Of course the public interest is served, by setting in train policy paradigms that seek to end poverty in all its forms and guises, wherever and wherever we find it. It is also served when we treat all others as we would be treated, were we in their shoes, and some day, we could be? We have many more riches to rags stories, than rags to riches examples!
So there is an inherent self service element in developing that inculcated social mindset.
Moreover, when those on the lower socio-economic rungs are assisted to climb a few rungs higher up, those immediately higher up are all but forced by up-welling pressure to also take a few steps further up. The public therefore ought to take a keen interest in the public interest, given, at some point in the public interest dichotomy or diabolic juxtaposition, [dammed if you do dammed if you don't?] It is not possible to please everyone?
Look, some people can never ever get enough money or power.
When we improve the prospects and the spending power of the least amongst us, we achieve a number of things, including finally meeting unmet need, and more importantly, introducing an economic growth paradigm no longer or ever dependant on unsustainable population growth.
No man is an Island, nor is personal wealth, however large, ever the creation of any single individual, but rather, the end product of very many minds, hands and other peoples' blood, sweat and tears!
Who ultimately create all so-called wealth!
e.g., a steel merchant needs iron ore and coal miners, steel mills/workers, shipping, road, rail and transport operators, port operators/wharfies etc.
Those who like billionaire merchant bankers, pluck their money from thin air, via derivatives, short selling, or debt based speculation, are in reality, I believe, plundering the real enterprise, effort and enterprise of others? And indeed, the real reason we have poverty here or an ever widening gap between the haves or have-nots?
We could do a lot worse than return to Keynesian economic principles, or the post war period of unprecedented prosperity it created. Rhrosty.

Rhrosty,
What if the "Poor" can't or won't change and throw your charity back in your face?
The idea of unlimited human potential is, again, simply dogma, it's based on a set of beliefs and not in fact.
There are myriad factors "holding people back", heredity and race play a part, congenital disorders, diet, intelligence and so on.
With money all that can be achieved is to tinker at the edges, you can extract some people from "poverty" and through subjecting them to intensive management you may improve their lives but how do a few million well meaning Europeans manage several billions of feckless, low IQ Third Worlders?

JOM: Not talking about charity per se. But rather, a hand up rather than a hand out.
Warren Buffet was right!
We create post code poverty traps by treating those who were born and raised in them, quite differently!
No one that you could point to JOM, chooses to be born into poverty and or depressed circumstances. You stand corrected.
Its like a race, where some are forced to run carrying an iron ball and chain, [the circumstances of birth,] whilst others are given a tow and a tail wind, or the benefits of being born wealthy, or having dedicated parents willing to sacrifice, in order that their kids have a better start than they did.
Yes, it is sadly true that some piss their prospects away against some wall somewhere, but that applies to all socio-economic circumstances.
Usually, inherited wealth doesn't travel beyond the forth generation!
My recipe would include quite massive tax reform and vast simplification.
To in the first instance, remove the cost of compliance, which sees as much as 7%, ripped from the bottom line.
A very big part of the paradigm, is enhanced self help opportunity.
Besides, we need something other than entirely unsustainable population growth, to grow the economy!
With around 7% added to the bottom line, via long overdue real tax reform, we could and should progressively increase the minim wage.
A very simple stand alone expenditure tax, set at a patently painless 5%, would raise more revenue than the current complexity, around 100 billion more, PA.
Half of these new surpluses could be invested in an income earning sovereign fund, the other half could be used to improve the eduction prospects of the worse off. All in the public interest!
And we could trade away unfair dismissals, in return for seriously improved welfare/work start benefits, which would conclude for the able bodied, in around 12-18 months, and then be replaced by compulsory military service.
Which could include trade and profession training!
To do what we have always done and expect different outcomes, is madness.
Rhrosty.

Footnote; low IQ in third world countries is usually a product of enduring poor nutrition, not dark skin genetics! Again you stand corrected JOM. Don't look now, but your bigotry is showing?
Helping those poor bastards rise above the circumstances of their birth is as simple as collecting a tiny Tobin tax and distributing some of it as micro-loans, that help self help, village or local economy progressing cottage industries.
Think global but act locally!
Usually every community has some saleable hand craft/cottage industry skills and or surplus produce, and only need some professional guidance, to get that to market, and at a time, which improves the margins and or bottom line.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him and his family for life.
Where it is possible, the addition of power and clean water does wonders, as does supplanting hand held implements, with a milk producing buffalo or two, which can also pull a plough.
It can be very surprising how so much difference can be made, with so little assistance.
Rhrosty.

Oh my god! Verbosity reigns supreme.

This one must take the prize for bull sh1t dressed up as cream, & the fellow travelers among the posters, are almost as bad. Some people should never be allowed even the merest glimpse of their navel, let alone be allowed to meditate on the thing. That goes double for those who have read too many lefty ideas, but have no thinking capacity of their own.

Yes I actually struggled through the whole thing, & apart from being horrified that such fools are all too often paid by the public purse, I did get the point.

To paraphrase, "I want to be editor of The AGE, & I don't want Gina, or anyone else who has worked hard enough to buy the thing, telling me what to do, when I am".

Thank god for the AGE readers, & share holders, such a happening is about as likely as me bothering to read another article by this bloke.