"Much like 'cut government spending'."
So..why did you say it in the first place? It's obviously something you believe.
"You sound like someone who takes Ayn Rand seriously as an economist, as opposed to a philosopher. The truth is that most of the wealthy were born into the upper classes of income"
Define wealthy. You are going to the extremes. Wealthy to me might be $100,000/year if I'm living in the mid-west. You also need to back up that statements with some citations/sources.
Here is a list of wealthy people that were born poor: http://www.intelligenius.net/rich-people-who-were-born-poor/ There are countless others that may not have billions, but still live very comfortable lives.
I'm really tired of people that don't want to put the time and effort into becoming successful trying to knock the actual successful people down a notch by saying it was luck or they were born into wealth (that must be the only reason they have money).
I have a quote for you:
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
I have felt this way for years. There are opportunities all around us every day. If you aren't educated enough to act on it, it will pass you by/you won't even be able to recognize it as an opportunity.
With Internet the being so prevalent, you could easily learn a new skill online, without ever having to pay exorbitant education fees. (MIT has free coursework available). Every city I've lived in has had free Internet access through the library. There are no more excuses. If you aren't physically or mentally incapable, you can succeed if you put in the effort.
"so let me give you a counter example: you work very hard in your company as a senior developer. Once day the boss comes and tells you you're fired because he's hired his son to do your job."
The boss owns the company. If he wants to hire his son, it's his freedom. If I was a senior developer, I probably would have the skills to easily find a job somewhere else. In a few months, when the boss realizes his son can't do the job, it will be too late. If it isn't, I will need a much higher salary to come back.
"Now you're on unemployment for months due to an economic downturn, but because there are no income taxes you get no unemployment benefits."
So when did I say we should have no taxes? You are once again taking things to the extreme to further your point. Sounds like a red herring to me.
"To top it off, you lost your health benefits when you lost your job, and now you find you have cancer (33% of us will get it at some point). The good news is, it's curable. The bad news is the treatment is prohibitively expensive"
Treatment is expensive no matter what. The difference is that either the government pays the cost (IE: the tax payers) pr your insurance company pays for it. My problem with all of the current universal health care advocates is that they propose plans that assume medical care is an infinite resource. There needs to be some way to limit doctor visits or people will be coming into the office many more times than they should (because hey, it's free I'm paying for it). There needs to be overall limits in place and after those limits are hit (maybe a yearly visit limit), you need to pay out of pocket. If we got rid of the insurance companies altogether, the hospitals wouldn't be able to charge $100 for a bottle of aspirin.
Another point I would like to make is that in pretty much all countries with socialized medicine, there are long waiting lines for things like cancer treatments. I have many older relatives that live in Canada that have had to come over to the US because they weren't able to get treatments in time.
"so like all of the losers in society's Randian economic game, we're going to expect you to simply die gracefully in a cardboard box somewhere out of sight. Thanks for playing, though."
red herring #2. Your post is filled with them.