The Longer Game
Nothing Ever Happens
Yesterday, I chastized Matt Gaetz and his assault on Speaker McCarthy. There are several in my camp. But, there are those that support his action and most of them are bloggers that would be seen as on the far right.
I feel uncomfortable when I agree with people in the Wall Street Journal but Daniel Henninger had a pretty good article. The problem was Karl Rove chastised Gaetz too. I am for party loyalty, but I am for a good internal debate too! Rove’s way is no different than the Democrat’s way. He just has different Masters.
Here is the problem with the bloggers like The Conservative Treehouse and Ace, the WSJ, and Karl Rove. No one is really saying what the problem is and how they will fix it. But, at least the differing opinions highlight where the split is in the Republican Party. I’d rather be splitting and fighting about this stuff than be in goose step with the Democrats trying to put their jackboots on the necks of Americans.
What’s the problem?
70% of the budget that is now $33 trillion in deficit is pre-planned mandatory spending that no one in Washington has the standing to stop. Like a kudzu plant, it grows every year and you can’t kill it. It’s hard to even slow down or trim.
Venture capitalist Mary Meeker used to identify that in her slide presentations about the future of the internet.
We can squabble all we want. We can make our talking points. We can go on TV and play “gotcha” with the other party every single day. You know what? Every single day the budget deficit gets bigger because no single Senator or Representative will do anything about the 70% of the budget that grows every year and is bankrupting us.
It’s not the defense budget. It’s entitlements. It’s transfer payments. It’s programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, EBT/SNAP, and programs like that. I always hear the refrain “We are the richest country in the world and in human history but we can’t seem to take care of our poor”. I have news for you, no government can.
You don’t want a government to take care of the poor either. The end result is a totalitarian society with no free speech and no way out.
With the absolute breakdown of the family unit and the poor economic incentives in place because of the US government programs that seek to take care of the poor, we get more poor people who are more desperate than before.
Over 70% of black babies are born in a single-parent home. That’s a core reason they are behind the 8 ball before they even start. It’s a big reason for violence in their neighborhoods, and now our cities. Don’t get me started on inner-city educational opportunities.
Biden opened the southern US border and now all kinds of illegals are streaming in. Many people used to say, “We should let them in we need immigrants and my family immigrated.” Let’s be honest, today Biden said he wants to build that overtly racist wall Trump wanted to build and the only reason he is doing it is because it’s a big campaign issue now that people in cities like NYC and Chicago are feeling the pain.
To them, I say, “Sure. Did your family get an entire government payments system to access when they came?” The obvious answer is no. They relied on a family or some other network to get ahead and find their way. The first generations were poor and worked crappy jobs. Their kids got educated and assimilated and if they took the right paths they did better.
Maybe we end most if not all of these government support programs. People have gamed the system for years and they create the wrong economic incentives and people react to them. Sure, there are indeed some people that need help but my eyes were opened when I saw how many people on a percentage basis, and how much money was going to SNAP.
I knew from Mary Meeker’s slides how much the government was spending. But, when you say that 42 million people out of 330 million are getting SNAP payments from the government, don’t you think it’s a bit too high?
We know health care is a mess and Obamacare made it messier.
Vivek can’t be President, but his idea to totally abolish broad swaths of the bureaucracy is a great idea. I call it a start.
There are ways to gently get off these horrible government programs that started in 1933 and greatly expanded in 1965 and beyond. But, talk about them and you are politically dead.
For example, what if to end Social Security, you said anyone that is turning 18 this year will not get it? What if instead they were able to take earnings and put it in a 401(k) or some other retirement kind of account? It would be mandatory. But, it would be theirs and it wouldn’t feed the Ponzi scheme that Social Security has become. What if people ages 18-50 could get a one-time payment, discounted back to present value via some interest rate, of their Social Security earnings? They could then invest this in a retirement account. People over 50 would stay on the program until they died. In 30-40 years, it would be over.
That’s playing the long game.
The best support for the poor is a healthy and prosperous economy that credibly provides long term opportunity, training, and job skill education.
This is why Biden's horrific energy policy that triggered inflation that triggered high interest rates that have now combined into a witch's brew to create a recession is so devastating.
You have to make a distinction between unearned benefits to the unemployed, misfortunate, and lazy, and those diligent workers have purchased with their hard earned money.
Medicare is bought by workers with their payroll taxes and the continuing fees even when they retire. Medicare is not free. They take the money out of your Social Security every month.
Social Security was paid for by workers with their payroll taxes and is the return of their own money.
To reform both of these programs, there is a punishingly simple solution:
1. Give young people the chance to opt out with a small payment. They get no Medicare and Social Security, but they can buy both services -- long term healthcare and retirement funding with before tax dollars. They continue to pay a small percentage of payroll taxes.
2. Extend the eligibility term from 65 to 70 for those who are younger than 50.
These two things make those programs solvent into the next century, but what politician will do it?
JLM
www.themusingofthebigredcar.com
If I could be granted one wish about our federal
government it would be that they would tell us the truth. Out of our elected representatives, I’d say there are maybe 10-20 at most that even try to get reasonably close to truth in their public utterances. The odds are stacked against them winning the argument. We are living in a society built on and fueled by lies, greed, envy, lust, and resentment. Obama’s “fundamental transformation” is nearly complete. I’ve got little hope the current crop of Republican grifters can slow the slide, even if they wanted to try. We need a national spiritual revival. Nothing less will stop it. That’s the longest game.