Posts Tagged Entitlements

Clunker Drivers Have Been Bailed Out…Where’s The Outrage?

Posted by Scott in Entitlements, Gov't Spending, Taxes on August 29th, 2009

It was less than a year ago when Wall Street firms started seeing the first wave of government bailouts.  Shortly thereafter the media and “Main Street” started crying about corporate excesses and greed.  Those same people, however, are praising the “successes” of Cash For Clunkers; even advocating for a sequel Dollars For Dishwashers.

Why was Clunkers a success when the Wall Street bailouts were a miserable failure?  Essentially they amounted to the same thing, the only difference was the recipients of our tax dollars.  Where’s the outrage against those who were able to get a discount on their new automobile?  Where’s the public disclosure (maybe a bumper sticker to thank the rest of us for their new purchase)?

Now I’m not trying to say that I agree with the Wall Street bailouts, because I don’t.  I’m just trying to figure out how it’s OK to bailout one group of people and not another.  The dollar amounts are irrelevant – the principle is the same.

After all, wouldn’t it just be easier (and more Constitutional) to simply not tax us as much?  Lowering taxes for everyone across the board would not only help the auto industry and big Wall Street firms, it will also help every other industry.  If everyone has more money to spend, they will spend it where they see fit.  Whether that’s a new car, or a new dishwasher, the money will be spent, and the economy will eventually correct itself.

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Cash For Clunkers Thank You For Proving Our Point

Posted by Scott in Entitlements, Gov't Spending, Healthcare, Taxes on August 21st, 2009

For years, conservatives and liberals have clashed over taxes.  Do we tax less, and allow the free market to thrive with the increased spending, or do we tax more to allow for an increase in government spending.

Cash For Clunkers has proven the conservative point of taxing less to benefit the economy, and here’s how.

Everyone, especially liberals are pointing out that one of the successes of Cash For Clunkers is that if you give people money, they will spend it.  But why did the government have to place restrictions on how it could be spent?  Had they simply not collected that $3 billion from the American taxpayer, we would have spent it as we saw fit to begin with.

Not only would people inevitably have purchased new (or even used cars), they also would have had additional money to pay for things like, gee I don’t know, maybe health care? 

This leads me to another point.  Cash For Clunkers was supposed to last until November.  Whether it was the apparent “success” of the program, or the flaws in the paperwork processing that caused the program’s early departure, it was still cut short.  What happens when the proposed universal health care ends up becoming too “successful” for its own good, or the inevitable mountains of paperwork become too much to handle?  Are people going to be left waiting weeks or months for the treatment they desperately need (similar to the auto dealers waiting on payments they also desperately need)?

It’s time to see the light at the end of the government sponsored tunnel.  More government involvement than is absolutely necessary in anything is never a good thing.  And right now there is definitely far more than is necessary.

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Cash For Clunkers – Yet Another Government Blunder

Posted by Scott in Entitlements, Environment, Gov't Spending on August 20th, 2009

If you’ve driven by a new car dealership lately, you’ll likely notice the same thing I did when I went out looking to buy a new car.  The lots are barren.  You’re lucky to find a dealership who has more than one of the model car you’re looking for, and even luckier if it happens to be the right color, with all the features you want.

The recent buying frenzy caused by Cash For Clunkers has diminished the supply of new cars available to dealers to sell, because manufacturers weren’t able to increase production enough in anticipation of the surge in demand.  What this has done, is caused an increase in the price of new cars, potentially eliminating most, if not all savings the government incentive program provides.

What’s worse, is that the dealerships who have already made thousands of sales aren’t being reimbursed by the government.  One Los Angeles area dealership has said that they have made about 270 clunker deals, and has only been reimbursed for two.  That means that this dealership is owed around $1 million from the government.  And that’s just one dealership.  Nationwide, approximately 2% of all clunker deals have been paid out so far, and 80% of all applications are “rejected for minor oversights”.

Not only is the $3 billion program expensive, it’s clearly inefficient (like any other government program).

Additionally, think back to the lessons learned from the mortgage crisis, where people went further into debt than they could afford, ultimately foreclosing on their homes.  If someone is driving around in a “clunker”, they’re probably doing so because they can’t afford to buy a brand new vehicle.  They might be better off if they upgraded to a nicer used vehicle, but many of the new vehicles that qualify for the program are expensive.  The auto finance companies are loving life right now, but they’ll be looking for another bailout once people start defaulting on their loans.

Come to think of it, why are only new cars accepted in the clunkers program?  It seems to me that buying a more fuel efficient used car would be better for the environment than manufacturing a brand new fuel efficient car.  Not to mention the environmental impact of increased scrapping of some perfectly good cars.  Seems to me like the program is more of a bailout for the automakers than it is an environmental incentive.

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What’s Coming From Dr. Obama MD

Posted by Scott in Entitlements, Healthcare on July 27th, 2009

The President, and democrats in Congress have been pushing hard lately for a health care bill to be passed.  The proposed bill will place tough restrictions on current health insurers, as well as set up a government run insurance for any uninsured American.

So what do Americans have to look forward to?  Based on other government programs and trends from other countries with socialized health care, here are a few of the things Americans will likely see in the future:

Quotas:Like any other government operation, there will be a budget in place.  That essentially means that the government will place limits on itself as far as how much they will be able to spend each year.  The President mentioned in his public address last week that doctors often times will choose the more expensive treatment, when a less expensive one will suffice.  In this situation, a less expensive treatment might be mandated when a more expensive one is necessary.  Additionally, the socialized programs in the UK and other countries are plagued with other similar annual quotas.

