Didn't the country at large just drop enormous sums of money propping up failed companies full of rich people?
Edit: Additionally, I think "wealth" and "money" are not the same thing and as such any argument that the wealth of the poor is being unfairly taken cannot be denied purely on the grounds that they don't pay much in tax. Their wealth is being taken before they even see a monetary representation of it.
Since the poor and near-poor pay far less in taxes than the services they receive, that's irrelevant.
The middle class and non-connected sort-of-wealthy are the ones getting screwed by the bailouts.
Unless you assume that the poor have a right to what others earn (as opposed to simply the right to not get screwed and exploited by the wealthy, as the parent is talking about), then the poor have nothing to complain about as far as bailouts go.
"The middle class and non-connected sort-of-wealthy are the ones getting screwed by the bailouts."
They're still better off with the bailouts than they'd be without them. They'd be even better off if policies that prevented the necessity of bailouts were in place back then. I hope the policy changes since then have been enough.
ENOUGH?! To a first approximation, there has not been one policy change in the US that will reduce the necessity of future bailouts.
(Basically, the single overwhelming issue is "too big to fail". To the limited extent that this has been addressed at all by regulatory changes such as Dodd-Frank, it has been to make the problem worse.)
But that's a shame! The honest rich and the honest poor are all those that want no part of government bailouts or handouts. There are plenty of both, and we need a system based on individual rights so that rich and poor alike can all prosper as far as their own ability can take them.
(We don't have individual rights today, and we haven't had a consistent adherence to the ideal in well over a century. For example, if you own a home, it can be taken under eminent domain. If you have built a giant enterprise on your own, it can be smashed by antitrust. If you have an innovative idea in nearly any field, you'll find that regulatory restriction make it difficult or impossible to execute, with a small number of exceptions like the computer industry.)
Your edit makes no sense to me. Let's assume that you're saying that tax dollars went to bailouts that could've been used for social welfare. Even so, you can't assign the same wealth to multiple people. It's the taxpayers' wealth, not the potential future benefactors.
Edit: Additionally, I think "wealth" and "money" are not the same thing and as such any argument that the wealth of the poor is being unfairly taken cannot be denied purely on the grounds that they don't pay much in tax. Their wealth is being taken before they even see a monetary representation of it.