Why do people in USA fear socialism so much?

[Hawker]

I work hard to earn my way through life. I prepare for my future and the future of my family, to care for my elders, and I teach my children the exact same ethic I was taught regardless of the education and media systems trying to program them otherwise. It's been a tough fight and getting tougher every day.

Personal responsibility. Just like in any species of life, you die if you do not do your required work to survive. You, and no one else, is responsible for your survival.

Socailism is a bunch of people who would steal the product of my hard work through legislative means rather than work for what they need to survive. It also breeds entitlement. Entitlement to my stuff just because their parents screwed and had an accident they could not raise appropriately in my opinion.

You have no right to anything you do not work for.

What you DO have is the possibility of others pity in charitable contributions. I believe in pity to help the truly needy. Those that have absolutely no ability to care for themselves. These cases are extremely rare.

If I held a gun to your head because I want that watch you worked hard for would be illegal.

Just like holding a gun to my head or threatening prison time to me for not giving you my hard earned product (my taxes spent on you socialists with an entitlement disorder-  without my consent) should be illegal, but like most things the government and elites advocate is not illegal because they voted to make the illegal- legal.

What happens way in the future when there is absolutely no incentive to work and earn your way through life to survive ?

People stop working and relies on the state. They lose all their wealth and personal property because they can not aford to buy or upkeep it through the high taxes stolen from us.

Totalitarian Police State where everyone is forced into an occupation to work for the state and the greater good of humanity, because everyone is reliant upon the state.

Think about it.

Well put, I agree. 

Really by that logic George W Bush was a socialist.  I agree 100% with your opposing your money being wasted on layabouts but Stalin used to shoot them for parasitism.  What you are opposed to is injustice, not any known version of socialism.

[SgtSpike]

I work hard to earn my way through life. I prepare for my future and the future of my family, to care for my elders, and I teach my children the exact same ethic I was taught regardless of the education and media systems trying to program them otherwise. It's been a tough fight and getting tougher every day.

Personal responsibility. Just like in any species of life, you die if you do not do your required work to survive. You, and no one else, is responsible for your survival.

Socailism is a bunch of people who would steal the product of my hard work through legislative means rather than work for what they need to survive. It also breeds entitlement. Entitlement to my stuff just because their parents screwed and had an accident they could not raise appropriately in my opinion.

You have no right to anything you do not work for.

What you DO have is the possibility of others pity in charitable contributions. I believe in pity to help the truly needy. Those that have absolutely no ability to care for themselves. These cases are extremely rare.

If I held a gun to your head because I want that watch you worked hard for would be illegal.

Just like holding a gun to my head or threatening prison time to me for not giving you my hard earned product (my taxes spent on you socialists with an entitlement disorder-  without my consent) should be illegal, but like most things the government and elites advocate is not illegal because they voted to make the illegal- legal.

What happens way in the future when there is absolutely no incentive to work and earn your way through life to survive ?

People stop working and relies on the state. They lose all their wealth and personal property because they can not aford to buy or upkeep it through the high taxes stolen from us.

Totalitarian Police State where everyone is forced into an occupation to work for the state and the greater good of humanity, because everyone is reliant upon the state.

Think about it.

Well put, I agree. 

Really by that logic George W Bush was a socialist.  I agree 100% with your opposing your money being wasted on layabouts but Stalin used to shoot them for parasitism.  What you are opposed to is injustice, not any known version of socialism.

I am opposed to anyone forcing me to give money towards anything.  Let me choose how to spend my money, what charitable donations to give, what public projects to fund, etc.  I wouldn't even mind a forced tax if I got to choose what public projects it was spent on.

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

[AyeYo]

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases!  They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!


 

[Anonymous]

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases!  They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!


 

Damn, those poor people with debilitating diseases. They have to depend on the mercy Big Pharma and stagnant innovation to hopefully receive overpriced treatments provided by the welfare state.

[AyeYo]

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases!  They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!


 

Damn, those poor people with debilitating diseases. They have to depend on the mercy Big Pharma and stagnant innovation to hopefully receive overpriced treatments provided by the welfare state.

Yes, because if we only got rid of that regulation about the height of door frames, prices on all medication would magically drop to free, doctors would work for the fun of it, and hospitals would take smiles for payment.

[Bind]

Yes, because if we only got rid of that regulation about the height of door frames, prices on all medication would magically drop to free, doctors would work for the fun of it, and hospitals would take smiles for payment.

