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It's the government, stupid!
Christian Twiste
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10/4/2009 10:52:51 AM
Forget healthcare, the people know the powers-that-be can't get anything right.
Instead of asking whether the government ought to take an active role in healthcare—whether through increased regulations and/or a new government run healthcare plan—why aren’t we starting with a more basic question: Can the government handle an increased role in anything?
Well, what sort of track record does the government have in healthcare and other markets? Medicare and Medicaid are generally liked by their recipients, but they’re also sinkholes of waste, fraud, and abuse so obscene it would drive any private company out of business.
After all, no one and nothing in the private sector can possibly afford over $100 billion a year in “shrinkage.” In fact, only 50 companies in the entire world take in that much money period. Exxon-Mobile earned a record $45 billion in profits last year. Huge by private standards, but tiny compared to the trillion dollar dream world the government inhabits: That’s less than half of the waste and fraud in just two government programs.
Congressional and Presidential arithmetic is highly suspect as well. In particular, the costs they estimate for a program are generally much, much less than the actualcosts in question. This rule appears to apply regardless of the size of the government give-away. Whether it be the extra $2 billion needed to support Cash for Clunkers, the billions and billions in “supplementals” for the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, or the greater than tenfold increase in Social Security tax rates over the years, the government almost never gets it right.
Earlier this year, Obama estimated a $7 trillion deficit over the next ten years. In August, he bumped it to $9 trillion. That’s an annual “error” of $200 billion dollars—more than 4 times the annual profit of Exxon. And that’s only the money they missed in the deficit—the actual deficit is going to be somewhere over 20 times Exxon’s profits.
Unfortunately, they aren’t much better at execution. Back when Bush was in office, we heard plenty about the “mistakes” made in Iraq, Afghanistan (and even New Orleans). We were also made painfully aware that our government proved incapable of properly indentifying the terrorist threat in the 90’s, capturing Bin Laden, and preventing 9-11.
They have since proved equally incompetent at rebuilding both the World Trade Center and New Orleans. On the domestic front, the government protected us from neither the tech bubble nor the housing bubble that recently took out the global economy (instead they appear to have actually caused the housing bubble and facilitated the earlier tech bubble). But—like they always do—they claim they’ll get it right next time.
Well, when is next time? Tinkering with the economy isn’t all they’ve been trying to do for the past 30 years. The government has also been trying to implement a coherent energy strategy with zero success. This failure leaves every American—especially the middle and lower classes—continually susceptible to a potentially disastrous “energy bubble” (like the gas price increases last year that left many of us in a bind).
There have been other long-term failures as well. Healthcare has been covered exhaustively, but also consider: The War on Poverty, lost according to the very liberals that want to spend more on it; The War on Drugs, about equally successful; The Un-named War on Illegal Immigration, another disaster with 10 to 15 million illegal aliens running around the country and a border about as secure as your local Starbucks. Adding insult to injury, the very same people incapable of keeping illegals out of the country in general, seem to believe they can keep them out of the free healthcare plans being debated in Congress.
Why do I sound surprised? State and local governments aren’t even capable of supplying their citizens with water. Just last summer, Georgia, Florida, and other states almost went to blows over some dwindling reservoirs during a tough drought. It was the metaphoric equivalent of Kubrik’s man-apes from 2001 squabbling over a puddle. Even major metropolitan areas like Atlanta were operating with limited water resources for months. How much do you want to be that, during that same period, Walmart and other retailers had no trouble keeping their shelves stocked with Poland Spring?
In a completely different vein, President Obama made headlines this year when he announced changes to the CAFE standards that govern automobile fuel economy. This was heralded by the media as a major step forward for the environment. The age of the policy in question received little attention, but those of us who follow these things couldn’t help but marvel at the irony of an energetic new President filled promising bold ideas instead of business as usual reduced to tinkering with 35 year old Gerald Ford era regulations written when Obama himself was in grade school.
During that 35 year time span, the private sector has revolutionized everything from the way we communicate to the way we cook. No one in 1975 would know what the hell an i-Phone was or how to make microwave popcorn, but—when it comes to the government—they’d have a crystal ball of broken promises and colossal failures.
Contact the author at
christian@eatthemushroom.com
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About the author: Christian Twiste isn't really qualified to comment on any of the topics he prefers to write about, but that's never stopped him from trying.
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