Comment by EgregiousCube
16 days ago
You'll find very few people who don't want poor people to have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way.
The two commonly held arguments against socialized healthcare in America are: First, a distrust that the government will create a system that is good and a belief that quality will decrease under such a system, and;
Second, that such a system would be funded by a large tax increase and that Americans are in general hard to get excited about tax increases. The financial concern is in the taking, not in the getting.
> You'll find very few people who don't want poor people to have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way.
I'm afraid your experiences are not universal.
There is a very strong streak of this in the US, significantly (though probably not wholly) traceable to the Calvinist roots of the Puritans who were a profound influence on the early culture of the country. When you believe that people's position on Earth is due to their level of deserving (Just World Fallacy), it's very easy to extend that to "and therefore we shouldn't try to help poor people; they're just being punished for being bad people."
There is a wide gap between not wanting to be responsible for helping the poor and actively wanting the poor to fail. You're confusing the two.
You're right about the first part, but I'm not confused about anything.
There are genuinely many people who wholeheartedly believe that the poor deserve to be poor, and that helping them is bad. Some of them aren't even that well off themselves, but have bought into an ideology that's detrimental to them.
If you haven't encountered these people, then count yourself lucky, but don't try to deny their existence or assume your own experiences are universal.
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