And it absolutely does benefit them personally, just in ways they're too dumb to see.

I vote for school tax levys. I don't (and probably will never) have kids.

I always take it to a literal extreme when these sorts of arguments come up.

"I'm happy paying towards unemployment benefits because everybody needs to eat. Even if its going to drug addicts spending it on crack, because they need thst crack and theyre going to get it. I'd rather them be in the dole office with their hands out than sneaking around my house in the night taking my xbox."

People are not a consistent part of any community and have no relationship with the past or future of any community. The past is a completely different world, as will be the future, and we move through communities constantly in modern life, never becoming a meaningful and enduring part to any of them. A community would have to be part of our sense of self to have any of our interests be in its future. The pace of change has completely disconnected us from any concept of planning beyond the boundaries of our own lives, especially into a future we will never see and for communities we don't, and never felt a part of.

We have also become almost completely powerless with regard to how the world is shaped and for what purpose. Corporations, the wealthy and powerful, and authoritarian inclined governments have taken that power from individuals and communities to use for their personal desires. They are also the cause of the pace of change, creating the very context of community disempowerment which enables them to take that power.

Everyone in the lower 99% is struggling to simply keep existing and find a justification to do so, maybe have a couple of kids if they're lucky. It is not reasonable, living in a rapidly changing system of constant political and economic selfishness, to expect the struggling people to make their own lives harder to try and make plans that benefit other people's futures. It's impossible to even know what plans are wise when the powerful and wealthy change things so fast to benefit themselves, that most plans will never have any confidence to even be fulfilled.

We are all being fucked, present past and future, by the runaway selfishness of people whose power is seemingly unchallenged. Pointing fingers at each other for making desperate decisions that hurt others to protect ourselves is fucking stupid. These are not the choices we want to be making but are forced to. There are no good choices to make, be selfish or be dead is becoming normal. That's the world we inherited.