I ran across this quote from Justice Harlan's dissent in Douglas v. California and wanted to share.
". . . the Equal Protection Clause does not impose on the States 'an affirmative duty to lift the handicaps flowing from differences in economic circumstances.'  To so construe it would be to read into the Constitution a philosophy of leveling that would be foreign to many of our basic concepts of the proper relations between government and society.  The State may have a moral obligation to eliminate the evils of poverty, but it is not required by the Equal Protection Clause to give some what others cannot afford."