As much as you'd like to invoke social Darwinism, maybe they are secretly lazy or whatever, but there is one underlying issue. We are a modern civilized society. As a society, we have an obligation to prepare our children for the future. "Let them starve" means I'm going to be killed in front of my son behind a theatre by someone who's parents were allowed to starve. The solution isn't to buy a house in a gated community and pretend like problems go away.