To: TimF who wrote (623516 ) 8/8/2011 6:06:15 PM From: tejek Read Replies (1) | Respond to I didn't say the poor are con-artists. Some of them are, but most are not. The handouts are not only to the poor, the middle class and even some of the rich get subsidies, transfer payments, and/or targeted tax breaks. The collection of all of this is unaffordable, but one the spending starts you get a huge constituency for it. And the bigger and more expensive and thus less affordable the program is, the bigger the constituency. Some of the people receiving it become dependent on it. People arrange their lives around it, the poor can even get trapped by it since if they work hard and make progress and earn more they might loose all the benefits and be worse off in the short run. Some might fight through that because they want something better at the end and are willing to suffer to get it, but most people avoid short term suffering, and if your poor even being a little worse off can be very painful. Tim, forget most of what you learned from Ayn Rand. She was wrong. She was a tsarist who got her ass kicked by the people and was bitter about it ever since. So she wrote these ridiculous books and infected a whole new country with her elitist views.
