Why We Need Health Care (Part II)

In the last post I attempted to define at a very fundamental level why liberals believe that the wealthy are to blame for the plight of poor people in America. I realize now that I made a basic mistake and did not define the terms I was using. When I speak of poor, I mean people who have difficulty paying for or maintaining many of the luxuries that are common place in America and when I speak of the wealthy, I mean those who make or have accumulated more than the average American family.

In this post I will look at why liberals look to the government as the solution of the problem. We identified their assumption that the reason for an excess of wealth in one area is a lack of it in another. They believe that there is a finite amount of wealth, which means those who have more than average have stolen it from those who have less.

Having determined that there is theft going on, (from one income bracket to another) the liberal then looks to see who or what has the power to remedy the situation. The most obvious candidate is government, it has the power to compel people to do its bidding, and the wealthy will not surrender the amount of income required of him willingly.

 Thus, the liberal sees government as the best force with the right to equalize the wealth of a nation, because the nation is not capable of doing it itself. When big business steals from the poor or otherwise takes advantage of them, the poor have no one to turn to except government. Thus the government become the ultimate charity, collecting from the wealthy to care for the poor. The collections take the form of taxes, and the government uses those taxes to pay for doctors, food stamps, medication, etc. In this way, the wealthy CEO of Walmart pays a portion of his earnings back into the system, allowing it to be used to help and provide for people in the lower income brackets he makes his money off of.

This is why people like Marx or Hitler look to some form of populist government and force to achieve what they see as social justice. Because people with wealth have been shaped by the capitalistic culture that surrounds them, they are motivated by greed and self interest and thus are more concerned about themselves than the community and must be forced to share and take care of the community.

Government becomes the ultimate parent, making sure the children share and get along while also providing just what every child needs.

Irresponsibility 101

As a conservative who believes in responsibility, I naturally disagree with much of the spending that President Obama and the 111th congress have shoved through the legislative process. However, we can whine about democrat spending till the cows come home or until the cowboys start winning, and it will not make much difference. Fox News reports that NASA is being forced to spend $500,000,000 on the Ares I rocket, which is cancelled. Last October, President Obama signed into law a new NASA plan, which canceled the Constellation program, an umbrella program that included the Ares I which was meant to replace NASA's aging shuttles. However, even though the program was canceled, congressmen inserted clauses into NASA's budget to prevent NASA from cutting jobs related to the program in their states.

Before anyone claims that is a good thing (they are protecting jobs, right?), may I point out that the money being spent on the program is tax money, i.e. money that has been taken from tax payers. Put simply, money is being taken from the American People to pay American People. In other words, the American People are paying themselves; and that assumes that none of the money is being spent over seas, which I find highly unlikely. It should also be remembered that we technically don't have the five hundred million dollars in our pockets, that money is being borrowed from the next couple generations.

At the same time that we are spending half a billion on building technology that may or may not be used, congressmen are talking about cutting military budgets in order to reign in the budget, despite the fact that we are fighting a war.

Bringing spending under control is simpler than many people are making it. Stop spending money we don't have on programs we don't need just so that you'll look good to your constituents.