Fully public facilities like gyms and pools are just one brand of soda, as it were. Some people don't like Pepsi, they'd rather drink Coca Cola, or put more plainly at least go to gyms and pools where the people have an appreciation of the cost of good things. There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on. If you are subsidizing everyone's pools and gyms, and you don't care to go yourself, money is being stolen from you in a sense, or to use the soda analogy, you're being force fed Pepsi when you really want something else.

> There is the central difference between the American way of doing things, people have more freedom to choose what they spend their money on.

And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it. Maybe the problem is that you decided that freedom is dead presidents printed using green ink.

>And people which don't have money have less freedom and no choice about it

So, what are you proposing? That everything is funded from taxes, so that people who make less money could enjoy the same things as people who make a lot?

This is called communism, and has failed miserably (see Venezuela, Cuba, etc).

There is an acceptable level of sharing (healthcare, defense, police), but swimming pools? What about spas?

Equality is all about equality of opportunity, not equality of consumption.

Public swimming pools can also be found in most european countries, and western europe is not exactly a collection of failed communist states.

There is a nice ring to the ideology of freedom, but practicality beats purity, and when it comes to the social cost vs reward of public institutions, the cursor in the US is way off.

If swimming pools are out of the question for you, free education and health care are an easier starting point.

How are you being forced? You're free to leave the country and live somewhere else where there is no health care for the poor. It sounds as if the Swedish people are fine with the system. It works for them. It works remarkably well indeed.

And that is how you end up with a country full of poor obese people, who drive up healthcare costs for everyone.

The American Way: Cutting off your nose to spite your face.