guyy

Went to university? It's massively subsidized by the poor for the benefit of the middle and upper classes -- and not just by taxes. If you went to a public university, your tuition did not cover the costs. Moreover, your university grad wages ultimately express themselves in commodity prices which everyone pays. That is to say, we have been paying for your education -- even if some of us didn't get to go to university. We pay for your family's health care already. That is capitalism.

Nothing is further from the individualist fantasies of the anarcho-capitalists than actual existing capitalism. Capitalism, you see, is a system of socialisation. It is a way of distributing costs and benefits of social labour around society. That is its secret. That is why it defeated feudalism and slavery. Even if people don't recognise it as such, the distribution of those costs and benefits is a political question. It is now, it was in Ricardo's day, and it will be under Obama. Go ahead and complain about how "undeserving" people get some of yours, but free yourself of the fantasy that some pet mode of distribution is politically neutral.

So maybe you would pay more in taxes if the Obama administration implements some sort of national health scheme, but then you would be paying correspondingly less for private health care either directly or indirectly through higher prices. You can look at something like public investment in preventive medicine as yet another burden for America's heroic petit bourgeoisie to shoulder, or as a way of reducing health care costs, which, in one way or another, you are and will be paying for anyway.

The real issue is that you find some people "undeserving" and others deserving. Why do you deserve education subsidies and not others? Why does your family deserve health care over another?