There's four quadrants, lazy, works hard on one axis, and poor and rich on the other axis. Of those four quadrants, people exist in all four of them and it's stupid to pretend otherwise. That means that not pretending lazy poor don't exist, nor that rich hardworking people also exist. I know lazy poor people that aren't lazy so much as have severe mental health problems related to being poor, but also know rich people who could have fucked off to the beach forever by now but they keep working for some reason.
Why do I bring this up? Am I nitpicking? (yes) Until such time that there are no poor people, claiming there are no lazy poor people just gets people that actually know lazy poor people to tune out anyone's dreams of UBI because I'm not paying taxes on income I earn through me working, so that everyone else can be lazy and not work. It's as simple as that. Yes we can point to systemic and racially moviated biases that lead to unequal outcomes, but that isn't convincing on why my tax dollars should go to lazy poor people who refuse to work or even go to the EBT office to. I'm all for my tax dollars going to hard working poor people, and especially to their health care because a cancer or diabetes diagnosis should not bankrupt anyone, but the rest is hard to swallow.
Your tax dollars go to all kinds of things far worse than helping people survive. The Protestant work ethic cannot die soon enough. Never once have I cared if someone is "lazy". A rich person may work very hard exploiting others, that's far worse than not working at all.
I feel like even a lot of atheists get trapped in this Protestant mindset because we've been raised in this environment (like a fish trying to detect water), but if you think it through you'll see it doesn't actually make sense. Especially under capitalism.
But the Protestant work ethic is good! There are hard-working people who are still poor, but there are very few situations where you, or anyone else, will be better off being lazy instead of working. (Hard manual labor that harms you permanently in some way, like old coal miners, is probably the biggest exception.)
In the counterfactual, where these hard-working poor people are lazy instead, they aren't suddenly rich or even the same as they are now. They're almost certainly worse off.
I was raised with a strong work ethic. Do I believe that working hard is the only reason I am where I am now? No, of course not. But if I didn't work hard my life would be worse in every way imaginable! Regardless of how lucky or unlucky your life is, having a solid work ethic will always always always make you happier. Work is not inherently 'bad' in some way, and neither is having to work to live and to learn and to have a good life.
> But the Protestant work ethic is good!
I don't agree, it's a one way ticket to exploitation. All of the richest people I know (and I mean really rich, like over $100M in net worth) are from rich families and have inherited their wealth. Most are lazy but the ones that "work hard" produce exploitation at scale to further enrich themselves at the expense of their workers.
> I was raised with a strong work ethic
Most Americans are raised like this, which is why they are so easy to exploit and why they are against basic social safety nets and other things that are generally good for society.
The fact is other than inheritance, the easiest way (and really only way) to make a lot of money is to talk well. Talk well and get as close to rich people as you can, then talk some more. Is that "hard work"? It's wasting your life for sure, but it doesn't compare to pouring concrete.
I recommend everyone read this and try not to end up "clueless" as it really is the worst option of the bunch:
https://ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-t...
Something like 90% of my tax dollars go to social security net programs.
Not if you're in the US. Social security is ~22% https://govbase.com/blog/where-your-tax-dollars-go
Not 90%[0].
Social Security is kind of a "zero-sum gain," if you believe people, because we are supposedly being paid back what we spent a lifetime, having withdrawn from our wages.
[0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...