What They Deserve
As has been noted to the point that we are flogging the marrow inside the stripped bones unearthed from beneath the dead equine flesh, there are a lot of people who are angry. There is a full range of sources for this anger, but I want to focus on one-- the anger that some people are not getting what they deserve. Specifically, those people are getting far more than they deserve while escaping the suffering they should be experiencing. This anger about just deserts, about people escaping the consequences their shoulders should be rightfully bowed under.
Take the arguments about reproduction. There are points on which reasonable people can disagree, but some opponents of abortion and, in fact, birth control are well beyond that. Peel back their rhetoric, and you find this rationale-- sex is dirty and only a dirty nasty woman would ever have sex for any reason other than to provide children for her husband. Women who enjoy recreational sex are Bad People, and allowing them to have abortions or even birth control is enabling their bad behavior. They should be made to suffer the consequences of their slutty activities, i.e. pregnancy and childbirth. Anything that allows them to escape pregnancy is allowing them to get off scott free, and that's just not what they deserve.
When we want to talk about getting people what they deserve, the free market often comes up. Again-- not all free market fans are righteously angry true believers. But for many the free market is a perfect mechanism for getting people what they deserve-- and no more. When some advocates for free market health care insurance start talking about choice, it can seem nuts to suggest that poor folks get crappier insurance as a consequence of their freedom-enhanced choice rather than their financial inability to buy the good stuff. But the idea here is that your socio-economic status is the result of your own choices and behavior. Rich people have more choices; that's supposed to be the point of being rich. To use government support or subsidies or tax dollars to give poor folks those same kinds of choices as rich folks is giving them something they don't deserve, that they didn't earn fair and square. (Besides, good and virtuous people who live right don't need much health care, anyway.)
The same is true for education. When (some) angry folks declare that we are spending too much CURMUDGUCATION: What They Deserve: