When Yeshua said we will always have the poor with us, he wasn't necessarily being fatalistic. He wasn't commenting on greed or hopelessness. He was saying two things (that I can think of off the top of my head):
First, the poor–or rather, the less fortunate, because there is an extreme parsity of real poverty in America–will always be with us, because that's the way God wants it. Giving to the poor is a command and carries physical and spiritual benefits for the giver. God wants us to have an opportunity to experience those benefits, so he arranges for some people to have more than others. The "War on Poverty" and mass charities are misguided and counter to the way God wants charity to work. They actually create more poverty due to economic processes, which were probably designed by God in part to ensure that there would always be an upper and a lower economic class.
That doesn't necessarily mean that some people are destined to be poor while others destined to be wealthy, nor that we should never help the poor so much that they aren't poor anymore. I'm not talking about divine right and I'm not preaching Hinduism. It just means that we shouldn't worry too much about it. Don't try to save the world. Help those you can help personally, and let God take care of the rest.
Which leads me to the second point I believe Yeshua was making: keep your priorities straight. If everyone spent all their time helping the poor, then we would all very quickly become the poor. Everyone has their mission, their ministry, and it might change from time to time. You have to keep your eyes open, spiritual and physical, and realize that, no matter how emotionally charged a problem might be, there could be more important things for you to worry about. If every pilot or tanker ditched in order to pull a wounded soldier off the field, the war would soon be lost.
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