Socialism vs capitalism

Capitalists tend to be few and far between even in a capitalist society and a lot of capitalists just want what's best for themselves. They don't care how well (or badly) everyone else is doing. Some of them will step on whoever they need to or whoever gets in their way to accomplish whatever it is that they want to accomplish. There are a lot of capitalists who recognize that they're doing well and want to help out some of the people who aren't doing so well, though. On a very basic level this is why a capitalist society works so well. Limited government involvement, through taxing everyone on things that they utilize and benefit from (gas tax which pays for our highway, sales tax that pays for most of our government workers, etc) ends up benefiting everyone. Anyone with some ambition and a halfway decent business mind can put together something that works, profit from it and hire some people to help them out. Give them enough leeway and they start giving their excess to help the less fortunate via charity.

Socialists have an entirely different philosophy. They don't believe that anyone deserves to do any better than anyone else. They think that, despite how exceptional an individual is, that everyone should benefit the same from society. The guy pushing a button in a factory should get everything that the guy who's in charge of that company gets. Why should the guy who intelligently put together a business, ran it exceptionally and employed a lot of people get to live in a bigger house than the guy who he just hired, who is sick every couple of weeks and can't make it to work on time because of all of the unfortunate circumstances that always seems to befall him?

I can think of countless examples of people who started with nothing and worked themselves up to a success (myself included although I don't really consider myself to be very successful). Had the incentive for them to be a success been taken away they would still be at the bottom of the totem pole doing only what was asked of them so that they could take home their fair share. Incentive is one of the most important things that we can implement into the economy. Why bother working harder if it doesn't do you any good?

We keep seeing more and more socialist ideals implemented into our economy. At first glance and on the surface it seems like a great idea. It's hard for someone who doesn't know the consequences to read a book on socialism and not come to the conclusion that it's a great idea. How could taking from rich people who can do whatever they want and giving to people who have "practically nothing" be a bad thing? What's so scary is that we keep inching closer and closer to full blown socialism. It seems like every inch of ground that "they" (socialists) gain "we"(capitalists) never get back. I keep hearing about this pendulum theory. I understand it completely but it's strange how every time that it swings in the socialists favor that it never seems to swing back ANYWHERE NEAR as far into the capitalists favor. I can sit here and talk about why that is all night but I'd rather just go to bed. After all, why should I work so hard to convince anyone that one way is better than the other when it's so obvious that so many people are already convinced which way is the "correct" way?