Overall, people are good and honest and helpful. People like you mention will be pitied and charitable contributions would happen. Or they would be taken care of with the assistance of orgs and churches who perform this type of assistance from charitable contributions.

[AyeYo]

Yes, because if we only got rid of that regulation about the height of door frames, prices on all medication would magically drop to free, doctors would work for the fun of it, and hospitals would take smiles for payment.

Overall, people are good and honest and helpful. People like you mention will be pitied and charitable contributions would happen. Or they would be taken care of with the assistance of orgs and churches who perform this type of assistance from charitable contributions.

Yes, because history definitely bears that out.

This is why we don't have welfare, medicare, and other such social services, because charities are so flooded with contributions that they simply aren't needed.

[SgtSpike]

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases!  They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!


 

Fair point, but it still shouldn't be forced.  If you have a much lower tax rate from not having entitlement programs, then you enable people to have more free money to donate to charities that would help some people.  Ideally, if a person did have a debilitating disease, then family members and/or charities would decide whether it is worth spending money on keeping them alive.  Sounds harsh, but keep reading...

This gets into another question though, which is, what is the value of a random person's life?  $5?  $500?  $500,000?  $5M?  At what point do you say, enough is enough, and give up on throwing money at trying to save a person's life?  And I'm talking about any general public fund's money, not an individual's money which they can spend at will on whatever they like.  You can't say that a life is priceless, else we'd all be so poor spending money on keeping people alive that we'd live in shacks and eat grub for every meal.

[AyeYo]

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases!  They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!


 

Fair point, but it still shouldn't be forced.  If you have a much lower tax rate from not having entitlement programs, then you enable people to have more free money to donate to charities that would help some people.  Ideally, if a person did have a debilitating disease, then family members and/or charities would decide whether it is worth spending money on keeping them alive.  Sounds harsh, but keep reading...

This gets into another question though, which is, what is the value of a random person's life?  $5?  $500?  $500,000?  $5M?  At what point do you say, enough is enough, and give up on throwing money at trying to save a person's life?  And I'm talking about any general public fund's money, not an individual's money which they can spend at will on whatever they like.  You can't say that a life is priceless, else we'd all be so poor spending money on keeping people alive that we'd live in shacks and eat grub for every meal.

See above, history has proven time and again that charties do not cut it, which is why social services were started in the first place.

It's not about spending money to keep people alive, it's about giving everyone as equal a shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we can.  No one should suffer due solely to being dealt a bad hand.  That's why this BS that everyone that uses social services is some lazy ghetto queen bum is so off-the-wall wrong.  The purpose of social services is to prop up people that need propping up so that they can hopefully get back on their feet someday and become contributing members of society.  They can't do that if we just let them die.


Father, mother, and two kids are living their merry lives.  Father gets cancer and has to stop working.  Leaving works means getting dropped from his healthcare policy.  Father now has to find it own healthcare... but no one will take him because he's got cancer and cancer is expensive.  Father is now stuck paying for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments out of his own pocket.  Mother goes to work.  What about the kids?  The kids have to drop out of highschool at 16 and get jobs to help put food on the table.  Their future is shot.  They were 4.0 students, bound for good colleges, now they're working at McDonald's.  Father dies.  Mother is now old and burned out.  Kids are in their late 20's with no highschool education and they're forced to keep working to support their mother who had no retirement savings because it all went to her husband's medical bills, rent, and clothes for the kids.  Mother dies.  Kids are now in their 50's with no retirement savings, no education, and no hope for what's left of their future.

So we've throw an entire generation down the toilet because society didn't want to pick up the tab for father's cancer treatment.  The same father that worked a 9-5, paid his taxes and was a contributing member of society.  It's called giving back, and it's not voluntary because it's OWED.

[gusti]

Father, mother, and two kids are living their merry lives.  Father gets cancer and has to stop working.  Leaving works means getting dropped from his healthcare policy.  Father now has to find it own healthcare... but no one will take him because he's got cancer and cancer is expensive.  Father is now stuck paying for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments out of his own pocket.  Mother goes to work.  What about the kids?  The kids have to drop out of highschool at 16 and get jobs to help put food on the table.  Their future is shot.  They were 4.0 students, bound for good colleges, now they're working at McDonald's.  Father dies.  Mother is now old and burned out.  Kids are in their late 20's with no highschool education and they're forced to keep working to support their mother who had no retirement savings because it all went to her husband's medical bills, rent, and clothes for the kids.  Mother dies.  Kids are now in their 50's with no retirement savings, no education, and no hope for what's left of their future.

