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They also want people they think are less deserving not to get those things, or things that they perceive themselves either to be paying for or not getting. Note that is is unrelated to whether they actually are paying for or getting those things.
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I'm not sure the advantaged feel that way. I hear that most from modestly middle class whites. They seem to think they're entitled to transfers from the state, but immigrants and people from other cultures are not.
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I actually don't agree. Or, mostly, I do not think it was possible, even if preferable. No one had the authority to impose the nationalization of a huge chunk of the financial system, nor were there ever going to be enough votes available in congress. Even if congress could eventually have been convinced to act, you cannot afford to wait in the face of a bank run. With the tools available at the time, there was no realistic other choice.
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How'd we effectively nationalize AIG if we didn't have the authority to do so? Shit, AIG was an insurer. We trampled McCarran Ferguson to do that, no?
And we didn't have to nationalize the banks. We could have thrown them into some special receivership as a condition of the bailout. The 2008 crisis was an "ask forgiveness later rather than permission now" moment. We could have done anything we wanted, and creaming investors who deserved to lose along with the incompetents who ran those banks would have helped the bailout go through Congress. It would have sailed through on one vote rather than the two it ultimately required.
And we could have paid the Goldman pricks .10 on the dollar on their AIG CDOs, rather than the .80 they received. That was fucking criminal.
What fails needs to be left to fail or go through bankruptcy. The investors in those banks deserved to lose everything they'd invested in them. Saving their asses was an outrageous act of political favoritism. And a consequence is the cynicism you see today, manifesting itself in Trump and populism.
