Too often IMO we tend to conflate income with wealth. Today in the USA at least the top 1% of earners would make 400k a year whereas the top 1% of wealth would be at about 3.5 million in assets. Wealth is a lot more difficult to get your head around because the numbers can be staggering for most of us that aren't wealthy. Full disclosure, I'm nowhere near either of those numbers.
I know it's easy to single out a person that defrauds the government out of a few thousands dollars of benefits a year but the reality is that is the exception and not the rule. In Florida for example the government spent money testing welfare recipients for drug use as a stipulation for getting the benefits. As it turned out the government spent more in the drug tests than it spent in the benefits it withheld because of recipients it found using drugs. Turns out that drug use is not more prevalent in poor people... who'd have thunk it?
So when we say people won't work, it's easy to understand, it's easy to single out and it's easy to see. What isn't easy to see (and I say this because it obviously doesn't raise the same level of ire) is when corporate welfare is handed out, or when corporations defraud the government of billions and there is no accountability for that.
About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006. Social Welfare Vs. Corporate Welfare
I'll add that these numbers are old, the gap is even wider now.
In the end, the level of comfort is relative, because money and wealth aren't directly tied to well being and happiness. So we each do what we want based on our abilities and expectations as RC put it. I'm not condoning or decrying one over the other, I do have my opinions, but they're irrelevant here since the point I'm trying to make is how we somehow differentiate or disassociate the two, when they're really both the same type of corporate expenditure that costs the taxpayer money.
just stating the obvious, if you want to retire in relative ease and comfort and do things you've always planned to do, then you have to do something about it, you can't rely on state pensions to provide for that.
Hence investment properties;-)
