[Arryn]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I said that society owes you protection from starving to death and abject poverty.

Why? This encourages people to become leeches.

The compassionate part of me has sympathy for the elderly and the unfortunate. But the rational side of me thinks: if these folks had been less inept and/or foolish they'd not be in a situation now where they need help from others. Why should I reward the poor decisions they made in their lives? Example: if someone decides to have 8 children, and cannot afford to feed/clothe/care for more than 1, why must I (in the form of taxes) pay for their stupidity/irresponsibility? If you smoke, and get cancer, why should I have to pay a share (in the form of higher insurance costs) for the tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars it'll cost to deal with your foolishness? If you eat like a pig all your life, blimp out, and then get heart disease or colon cancer, why must everyone else be burdened by you?

Sorry, but people need to be responsible for themselves. The alternative is, eventually, a nonfunctional society in which very few support very many. A bankrupt society. We have too many people feeding at the public trough now, as is.