So what is your take on that? I am genuinely interested, because coming from a country where everybody started with more or less the same crappy housing, cheap transit, no-frills healthcare, and ok education (and where 95% of my classmates were the same ethnicity, and the other 5% were, if anything, more successful and richer), I've come to look at such people with extreme disdain. Growing up I was actually on the poorer end of my peers, and I was merely pro-meritocracy, by my mid-20ies I was (and still am) outright classist.

So, in the US, I buy the arguments about the people who have a precarious housing situation, etc.; but I would absolutely "leave behind" the people you describe, with free rent and food. What else can one do?