>> If you believe in redistribution of wealth, you should redistribute yours and not someone else's.
I don't believe in redistribution of wealth. You do. You believe that you can systematically underpay your whole life and that the next generation's wealth can be redistributed to pay for your healthcare and other expectations. Forego your Medicare expectations and pay your own way and we'll see how long the assets last.
>>There used to be a time when family and friends took care of each other. It was the synagogues, churches and other (non-governmental) organizations that used to care for the homeless and poor. I think that this is the way that it should be.
I think there should be world peace too, as well as a cure for cancer. Meantime I approve of Police forces and breast screening to which I cheerfully contribute though I'll never need one myself. Such decisions become very easy when you consider that a national health scheme effectively is a big mandated insurance scheme without the dividends and billion-dollar executives and that a penny of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1