| Michael Phelps was born with his flipper-like feet, does that make him any less of an Olympian? No, but it makes the victory tainted by circumstance rather than hard work. Who would you be more receptive to in a lecture about hard work: Yao Ming at 7"6' who barely has to stick his hand out to make a block, or Charles Barkley who is an entire foot shorter? And if Michael Phelps didn't exist, someone like Cavic would have won by an insignificant 0.01 seconds less. By the same vein, it is inevitable that someone else would have stepped up had Microsoft not existed. So why is it a problem to worship these people that have had all these advantages? The biggest excuse why these people are against taxation is because they feel their wealth was earned 99% by hard work rather than circumstance. Conversely, many of them feel people on welfare don't deserve it, and it is 99% due to their personality. It is a classic case of the fundamental attribution error. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error |
To use your example, recent figures have shown that there are 4M adults in the UK who have never worked and spent their entire lives on the dole. Paying them to do nothing while there is stuff in the public good that needs doing, is simply not a good use of taxpayer's money.