Entitlement

How should the church view poverty in the world?  I found what Gene Veith had to say in his book, Postmodern Times, very interesting.

"Just as the social engineers have taken over education, postmodernist ideology molds other government policies and attempts at social reform as well.  Marvin Olasky has described how efforts to help the poor have shifted.  In the classical model of welfare, aid to the poor was primarily handled by the church.  Those who were helped and those who did the helping had a personal relationship.  The charity aimed at lifting people out of their economic problems by attending to spiritual as well as material needs.   Moral reform and character building - through work, responsibility, and spiritual transformation - enabled people to escape poverty.
"In the modern model of welfare, the government played a larger role.  Reaching its high point with the New Deal, modern welfare offered a rational plan to provide temporary help and employment for the indigent.  Like the classical model, modern welfare restricted itself to those truly in need.  Accepting welfare was embarrassing.  Both the system and the recipients were geared toward getting people off of welfare and into the economic mainstream as soon as possible.  As with modernist art and architecture, modernists welfare was rational, efficient, and minimalistic.
"The postmodern model of welfare began with the Great Society of the 1960s.  Its principle is entitlement.  People began to see welfare benefits as rights.  They no longer viewed the poor as individuals who must be helped to improve their lot.  Rather, the poor are an aggrieved group, made so by the society.  Thus they have no individual responsibility.  'Welfare rights' groups were established, led not by the poor people but by the affluent New Class activists.  Entitlement programs multiplied.  The stigma against taking welfare payments diminished.
"Rather than ending poverty, postmodern welfare made it permanent.  The poor acquired a new status, as a subculture, a protected group.  Social mobility ground to a halt.  The work ethic diminished.  Economic incentives to marry evaporated.  Traditional values fell apart."