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True, but every tax is a tax on someone or something to pay for something else. I pay taxes, some of which go to the DOE which is doing research to support the LED industry, which has blanketed the world with misleading (or patently false) information on neon and cold-cathode. My taxes also pay to research and dispose of private companies spent nuclear fuel and pay for their insurance (as no private insurance company will touch nuclear power generation). I'd get a tax increase had I not bought a home (and taken the home mortgage interest deduction). Is the government compelling me to buy a home? Maybe so. If I had not (or decided to sell my home) I will pay higher taxes. Ayn Rand would roll over in her grave if she knew. Do I approve of it? No, but like all taxes I pay it and just try to elect folks that carry my vision forward of a fair world and concentrate on my own business ventures in the mean time. Obamacare hardly seems socialist. If anything it is Fascist: giving more power to the private insurance companies. Any guise of a "public" insurance plan was quickly killed by both parties. The "individual mandate" was a Republican idea, born out of the Heritage Foundation and included in the 1993 alternative to "Hillarycare", and certainly a centerpiece of "Romneycare". I've no doubt that if McCain were president right now repubs would be pushing a similar plan and the left would be railing against it with all the vitriol they could muster. If healthcare is going to change or cost less or be less profitable to someone, then that someone is going to loudly complain about it anyway they can. Who wouldn't? Nobody wants to get less money for their products or services. The status quo sucks to some, but is quite nice to others. Depends on where you are in the scheme. My point? The contradictions are everywhere and will never go away. Just learn about the issues from multiple sources - try to understand both sides and make your best choice at the ballot box every couple of years. Like Dominic I'm neither Liberal nor Conservative. I've voted for both sides. My perspective is just as I see things... as a person who's spent his entire life running multiple small businesses.