Lets examine some other big government programs that were meant to produce great results, but have not.
FDS is as good of a place to start. He many big budget, big government programs that were designed to "reboot" the economy. He created the WPA who built roads, bridges, and highways. Many of them are used today. But these programs did not create permanent jobs, stimulate business, or make a dent in the Great Depression. I do agree that it was better then straight handouts from the government, but they still did very little, if anything for the economy. It required business owners and industrialists to pay higher taxes that did not help their own business's grow. The end of the Great Depression can be directly attributed to the beginning of War War II and the massive increase in the armaments industry. Ye, many people ignore this and try and give FDR credit for getting us out of the Great Depression.
Social Security is another failed program. It is the single highest tax on low income people. The purpose of Social Security was to provide a safety net to people whose retirement savings failed to materialize as planned or disappeared due to a stock market collapse. But instead it removed the incentive for millions of people to save for there own retirement. Instead we now have a system that is going bankrupt because of the increasing number of people drawing benefits, and because of the Governments inept handling of this money. And the people on Social Security live in absolute poverty, as the payments can barely pay for even the most basic necessities.
We come to Welfare... a plan with a great idea, and a "feel good" mentality. The program was intended to help single mothers, whose husband left them, or who got pregnant in other unfortunate circumstances to be able to raise their own children. Instead we have created a new "welfare" class of people. Women figured out that they were better off not getting married, and having even more kids, as payments increased for each child. We now have a complete collapse of the family unit. We have a generation of children growing up in homes without a father, and this program is a huge portion of our federal budget.
Now we have allowed our government to spend $850 billion that we do not have. We will pay for most of this likely with an increase of taxes on the job creation class, printing new money, and an expansion of our national debt. The amount of interest is paying is astronomical and one day there will be a point where the government will either have to inflate the value of money be just printing trillions of dollars, or by going bankrupt. We have set ourselves on a path to our own destruction. I just pray that we, as a people, will wake up before it is too late.
8 comments:
You make some decent point, but the issue with government spending and say.. Social Security isn't because it's not a good idea or it couldn't work.. but because we've had fiscal irresponsibility for decades and had to dip into Social Security to pay for stuff and now it's all bjorked.
Also, partly we have a certain people who doesn't think government is any good at anything but the military running the government... no wonder things dont work when you dont think it should work.
Fact of the matter is, when a program from the government is funded, audited for efficiency and not bogged down by politics, it is as effective as any private organization. This mostly because Private Organization have to make a profit and Non-Profits just aren't as popular as they used to be.
If you ask the government to manufacture something.. it is not as effecient a private business
The point is.... nothing has worked for the Government. For whatever reason that may be, the Government always screws it up.
And it isn't because people don't think it won't work. It is because the Government has a track record of making sure it doesn't work.
And since when is any government program not bogged down with politics?
There is no doubt that when an agency or government program is politicized they begin to fail because ideology kicks in. IE Government doesn't work so why make it work is an ideology that is political and will make government programs not work INSTEAD OF.. "Hey, that program works and helps people so let's make it work".
There's also no doubt that knowing WHY SOMETHING FAILS is important so you can figure out how to make it work.
The Attorney Generals office WAS a non-political agency of the government that ran very well until recently. Social Security was non-political until recently (it was just abused budgetarily due to over spending my the government). The Government Office of Accountability was good until recently, but is starting to reassert itself as a non-potitical.
I thinking healthcare is NOT a commodity and for a society to be free we shouldn't have profit attached to healthcare.
Healthcare MUST be profitable... because profit breeds innovation. If you remove the profit from medicine, you won't get the advances that we have enjoyed the last 100 years. If you notice, almost exclusively, medical advances are found by private companies, and not governmental research foundations. This is because when you stand to make a profit (or... stand to lose because you making a faulty product) there is greater incentive.