So we've throw an entire generation down the toilet because society didn't want to pick up the tab for father's cancer treatment.  The same father that worked a 9-5, paid his taxes and was a contributing member of society.  It's called giving back, and it's not voluntary because it's OWED.

No matter if you need to work at Mc Donalds 12 hrs a day (which is not the rule), if you put some effort, you can also finish highschool, college and a master. With some effort from you. Or you can learn some plumbering or something, and you will be doing good too.
The choice is in the individual.

[JeffK]

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases!  They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!


 

Fair point, but it still shouldn't be forced.  If you have a much lower tax rate from not having entitlement programs, then you enable people to have more free money to donate to charities that would help some people.  Ideally, if a person did have a debilitating disease, then family members and/or charities would decide whether it is worth spending money on keeping them alive.  Sounds harsh, but keep reading...

This gets into another question though, which is, what is the value of a random person's life?  $5?  $500?  $500,000?  $5M?  At what point do you say, enough is enough, and give up on throwing money at trying to save a person's life?  And I'm talking about any general public fund's money, not an individual's money which they can spend at will on whatever they like.  You can't say that a life is priceless, else we'd all be so poor spending money on keeping people alive that we'd live in shacks and eat grub for every meal.

See above, history has proven time and again that charties do not cut it, which is why social services were started in the first place.

It's not about spending money to keep people alive, it's about giving everyone as equal a shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we can.  No one should suffer due solely to being dealt a bad hand.  That's why this BS that everyone that uses social services is some lazy ghetto queen bum is so off-the-wall wrong.  The purpose of social services is to prop up people that need propping up so that they can hopefully get back on their feet someday and become contributing members of society.  They can't do that if we just let them die.


Father, mother, and two kids are living their merry lives.  Father gets cancer and has to stop working.  Leaving works means getting dropped from his healthcare policy.  Father now has to find it own healthcare... but no one will take him because he's got cancer and cancer is expensive.  Father is now stuck paying for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments out of his own pocket.  Mother goes to work.  What about the kids?  The kids have to drop out of highschool at 16 and get jobs to help put food on the table.  Their future is shot.  They were 4.0 students, bound for good colleges, now they're working at McDonald's.  Father dies.  Mother is now old and burned out.  Kids are in their late 20's with no highschool education and they're forced to keep working to support their mother who had no retirement savings because it all went to her husband's medical bills, rent, and clothes for the kids.  Mother dies.  Kids are now in their 50's with no retirement savings, no education, and no hope for what's left of their future.

So we've throw an entire generation down the toilet because society didn't want to pick up the tab for father's cancer treatment.  The same father that worked a 9-5, paid his taxes and was a contributing member of society.  It's called giving back, and it's not voluntary because it's OWED.

This is what I'm not getting, it's basic social contract. Rich person benefits greatly from standing social infrastructure - shouldn't he be required to give some of what was given to him back to ensure continued existence of the system?

Working class person gives and gives to society by providing labor, and gets cancer. Shouldn't the society that benefited from his labor take care of him, either as repayment or so he can actually re-enter the workforce again?


In America, the answer to these questions is no. The rich should be allowed to disproportionately leech off the system due to their position and advantage and life, and the working class man should be cast aside as a disposable tool the minute he becomes a liability.



Here's a truth-bomb for everyone posting here: You may not fully believe it yet, maybe you have not gotten a full dose of the real world yet, but if you spend your free time theorycrafting on forums, it is very very likely you weren't born off into good enough conditions to not be in the second class, and in a capitalistic society you WILL NOT benefit from all the fruits your labor, in fact, you will probably receive much less of a fraction of your labor back as you would under even a mild nordic-style socialism system and safety net. Also, once you become useless to society, either through age or disability, your employer, your banks, and even your insurance will throw you to the side like trash and let you die, no matter how much you've given them. People and markets are not rational, and unless given regulation and a tax code that requires people to pay into a structured society, people will do everything they can to fuck you as hard as they can, just to make their bottom line grow a little.

[JeffK]

Father, mother, and two kids are living their merry lives.  Father gets cancer and has to stop working.  Leaving works means getting dropped from his healthcare policy.  Father now has to find it own healthcare... but no one will take him because he's got cancer and cancer is expensive.  Father is now stuck paying for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments out of his own pocket.  Mother goes to work.  What about the kids?  The kids have to drop out of highschool at 16 and get jobs to help put food on the table.  Their future is shot.  They were 4.0 students, bound for good colleges, now they're working at McDonald's.  Father dies.  Mother is now old and burned out.  Kids are in their late 20's with no highschool education and they're forced to keep working to support their mother who had no retirement savings because it all went to her husband's medical bills, rent, and clothes for the kids.  Mother dies.  Kids are now in their 50's with no retirement savings, no education, and no hope for what's left of their future.

