> Those people are in that position inspite of the fact that we could, with the wealth we have, feed, house and provide health care and education for each and every one of them.

I don’t think this is really true, part of the problem is that the wealth that you think could be allocated to this problem was only generated by incentivizing people to build it with compensation, if you turned around and took it away from the people who built it and gave it to people who did not build it, you would disincentivize creation of more wealth, and the wealth you reappropriated would deteriorate, because you neglected to create an incentive and maintenance infrastructure to keep it working. This is exactly what happened when we tried this, starting with poor people in our own communities.

Public housing projects and welfare programs are money sinks that are notoriously counterproductive at meeting their stated needs; and we can’t get people to consider the structural imbalances that result because the need for these programs is an article of faith and among the believers the only acceptable reasons for their failure are “people who don’t agree with the program” and “lack of funding.”

Ah, thanks. I felt that was a separate point to the idea of stopping progress because we have enough. I didn’t realize that was the main point? Yes indeed, we have enough to ease those burdens and it’s a terrible thing that they continue!