The Democrats are Socialists and the Republicans are Liberals!

February 11th, 2008

The following is a political rant not intended to be published on Seeking Alpha. 

What a world we live in… Interesting times I tell you! The United States of America, the democratic country that utilized free market capitalism to become the world’s richest super power with high standards of living for its citizens is now on the verge of losing all its titles… United?, Democratic? Free Markets? Capitalism? Rich? I see each of those beliefs and systems and terms being used less in the future. The system hasn’t be perfect, but show me a system that is! The United States of America is one of the great countries on Earth because it enabled anyone, from any ethnic group or religion or economic background to move up the economic ladder and become extremely wealthy through hard work and determination. They call it the “American Dream” to work hard and achieve great things with only modest beginnings. Now that the United States of America is starting to show some cracks in the foundation, it has decided that the rest of the world really did have it right and that socialism is the way to go. Guess hard work and determination aren’t the solution - Now the solution that the populace is searching for is to have everything handed to them by the government. Show me one Presidential candidate that wouldn’t enlarge government or create more social programs? The United States is turning to socialism to find its answers. How sad it is. Look at how the government has handled currency and how they have interfered with the basic economic environment in the United States. Look at how the government has done with its own money. You think they will do a good job at fixing your problems? LOL.

It’s not that socialism is inherently bad, because it isn’t. The goals of having no poor and no one left behind are noble. Socialism just isn’t the way to achieve it. Capitalism and the free markets didn’t completely eradicate those problems either, but it actually did a better job than socialism as ironic as that sounds! Go look at the standard of living in America a few decades ago before socialism started gaining ground and compare that with the standards everywhere else on the planet. The problem I find with socialism is that it takes the resources and hard work away from the working class, in order to fund the laziness of those who don’t work hard. I’ve seen it far too often. Do you realize how many people I know don’t work all that hard and expect everything in life to be handed to them? I’d rather live in a country where the population wants to work hard and strive to make things better instead of just cry for government to solve all their problems - because I know it won’t. Do you realize how long it took government to get water into the stadium after Katrina? Government is already in control of the schools that teach the youth, and you wonder why there are problems. Now you want them to be in control of health care and other social programs to fix all America’s problems. Government can’t even balance a budget consistently and now the population wants them to spend MORE money.

Do you know what socialism really means? For those of us that live in more socialistic countries, let us tell you what you can expect. It means that when you go get a job and they tell you you’ll make $xx,xxx a year… you really only make ~50% of that. Than, with after tax dollars, your remaining ~50% has another 5% to 15.5% eaten away with sales tax on anything you buy. I’ve lived in a place where for each dollar I earn I only ever see about half. The rest goes to the wise and all knowing government who is here to save us from ourselves. What would we do without them? Oh, and with any savings, if you are lucky enough to save anything, your investment income is then taxed as is you estate when you die. Yes, your after tax dollars aren’t finished with taxes (so are they really after-tax?). But that’s another story.

I’ve heard Americans complain of taxes - That makes me chuckle. Yes, there were the good ‘ol days with no personal income taxes and it’s sad how the younger generations don’t know that is possible or ever existed (What, a time without income taxes?) - But there are reasons we have personal income taxes now - because people wanted “free” social programs and governments got into debt for wars. Then the same Americans that complain of taxes also want Universal Health Care or more social programs - You have to pay for these things one way or another and nothing is free. What is the difference between robbing someones home to get money to pay for your health care or food OR voting in someone that will tax that same person’s income through the unconstitutional IRS? It might be legal but the IRS is taking people’s money and redistributing it in a “fair” way; but it’s still theft of someones earnings no matter what way you slice it. One way is just legal and therefore it’s morally acceptable. We are trying to take away some of the incentives for people to work hard to get ahead.