So we've throw an entire generation down the toilet because society didn't want to pick up the tab for father's cancer treatment.  The same father that worked a 9-5, paid his taxes and was a contributing member of society.  It's called giving back, and it's not voluntary because it's OWED.

No matter if you need to work at Mc Donalds 12 hrs a day (which is not the rule), if you put some effort, you can also finish highschool, college and a master. With some effort from you. Or you can learn some plumbering or something, and you will be doing good too.
The choice is in the individual.

Not everyone is born into the conditions that allow them to do all of these things. This is basically the Just World fallacy

[gusti]

In America, the answer to these questions is no. The rich should be allowed to disproportionately leech off the system due to their position and advantage and life, and the working class man should be cast aside as a disposable tool the minute he becomes a liability.

In America, the so called "working class" man, that is, the people that works responsible, go to work on a new model car, and live in a nice house, have vacations, etc. If you are responsible enough, you can have the liability insurance of your choice, or live with that risk.

[gusti]

Father, mother, and two kids are living their merry lives.  Father gets cancer and has to stop working.  Leaving works means getting dropped from his healthcare policy.  Father now has to find it own healthcare... but no one will take him because he's got cancer and cancer is expensive.  Father is now stuck paying for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments out of his own pocket.  Mother goes to work.  What about the kids?  The kids have to drop out of highschool at 16 and get jobs to help put food on the table.  Their future is shot.  They were 4.0 students, bound for good colleges, now they're working at McDonald's.  Father dies.  Mother is now old and burned out.  Kids are in their late 20's with no highschool education and they're forced to keep working to support their mother who had no retirement savings because it all went to her husband's medical bills, rent, and clothes for the kids.  Mother dies.  Kids are now in their 50's with no retirement savings, no education, and no hope for what's left of their future.

So we've throw an entire generation down the toilet because society didn't want to pick up the tab for father's cancer treatment.  The same father that worked a 9-5, paid his taxes and was a contributing member of society.  It's called giving back, and it's not voluntary because it's OWED.

No matter if you need to work at Mc Donalds 12 hrs a day (which is not the rule), if you put some effort, you can also finish highschool, college and a master. With some effort from you. Or you can learn some plumbering or something, and you will be doing good too.
The choice is in the individual.

Not everyone is born into the conditions that allow them to do all of these things. This is basically the Just World fallacy

Sure. You are responsible, a hard worker, smart and good looking. I'm lazy, stupid, ugly, I like drugs and to party all day long.
Can you please send me some btc, bro, so I can cope with that differences ?   

[SgtSpike]

And what do you mean by "any known version of socialism"?  What does a known version of socialism look like, in your opinion?  Because to me, it looks like programs to give people money who don't work hard enough to provide for themselves.

Damn those people with debilitating diseases!  They just need to drag their lazy asses off the couch and get to work to pay for their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical treatment.

No wait... they should have planned better and not gotten sick in the first place!


 

Fair point, but it still shouldn't be forced.  If you have a much lower tax rate from not having entitlement programs, then you enable people to have more free money to donate to charities that would help some people.  Ideally, if a person did have a debilitating disease, then family members and/or charities would decide whether it is worth spending money on keeping them alive.  Sounds harsh, but keep reading...

This gets into another question though, which is, what is the value of a random person's life?  $5?  $500?  $500,000?  $5M?  At what point do you say, enough is enough, and give up on throwing money at trying to save a person's life?  And I'm talking about any general public fund's money, not an individual's money which they can spend at will on whatever they like.  You can't say that a life is priceless, else we'd all be so poor spending money on keeping people alive that we'd live in shacks and eat grub for every meal.

See above, history has proven time and again that charties do not cut it, which is why social services were started in the first place.

It's not about spending money to keep people alive, it's about giving everyone as equal a shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we can.  No one should suffer due solely to being dealt a bad hand.  That's why this BS that everyone that uses social services is some lazy ghetto queen bum is so off-the-wall wrong.  The purpose of social services is to prop up people that need propping up so that they can hopefully get back on their feet someday and become contributing members of society.  They can't do that if we just let them die.


