Golden Age, Past and Present

A reader asks Julie:

Should everyone over 65 get free medical care? Really? Why?

If you have 5 million? Two million? 1 million maybe. Can't you carry yourself.... Did you really pay so much into the system that you deserve it? How much are you owed?

 I don't think the problem is ever scarcity it is distribution. And distribution is connected to our idea of ourselves and others. If we can brag about what we have / and feel good/ money health care/ education/ good genes knowing that someone had to be slave labor to get us here then we are still cavemen. I have a hard time being in a society that derives much of its wealth from killing others even by the seeds we sell let alone the guns and bombs. I am out of step, I think. I am trying often to discover the magic and the hope and the way into a new way of relating. That is why I tell stories about myself and others. I would rather spend my taxes on food stamps than drones. I would rather have fair wages than need food stamps. I would rather have a middle class society than the 1% thing going on now.

You don't need to inflame your audience. It was just an idea to draw people out. however you are for sure sidestepping the question of who pays, by saying in the abstract, there is wealth. Who pays? or is it rather who cares, as long as its not me. I think its that. "Distribution" is a political way of saying theft. When this 'distribution' kicks in, it actually means expropriation (or extreme taxes aka expropriation aka theft). That is the plan - because there is no other plan. For people with kids and grandkids, there is only one answer, they pay. If it can not be paid for, the services can not be provided. If medical care cannot be paid for, then it can not be provided. Certainly costs should be dramatically scaled down, and more care could be provided for fewer dollars. There were actual dollars paid into medicare medicaid, and guess what - that's the available dollars + any growth on those dollars while they were under management, minus any losses or expropriation/theft. Not infinity dollars. Infinity dollars is how we are running everything. Infinity dollars are work not yet done, they are a promise that somebody will take care of it later. They are undermining the credibility of the nation. But the bottom line is there is no free lunch. Somehow our country thinks there is. With luck your generation will never see what you have done/are about to do. My friend said the other day - "we are living in a golden age" and truly, we are. It is a borrowed age. Soon the bill comes due, just as our costs are exponentially exploding, and interest rates start reflecting the very real risk that our currency is after all - just paper. When the interest rates rise - and they are starting to rise a tiny bit (despite the fed buying 85 billion dollars of its own bonds every month - faking demand to depress interest rates), the cost of debt maintenance explodes. 

The last golden age was right before the Great Depression. Looking back and reading about that time, there was no Social Security and no  Medicare and the plunge seemed to come from the crooks at the top of the heap...on Wall Street. And the very same people garnered all the monetary benefits from the Depression. Amazing how it works. Now the tax system benefits the corporations and the wealthy to such an extent that there is virtually no hope for the middle class. I am not a communist or even a socialist. I am not even a liberal. I am just trying to see if it is humanly possible to create wealth and prosperity without violence against others.

I just read a book about one of the richest men the USA has ever known. (Empty Mansions, Huguette Clark)  He owned, among other things a shit load of copper mines in Montana and Arizona. !00 years later we are still paying to clean up the superfund site he created. We are still paying for healthcare for the workers and their descendants who are poisoned by his activities. He, like the Koch brothers, used his money and influence to fight any regulation that might have been for the good of the land or the people who lived there. His daughter lived alone until she died at 104 and spent out the fortune on doll houses. Never felt that she owed society anything. Sad picture.

I welcome this subject. I am interested to have my knowledge and positions challenged and expanded. Keep it coming.