DougJ at Balloon Juice, riffing off of another good post by Sardine at Eschaton with a reminder that this health care debate isn’t some abstract political game:
I realize that if you’re poor in this country, then everything is your fault. If you take out a loan you shouldn’t have taken out, it’s proof that you’re too much of an idiot to handle money, whereas when rich people are fleeced by Bernie Madoff it’s proof that Madoff is a super-genius monster. If you’re hit by a stray bullet, you were probably in a gang. If you’re sick, it’s because you smoke and you’re overweight. And whatever trouble you have getting a job, it’s all because of your genetically determined low IQ. And if you weren’t poor, overweight, genetically deficient and so on you wouldn’t have trouble getting disqualified because of preconditions and you’d never get scammed by bogus insurance outfits.
Our system is screwed up and people are dying as a result.
Those who didn’t buy into the promise of the ‘investor society’ have been systematically demonized since the 80s.Reagan taught us we could cut taxes with no negative consequences,and keep doing it forever, his followers continued. Thats the group that makes up the 19% left in todays Republican party.Cutting taxes invariably started a class warfare fight,and that when the name-calling began so much in earnest; who’s deserving and who isn’t was the constant dialogue and everyone had to take sides.
A guy like me who was paid from public money and who is now living on a modest public pension is part of the ‘leech class’ who take away from these venerable investors. Well, now I have the last laugh,but am not laughing.. There’s no fun in seeing peoples promised private benefits litigated away in bankruptcy court.( like Bethlehem Steel workers).One thing about working for government: it has to deliver what it promises.My pension even survived intact in spite of Blago. I knew when I heard these 20ish guys at the gym talking about the fortune they were making by flipping houses,that something was very badly wrong with our system..How could people make so much money so effortlessly? Were we just stupid chumps,as we were called?
Actually I invested too and I lost as much percentage-wise as anybody,but thankfully I dont need what I saved and lost to live on like many do! Future generations will be more vulnerable.
So much for Reaganomics.His legacy,whatever it could have been, has to take the hit for those who sullied it with cheap,but mostly legal, get rich schemes . But everyone has to pay the price for these super-house-flipping investor types,and they come in all colors and styles..I’m looking forward to see what ‘Obamanomics’ are going to be; more rules with more freedom is my hope.