Medicare, Smedicare

I believe in reforming Medicare, but the debate should be that the system's inefficient, cheats doctors and patients; and not the financial debates which demagogues use to cast the uninformed and helpless on the system off cliffs for their votes in the name of saving them. And what is hypocritical, I mean, didn't President Obama already steal at least 500 billion dollars from the system for his Health Care plan?

I digress though. I swore I was going to quit writing about this and move on to another topic, but the recent budget battles just this week have drawn me in again. There are people talking about future unfunded liabilities of more than a hundred trillion dollars for Medicare, Social Security, Smedicare, Fedicare, pensions, smensions, etc. And so what.

First off, the government doesn’t do accounting like a private firm. It lists no assets. So, though it has 1/3 of all the land in this country and gold, oil and timber, this goes unaccounted for when describing our financial situation. Only costs are listed for the government.

Secondly, if higher taxes are needed, the United States is by far the richest country in human history with a population that is taxed at a very low rate compared to government services. And yes I am a conservative, but like Ayn Rand I believe a fact is a fact. However, we all want the guy behind the tree taxed, not us.

And contrary to what experts tell you higher taxes don't bring about less revenue if the tax increase is reasonable. No one would ever have stopped working if the only tax in place were to rise from 10 % to 11%. Of course; the problem with a tax increase is it won't go to deficit reduction, it will go to more spending.

Thirdly, addressing future unfunded liabilities. In discussing this “problem” it shows how truly ignorant many of the pontificators are. The figures for unfunded liabilities are arrived at by taking millions of babies and assuming they live a normal life span. What will be the cost to Social Security and like programs as compared to estimated tax revenues? And this is all wrong.

Again, the government is not a business. It loses money every day by business standards because it takes no write offs, lists no assets, and spends money based on population or department needs not revenue. The FBI doesn’t go home because a surveillance chopper is needed for an important operation which wasn’t budgeted. (This analogy is general: however, it doesn’t mean the Park Service can order bullet proof limousines.) It is the issuer of currency, not a head of household.

Also, no funds are in a magic lockbox or owed back to another magic lockbox after funds are exhausted except as an accounting procedure of the government. Further as I stated in another article, the United States borrowed a little less than 300 billion dollars to pay for World War II, an astronomical sum beyond the comprehension of even Wall Street bankers in the 1940’s. This was for 3 years, 8 months of war.

So spending 2.5 trillion dollars a year on a sound budget to the people of 1940 as the sane want to do now days would have given that generation fainting spells. In other words budgets aren't made by governments for nearly a hundred years from now. They are made as they are needed dictated, hopefully, by common sense.

Because we still need sound spending as yearly huge deficits not national debt are bad. If the government budgets wisely each year, next year’s budget isn't a problem. I will conclude this next week.

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