alt Hacker NewsYour 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.
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loeg • yesterday at 9:36 PM
Something like 90% of my tax dollars go to social security net programs.
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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.