The irrationality you are noticing is to do with the modern concept of rights. Since the New Deal and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 'right' has come to cover things like right to a job, right to healthcare, right to electricity, right to broadband, and so on. But these rights impose obligations on other people, to either work to provide these rights for you, or to stump up the cash to pay for them. That means you need an agency which violates property rights.

Since you can never raise enough taxes to pay for everyone's needs, there's no consistent way to implement the modern notion of rights, so it simply becomes a list of irrational demands.

The only consistent system of rights (of rights which can be granted to everyone equally), take the right to life as a fundamental, and derive other rights from that. The derivative rights in such a system are the Enlightenment-era rights, I.e, life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.