The Leonard Lopate Show

Is it a stretch to liken your piece about empathy, and to observe that we sit by passively while our government spends millions, billions and trillions of our dollars in ways in which we heartily disapprove, yet we complain bitterly when we have to pay an extra dollar in the supermarket?

And in my own community, the government exhorts that recycling costs much too much money while they spend huge amounts on things that seem to me to be frivolous and wasteful ... Laiah Raphael

The perception is true; at least, by response it is, although the opposite should be the case. A million deaths is a tragedy.

I believe it has to do with people feeling swamped with millions, as if nothing can be done about the problem. Whereas, you can do something about 1 or 3 people in need. It goes back to Margaret Thatcher's TINA.