Father, mother, and two kids are living their merry lives.  Father gets cancer and has to stop working.  Leaving works means getting dropped from his healthcare policy.  Father now has to find it own healthcare... but no one will take him because he's got cancer and cancer is expensive.  Father is now stuck paying for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatments out of his own pocket.  Mother goes to work.  What about the kids?  The kids have to drop out of highschool at 16 and get jobs to help put food on the table.  Their future is shot.  They were 4.0 students, bound for good colleges, now they're working at McDonald's.  Father dies.  Mother is now old and burned out.  Kids are in their late 20's with no highschool education and they're forced to keep working to support their mother who had no retirement savings because it all went to her husband's medical bills, rent, and clothes for the kids.  Mother dies.  Kids are now in their 50's with no retirement savings, no education, and no hope for what's left of their future.

So we've throw an entire generation down the toilet because society didn't want to pick up the tab for father's cancer treatment.  The same father that worked a 9-5, paid his taxes and was a contributing member of society.  It's called giving back, and it's not voluntary because it's OWED.

This is what I'm not getting, it's basic social contract. Rich person benefits greatly from standing social infrastructure - shouldn't he be required to give some of what was given to him back to ensure continued existence of the system?

Working class person gives and gives to society by providing labor, and gets cancer. Shouldn't the society that benefited from his labor take care of him, either as repayment or so he can actually re-enter the workforce again?


In America, the answer to these questions is no. The rich should be allowed to disproportionately leech off the system due to their position and advantage and life, and the working class man should be cast aside as a disposable tool the minute he becomes a liability.



Here's a truth-bomb for everyone posting here: You may not fully believe it yet, maybe you have not gotten a full dose of the real world yet, but if you spend your free time theorycrafting on forums, it is very very likely you weren't born off into good enough conditions to not be in the second class, and in a capitalistic society you WILL NOT benefit from all the fruits your labor, in fact, you will probably receive much less of a fraction of your labor back as you would under even a mild nordic-style socialism system and safety net. Also, once you become useless to society, either through age or disability, your employer, your banks, and even your insurance will throw you to the side like trash and let you die, no matter how much you've given them. People and markets are not rational, and unless given regulation and a tax code that requires people to pay into a structured society, people will do everything they can to fuck you as hard as they can, just to make their bottom line grow a little.

The rich may leech off the system, but so do the poor.  I see examples of it nearly every day.  Which is why there shouldn't be any system to leech off of.  Not abolishment of government completely, but certainly downsizing it from the ridiculous bloat it has become.  No welfare or loopholes for anyone, rich or poor, to use.

I am fine with my return off of labor.  I wouldn't mind more money, but who would?  I got myself a degree, I work hard, and I take home a decent paycheck.  I put some into a retirement fund, and at some point when I have more of my debt paid off, will start putting more into more savings accounts.  If I get cancer and none of my family can afford to pay for it (or wants to pay for it), then I die.  My wife would have life insurance payments to help take care of the children and pay off the mortgage, because I was smart enough to pay for some, and life moves on.  If a person puts their family's financial state into danger because he didn't pay for life insurance, or assure them other means for survival should he pass, then that is his fault.

Also, one of the big reasons why a cancer care bill might run into the hundreds of thousands is because many people never pay their hospital bills.  Remove that leech of the system, and you'd have much smaller and more manageable bills for the people who actually do pay them.

[SgtSpike]

One more little tidbit:  LIFE ISN'T FAIR.

And we shouldn't try to make it fair.  Not everyone can afford a college education.  Not fair?  Perhaps, but life isn't fair.  If a person gets dealt a bad hand in life, it's no one's fault, but society as a whole shouldn't have to bail them out - they should only have the option to do so if desired.

[JeffK]

In America, the answer to these questions is no. The rich should be allowed to disproportionately leech off the system due to their position and advantage and life, and the working class man should be cast aside as a disposable tool the minute he becomes a liability.

In America, the so called "working class" man, that is, the people that works responsible, go to work on a new model car, and live in a nice house, have vacations, etc. If you are responsible enough, you can have the liability insurance of your choice, or live with that risk.

Yeah, except they don't

Median household income (generally two-earners), in 2003, was $36,835 for highschool grads and $68,728 for families with at least 1 bachelor's. Even at $68,000, it's hard to afford 'a nice house' and 'a new model car' without saving for a decade or owing someone a shitload of money. (I can't be bother to lookup more recent numbers than 2003, but since wages have stagnated for 30 years AND we have another depression happening, I'd imagine it's lower.)

