their own resources.

What have I done for the working poor? Other than tipping well back when restaurants were still a thing, I've done jack shit for them, and 99% of the rich techies living here have similarly done squat. The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA. People will look after themselves, and will help close allies where support is expected to yield long-term benefits, but beyond that, we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought. Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way.