Bait and Switch

(from the BC thread "The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes")

The rule in lifesaving is never let a drowning person grab a hold on you. They will pull you under. The fact is that we are mortal, at the end we all are out of money, time , hope and life. As the end approaches people will get increasingly desperate and will demand an infinite level of support from all around them. If they were prudent, productive and lucky then they will have money, there is never enough because the end is never what is desired, to extend life and mitigate the suffering. If they were also loving and decent and lucky then they will have friends and family to comfort them and help them obtain medical and other assistance.

The best way to increase the resources available to the elderly and to their friends and family is to unchain the economy and reduce the role of government. To chain the economy and expand the government in the name of providing health care, or food or clothing or shelter, is akin to allowing the drowning person to kill the rescuer.

The bitter irony is that the Democrats in the government both use the fear that the elderly feel to push for expanded government control, first through Social Security then through Medicare and later through expanded financial regulations, and then decide that the elderly are not worth saving. What has happened is that people who spent their entire productive lives, over 60 years, expanding a system that transferred wealth from the productive members of society to the elderly with ever increasing promises of support are now seeing those benefits diverted to new constituencies, such as illegal immigrants. Unfortunately for those who supported and relied on the Social Security/Medicare system the wealth that has been diverted to these wasteful Ponzi schemes is no longer available to strengthen the economy and support the elderly.

Instead of calling this miracle "Loaves and Fishes" I would call it "Bait and Switch."

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Subotai Bahadur,
(who had a shocking tale of abuse witnessed in the British NHS)
Thank you for the story. I hope your little girl is well now.

elby,
(who noted that 500,000 lost their jobs last month)
Methinks the real unemployment rate is around 20%. The government only counts people who are getting unemployment. If you are working a part time job or if you have been out of work for over one year and the unemployment stops then you are no longer counted. Did you see the report that NY State stopped payments to an unemployed lawyer who had stated on her blog that she was making $1.30/month in revenue from her blog ads?

bogie wheel,
(who described the Ponzi element and vast padding of gov't payrolls)
Good work. The 2009 Statistical Abstract says that in 2006 there were 5,128,000 State workers and 14,199,00 local government employees, rounded to the nearest thousand for each. Read it and weep and note the trends.

tanstaafl,
Look for the ... slush fund, aka the Porkulus, ... prior to 2010 elections.
Correct, the Stimulus is really the trillion dollar slush fund.

A truly honest politician would walk into a room full of retirees and tell them the truth.

There are three groups of people in America.

1) Those in this room who voted to give their wealth to other people who had retired over the last 60 years.

2) Those who voted to set up the system that gave them the money, who have already received it and are now dead.

3) Those who are now working or who are going to work in the future. You expect that third group to send you their money because you sent your money to someone else. They may not want to do that.

The money that the people in this room are expecting to get from the government is not your money. Forget that idea, it simply is not true. Your money was already spent on other people. That is the system that you and the people you sent your money to voted for.

Given that you are asking the workers of the future to support a life expectancy, standard of living and level of medical care vastly greater than that which would have been available to people when this Ponzi scheme was set up 70 years ago and given that doing so will condemn those future workers and their children to a lower standard of living and life expectancy and given that if you and those you sent your money to had instead supported a smaller role for government and increased investment in the productive economy then both you and the future generations would not be facing these financial constraints you are asking a lot, indeed to much, of the future and something must change.

We can unbundle ourselves of this burden and do so humanely over a 20 year period. We must begin.