"Here I am, working my ass off, true-believing in the eventual payoff of all that delayed gratification, stressing myself sick over making the Right Choices in this unwinnable game - and someone who is clearly not capable of making Right Choices gets their problems solved for free? The sheer audacity!"
I feel like the cognitive dissonance between the above line of thought and the social expectation to demonstrate "kindness", "generosity", "compassion" is at the root of many people's rejection of an universal social safety net. Can't let themselves realize that a homeless beggar on crack might not only be just as human, but in some ways even a more genuine human being than your garden-variety obedient nine-to-fiver with a bullshit job and toxic family in 4 kinds of debt to cokehead bankerbros.
Unfortunately, not getting one's fundamental assumptions challenged is very often a much more powerful motivator than any desire to actually reduce the actual suffering of actual beings.
I feel like the cognitive dissonance between the above line of thought and the social expectation to demonstrate "kindness", "generosity", "compassion" is at the root of many people's rejection of an universal social safety net. Can't let themselves realize that a homeless beggar on crack might not only be just as human, but in some ways even a more genuine human being than your garden-variety obedient nine-to-fiver with a bullshit job and toxic family in 4 kinds of debt to cokehead bankerbros.
Unfortunately, not getting one's fundamental assumptions challenged is very often a much more powerful motivator than any desire to actually reduce the actual suffering of actual beings.