I have a number of working-class friends who would inveigh against the rich whether it was their corporate bosses, rich athletes and entertainers, or whoever had a dollar more than they did. To them, Obama represents the shining hero who will make it all right for them. He will take the ill-gotten, undeserved booty from the evil rich and distribute it to them. Even if they don't get any of the booty, the rich will be taught a lesson. The fact that hurting the rich will hurt them as well never crosses their easily confused minds.
“...........It has become increasingly apparent in recent decades that the trajectory of our welfare state is not consistent with the survival of this way of life. Left on its current course, the federal government will take up a greater and greater portion of our economic output (increasingly starving other social institutions and burdening future generations with debt) and will become less and less able to perform its own crucial tasks (as the costs of benefit payments to individuals overwhelm all other functions). Meanwhile, the character of some of those programs of benefit payment threatens to undermine the character of our citizens.
The latter problem, which conservatives often describe in terms of dependency, is better understood in terms of entitlement. People so poor they actually depend on government support surely deserve our help and a path to independence, which our public programs too often deny them. But it is people who are not dependent but who nonetheless feel entitled to benefits who really pose a challenge to republican citizenship. Because not only the poor but the great mass of citizens become recipients of benefits in our welfare state, too many people in the middle class come to approach their government as claimants, not as self-governing citizens..........”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2938954/posts