It was past ten in the evening this Friday. The penultimate episode of ‘Whale Wars’ had drawn to an end. I reached for my remote to flip past ‘Animal Planet’ in pursuit of something on the television that would suit my fancy. My wife had retired early to bed leaving me to my own devices. As I flipped past the Food Network Channel I thanked my lucky stars that my wife was conspicuous by her absence. My wife is an avid Food Network fan and we often end up parking up this alley when we are searching for something entertaining to watch. Well, you will not find me complaining too much about having to watch the Giadas and Rachel Rays of this world showcasing their talent because my wife happens to be an excellent cook. I wouldn’t mind her deriving her inspiration from here because it often ends up in the shape of many a delectable delights on my plate. It is quite refreshing being married to a woman who has mastered the art of fine cuisine given the young hussies of today who shamelessly claim impotence in the culinary department. Some of my colleagues have to come home after a hard days work and slave over a hot stove because their stay at home wife cannot boil an egg. Thank God for small mercies. Enough of this culinary nonsense. It must be this afternoons Chiken Piccata talking.
As I flipped on further I happened to stumble upon C-Span covering President Obama’s Montana town hall meeting. While food happens to be my wife’s forte, I happen to be quite intrigued with politics. You hear a lot about health care these days. Be it the papers, the internet or the television. You just cannot miss it. It was a decent sized convention center like auditorium packed to capacity. Not too many disgruntled voices could be heard unlike what transpired with Arlen Specter not too long ago. Based on the few clips I saw on You Tube, Specter was so badly verbally barraged and disparaged by his very own constituents that he looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and die soon after the meeting.
Obama had it a lot better than poor old Specter. There was pin drop silence amid a well behaved and almost reverent audience. ACORN must have done a splendid job at cherry picking the audience. Even the insurance companies could learn a lesson or two. The crowds sat in awe struck wonder as Obama in his usual composed poise, sleeves rolled up, began preaching to the choir.
As I sat on my couch I gave the man a patient hearing, then he bamboozled me with his outrageous claim that he intended to pay for two thirds of his proposed plan with savings made through the curtailment of wasteful expenditure and the streamlining of the system. That sounded like a cart load of horse dung being shoveled at the audience. With this statement alone I was led to believe that Mr. Obama had never run anything in his life before. What is he talking about? An approximate 65% savings on the total operating cost by making a few delivery system changes as he so callously put it? Is this man for real? How gullible does he think we are? Government is always inefficient, that is why we must keep it as small as we possibly can. However if this sector was that inefficient, programs like Medicare and Medicaid would have gone belly up a long time ago. A 20% to 30% improvement is believable, but 65% is preposterous. Is this how we are going to pay for this white elephant? What happens if this monstrosity of a bill gets passed and we learn the hard way that Obama’s Harward education did not include a course in basic mathematics? What happens when we learn that Obama’s figures that never made sense from the beginning now do not add up? Where do we go from there? Do we scrap this bill or take our begging bowl and head for China? Geithner in some of his interviews has refused to rule out tax increases on the middle class. How long till Obama jumps ship and leave us stranded?
Let’s cut to the chase here. Canada, Australia and other counties of Western Europe have all implemented different welfare systems that cover every body. The middle class in most of these countries pay close to 50% of their wages in taxes. What makes Obama think that he can cover every American without raising their taxes?
Here’s a sobering statistic. It has been said countless times before in the media that about 40% of Americans do not pay any income tax. Let us consider this demographic. If this rather large demographic does not fulfill it’s basic citizenry obligation, will it be able to meet it’s obligation with respect to Obama’s new health care system? If it does not, who pray tell would foot this bill? I have heard people suggest that we tax the rich to pay for this deficit. Here I would like to caution you with a somber reminder of a statement made by treasury secretary Giethner recently, that taxing only the rich would not pay for this shortfall. Where do we go from here? If the delinquent 40% cannot pay their fair share and the rich have been milked to the point that they cannot lactate any more, how will the middle class escape? This brings us back full circle to the argument that if countries like Canada, Australia and other countries of Western Europe need to tax the middle class to the point of lunacy in order to afford health care that is “free at the point of need” as they so eloquently phrase it, how could we achieve the same without commensurate sacrifice?
Talking of sacrifice have we ever stopped to think what this could do to the middle class? If a rich person who earns $10 million is taxed half of what he earns, he would be left with $5 million. Even though that is a colossal loss to swallow, the law of diminishing returns would protect him from a drastic change in his standard of living. He would be paying more into the system but this would not devastate his standard of living. Now spare a thought for the middle class. If you make $100,000 a year and your pay check is sliced down the middle, you would be left with $50,000. This would have a castrating effect on your standard of living. Now how are you going to pay for your mortgage and student loans that you committed to before this Robin of the one wonders which hood came to town? Ask yourself this question. Could you afford the kind of life you have here in the US with a European take home?
When all the dust has settled and we can see clearer will we continue to view Obama as the messiah of the middle classes? I switched off the television set in disgust. “They are out to get us, why don’t they leave us alone?”, I thought to myself quite agitated by what I saw and heard. We gave them the house, senate and the presidency. How smart was that?
