by Greg Jones
Like a parrot in a pet store, the Bernie Sanders faithful have the
same refrain for the suggestion that America can’t, or at least
shouldn’t be, a socialist country. In many ways,
they say, “it already is. Bok!”
While
we are plenty removed from pure socialism (and pure capitalism for that
matter), the statement isn’t altogether untrue. Like most complex
political arguments there is a fair bit of semantics involved, but there
is also little denying that some of America’s costliest programs are
about as socialist in nature as America gets.
It seems the debate
regarding Mr. Sanders’ philosophy provides that rare case in which both
sides are right: America is definitely somewhat socialist, and it
definitely shouldn’t be.
Uncle Sam’s forays into leftist economic
principles have generally been popular, precisely because they have
become, to borrow Marx’s phrase, the opiate of the masses—habit forming,
expensive measures more designed for short-term political highs than
long-term solvency.
There are plenty of examples, but let’s begin
where it all started: Social Security. This retirement insurance is now
32 percent
underfunded. Even better (and by that I mean worse), contributors are now receiving
less
than they paid in. Simply put, Social Security is putting the nation,
and its workers, deeper and deeper in debt. It doesn’t take Warren
Buffet to figure out that this New Deal dinosaur is a Bad Deal for the
country.
But it pales in comparison to government attempts to
regulate healthcare. Perhaps nothing has made America sicker than the
country’s dalliances with socialist-style medical programs.
Consider the
gruesome
twosome, Medicare and Medicaid. A whopping ten percent of the former’s
budget is lost to “waste, abuse, and fraud,” while the latter syphons
more from states each and every year—from nine percent to 20 percent
since 1989. And like Social Security these two programs are so
entrenched that overhauling or doing away with them is now all but
impossible. Once you’re hooked, you’re hooked.
How else can one explain the Affordable Care Act, in which the first sitting President forced to
deny being a socialist made it his signature accomplishment to push through what will prove to be one of the largest redistributive
tax hikes in American history.
While the jury is still out on the costs and benefits of the ACA,
early signs are far from promising. For starters, the White House’s
latest
projection for enrollees as of 2016 is half that of the Congressional Budget Office’s.
Worse yet,
ten of the 23 health insurance co-ops (more than 40 percent) formed in response to the ACA are now
closed. And worse still, the program isn’t attracting the young and healthy
demographic necessary to sustain it.
If there is anything positive about the ACA, it’s that it may fail fairly quickly. If only we could say the same for the rest.
Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government health programs,
combined with welfare and other entitlements and interest on the federal
debt, consumed
two-thirds of the federal budget in 2014—American socialism at its finest.
Well, not quite. Enter the Veterans Health Administration, the United States’ most “
socialist”
healthcare experiment to date, and its most disastrous. Following a
publicized string of tragedies at various VA locations, Congressional
hearings
revealed a laundry list of gut-wrenching failures, from rejecting the
mentally ill for not having an appointment to covering up an outbreak of
Legionnaire’s Disease to infecting at least 18 patients with HIV by
reusing disposable supplies.
We aren’t talking numbers when it
comes to the VA, we are talking dead bodies. The men and women that
risked their lives and limbs for this country have been abandoned by
their quasi-socialist government at their most vulnerable moments.
But
it didn’t have to be this way. Surely the world’s most powerful economy
can afford to take care of its old and sick while not penalizing its
young and healthy for generations to come. Of course we can, if we don’t
neglect the ideals of our founding for political expediency. The people
dependent on these programs are obviously not at fault, because they
have no choice. The government decided for them, and for generations to
come.
Yet as Sanders’ meteoric rise demonstrates, despite the
skyrocketing costs, subpar service, and climbing body counts, we are
gluttons for punishment.
It’s as if we go to the same terrible
restaurant week after week to pay exorbitant prices for microwaved
potatoes and overcooked steaks when the real deal is sitting half empty
just around the corner. It might not be cheap either, but at least they
can nail a medium rare.
Of course, that would require knowing our
own neighborhood. You see, ignoring wonky analyses is one thing; after
all, most of us aren’t sadistic enough to mull over government program
projections as a reflection of GDP for fun. But ignoring the evidence
piling up in our own backyards is an entirely different matter.
The
fates of Rust Belt cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore are plain for all to see.
Now
contrast these liberal Leviathans with newer, more dynamic urban
centers like Austin, Nashville, and Charlotte, all located in
right-to-work states where organized labor, one of America’s great
"socialist" experiments, has been defanged. In fact,
nine
of the 12 fastest growing cities are located in right-to-work states,
further proof that our socialist tendencies, no matter how tempting, are
almost always ill-fated.
And yet Sanders’ popularity shows no signs of slowing down. But why?
The
simplest explanation is that increased entitlements only lead to an
increasingly entitled citizenry, one that prefers to point clean fingers
rather than get its hands dirty. It is exponentially simpler to blame
others for their success than to create your own.
And all the facts in the world can’t change that.
Source:
Gluttons for Punishment | The American Spectator
I
never expected to see the leaders of the two biggest nuclear powers in
the world spitting in each others faces. But it's happening today
before our very eyes, with Obama's "best friend" Recip Erdoğan of Turkey
having deliberately provoked Russia by shooting down a Sukhoi Su-24
jet, using two American-made F-16s, and leaving one of the Russian
pilots to be killed by U.S.-supported jihadi gangs on the ground. Putin sees Erdoğan as Obama's string puppet, so we are involved, whether we like it or not.
