I find it unfair that I'm expected to make sacrifices while I'm young to ensure a comfortable retirement and also have to pay for other's retirements because they failed to do so.
Say you encountered a local situation where you meet someone in real danger, and for some contrived reason only you are able to help them (say, they knock at the door of your remote house during a blizzard or something, if it helps to make it concrete.)
The majority of society would say it is your ethical duty to help a person in such a circumstance, even at moderate inconvenience to yourself. You wouldn't necessarily be expected to sacrifice your own safety, or even your own fortune; but in general, most people would frown on your choice of a fancier car or a European vacation over someone else's life, in this kind of local, specific scenario.
So what makes that ethical obligation go away, just because it can't be pinned on any specific individual? Why does this ethical logic apply in a 1:1 scenario, but not in the many:many situation we find in society?
It does. And that is the basic ethical argument behind government welfare.
There may be room for discussion over how dire someone's straits must be before it's ethically mandatory to step in and help; fair enough. Maybe a "working senior" qualifies, maybe they don't.
But that doesn't change the underlying point. Your life is _not_ just your own. You live in a society, and that comes along with ethical obligations, both in direct circumstances of your life and indirect social issues.
We as a society shouldn't abandon a physically or mentally handicapped person to the streets anymore than we should walk whistling past someone lying on the road, injured by a hit-and-run.
Existence as human beings, and humans in society in particular, does impose moral obligations.
A stranger man knocks on the door of a single mother with a young daughter (yes, I am piggy backing on stereotypical social norms). Does she have an ethical duty to put both herself and her child at potentially great risk (which is probably largely overblown by 24 hours news and crime based TV shows)?
>but in general, most people would frown on your choice of a fancier car or a European vacation over someone else's life, in this kind of local, specific scenario.
The difficulty is when they enjoyed their European vacation in the past while you saved up for yours now.
Or to put in a more generalized term, the ethical obligation to share wealth even with those who are themselves responsible for not having wealth encourages one to never save up wealth to begin with (not in an all or none sense, but as a pressure which can be increased or decreased).
But even given emergency services, there are still limits where they are unable to provide help. And in those cases, while we are free to judge a person regardless of what they choose, we do not force them to render aid.
But how should one feel when they are being asked to share with someone who spent everything on the present. They benefited then while you benefit now. It might be fair for me to share with them now if they could share with me their own benefits, but alas they cannot. It would be nice of me to do so anyways, but if I am forced to sacrifice reaping the benefits of saving... then why should I have ever saved to begin with?
What lesson do we want to pass on to our children? That if you plan for the future, you will be able to benefit from your savings and we will help you if you suffer bad luck, or that you should live in the now and you will be taken care of in the future even if you don't plan for it?
(And to complicate the matter, most cases are a combination of some bad choices and some bad luck.)