I think it has more to do with (relative) poverty than anything else. When Austria, Germany where struck by floods earlier this summer (nothing on the scale of NO of course, but a lot of people where trapped for a week or more) people where helpful to eachother, even though any country in Europe is more of a welfare state than the US.

I might agree that a welfare system isn't beneficial for the mentality of the people on welfare, since they are treated as 'needy' and generally get no responsibility or voice of their own. A lot of people don't know how to rise to an occasion because they never have gotten the chance before.

But what are you going to do ? Leave all those people (12% of Americans are living under the poverty limit iirc) to their own ? Without education for their children, healthcare, or in the worst cases food ? That is just inhuman, and frankly, disgusting. For a country where so many people consider themselves Christian, such a mentality is imnsho, baffling.