It is human nature that we strive to do things only that we profit from. The US has one of the best healthcare systems in the world BECAUSE it is not government run. The main problems we have with the healthcare industry the past 20 years is BECAUSE of more and more government interferance in the industry... but that is for another blog post.
There's nothing saying private research wouldn't continue or profit off their discoveries. However, the actual application of Health Care Insurance is a moral imperative beyond making money.
In a capitalistic society, people lose just as you said. In the case of Health Care, when people lose, people die when they could have been otherwise saved had it not been for the need to make a "profit".
I don't care nearly as much as when a business fails as much as I do when someone dies because some HMO wouldn't cover an illness to one of the customers because of a pre-existing condition which was ignored upon purchasing the coverage.
People thinking socializing health coverage is becoming the USSR, it's really not unless you consider Canada, UK, France, Germany etc the USSR.. and they're not.
The healthcare systems in all the countries you just listed are beginning to fail though. People in most of those countries have to wait months for procedures that are necessary to keep them alive. Alot of the richer people in those countries come to the US when they need advanced medical care, because their government run programs are inefficient and ineffective. We do not want a Canadian or UK system of healthcare.
Bunch of generic talking points on both sides. Everyone rants and raves against the phamra profits yet the first thing you ask when you are told "you have cancer" is...is it treatable.
Well if the answer is YES its because a pharma company most likely created something (for profit) at great expense with extraordinary risk.
You cannot possibly believe that the Dept of Health, CDC or some gov. agency will be better at creating life saving medical procedures/medicines then private industry.
Eliminate profit and thats exactly what you will have.
Do some google searches on the UK's health care system or health care in France etc. Its far from perfect and begining to fray at the edges. Our system isnt perfect and needs reform but nationalizing it, stripping profit/innovation from it-isnt going to solve anything.
Interestingly enough care will decrease for the "poor" and the wealthy/upper middle income will stil be fine as they can just pay for private medical care, private hospitals etc.
In terms of the Attorney Generals office working until recently-while I understand that it is popular to suggest that BUSH broke everything. I would direct you to take a peak at Janet Reno (Ruby Ridge, the Olympic Park bombing, Branch Davidians) etc. That wasnt exactly the AG's finest hour.
Social Security? Well...its never worked, its regressive, and its served as a crutch for spending since around 10 years after it was created.
Amandi your comments are still borked.
I fail to see how letting people die to make a buck is a simple talking point. It has substance that a "talking point" doesn't have.
Further, I fail to see how meshing private innovation with governmental implementation is any different than how our Military is right now. Those companies make profits, so can the Pharma companies.
There's no doubt that there have been waiting periods for procedures in those countries, but that is mostly because they're catching up with technology and tracking.
Right now, we have the technology to track everyone's health issues without problem. Most of the references you guys are refering to are for the most part propaganda video's to stop teh ebil socialists from taking over.
If the only way to have innovation is to make something private, then let's privatize the Police, or The Fire department, or the Military (ie Blackwater). No, companies make money by selling their stuff to the Police, Fire and Military, it's innovative and necessary
No, this is not the answer either because they have mandates, mandates that would over stretch a private companies budget, JUST LIKE THE HEALTCARE SYSTEM NOW.. when we're talking about closing hospitals because they're mandated to treat ALL people, but don't get money for it.. boom they're gone and what about the people who have healthcare through that HMO? What do they do? They're bjorked
If you talk to a Canadian, they will tell you their system isn't perfect, but they will sure as hell make sure they protect themselves when traveling in the USA by buying travel health care.
There's no reason to think that just because something has been a certain way that it will be a certain way in the future. We have the capability to LEARN FROM MISTAKES. Crazy concept I'm sure.
The AG isn't perfect, no doubt, but the hiring practices haven't been this political since Bush's admin.
If you think for one second I'm an ideologist, you're wrong, I'm an observer of events and if that makes me disagree with a political way of thinking or something, then so be it. I have an educated opinion about things (but I'm always ready to be proven wrong in order to better my self).
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