"We're not seeing the clock turned back to 1912, before the graduated income tax was enacted; we're seeing it turned back to Imperial Rome, where I think it was Seneca who said, “There's no use giving food to the starving. It'll just prolong their miserable lives.” Rabbi Hertz quotes him. The Roman attitude was that being hungry, poor, and sick, you deserved to die anyway. Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, Seneca and all of these people, don't even include it as a virtue — they actually include it as a vice, that you would help the needy. We're now seeing a return to the old imperial system of, “Let the disadvantaged sink to the bottom, let ‘em die.” This is so tragic and so inhumane.
http://facesonposters.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/last-words.html