What matter of silliness is this? Just because you pay to pave the roads (as if you have a choice in the matter) doesn't mean you're entitled to another taxpayer's money, if he makes way more than you. If he's rich, he invests MORE in the roads than you do.
Nobody owes the government a penny more than what our laws currently state (and we have a say in those laws). This isn't about fairness. It's about laziness, jealousy, and envy by certain people with a massive entitlement complex.
It is important to understand the economy web in a more direct manner. Though the term "self-made millionaire" is a common one, there is no such thing as a "self-made" millionaire, or a "self-made" anyone of any economic level. The only person who can be called self-made is a hermit. For example if a person starts their own pizza delivery business and then makes it successful and becomes a millionaire, many will call him "self-made," but in fact he is not "self-made" any more than a shark living in the ocean is "self-made". Both are part of a web of relationships that has to exist in order to support the individual. In order for the man to have a successful pizza business he relies on established roads, an educated public from which he can employ workers, consumers who have money to pay for the pizza, farmers who grow and market the food, etc. This is the full nature of the economy web.
What we have to understand about capitalism is that a relatively small number of people in the world own capital. At the same time, the only people in the world who actually have a stake in the value of our system are those people who do own capital. We all, every single living thing on earth, contribute to the value of our economy, but owners of capital are the ones who realize all of that value. Some of that value is paid back to workers in the form of wages, but a large portion of that value is not the product of paid labor, or even in cases where it is, for example a worker who builds a road, the "trickle down" effects of that labor are not compensated for, i.e. the worker is paid a wage to build the road, but he is not paid for the real value that he added to the other property near the road. In that case the property owner reaps the reward of all of the work done by the laborer, and the investments made by the public, and assumes none of the cost.
This of course presents a problem when it comes to the issue of economic justice.
Over the past 20 or 30 years in America ownership of capital has been consolidated into a smaller number of hands. Companies are consolidating and a smaller portion of people are owning a larger and larger portion of American capital. This is not the first time in American history that this situation has arisen, this took place at the turn of the 20th century as well, with a few wealthy capitalists such as JP Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie owning or controlling hugely significant portions of American capital. Not only did those conditions help contribute to the Great Depression, but the fact is, the conditions are simply not fair.
Capitalists, by definition, are taking advantage of work that other people do, and they are, through law, being entitled to the value added to property by other people. You buy property, you get a piece of paper that gives you rights to "ownership" of all of the value that that property represents, and then as the value of that property changes due to work done by society, you are legally entitled to all of that value. This is certainly not to say that capitalists don't serve a valuable role in the economy, they do.
That situation alone presents a problem though, however, its not a problem that cannot be dealt with within the capitalist framework, but it is a problem that must be recognized.
There is a "trickle" effect in a capitalist economy, but unlike the claims of the Reagan Administration, wealth does not trickle down, it trickles up.
In 2001 the top 1% possessed almost 33 % of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 50% owned less than 3%.
