Bitter or Better

Dear Readers:

I’m looking to provoke a conversation, regardless of the heat.  Yes, I’m going to go “there.”

But be not diverted by what I say, or you will play into the hands of the Radical Right who want to divert your attention from their deliberate underfunding of government, their greedy nonsense about taxation, and their fixation on so-called “entitlements.”  Because THAT diversion is sheer selfishness and greed on their parts, to get the conversation away from them and their (mis)deeds, and thinking that ONLY benefits programs need addressed. 

We have a resource allocation problem, both in taking in enough (and from where), and where those resources go once we have them.  On the revenue side, we don’t take in enough, largely because the corporations and uber-wealthy have rigged the system to escape what they used to pay when we were fiscally healthy.  On the allocation side, we have five huge categories which make everything else nearly insignificant: Military associated spending, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and Interest on the National Debt.  Solve those and you have solved the majority of your allocation side problems. 

Social Security was a good idea, for poverty of the elderly detracts from the descendants who must divert otherwise productive time and resources toward their elderly.  This does NOT mean sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters have no responsibility or can or should escape the honoring of their elders (we can learn a lot from Native Americans about honoring one’s elders).  It merely means that those elders can at once have some economic dignity while their descendants can make their way in the world without being excessively dragged down by economic burden from their predecessors.  Note that this applies both at the individual level and societal level.

Social Security has a separate funding stream, is only a mild problem, and is easily fixable.  Even if it isn’t “fixed,” at worst the program can continue with benefits reduced at most by one-third.

Military associated spending has been historically excessive for so long people have become numb to it.  But it is not economically productive, and is instead a drag on the economy as well as the budget.  No power in history has kept up this level of spending and survived.  There’s something to think about when talking about “risk.”

Interest on the national debt is artificially low right now, so we are getting a bit of a break, but it is still far too high.  You don’t need to be good at math to realize that each year of deficits means a bigger and snowballing problem.

Medicaid growth is largely a result of the abandonment of the working/lower class.  We have an economic system that permits too many “employers” to foist the true costs of their decisions onto the society, and they also make people sicker to boot.  Yet there is little doubt that we have done a poor job of defining what an acceptable level of care is, especially because Medicaid has no separate funding stream.  Both states and the federal government suffer for this gem.

And now to the country sized elephant in our midst: medical spending on the elderly.  Any alien watching us from space must marvel at what we do, and probably sends back reports that the illogic of this species precludes contact at this time. :)  To that alien it is obvious, although not comprehendible: we divert tremendous resources to the sick care and chronic health-conditions management of those whose productive years are largely past, who will have the most health problems regardless (and the costliest), and who often have highly abbreviated years remaining.  We do that while at the same time cutting resources to the young who need it most—and the society that needs those young to be resourced and productive. 

I am not asserting that Medicare was wrong.  Perhaps we do owe the elderly a level of medical care certainty.  But I AM saying that the discussion has been framed all wrong. Whatever this society feels it owes its elderly citizens, it should be considered within the larger picture frame of the whole society, and especially the energetic economic lifeblood of the society (generally considered 18-65, although both those numbers can be moved forward or extended a few years to provision for variances; and exceptions will always exist).   If we want sustainability, that has to be near the forefront of our thinking.  Not in some Nazi way at all, just a common sense way, in which dignity, and the long term, are in synchronicity.

Medicare was an incompletely considered idea.  Because it was inadequately framed, we find ourselves in the mess of today.  Health care (actually, “sick care”) is not the “tiger we ride because if we get off it may eat us.”  It is the parasite that it is draining away our energy and our vitality, and so weakened, may kill us.

We spend 18% of our GDP on “Health Care.”  Germany spends about 11%.  And arguably has better care.

We can do better. We must do better.  And we better start talking about it.  Not cleaving to illusion.

Or start apologizing now to our embittered descendants.