Longer Waits: The US Government recently launched the “Cash for Clunkers” program where it will pay $4,500 for your used car if you purchase a new, more fuel efficient car in return.  The program was scheduled to start last Friday, but was delayed until today due to a problem with the website used by dealerships to report the transactions.  While this doesn’t seem like a major catastrophe, the slightest wait for someone who is having a heart attack would be a disastrous catastrophe. 

Poor Coverage: Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ hospitals are all shining examples of poorly run health care in the US.  The US government already has a proven track record of poor coverage through these programs, so why does anyone think that the new system will be any different? 

Redundancy: The President said that there are millions of uninsured Americans who will benefit from government run health care.  He implied that these millions of Americans are unable to get access to insurance because they simply can’t afford it.  If this was true, they would automatically be covered under Medicaid.  He failed to mention that there also happen to be millions of young, healthy Americans, who choose to spend their money on other things than health insurance.

The list could continue, but I think I’ve made my point.  The government has yet to prove that it is capable of running anything without having bureaucrats putting their two cents in where it isn’t wanted (or needed).  Health care is something that should be left to the public to handle, not bureaucrats.

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Redistribution of Earnings

Posted by Scott in Entitlements on May 5th, 2009

I think a lot of people have come to the conclusion that rich = evil, and lower to middle class = victims of the rich.  If you’re wealthy, no matter how you became wealthy, you’re looked at differently these days.  You’re not looked at as someone who is successful and should be looked up to, you’re looked at as someone who is greedy and who should give back their wealth to the less fortunate.

What if we weren’t talking about money though.  What if we were talking about grades in school?  Could we justify having the students who get A’s supplement the grades of those who are failing so that everyone passes?  That way everyone has a chance of landing a good job.  The grades become useless, because their intent is to provide a scale to judge a student’s previous experience.  If you take all the grades and level them off, to roughly the same level, then potential employers, and colleges won’t be able to tell who has worked hard for their grades, and who just got by benefiting from the hard work of others.

What about in sports?  What if there were no winners or losers?  Would you watch a baseball game that you knew was going to end in a tie?  At least no one’s feelings get hurt by the outcome, unless of course you’re the better team and feel that you deserve some recognition for your hard work.  And at the end of the day, you don’t even need to have good athletes on the team if the game is always going to end in a tie.  (You also won’t have good fans coming to watch the games).

These people don’t understand that you don’t just become rich, like the way someone becomes sick, or becomes thirsty.  It’s not something that just happens.  In order to become rich, you need to work hard to get to a high paying position.  You’re not simply selected at random, as your experience and hard work will get you to the top.  And by hard work, I don’t mean being able to do manual labor for 12 hours a day.  I mean smart work.  People will pay you more for what you know than for what you can do, because anyone can be trained to lift 100 pounds all day, but not everyone can manage a Fortune 500 company.  (Oh yea, companies come and go from the Fortune 500 list every year because of how well they perform.  It’s not a weighted scale so that the mom & pop shops can compete on the list with the Exxon’s of the world).

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Quit Bashing The Rich!

Posted by Scott in Entitlements, Taxes on April 15th, 2009

To all of you out there who think the rich are evil and need to be put in their place – STOP COMPLAINING!

You’re also probably complaining that they don’t pay their fair share of taxes.  Since they make so much more than the average Joe out there, they should have to pay more, a lot more, right?

Well guess what?  They are already!  According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2006 (the most recent year which data is available), the top 10% of households shared almost 73% of all individual income tax liabilities.  The top 5% of households was over 60%, and the top 1% was over 39%.

Think about how fair that is. 

If you were to go out to a fancy dinner with 10 friends, and the bill came to $1,000, would you have the person with the highest income pay $730 for his dinner, and split the remaining $270 among the 9 others?  If you did, I’d bet that friend would find another group of people to go out to dinner with!

Then how is the current scaled tax system fair?  Just because you don’t know the highest income earners personally, doesn’t make it right to stick them with the bill for your issues, does it?  Think about the dinner example.  Why should the rich person have to pay 73% of the bill if all he had was a salad, and everyone else got to eat steak?

Just some food for thought.

Source:
http://cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2009/tax_liability_shares.pdf

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Are We Headed for a Welfare State?

Posted by Scott in Other on March 29th, 2009

With the proposed programs in the Obama administration’s budget, it appears as if we’re on a collision course with becoming a socialist state.  European countries have been on this path for decades, with universal health care and other similar programs.

The question one has to ask is, has any of these programs worked?  And in order to answer that question, you have to define what the expected result is.  If the result is to have everyone pay for everyone else’s health care, for example, then the program is a failure.  If it is to give everyone access to health care, then again the program is a failure.

In the UK, taxpayers fund the government sponsored health care system where everyone has “access” to health care.  I say “access”, because, yes everyone is “entitled” to health care for “free”, it just depends on how long you have to wait for it. 

It is perfectly reasonable for one to assume that if you have a potentially fatal disease, you should be moved to the front of the line, and you receive top priority.  However in the UK, they work on a quota system of sorts.  What this means is the government budgets for a certain number of open heart surgeries, brain surgeries, and other like treatments each year.  Once the quota is met for the year, anyone waiting for treatment has to wait until the next year.  Even if they are at risk of dying before being treated.

So is this what we want?  In an on-demand society that complains about a 3 hour wait in the emergency room, do we want to wait months to be treated for serious illnesses?

Hospitals are businesses like any other, except they also accept insurance as a form of payment.  If you don’t have insurance, they’ll put you on a payment plan.  While this may be financially difficult to those without insurance, it shouldn’t force everyone else to have to pay higher taxes.

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