Well ...I detect a certain ahh...smugness in your applying selfish motivations to behavior. It is of course technically correct, but since the way you have defined the term, it can be applied to ALL behavior, and therefore loses all meaning and becomes rather pointless.
"... you would, if you had the power decide how others would spend their hard earned money. You proved it in your own example. This person doesn't need another video game they can pay for someone else. It is you through the guise of compassion that justifies theft."
As with many people who have presumably "made it", you seem obsessed with the rights of private property and view various redistributive programs as "theft". Many on this board recognize that "theft" also may be applied to forms by which capital (as well as much personal wealth) has been generated. All Surplus Labor may be regarded as theft as long as those wage earners who have produced this surplus value have nothing to say about where or how it is to be invested.
Those who control the culture and economy also control the way we assign meaning to words. Thus to say that an investor "earns" his income by having his money "work" for him, has corrupted the meaning of both these words.
