But, if I wanted something, the choices were clear. Work and save so that you can gather what it costs to buy it. No one was going to come along and give it to me. Along the way I also learned that there was a correlation between cost and quality. Sometimes the bargain wasn't a bargain in the long run. It wasn't always true, but if you used some judgment you might spend a little more to get a lot more value. To paraphrase that great philosopher, Mick Jagger, "you can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need."
Today people don't seem to associate value in terms of planning and labor to actual costs. If they want it then someone should provide it. If they can't afford it then government should provide. Apparently there is a belief that government somehow is a repository of this huge bucket of cash and services which they dole out when someone asks for it. It doesn't come from anywhere, it just is.
It's Going to Be Like Christmas
Where do these fools think it is coming from? Do they somehow believe there is no cost associated? Is there no element of individual responsibility?
But was he not getting health care already? Was he lying in the gutter wasting away like some poor third world denizen without facilities available to him? Actually the situation wasn't a problem at all:
Flythe was among the patients Monday at the Walltown Clinic, a joint program of Duke University and Lincoln Community Health Center that serves the low-income neighborhoods near Duke's campus. The clinic serves 3,000 to 4,000 patients a year – 80 percent don't have health insurance – and charges co-pays based on what patients can afford.
So, he's temporarily unemployed. He's got a job with healthcare benefits now which will kick-in shortly and he's been receiving services for himself and his family for the last three years.
His Christmas has been coming every day for his entire life. Nothing really will change for him.
"It'll make the world better. It'll make us all better, actually," he said
Two things there. I sincerely doubt a global impact. And I don't think he is speaking for me at all.
3 comments:
I believe the root cause of this is the insidious evil of Payroll taxation. Congress when they decided to take SS, Medicare and Income taxes through the employer so that the citizen never sees it in his paycheck to start with, has effectively blinded people to just how much they actually pay in taxes.
If the employer was taken out of the tax collection business and the individual had to write a check to the Government every payday this whole massive government would soon disappear.
I'man, I'm facing TurboTax this very week. I've had withholding taken from my retirement, my wife's retirement, her paycheck, my college paycheck and we both get Social Security. After all our withholding and a princely $1200 last year in book royalties I'm working to lower a still owed amount from $17,000 remaining. Do I make too much money? Or does the government want too much of it?
Raz, you're missing I'man's point-that the average guy doesn't realize how much his government is costing him because he never sees the money that's being withheld.
If Joe Bagodonuts had to write a check on April 15 for what he "owes" or on every pay day, there'd be 1776, Part Deux (sic) all over again.
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