Indeed, I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about crony capitalism and the unintended consequences it creates. Now then, since my politics are right-leaning, although I am a libertarian, I would first like to point out the terrible situation our federal government's budget is in due to the inherent corruption which goes along with all the social services our government provides. The healthcare industry and specifically the health-insurance industry spent quite a bit of time writing The Affordable Health Care Act.
The pharmaceutical industry also has deep pockets for lobbying. And we should never forget the warnings of Dwight D. Eisenhower with his closing remarks on the Industrial Military Complex. It was determined long ago that our nation needed to support the defense industry so that we could ramp up quickly in case there was a war. The capacity to quickly go from 0 to 60 in our manufacturing sector to produce weapon systems to win a war is paramount, and we know this, and learned this lesson from World War II.
Besides, the federal government's number one job is to protect the American people from enemies both foreign and domestic. The reason we have a federal government is to pool the assets of the states for our common defense; our military. Of course, as our nation prospered and had more money folks started to say that we needed to spend more money here at home on our own people. We began setting up social services, and they can be quite problematic. Once you set up such a service, it never seems to want to go away, and it always grows. Just like the government, which is unfortunate because they are the ones running the social services such as Medicare and Social Security - and yes, now ObamaCare too.
The Business Journal in Phoenix posted an article on September 13, 2012 titled; "Arizona could lose 10,000 jobs from Medicare cuts," by one of their best reporters by far; Angela Gonzales. The article stated that a 2% cut in Medicare costs would do this. Okay, but can you even imagine how many jobs they'd lose if Arizona lost a good portion of the defense industry there? Raytheon, Boeing, Motorola, etc., etc., believe me there are some heavy hitters in Arizona when it comes to the defense industry.
Well, today we have to make some budget cuts. We need a more efficient military, running under Six Sigma supply chain efficiency standards, we are going to have to cut 15%, but I believe we can do that through better efficiencies, but we cannot afford to lower our standards, and we must maintain the greatest military in the solar system, not just here on Earth. Think of it like an Olympic athlete holding the world record, best of breed and best on the planet, that Olympic athlete must now beat their own personal best regardless of the competition far behind.
Now then, they say that all politics is local, and since we also have to cut social services, and we still haven't dealt with the healthcare costs rising at 8% per year, it's time to deal with all that too. Merely cutting 24% for Medicare isn't enough, that would only account for the rise in costs of the last three years, we needed to cut 35 or 45% of that prior to those rises. Yes, these are unheard of cuts, and one of the toughest things to do once you promised a population something is to take it away. That's when they really get angry.
Likewise, we've given food stamps to 47 million people, they are getting free food, and they are likely to vote for the Democrats and the socialist leanings to continue to get that free food, and that free money from the government. The Democrats keep promising to continually give away more money without cutting benefits. That's "unsustainable", using their own favored buzzword. On September 12, 2012 there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal by Anna Wilde Matthews titled "Health-Plan Costs Rise More Slowly" and interestingly enough the title might be a little misleading.
The article explained that businesses were cutting benefits and limiting the use of medical care to make up for the increase in costs. It turns out that the average cost of healthcare for corporate employees went up by an average of $632 last year. That is a significant amount, but it's a lot less than the increase in healthcare costs in the last few years. It's not that healthcare costs have risen any less, they have actually risen more, but companies are combating this by lowering the amount of benefits that employees get.
The government will have to do the same thing, they have no choice, we cannot continue these increasing costs, trillion dollar per year deficits, or blowing up a bubble that we've blown up long enough due to crony capitalism, government giveaways, and politicians that care more about getting elected than doing what must be done to prevent our nation from bankruptcy. It's time that we ditch the politics and do what we have to do.
The government created this nightmarish problem, it cannot afford to sustain it, and it's time to fix it. Unfortunately, no one wants to stand up in Washington DC and be a man, to tell it like it is, or exhibit a tough love attitude with the American people. These are not leaders, and we deserve more. Please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you've enjoyed today's discussion and topic. http://www.WorldThinkTank.net - Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.
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