isvicthere?
a.k.a. floppybollocks
You can try to change it if you wish, but you should suck it up when you lose. I get the feeling you're a young person. As you get older you realize how interdependent we all are. Most people spend the bulk of their lives figuring out how to cooperate with people they don't like very much, not compete.
By existing within the bounds of the country you are using the services. You benefit when others benefit. Someone else using a road to transport goods and make the economy move, serves you. Having a health service that prevents communicable disease, serves you. Having police and military to protect society, protects you.
As far as welfare recipients go, I think you've bought some right-wing mantra that dismisses the contributions of the lower classes. At least in the US, many welfare recipients work. They just don't make a living wage. This wage subsidy in the form of "welfare" benefits their employers more than it does them. Its corporate welfare. As a society, we could easily solve the sub-survival wage issue by raising the minimum wage, at much less cost to the government.
Also, welfare recipients do pay taxes. They pay social security taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, gas taxes, property taxes (in the form of rent). The lowest income people pay a higher percentage of their income in tax than the highest income people do, as billionaire Warren Buffett is often points out.
Contrary to the stereotype you're presenting most people want to contribute. I think you'll also find that most welfare recipients have contributed to the commons at some point in their lives or will in the future. Welfare is temporary and time limited (at least in the US). There's been a limit on how long you can stay on it since the Clinton administration.
They aren't the "useless eaters" you want to make them out to be.
Good post, YW. There is such a thing as society, despite what our much-hated and not missed Prime Minister once said. What you describe also broadly applies in Britain. About 60% of the poor in the UK work, and despite the tabloid image of the shiftless, welfare dependant, the real scroungers are the employers who get away with paying starvation wages, and the landlords who charge ridiculous rents (especially in London).
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