No, socialism is not depended o everyone contributing equally. "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." is the basic principal of socialism. That is exactly what government does. It provides services equally to everyone as needed and, in our system of taxation, it takes according to what one is able to pay.

We all pay taxes. Those of us that can afford more pay more, those who can't pay less or nothing. But services are equal to everyone. Like I said, necessary services such as police, fire, public schools and military, are available to all of us as we need them.

Although we are primarily a capitalist society we do have some areas that are socialist.

As far as I know this system has worked very well for necessary government services for a long time. The question is which services do we feel are important enough to put under this system.

I know that some people would move health care into a socialist system. To that I ask, if health care is that important, how about food? If health care should be socialized shouldn't food also be? Isn't food as important as health care? Should the government provide everyone with food? How about shelter? Should the government be responsible for making sure that we all have a place to live regardless of whether we can pay?

Going to a socialist system to provide everything is a slippery slope. Capitalism has shown to have worked better in most areas. The reason that we have a health care problem is that it is no longer a capitalist system. Health insurance is not insurance at all. Insurance is basically a wager between you and the insurance company. You buy car insurance the insurance company is betting that you don't have an accident. If you do, they lose.

We did have health insurance until about the 1960s. Today what we have is pooled payment. Everyone contributes and everything gets covered, even pre-existing conditions. Can you imagine getting into a car accident and then buying car insurance that pays to repair or replace your car?

When people bought their own health insurance or paid their doctor out of their own pockets, the prices had to remain at what the market would bear. A doctor couldn't charge outrageous amounts of money because he wouldn't have any patients. Once employers began including health insurance as a part of a compensation package, the free market began to break down. Prior to that people bought catastrophic coverage and paid for routine doctor visits out of their pockets. If something serious happened, the catastrophic coverage kicked in so no one went bankrupt.

Basically when the free market was taken away prices skyrocketed because people didn't care what the costs was. They weren't paying for it.

Several other factors such as HMOs came along and the problem kept getting worse and worse until we got to a point where some people felt that the government needed to fix the problem. Usually, with a few exceptions, when the government interferes with the free market, things don't go well.