Diamondeye wrote:
Not even that. We're basically being told that we just can't cut because.. well, it might mean the voters directly feel the consequences. Fear of cuts to social spending (including, at state and local levels, school spending) is one of the central victim-advocacy tactics of Democrats. If Democrats ever actually are forced to make real cuts in social spending, it will be "Read My Lips - No New Taxes" on steroids and powered by a Lockheed fusion reactor for them.
We can't cut because voters won't take responsibility for the consequences. That's the reality behind most social spending. Why does Social Security exist? It exists because even in an era where failing to save for retirement had far more dire consequences than it does today, people simply didn't do it. You can preach personal responsibility all you want but it eventually reaches a point where you're making the same mistake Communists do and assuming people are better than they are.
The fact is, we live in a country where over half the EMPLOYED population lives paycheck to paycheck. Hell, I just read an article where they polled Americans on their ability to afford a $2,000 unexpected expense on 30 days notice, and learned that almost half of Americans don't even have the
available credit to cover that expense, let alone actual money in a bank account to do so. You can't just go and blame all this on government tax policies when Europeans with >60% tax burdens manage to save more than Americans do.
You can complain about the inefficiency and wastefulness of government meddling all you want, but the policymakers have to address this reality. Take health care for example. How are you going to provide health care to a population where the majority literally has negative savings? The thing about private health insurance is if you want it to work, it has to function as, well, insurance. Insurance is supposed to be a risk spreading mechanism. It's something you buy to cover yourself against catastrophes, where you need to spread the risk because you can't realistically ever afford to deal with the catastrophe yourself. Insurance is not supposed to cover all the little expenses that you already know about in advance, like routine doctor and dentist visits. When you use insurance for that, you're essentially doing the same thing as the idiot that buys the service plan and extended warranty plan at checkout at Best Buy. It's a gigantic money pit because the insurance company has to hire tons of bureaucrats to scrunitize claims and protect themselves from the absurd moral hazard associated with all their customers buying insurance against expenses they know they're going to have.
The problem is, we can't adopt a sane health insurance model that only protects you against big bills, you know, like every other kind of insurance does. Americans NEED full-coverage insurance because they simply don't have any money for unexpected bills. Without total coverage, a $300 bill to see a doctor, get a prescription, and then fill a prescription for a routine problem is something they just can't afford. This is why co-pays are so effective in controlling costs for insurance companies. Make them pay $30 to see a doctor and $30 to fill a presciption and many people won't, because it's a serious problem for them to come up with the $60 on short notice.
Americans spend their entire paycheck the instant they get it. This is actually why we have those terrible extended warranty plans in the first place. For your average American, if they want to buy something like a cell phone, they can't just go withdraw $500 and buy it. They don't have it. What they have to do is cut some expense out of their budget, and then save the $500 over a number of weeks to buy the phone. Now, they need that extended warranty because if something were to happen to the phone, they'd be left without a phone. They can't wait the weeks required to save up for another phone, because they need a phone. So it's much easier to just leave whatever they cut from their budget out and keep putting that money towards a $20/month insurance plan for the phone.
Why do you think we have government subsidized group plans for insurance? We have them because the government knows that if you don't essentially force companies who have employees that are remotely worth giving health insurance to buy it for them, the employees certainly won't do it on their own. If we dismantled the subsidized employer group plans and just had the employers pay every employee in cash what they were paying for health insurance before, that just results in a shitload more profits for China as all those people just go and consume more stuff. In addition, the minority that did save their money end up having to pay for everyone else's problems anyway when they end up in the hospital.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
