All this talk of socialism by the Right is a snow job designed to take advantage of people's ignorance. "Socialism" is society's total control of the economy, and Obama is proposing no such thing.

The government's role in the economy is to provide and manage the "common wealth" (resources and infrastructure). Taxes pay for that, and it makes sense that those who use more (the rich) should pay more. Bush's tax cuts for the rich effectively shifted the burden to lower-income people; Obama is simply restoring the proper balance (especially in light of the additional consequence that government is paying for discharging its responsibilities by taking loans from foreign countries).

That everyone has equal access to (if not equal use of) the common wealth is a necessary consequence of living in a society, if you want that society to last any length of time. After all, it's the majority -- the middle class -- that generates most of the real wealth that many of the rich are paid a lot to manage.