On The Money, Obamneycare is a Symptom, Not a Cure

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Working-Class;

Obamneycare is a Symptom Not a Cure

In an attempt to alienate all of my readers by denigrating their political views, I weigh in on a hotly, although mostly inanely, debated topic, the new mandatory health insurance law, the Expensive Insurance Act, also known as Obamneycare.

With people currently paying $500 or more a month for a health insurance policy with a $5,000 annual deductible, you are better off diagnosing yourself and buying drugs on the black-market than buying health insurance.

 

At 50 years old, I have never run up $5,000 worth of medical bills in a year, if I had been insured since I was 25, I would have already paid 150,000 for nothing, and if I missed one payment, even that flimsy coverage is gone. Health insurance has become a ripoff of epic proportions, and Obamneycare just made it mandatory.

 

While conservatives cling to the delusional belief that the worst people, acting for the worst reasons, will always produce the best results, liberals think they know what’s best for everyone, and live in a grand illusion of their own design. When liberals and conservatives work together, they deliver the worst of both worlds. Such is the case with the new Expensive Insurance Act aka Obamneycare.

The American people gave Obama a clear mandate to make health-care more affordable, and he used that mandate to sell us all out, especially young people. According to Harper’s Index, in the last 25 years, the net worth of Americans 65 and older had risen by 42%. In the same 25 years the net worth of Americans 35 and younger dropped by a whopping 68%. Now Obama has screwed young people again, the very same young people who got him elected, by imposing a huge new tax on anyone who chooses not to pay for an extortionately overpriced product, that most young people don’t need, and would be better off without.

 

Obama didn’t make health-care affordable, he fed the people who elected him, to the bloated health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Health insurance rates continue to climb because our health-care system remains broken. Thanks to this new legislation, we will all be sicker and poorer as a result. Obama sold out young people with this new law, just like Clinton sold out American workers with NAFTA.

 

Once Democrats know you like them enough to vote them into office, they can’t wait to screw you for the people who paid for their campaign. Republicans know you don’ like them and screw you anyway. Romney screwed people in Massachusetts with a very similar law, because this is what democracy has come to. Politicians exist solely to sell us out to a corporate agenda, Democrat or Republican, they all work for the same people.

 

So, Obama caved to one of the most predatory industries in our whole economy and screwed young healthy people with an expensive new tax for not buying a ripoff product they neither want nor need. So, now life sucks even more for young working people who face rising tuition, inflated housing costs, stagnant wages and scant employment opportunities, and have already lost almost 70% of their net worth in the last 25 years. Like that wasn’t bed enough, now Obamneycare forces America’s young and healthy working people to subsidize two million BMW driving yuppies in Hartford CT, even though they could never afford to live there themselves.

 

It is surprising that we actually have any healthy people left in this country, considering how sick our culture is. Today, millions of children will consume psychiatric drugs, millions of senior citizens will take insidious cholesterol lowering drugs with side effects far worse than high cholesterol, and millions of adults will take mood-altering drugs that cost in excess of $1000 a month, to treat anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression caused not by a “brain chemical imbalance’ but because life sucks, because people are under attack, being played like pawns, and they have no idea how to make sense of their lives.

 

You can’t solve the problems we face with elections, no matter how many people tell you otherwise.  Obomneycare does not cure anything. Obomneycare is a symptom, and the disease is democracy. The sooner we stop trusting the people who caused our problems, to solve them, the better off we will be.

On The Money, Labor Day and NPR

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Working-Class

Labor Day, and NPR

 

Well its Labor day. A day off to honor American workers. Listening to NPR this morning, the only mention I heard of it, was an announcement that the stock markets were closed for the holiday. They didn’t even say which holiday.

If you listen to NPR on Memorial Day, you’ll hear Taps, a 21 gun salute, and a story about veterans. On Easter they’ll report from the Vatican, and you’ll hear the Pope. They play the sound of fireworks on the 4^th of July, and the cheers of people counting down, as the ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. They give us Christmas season retail sales reports for a solid month be fore Christmas, and they’ve played that David Sedaris elf story (oddly, the only story about an American worker I can remember hearing on NPR) so many times we’re ready to puke up Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish, but not a word about Labor Day.

You’d think the president would say something appreciative of all of the people who set their alarm clocks every day, give up half of their waking hours and pour themselves into their work to make our economy and government function. Maybe he’d mention that while wages stagnate or decline, worker productivity continues to soar. He could show some appreciation for all of the people who now work so much harder, for so much less. He could take a moment to thank American workers for all the sacrifices they have made, and for how much more they will be asked to sacrifice, just to keep America strong and competitive in the world economy. If Obama made that speech, they sure didn’t cover it on NPR.

Maybe some corporate CEO issued a statement to the press, in appreciation of all of the people who worked longer hours and took a cut in pay, in order to justify his obscene salary to the corporate share holders. NPR always seems to have time for those folks when they have something to say, but I heard no such message today.

I can understand how NPR could both report on higher productivity numbers, and lower wages, but somehow never cover the effects that these things have on the lives of American workers. I mean, the government issues a report, and the productivity number is printed right there. When a union makes concessions in a contract, someone sends them a press release. Do you send out a press release to announce that this is the third time this week you’ve had ramen noodles for dinner? So, you can see how they miss that story.

But Labor Day is a fucking holiday! How do you forget to do a story about American workers on fucking Labor Day. White collar or blue, 85% of us work. What else do 85% of us have in common? You’d think that stories about American workers would have very wide appeal all year around, but especially on Labor Day.

By contrast, less than half of us own stocks, and most of the people who own stocks, own very few. But, NPR tells us what happens on the stock market, and why, every half hour, at least. NPR themselves tell us, repeatedly, that bubbles in the stock market, mean that wild fluctuations on Wall St. do not really reflect the economic reality of most Americans. So why, do you suppose, does NPR continue to report all of the major stock indexes every half-hour, but can’t find a single story about American workers to run, even on Labor Day? Oversight, maybe? …Just slipped their minds? …institutional Alzheimer’s disease?

How should I know? But I know the Asian markets lost two percent of their value on news of a flat jobs report here in the U.S. and that stocks on Wall St. are seriously overvalued, especially when compared to American workers.