Look, I’m not trying to be harsh, I realize some people CAN’t work and we should look after them - but if you aren’t sick or dying then get off your butt and work FULL-time or you shouldn’t get a dime. You have to contribute if you are physically and mentally capable of doing so. PERIOD. If you don’t contribute, don’t expect a contribution from someone else to flow to you…

The problem with capitalism is that the government has interfered too much. Look at the way the dollar has been ruined? How can any business operate in an environment without a stable currency? We don’t just compete against another nations businesses but against their currencies as well. But the government took the US dollar off the gold standard and now PRINTS massive amounts of money in order to fund social programs and unnecessary wars to destroy Iraq so they can turn around and pay to rebuild it?… This printing of money devalues each existing dollar and robs the citizens of the very value of the monetary unit they are working so hard to earn. Also, now the very basis for the economy is to rely on debt and the dollar is nothing more than a piece of paper they can print in a printing room. The government did this, not capitalism. They have devalued the dollar, and increased inflation - that isn’t a failure of capitalism - that is a failure of government and its all because the government tries to interfere to try and create a stable economic growth rate - and yet in doing so it has been anything but stable. In reality, capitalism would work. It does need some rules and regulations because we know capitalism can go too far in some instances - but it also needs some breathing room and a strong currency. It has neither and as a result, the companies in the U.S. can’t compete. They have to outsource BECAUSE of government interferences and too much regulation… I can make a much stronger argument, but perhaps I’ll do that in a different article - I’m getting off my intended topic, like I so often do… damn side tracking.

So, when I go to get a job and they tell me the salary is $xx,xxx, I understand that it is actually $xx,xxx divided by 2. Last time I checked $xx,xxx / 2 doesn’t actually buy much after paying rent or a mortgage and buying food for a family. Oh, and let’s not forget the insurance that we are required by law to purchase - Shouldn’t that be considered a tax when it’s required? Anyways, that’s another story. Just think about this. If you work real, real hard you could be one of those “rich” people with a good job earning $100,000 a year. But just remember, in most socialist countries, that $100,000 is only $50,000. $50,000 might not mean your hurting too badly, but you certainly aren’t rich and living on the high hog if you have a family to support and your average sized older fixer-upper home costs $300,000 to $500,000. Sigh.

So, let’s tackle Universal Health Care. It sounds all nice and fuzzy knowing that you won’t be letting yourself, your neighbors, relatives, friends or countrymen/women go without receiving health care. It’s noble. It’s a good idea. The biggest factor for American’s is cost and how many families can go bankrupt if an illness strikes. It seems like the United States of America is destined to have Universal Health Care based on the politics of the presidential front runners. Universal Health Care will take care of the costs and pay for it - It’s all free…. or is it? It’s not free, somehow somewhere someone IS paying for it. But most people don’t care - as long as it ain’t them directly paying for it. They think they’ll just tax the rich and it will solve all their problems. Last time I checked, the corporations normally use the extra money they have in order to EXPAND and hire more people… it all goes back into the economy!! - If you tax them, they will expand less in your country because they have less money to spend on expansion or acquiring other companies or hiring more people and purchasing equipment. For those companies that don’t expand, they often give dividends to shareholders. Either way, most corporations put the money back to work in order to see a return on capital and it all makes its rounds through the economy. I’ll talk more about that later.

Let me tell you the real dirty secret that you don’t hear in the media. Universal Health Care is broken in most countries. Take Canada for instance. While reading so many websites and online journals and reporters from large media companies, they often cite how great Universal Health Care is in many places like Canada. They obviously haven’t used the system like I have. I’m real. I’ve used Universal Health Care. Here is how it works. If you have an emergency and you go to the Emergency Room at the local hospital, you can expect to wait about 10 to 12 hours in the seat as long as you aren’t LITERALLY dieing right this minute. The nurse will check on you about once an hour to ensure you haven’t deteriorated too badly. I’ve even been there on nights when it wasn’t THAT busy but all beds were occupied and the emergency waiting room nurse said she didn’t know if we would even get seen that night at all. Emergency Room - Eh? I’ve literally seen people convulse on the floor and shake and cry from pain - but they still had to sit and wait for 10 to 12 hours. One lady sitting beside me literally fell and as she did so, she dropped her purse… I don’t know what she was on or what was wrong with here but she had some sort of severe disease where she was losing control of her muscles and nerves were definitely bothering her. She was so out of it I had to put her things back in her purse for her and she didn’t even realize I was doing anything or that she had dropped anything. Anyways, back on track. After you get in past the Emergency Room Waiting area, you will be directed to a hospital bed where you can expect to wait another 45 minutes to an hour to see a doctor, in the mean time you will occasionally have contact with a nurse. Then the doctor will come by and do his thing. Then, if you are lucky enough and he fixes your problem, you can leave. Sure, it took a full day, but hey, who cares - I didn’t pay anything when I got there - Sure I might give the government half of my earnings for my entire life and most of that does go towards social programs like welfare and health care, who cares. If, though, you need some more advanced tests - you could be directed to wait some more countless hours in the hospital. That is the beauty of Universal Health Care. That’s just the “Emergency” Rooms. They aren’t the worst part of the system.

