filtherton

Only if it's theft when the wealthy take the masses' money from them. Your opinion on who is stealing from who depends on where your class sympathies lie. I personally think the word "theft" gets thrown around too much in regards to one side or the other when it obvious that if you want to think about it in terms of theft, both sides are stealing from eachother. I don't think it's theft. No one forces the wealthy to pay taxes. They just end up in jail sometimes if they don't. They're also free to cease doing business in america, which seems reasonable to me: if you don't want to contribute anything to the system and the infrastructure that made your wealth possible than you're just as much of a leach as anyone on welfare. TANSTAAFL indeed.

Alladin Sane, your idea of greed being justifiable purely because certain people seem to be naturally prone to it seems somewhat lacking. Humans are prone to many horrible things. I disagree that a predisposition towards a certain kind of behavior is the same as a justification for that behavior. That kind of reasoning to me seems to go exactly against the kind of vague appeal to personal responsibility over one's natural predispositions that is often used both to disparage the welfare state, and to somehow justify as deserving anyone who has managed to accumulate some wealth.