Social Programs Are Like Surgery With A Chainsaw
Fifty six percent of federal spending in 2009 was split between Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and other mandatory programs. That calculates to about 1.97T dollars. That is 93.5% of the federal receipts for 2009. What is the purpose of these programs? Some would have you believe it is to improve American society by helping people retire, get health care, get out of poverty. Ideally they would provide these services. The problem is the cost.When Social Security started it was for a very small percentage of Americans. Everyone paid in and you got paid out at 65. The average life span for a man was 60 and for a woman 64. Most American weren’t ever expected to collect it. That is why the Ponzi scheme worked. Since the life expectancy has grown and adequate adjustments haven’t been made. Since then people have saved less and less and depended on Social Security more and more. This program was not created as an excuse for Americans to be less responsible with their money and save less but that is the effect. We have generation after generation disregarding personal responsibility and a bloated government program that can’t pay for itself.
Medicare and Medicaid were created to help the elderly and the poor pay their medical bills. Medicaid created an incentive to stay a certain level of poor to maintain your insurance. Medicare created an incentive for elderly to put off insurance and treatments until they could be in the Medicare pool. The result is a society less responsible for their actions and a bloated government program that can’t pay for itself.
Welfare started as an effort to help poor people get out of poverty. The intention was to give people the means to pull themselves up from their bootstraps. We helped some folks do that but in the meantime institutionalized poverty for generations of individuals who were content getting a little for doing nothing. Poverty hasn’t decreased. Now we have institutionalized poverty and created generational welfare and a bloated government program that can’t pay for itself.
Now we have a new health care bill. It is a bailout for the middle class. With this new bill the only way the government won’t help you get coverage is if you are between 27 and 65 and relatively well off. I don’t think the American people are that pathetic. I think we can make better decisions but why should we when the government is throwing us money. I mean it is the money they taxed from us. It still makes us feel lucky though right. It is early but not too early to tell that this is going to make people less responsible for their actions and create a bloated government program that can’t pay for itself.
How did we survive in America before government held our hand cradle to grave? How did we get treatment, or retire, or get back on our feet after a financial loss? We turned to our community. We turned to those around us. We turned to those close to us. We had a close knit family to depend on and neighbors who were endlessly charitable as long as we didn’t take advantage. That is what we are missing in America. Leaning on our community and local charities, family and friends made sure we didn’t take advantage of aid. Our benefactors were people we saw everyday who knew what we did with their charity. That gave a huge incentive to spend wisely and make good decisions or be alienated from our community. That was the scalpel that determined where charity was well spent. Who needed aid and who squandered it. Government is a big wasteful chainsaw banging around all our social problems. For everything it accidentally helps, it screws up endless other incentives. If we didn’t pay these excessive taxes for government to blindly jab around we could use that money for our own communities. We could put that money to good effective use. Charities are efficient because if they are not, they don’t receive any funds. Government is synonymous with waste and fraud because if they screw up it doesn’t matter. They tax you more and pretend money was the issue.
Ultimately cost is the issue. Government programs cost far too much to do far too little. People will tell you that getting rid of these entitlements will make it impossible for the needy to get help but the needy have been getting help far longer than government has pretended to provide it. The only difference is when communities give back to themselves and communities police their own social welfare they eliminate free riders much more affectively. Don’t be fooled by big government. The only thing they do with that chainsaw is bleed America dry.
Tyson Bam
