Are you entitled to the fruits of other people's labor?

“[Barack] Obama [has said] the top priority of the next president should be the creation of a more lasting and equitable prosperity than achieved under Presidents Bush and Clinton. Obama apparently missed the class that teaches government doesn’t create prosperity; people do. During [a recent] debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama said he would pay for his proposed new programs, including mandatory health insurance, by imposing higher taxes on ‘the wealthy’ and raising the tax on Social Security wages. He added, ‘What we have had right now is a situation where we’ve cut taxes for people who don’t need them.’ Should government determine how much money people ‘need’? This is Marxism: ‘from each according to his ability; to each according to his need.’ Sen. Clinton expressed similar sentiments on ABC’s ‘This Week’ when she said if people refuse to buy health insurance under her plan she might garnish people’s wages. One reason this socialistic mind-set resonates favorably with many is due to the shift in the last half-century from promoting hard work, self-sufficiency, marriage, personal responsibility and accountability and living within one’s means, to a mentality that I am entitled to the fruits of other people’s labor. That used to be called robbery before government started doing it more than a century ago through the income tax... How many politicians today talk about looking out for one’s self, not relying on government?” —Cal Thomas