If, instead, I used working class to describe blue-collar high school graduate workers, the situation is obviously a lot worse. So if the 'average' working class man does own a house and a new car, it's only because he is well over his head in debt  and will likely spend most of his life turning over his money to his debtor.


Also, insurance companies across the country have been dropping people for any condition worse that is worse than a tonsil removal if they thinks it's too costly. Without government intervention (or better yet, single-payer system), this habit will  continue as insurance companies see profits at no risk to themselves and little fallout.

[JeffK]

One more little tidbit:  LIFE ISN'T FAIR.

And we shouldn't try to make it fair.  Not everyone can afford a college education.  Not fair?  Perhaps, but life isn't fair.  If a person gets dealt a bad hand in life, it's no one's fault, but society as a whole shouldn't have to bail them out - they should only have the option to do so if desired.

Neither should they have to give disproportionately to the people at the top who were given everything in life, including their education.

[cryptobard]

Once again, as J. Orlin Grabbe said:

Your first responsibility is to take care of yourself, so you won't be a burden to other people. If you don't do at least that, how can you be so arrogant as to think you can help others? You make progress by adapting to your own nature. In Rabelais' Gargantua the Abbey of Theleme had the motto: Fay ce que vouldras, or "Do as you will." Rabelais (unlike the Book of Judges) treats this in a very positive light. The implication is: Don't go seeking after some ideal far removed from your own needs. Don't get involved in some crusade to save the human race--because you falsely think that is the noble thing to do--when what you may really want to do, if you are honest with yourself, is to stay home, grow vegetables, and sell them in a roadside market. (Growing vegetables is, after all, real growth--more so than some New Age conceptions.) You have no obligation under the sun other than to discover your real needs, to fulfill them, and to rejoice in doing so.

In this approach you give other people the right to make their own choices, but you also hold them responsible for the consequences. Most social "problems", after all, are a function of the choices people make, and are therefore insolvable in principle, except by coercion. One is not under any obligation to make up for the effects of other people's decisions. If, for example, people (poor or rich, educated or not) have children they can't care for or feed, one has no responsibility to make up for their negligence or to take on one's own shoulders responsibility for the consequent suffering. You can, if you wish, if you want to become a martyr. If you are looking to become a martyr, the world will gladly oblige, and then calmly carry on as before, the "problems" unaltered.

One may, of course, choose to help the rest of the world to the extent that one is able, assuming one knows how. But it is a choice, not an obligation. Modern political correctness and prostituted religion have tried to turn all of what used to be considered virtues into social obligations. Not that anyone is expected to really practice what they preach; rather it is intended they feel guilty for not doing so, and once the guilt trip is underway, their behavior can be manipulated for political purposes.

you don't know what's good for anyone else, socialism is inherently coercive etc etc etc letshaveanargumentwherewedontagreetoeachothersdefinitionsofwordslikesocialisman dcapitalism

[JeffK]

The rich may leech off the system, but so do the poor.  I see examples of it nearly every day.  Which is why there shouldn't be any system to leech off of.  Not abolishment of government completely, but certainly downsizing it from the ridiculous bloat it has become.  No welfare or loopholes for anyone, rich or poor, to use.

The poor don't ask for Trillions They Already Have, however.
Also, here's a cool chart from Moody's, showing the estimated return rates on investment in social programs; many of those you lash out against have POSITIVE returns (if you're wondering how, it's mostly to do with enabling workers and businesses to continue working or have infrastructure):

I am fine with my return off of labor.  I wouldn't mind more money, but who would?  I got myself a degree, I work hard, and I take home a decent paycheck.  I put some into a retirement fund, and at some point when I have more of my debt paid off, will start putting more into more savings accounts.  If I get cancer and none of my family can afford to pay for it (or wants to pay for it), then I die.  My wife would have life insurance payments to help take care of the children and pay off the mortgage, because I was smart enough to pay for some, and life moves on.  If a person puts their family's financial state into danger because he didn't pay for life insurance, or assure them other means for survival should he pass, then that is his fault.

If you "didn't want to pay for cancer", there's a good chance your life insurance has a clause that would let them rule that suicide or something, I'd check that. (Suicide means they don't have to pay out)

Also, one of the big reasons why a cancer care bill might run into the hundreds of thousands is because many people never pay their hospital bills.  Remove that leech of the system, and you'd have much smaller and more manageable bills for the people who actually do pay them.

Single payer effectively fixes this, as the hospital gets payed regardless of the customer.