Why is being called a socialist now considered pejorative?

You might not have heard, but Barack Obama is a socialist (and a Nazi at the same time), Julia Gillard is a socialist. And no, these are not meant to be complimentary.

My dearest wish is that these people really were socialists, even a little bit. But they aren't.
When politicians who are a tiny bit to the left of centre-right are called socialists, what is meant is that they're not conservative enough. Obama has been accused of wishing for, believing in and working toward wealth re-distribution. Which is the policy that resources ought to be shared by all citizens equally. I think that equitable sharing of resources is a noble idea.

We ought not be able to watch members of our society starve, lose their homes or die of treatable infections and diseases simply because they aren't allocated a reasonable share of communal resources.

It's even more appalling when some nations of the world own or control the resources of other nations and live well or far too well, while the citizens of their client nations live in deplorable conditions, suffer, starve and die of easily controlled diseases.

So how do we know that Obama and Gillard are not socialists?

If they were, their governments would be more concerned with the well-being of citizens that ensuring that the corporations that bank roll their election campaigns are well looked after. Hospitals, schools, soup kitchens, and accommodation for the poor and the homeless would be priorities.

Instead, we see corporations being involved in negotiating the legislation that concerns them so that they're not overly impacted by any negative effects of new laws. We see legislation that ought to alleviate the disparity between the poor and the very rich watered down so that the very rich don't have their noses put out of joint.

The much vaunted "universal health care reform" legislation passed  March 23, 2010 was initially intended to be a single-payer, universal cover, health-care system much like many European countries and others have. Instead, for example, one of the policies that was negotiated was mandatory health care, meaning that  consumers HAD to purchase policies from the same insurers they'd already had problems with!

Julia's socialist credentials read like a conservative manifesto:

Treating refugees as criminals and lurching to the right to appease the less inclusive, redneck, voting bloc;
Following the lead of the conservative party in regards to supporting unfair and punitive wars in the oil and heroin hemisphere;
Continuing the insane policy of abrogating gay rights. Then minister, Penny Wong, herself and out gay, was responsible for Labor's policy of human rights for some, but not for gays;

It is a fact of modern political life that Socialists get very little respect, but the reason for this is not clear.

Socialism in a nutshell is concerned not with ripping your wallet from your hip pocket but with fairness for all; equal opportunity for all; human rights for all; free education for all and a safety net if you fall.

Why then is socialism seen as so evil?