Category: Money

To argue otherwise is to claim that math no longer works.  In 2009, the President stated, “We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care. Families will save on their premiums; businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future […] whatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.”

Let’s examine all elements of this statement:

“We agree on reforms that will finally reduce the costs of health care”

No.  The cost of health care has continued to rise at 8 times the rate of inflation since the ACA was passed 5 years ago.  This was obvious and predicted by almost all economists who noted the ACA did precisely nothing the reduce or control the cost of health care delivery, services and medication.  No shock at all provider costs did not go down.

“Families will save on their premiums”

Families are paying higher premiums now, some exponentially higher than when the insurance companies drafted the ACA for Rham Emanuel.  Were you one of those stupid enough to believe the industry would draft legislation to actually reduce premiums while having to sign up sick people with preexisting conditions?

“businesses that will see their costs rise if we do nothing will save money now and in the future”

Um, nope.  Businesses, especially small businesses have been crippled by the rise in health care expenditures and coverage.  Know what businesses are really taking a hit?  Health insurance companies!

“whatever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce costs for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.”

Bullshit.  What elements of this corporate sponsored mandate to buy their private market product has done a single thing to reduce the cost for families, businesses and government?  This is a bill written by an industry that still can’t make money off it.  United Healthcare is pulling out of the exchange because even with subsidies they can’t make the accounting work.

There was only ever one solution and the anti-government crowd can’t stand it, single payer.  There’s a reason it’s the solution the rest of the industrialized world has settled on and it’s not because America’s just so much smarter than all other nations and they just don’t get it.  It’s because they had accountants and actuaries do the math then realized for profit healthcare is a farce wrapped in a lie.  An immoral farce.  Instead we coddle obstinate, introverted people afraid of change.  People who still compare single payer to the VA when the two couldn’t be more different.  They never compare it to Medicare, the socialized medical system in the US that is somewhat functional.

It’s time we call Obamacare the failure that it is and call Hillary Clinton a failure for preaching more of the same.  Her love for all things Obama will be her undoing because to put it mildly, the man just got it wrong.  He won’t admit his legacy legislation is a piece of shit.  He’ll be talking about his ACA achievement on his death bed… while millions of Americans sacrifice their tax returns to the IRS because the fines will be less than the extreme cost of coverage with high deductibles in this failing system of mandated, employer based and private market health insurance.

If you despise labor movements (unions), fair wages, equitable employment, and all government regulations to these effects then you support the corporate distortion of the free market.  Rejecting labor means you embrace the “global economy” now pushing the American middle class closer to third world conditions with every passing day.  There is no middle ground.  The corporate takeover of government is all about removing any resemblance of a level playing field.

The labor agenda is known:  Increased wages, worker benefits, equitable education, all parts of the plan.  They could stand to calm down on the pension issue.  Overly generous pensions, lifetime free rides were a mistake, many causing great harm but we’ve not even begun to feel the pain from these ill conceived devices now that contributions are decreasing.  What is not widely known is how far corporations have gone with their presumptions that the American consumer base is declining and may soon be forsaken.  The accepted economic phrase is “emerging markets”.  Loosely translated these are markets where consumer spending power is increasing when compared to America.  Wal-Mart wants in.

US corporations thank you for believing their tall tales of how free trade agreements will help American companies export goods.  Never mind we don’t have the public infrastructure, ports, to handle the worlds largest container ships.  Don’t worry about those details.  Who needs taxes for infrastructure for the future when immediate profits can be pocketed now?  Free trade agreements are cheap labor agreements, nothing more or less.  As one international textile executive put it “we chase poverty”, moving mobile sewing operations anywhere the labor is cheapest on the globe.  I personally know a textile executive who stopped in my office on his way from Chicago to negotiate with Butner Federal Prison in NC for cheap manufacturing labor.  Ironically he spotted Bernie Madoff working the cash register in the canteen.

Corporations are not interested in job creation.  No tax break will make them interested in job creation.  Therefore any politician towing their corporate sponsors line is not interested in job creation or wage increases, they are interested in increasing profits for shareholders. <- That’s a period.  The United States is, after all, beholden to the shareholder economy.  The only solution put forward by corporate owned legislators, “lower taxes”, is about the most aggravatingly insane, narrow minded, out of touch one liner that working American’s can be insulted with.  A repeated call for a failed and failing strategy.  But you like it.  Why?  You don’t like being a primary component in the international consumer base?  Think your spending power should rival that of a typical Pakistani seamstress on a loom?  There almost isn’t an answer that can be correlated to prosperity for the American middle class.  Our demise is often blamed on “liberalism” through some abstract, loosely correlated dialog or completely out of touch racist or bigoted rant.  Somehow gays getting married and abortions are the causes of wage stagnation?  Truth is there is no political party beholden to American workers.  Politicians are RIGHTFULLY beholden to their corporate persons.  That’s the way the law is written per the SCOTUS and their Citizen’s United ruling.  Having conquered US politics these corporate persons now have their sights set on bypassing international laws and regulations with TTIP.

Until we can break the invasion of government by Wall Street the American middle class and working poor are at the mercy of an international race to the bottom deigned by corporations and implemented through their political ties and donations.  This means voters must embrace consumer and labor advocates who are prepared to fight for a stakeholder economy and oppose the seemingly national obligation to insure investment gains on Wall Street at all costs.  To do otherwise is to contribute to your own demise and you will not be at peace with the Lick Liberal.

“Our disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of rank, class and the order of society, is, at the same time, the greatest and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  Wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which should be reserved only for wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often more unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.” – Adam smith