In a free country it shouldn't be considered heartless. If I didn't work, I'd be poor. No one played a violin for me, so far as I know.
Throughout all of human history, if you didn’t work, you starved. There was no Big Nanny cushy “safety net.” Your family cared for you or the church or the community. But, by and large, if you were a useless layabout, you lived dirt poor. Or you died. Simple as that. Our decades of experimenting with welfare have proven beyond a doubt that that is the best approach.
Imagine what the USA would be like with that work ethic, if the governments didn’t suck up TRILLIONS of our dollars to indulge the indolent and addicts, if the huge pots of government money weren’t sitting there enticing fraudsters to come from all over the world to loot our treasury.