I will be honest, this is a sentiment that I saw over and over and over when i was in Ohio. I lived in Northeast Ohio which is okay as prosperity goes, but Akron, where I lived and went to school, was a town in the grips of a serious poverty problem.

But you would see the people who were themselves on social assistance being the most harsh on other people. "I'm having a tough time, I lost my job," "I'm having a hard time, my husband was diagnosed with a blood cancer and we have no medical insurance", "I'm having a had time, our son was born with brittle bones." There was always a reason that they were on social assistance, waiting in line at the food bank. But the next half of their line... "I'm having a hard time for x reason. But that guy in front of me? He just needs to work harder! he just needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps and find a job, work more hours."

Basically, "I have a reason and deserve this help, but these other people deserve their suffering."

I was told it comes from the concept that every poor American believes they're just a "Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire", combined with the other, more biblical concept that all of the other people in their situation deserve their suffering because of either something they did, or more commonly something they didn't do.