It's amazing to me how we equate compassion with cash.

Like the Reverend Jesse Jackson telling me on FOX Business Network we have a "moral obligation" to help those who got in too deep on their mortgages.

And that if we don't, we're somehow "immoral"?

Look, the reverend is a good man with good intentions.

But we end up paying for those good intentions.

Because for all the trillion dollars spent on the war on poverty since the 1960s, we actually have more people in poverty.

Someone, somewhere should be saying, "wait a minute."

There's got to be a better way.

And maybe, maybe, the government isn't it.

Yet we continue to associate the heft of someone's heart with the heft of their wallet.

And if we quibble with that, we're either callous, or clueless, or both.

What's callous is throwing good money after bad.

What's clueless is assuming you're helping people when you rescue them from themselves. And their own bad decisions.

And what's both is playing this predictable game that if we can't, maybe the government can.

Well, we can.

The government can't.

And the only thing that's rich is assuming the opposite is true.

Watch Neil Cavuto weekdays at 4 p.m. ET on "Your World with Cavuto" and send your comments to cavuto@foxnews.com