I'm reading Starship Troopers, by Robert A Heinlein. This passage seems particularly relevant to me during this election cycle.

"...'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible.
This very personal relationship, 'value,' has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him...and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted ... and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.
Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain."

It frightens me to think that maybe a majority of people in this country, including all three major candidates for the presidency, think that the way to make health care more affordable is to have the government seize control of one seventh of our economy.

When the top 25% of income earners in the United States pay 86% of all federal income taxes, and the top 50% pay 97% of all federal income taxes we are perilously close to being past a point of no return to reign in taxation and spending in this nation. We cannot continue to create entitlements and programs without crippling our childrens' futures.

Right now it takes the withholdings of four taxpayers to pay for the social security benefits of one senior citizen. In fifteen to thirty years, that ratio will be down to two to one. In order just to maintain current levels of payments, a tax rate of somewhere around 70% per worker will be required! These figures are buried in the federal budget, but they are there.

Socialism sucks.