Poker is a game, a beautiful one at that with well aligned incentives. In the real world our system is broken, and the people next to the money printers are exploiting that. I think that the current welfare system is a bandaid on a bullet wound designed to perpetuate poverty, but the people who are on it need it and just gutting it would be profoundly irresponsible. Ideally I would like to live in a world without taxes, but that would require generations of rebuilding our governments and economies into institutions that genuinely serve our best interest. At the end of the day I think you're asking the wrong questions and these questions have been deceptively fed to you by your enemies. Is taxation theft? Obviously it is now, because our government is run by thieves. Why can't we oust them? Where did our tangible democratic rights go and how did they become so useless? Well, follow the money. Look at who's benefitting from it all.