The worst part about Universal Health Care is getting surgery. If you are in an accident, you can rest assured you will get your life saving surgery right away - That is the best news I can give and it’s nice to know. But if you have an illness that doesn’t require immediate attention - you may wait months or years for a surgery, EVEN IF IT IS A LIFE THREATENING surgery. I’ve recently had one relative who had a series of blood clots in his arteries. They could pop at any moment and kill him. He had to wait for surgery for more than three months and wasn’t allowed to work or they could rupture. But that is quick! Obviously he was ushered to the front of the line because he was served in record time (just 3 months!)! I’ve seen many other people who need serious LIFE THREATENING surgeries and depending on the specialist required to perform the operation it could be upwards of a year - FOR A LIFE THREATENING SURGERY! Think about that for a second. How long would you wait for a life threatening surgery? Are you willing to wait a year, and in the meantime you aren’t allowed to work and must go on disability which pays far less…

Need an MRI scan because you are sick and can’t work - and can’t even walk a straight line? You can be assured you will wait 8 months just to get an MRI scan. Then, a few more months for them to look at it. In total, I’ve had a relative wait A YEAR. Then when they decided they needed to do another MRI on a different part of the body - that relative decided to pony up the money and just pay a private clinic to get the MRI so they could hurry up and figure out what was wrong so he could get back to work. That cost wasn’t covered but it sure beats taking another year off work and living off long term disability pensions for longer. But it gets worse.

I’ve had people with SEVERE heart problems that could die - told they would be waiting six to eight months for their surgery. Guess what they ended up doing? They flew to the United States of America and walked in and got the surgery within a couple of days. That is the most common thing I hear. People are forced to wait in line for months or years for life saving surgeries and get scared and instead decide to dip into their own pockets and go to the United States of America and pay themselves. Why? Because its a life or death situation and who cares if they re mortgage their house to pay for it? The money doesn’t do much good if your dead. If they can’t re mortgage their house because they are renters or poor - then they get the luxury of waiting in the LONG lines and HOPING they don’t die while waiting. Six to eight months is normal. Longer is common. Do you know how many people die while waiting for surgery? It’s sick.

The point of the story I am trying to convey is that MANY Canadians end up going to the United States of America for health care and they pay out of their own pocket simply because of how crappy our system is when wait lines take months or years. Yes, you heard that right. We Canadians think YOU have a better system! We like our “free” health care better - but we also recognize it’s currently broken and the lineups aren’t any good. When you need medical attention now we realize the United States is where we have to go, even though we already pay for our health care because its built into our high tax rate. Sick, because we sometimes end up paying twice - through taxes and then when we are forced to go to the United States if we don’t think we can last through the waiting line. We have been increasing our health care budgets by DOUBLE DIGIT rates each year and we still can’t keep up! Canada even has a BUDGET SURPLUS - For those of you who forgot what that is, it occurs when a government spends less money than it steals from its citizens. Canada is using the surpluses to pay down some debts and lower taxes and increase health care spending. Yes, you heard me… we have been lowering taxes in Canada because we can afford to. America has been lowering taxes but can’t afford to. Either way, we have been putting the extra dollars into health care and it still doesn’t seem to really change much.

One difference, which may be HUGE, between a Canadian and an American Universal Health Care is that the Canadian Hospitals are all government run. American hospitals aren’t. In other words, there is no competition to be a better hospital - they are all state run. Period. In America, with private hospitals, you get competition and a desire to be better and compete for money. Maybe you won’t have such long lines - though with an aging baby boomer population the doctor shortage will hit you as well, and then if you have 300 million people wanting health care and knowing it won’t cost them anything extra, I guess your hospitals might see some massive lines too. Add an extra xx million people that will now try and get health care and I bet you lineups will quickly form and get longer and longer and longer.

