SSH Kung Fu 
While the socks proxy does not require any root (local or remote), it is only useful for programs that support it - which are not many.However, apenwarr's sshuttle https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle is a briliant semi-proxy-semi-vpn solution that, in return for local root and remote python (but not remote root), gives you transparent VPN-style forwarding of TCP connections (and DNS requests if you want). It works ridiculously well. Try it, if you haven't yet.