Life isn't fair. So either it isn't fair because a poor person can't claw their way out of poverty while a lazy dullard skates through life doing easy work for

Life isn't fair. So either it isn't fair because a poor person can't claw their way out of poverty while a lazy dullard skates through life doing easy work for Father's friends, or it isn't fair because an enterprizing capitalist who scraped his way up from the bottom is taxed heavily to pay for another's laziness or stupidity. (to fairly characterize both side's straw men.) Appeals to fairness as an argument for or against various wealth redistribution schemes always strike me as odd for this reason. Neither side gets an exclusive claim to fairness. Both situations can end up equally unfair for equally reasonable definitions of fairness. No society-level policy -- especially doing nothing -- can possibly hope to be remotely fair in at least an infinitely of possible senses of the word.