Regardless, the cost of Universal Health Care isn’t cheap. The cost is simple: The state owns 35% to 50% of your wages for the rest of your life. In other words, the first six months of the year your just working for the government - the last six months you get to work for yourself. Think about how many resources go to programs you will never use. I’d rather pay high health insurance premiums than have to give such high percents of my income for the rest of my life. Yes, I’ve used Universal Health Care. Yes, it works if your willing to wait months and years for surgery and 8 to 12 hours for to see a doctor in the ER. No, it isn’t better. No, it isn’t free. You pay for it all, and then some. I guarantee if you EVER plan on earning decent money - You will end up paying far more for health care with Universal Health Care than without it. Unless you plan on never having a good job and never earning much money (wouldn’t that be un-American to never have a dream or goal or having a good job or starting a company and earning some more money - not for pure greed but to help change the world and perhaps make a few dollars as well?) and just living off of crappy jobs, the Universal Health Care is more a hindrance than a help. There are benefits to the system - but the drawbacks can’t be forgotten and I think too many people aren’t fully thinking about what it will mean for the United States.

For decades socialist countries have had a hard time competing due to the huge economic burden they bare to pay for Universal Health Care. Guess who they collect all that money from to begin with? The working citizens and businesses through taxes. Guess what? Companies have a hard time competing when they are paying massive taxes and still have to compete against companies in other countries that aren’t. Why manufacture anything in the United States if you can do it elsewhere and not have to pay a few thousand a year per employee for health care ALONE? In some places a few thousand a year is all it costs to employ an employee for an entire year. Many of the problems the big US automaker’s have been going through with pensions is along the same lines as what will happen to other corporations - except all the extra money will be going towards health care. The biggest, most successful, supposedly RICH corporations in America can’t even afford to compete while paying pensions and high American wages. Now, politicians want to legislate more corporations start paying health care? And probably higher taxes too. It doesn’t work that way, at least not in a world where China has a large reserve of slave labour (it is almost slave wages that they pay the bulk of their manufacturing labour force). You can’t compete against wage slaves in other countries as it is. You can’t expect corporations to stay in the United States if the citizens start voting in governments that will make it even harder to compete.

To persuade you there are problems with socialism I’d talk about welfare and old age pensions and other social programs the government provides for. I’d talk about how many new immigrants who have never paid a dime in taxes come over through the family clauses (ie, a younger person immigrates to Canada and brings an older relative eventually) and the older relative ends up getting money each month. Then the older person moves back to India or whatever country they originated from and the cheques get forwarded to them in India - Yes, I personally know people who are living in foreign countries and have servants there and yet they receive cheques from the Canadian government for old age security pensions - and yet they never paid a dime in Canadian taxes during their lives. No, the government can’t do anything about that without changing rules. No, not everyone abuses the system. The point is, with large number of social programs its almost impossible to police them all and ensure there are no misuses or abuses- and you can count on it that the lazy will abuse it by not bothering to look for work or create new companies. Why? If they are able to watch TV and enjoy a life of leisure (even if they are poor and they don’t have much) then some people are able to be quite happy with that. Then take this into consideration - Even with all our social programs - we have a rising number of homeless. Even socialism doesn’t work. Go ask any Russian that lived through shortages of bread, sugar, oil, currency collapses, etc…

In order to pay for more social programs the governments will be forced to continue running the printing presses which devalues the very dollar each American is working for and increases inflation. They say inflation is usually in the 2% to 4% range, but they don’t tell you that they printed 17% more money last year. I’d like to think most of us are smart enough to notice prices increasing a little more than 4% per year… Wages never keep up either. Middle Class households used to have only one wage earner. Now, it requires two. Inflation is the great robber of wealth and will continue to slowly erode the middle class - and all the while, the middle class will look to the same government that created the problem to finally fix it - and it won’t if they expect government social programs to do the trick.

In the end, countries that turn to socialism end up having a harder time competing with nations that don’t. Universal Health Care and other social programs don’t always fix the problems they are intended to. The United States can’t afford to spend more money on social programs and lower taxes and yet that is what every party promises - typical politicians. The Democrats are Socialists and the Republicans are Liberals. Where are the conservatives?

Oh, and the answer to the very first bold sentence in this article (at the very top) is Ron Paul. Ron Paul would take the country back to what it was intended - and protect and restore the constitution that has been butchered in recent years. He would get rid of personal income taxes and many of the extra government departments that aren’t needed and he would restore a GOLD backed currency. He would do all the things a government should in order to help give the citizens and companies a chance at competing in the world.

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