universal healthcare

[kandrathe]

Actually, I was under the impression that you were opposed to this --- isn't it up to the individual to help themselves and not depend on the government? (No matter if they're from some wealthy politically connected Texas family, get handed an Ivy league education on a platter, screw up utterly every single thing they touch, and still get invited to the Dallas Cowboys owners box for the NFL playoff; or they're some poor black kid from the inner city who graduates from high school against all odds, does everything right, and still gets laid off from McDonalds.)

Nope. I'm not the utterly one dimensional person (neo-con???? :blink:) you thought I was.

I'm for teaching people how to fish, rather than giving them fish. But, fishing is hard on an empty stomach. I've always said that we need a social safety net to catch people before they hit the ground, but we don't have anything like that. The government actually moves too slow. The way it works now, people/families become homeless, hungry, and destitute before things kick in to provide them any comfort at all. Unless we work in a homeless shelter, or a soup kitchen we may not notice because we are too busy handing out money to EVERYONE, just so that it seems fair that we take money away from everyone above the poverty line. I have no faith that the political class or government can solve this problem. They've got a good thing going by exploiting all the people waiting in line for their bread and diverting themselves with daily doses of cheap entertainment.

A significant number of people in our society are one "event" away from losing it all, whether that be an economic downturn, a layoff, a car accident, a fire, or some stranger getting injured on their property.

My layman's prediction is that the suffering is just beginning, as I fear the current administrations economic interventionism has an eerie parallel to the spend and tax legacy of Herbert Hoover and FDR's first two terms.

I would point you to Hazlitt, and his Broken Window Fallacy. This is what our current administration wants us to believe, that by breaking windows we are encouraging the economy. What we are doing really is taking money (less the cost to administer the tax, less the cost to administer the redistribution to those who will spend it) away from someone else who would have put it to a good economic purpose. For example, to grow a business that would hire some of the millions of people unemployed. Another way to think about it would be; how many private sector middle class taxpayers does it take to pay for one government agency? Governments cannot create wealth, although they can redistribute it and take a sizable cut for that service. Government, and its growing debt has become a millstone around the neck of the US economy. The absolute wrong answer is to grow the government (which means siphoning money out of the private sector), just when we need to be focused on building up the private sector to grow our way out of this recession/depression.

We also don't see that pumping money into ever increasing college grants and easy loan money drives tuition costs up and up, until it becomes too risky for the under classes. We don't see that pumping money into the housing market, through FHA, Freddie, Fanny, FTHB grants, and coercing banks to loosen borrowing rules has the same effect of driving home prices up and up, until they too are out of reach of the under classes. Then this latest bill raise the tax rates on non-wage income like rent, thus driving up the costs for renters who by and large are these very same disadvantaged people we want to help. And, since they don't care about the ultimate consequences, they will want to toss more bail out money and loosen up credit for markets that are trying to deflate rather then allowing them achieve some easy correction. Cash for caulkers, cash for clunkers, and the bonus money for home buyers are all just ways to re-inflate markets that need to achieve correction. In other words, the very thing that they coerce sympathy for has exactly the opposite long term effect. I've also said, for along time now, that we've got to end our obsession with consumption. A big part of our current problem has been wasteful over-consumption, money being pumped into things that are anti- or unproductive.

No, as much as you might want to paint me as the hateful Mr. Scrooge. I actually believe that most of the disadvantaged can climb out of the gutter, rather than delivering a free basket of goodies paid for by the toil of the middle classes to them year, after year. I want to give them productive lives, and self sufficiency. I want them to have "the American dream", in that everyone can improve their lot, and their childrens lot in life through hard work, ingenuity, and an entrepreneurial spirit. You do that by creating opportunity, and not by purchasing for them a gilded cage. Or, even one of iron bars, by making more, and more things illegal.