4. Whether anti-poverty spending is in the overall public interest is complex issue depending on empirical questions (does it foster dependency or independence? would the lack of such programs cause instability?) and values questions (do we value helping the most vulnerable, whether or not it will be of direct benefit to ourselves? is it ethical to allow people to starve or live in miserable poverty when we could prevent it?).
I’d like to see these programs administered in much different ways, especially in the US, but still overall I think they work in the public interest, and are thus worthwhile even if they superficially look as though they work against the private interests of the wealthy and for the private interests of the poor. The more poverty and inequality you have in a society, the worse it tends to be for everyone (in terms of all sorts of economic and non-economic variables). Recent research has provided a lot of evidence for this.
It’s also important to point out that the wealthiest have overwhelming political influence in this country. It’s not as if the poor masses are voting in the populists to soak the rich. It hasn’t been anywhere near that, at least since the FDR administration.
5&6. Here’s an example of how it might depend on context. Let’s say there’s a general agreement in that society that dramatically progressive taxation is in the public interest, because it brings society together or increases consumption and thus economic growth or whatever. If the vast majority believe that, I wouldn’t have a problem with it even if a few of the people within the top quartile do object to it. So in your terms, the underlying theory would not be extracting money from others, but rather providing for a decent society in which we’re all in this together and we all do our share. I believe this is how most people think about things in Northern Europe (which by the way is unlike this example empirically, because they have mainly universal benefits).
On a policy level, however, I think it’s best to have a system that’s far different than what you proposed — that is, that’s either slightly progressive tax-wise or not progressive at all — but that provides significant benefits to pretty much everybody at some time in their lives, whether that’s job training, subsidized low-cost university tuition, high-quality universal health care, paid parental leave, etc. The well-off tend to resent social spending if it doesn’t benefit them very much.
7. You haven’t paid for all those things yourself — you have, together with all the rest of the society (since everyone pays taxes.) It’s not that rich people “owe” that portion of their taxes to poor people. But they do have the obligation of paying the taxes that the government has decided to raise.
The fact that a small proportion of those taxes is going to temporary emergency relief to prevent great suffering and death of the most vulnerable people should not prompt selfish anger at having one’s “wealth distributed,” but rather an appreciation of the need for society to help those who can’t help themselves by spending some general tax revenue money.
After all, the money isn’t really yours — everything on this earth belongs to G-d. Money is not what’s important. Torah, mitzvos, chesed, maasim tovim — this is what is important. Why is it so critical to hold on to all your money and have none of it go to other people? Rabbis have referred to this country as Medinas Shel Chesed, perhaps because of the relative lack of anti-Semitism here. Should we be so aggrieved that the country also engages in the bestowal of kindness in other ways?