Limited, Inc.

The right argues that society as a whole has no responsibility to an individual who gets sick. The taxpayers, the argument goes, should not pay for this individual's healthcare. Which is at least a logical argument. But it is a strange one: for how about crime? An individual, x, is robbed. Well, that is sad, but why should taxpayers pay for the tracking down and incarceration of the robber? After all, the robber didn't rob y, who is having to pay for the building and maintena nce of the jail in which the robber is held. The right's response is that the individual, here, should be taken care of by society, but it isn't clear why. Is it because y has an interest in not getting robbed him or herself? But y has a similar interest in not being made ill by a person whose sickness is contagious. And, more broadly, y has an interest in being taken care of herself if she is sick. To go further: myself, I have no interest in or concern about investing, and if somebody defr