The Screwed Generation

Libertarian, not liberal. Actually libertarians are the true liberals. Most people who call themselves “liberal” are leftists who stole the term.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, I just read through the whole thing, and this is a pretty confused and incoherent paragraph:

We still vote with our heart; it’s just in a slightly different place. We’d rather bring home our troops from overseas and save those lives while spending that money to establish a universal healthcare system that will save even more. This isn’t necessarily because we believe the government should take care of us, it’s because everyone deserves to be healthy and the powers that be before us mangled the system so badly that it’s becoming impossible to afford. This is an example of our generation trying to take care of our own as much as it is trying to create change. While the concept of universal healthcare may be defined as “liberal,” it’s a fairly libertarian approach of non-interventionism and personal rights that brings us there.

There is no way to do universal health care without a massive violation of liberty and personal rights, as we’re seeing already with ObamaCare, even before it goes into effect. This is a utopian fantasy, and there’s nothing libertarian about it.

17 thoughts on “The Screwed Generation”

  1. Why would the author of the quote think that moving our troops home would mean we have money to spend on universal healthcare? If financing defense through debt is bad, why would financing universal healthcare be better?

    I seriously question the intelligence of people who lack understanding of basic human nature and the past 3000 years of history in relation to the importance of having a strong military.

    1. It’s a repeat of the old “Peace Dividend” line of reasoning following the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Listening to the politicians, the peace dividend would be spent as follows:

      50% for urban renewal
      50% to lower the deficeit
      50% to improve the national infrastructure
      50% for national healthcare
      50% for…

      In other words, they were going to treat the “savings” from the peace dividend like they did the increased revenue from the Reagan tax cuts – for every extra dollar of revenue, spending increased by about a $1.40. The idea of actually reducing spending is completely foreign to the polical class.

  2. it’s because everyone deserves to be healthy

    Who defines healthy? I think crowding aboard mass transit and being exposed to dozens of people’s maladies is unhealthy. Can I define healthy? Or does Michelle Obama get to define healthy and claim eating mystery meat is unhealthy. Or does Mayor Bloomberg get to define healthy and claim firearms are unhealthy?

  3. Sounds like the usual justification of (modern) liberals who say they are the ones who “really” believe in liberty — because, you see, one can’t really be “free” unless one has a full stomach, and a roof over one’s head, and nice clothes to wear, and transportation to and from a rewarding job, and a cell phone and a laptop, and, oh yeah, universal health care, and a guaranteed pension….

  4. “There is no way to do universal health care without a massive violation of liberty and personal rights”

    Unless I’m missing something, providing vouchers to buy insurance or care in the private market would not be a violation of anything. Unless you object to taxation and spending generally.

    1. …or watching prices skyrocket because now health care providers can charge what the market will bear, PLUS the voucher.
      Kind of what happened to the cost of higher education when Pell Grants became ubiquitous.

    2. Depends upon who gets the vouchers and for how long.

      When you tax tax money from producers, and give it to non-producers (I don’t mean that as a pejorative in this case – just people down on their luck temporarily),
      what you see is people getting free health care.

      What you also will see is a general increase in health costs.

      What do you not see is the jobs that would have been created if that money was spent as the owner wished, or banked. Jobs that would have allowed people down on their luck to work and therefore buy health insurance. What you do not see is the general wealth of the nation rising.

      Still, there are leads and lags in any system. So if the States wanted to tax people to provide vouchers, you would at least remove the vig the Feds take off the top. And each state could decide when and how to work that program.

  5. So when the traditional liberal means of protecting ourselves — uniting behind the government to promote action that benefits the common good

    His definition of “traditionally liberal” doesn’t date more than 50 years ago. I can imagine the steaming pile of mush he was fed in what passed for History in his formal education.

    The caveat that comes with this leniency is personal responsibility. … We’re willing to grant people the right to live their lives however they please, but if they mess up it’s on them to fix it.

    I guess “personal responsibility” doesn’t extend to the purchase of health insurance. I guess going without health insurance, and then getting sick, doesn’t qualify as “messing up”.

    He’s confused and incoherent in almost every paragraph.

  6. The majority of the problem we are dealing with today are because we brought government into the process to begin with. I’m old so I remember the insurance guy cheerfully coming to our home. He was there to sell you a product that you could afford, and it was common knowledge that purchasing it was the prudent and responsible thing to do. And when you had a claim you didn’t call and 800 number, that same individual came to your house and actually advocated for you with his company. He did this because he knew all the neighbor with policies were watching. I know this is novel in todays society. This is a small example of a self regulating system driven by each persons desire to provide a service that people were willing to pay for and it turn you made a good living. It’s a novel approach that we should return to, in so many different functions that we have turned to the government to provide and maintain for us.

    1. That’s old school – the kind where the expected value is greater than the premium. Hedging your position with that kind of insurance is a no-brainer. Modern insurance is, with guaranteed issue and coverage for pre-existing losses, is “social insurance” and a proxy for government collectivism.

  7. No one on the stump is talking about what to do 30 seconds AFTER they repeal Obamacare:

    No talk of revamping tort law

    No talk of adjusting (at least Federal) insurance policies to not cover the “windshield wiper/oil change” aspects of health care – things like yearly physicals.

    Once you do the latter, insurance companies can do the same thing regarding yearly physicals as they do about smokers:

    You smoke? you pay a higher premium. You don’t get a yearly physical (yes I need to see a note from the doctor) you pay higher premiums.

    There’s a LOT that can be done to improve (not fix) the health care system and no one is talking about that.

  8. I had heard that physicals were of very limited utility–they couldn’t catch an imminent heart attack, that sort of thing. What they should be good for is catching hypertension or the onset of diabetes. Much of that could probably be done in Walmart.

    Yeah, there’s a lot that could be done, and there are a lot of groups that seem bent on preventing it. Not least the AMA.

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