Last night I attended a fundraiser for Kamala Harris who was introduced by Governor Gavin Newsom—a pleasant evening amid the protestors outside for the Governor and one of his policies—could not deduce what it was. At any rate, Senator Harris discussed of few of her ideas for her Presidency along with the de rigueur Trump-bashing, more money for teachers, Medicare for all (allowing for private insurance choice) social and financial equality, etc. Nothing special, but certainly an intelligent lady who I’m sure would make a fine representative.
Here’s the rub: The Democratic candidates and perhaps all politicians speak in great generality and in absolutes, so much so that I 100% doubt what they are saying. For instance, Senator Warren’s “take from the rich and give to the poor” approach supposes that 1) this would work and 2) the rich didn’t come by a lot of their money the old-fashioned way—by earning it; 3) and perhaps most importantly, this would actually pay for the enhanced programs. The rich are not stupid, they just defer taxes, stop make charitable donations the benefit everyone including the poor, etc. Not to mention that all the institutions that are going to receive money are themselves fundamentally flawed and already have hyper-inflated spending and budgets that desperately need to be retooled, refined and re-approached, then we can extend streamlined benefits to everyone.
The United States of America already has the most expensive healthcare in the world! It needs to be decoupled from the influences of the lobbyists, the pharmaceutical companies, the insurers, etc, true costs of products and services need to be itemized, then subject to consumer choice and active competition—then you can make affordable healthcare available to everyone—in this order! And what about the pension deficits that just about every municipality and state are facing already? And now you want to empower the school unions more, heap more pay and benefits on TOP of this to help the teachers? Let’s see how this works out for Chicago!
Nope, what we are getting is platitudes from politicians who are afraid to tackle the true source of the issues, the sources that actual run Washington and the political machinery and instead, sidestep the real issues and safely speak to items that are easy to vote YES for and just continue writing blank checks with deficit spending. In my opinion, the open checkout of the US treasury is a faucet that is leaking and until that is turned off, we avoid fixing the systemic problems of our country, the ones that are truly going to affect children and their futures, and those of the adults who bear them.
The new programs and policies being proposed are just “good money after bad” and growing the bureaucratic monster that may very well be too big to control at this point. The real question is, can it fail and if so, then what happens? While you ponder this, let me be the first to say that I do think many of the rich indeed have weighted the government systems in their favor and they do inordinately benefit from this. However, the answer is not to take the money away from them, it’s to punish the politicians who let this happen and replace them with people who are not afraid to speak the truth and make choices that will not make them popular for re-election. Period.