I’ve been following this discussion in a few places of government running the economy vs. business running the economy. The truth is that neither happens anywhere in the world. Hong Kong is a high growth free-for-all, but still has a number of laws. China is the largest communist country, but it manipulates costs to compete in the global marketplace. The US tried a loose confederation that ultimately fell apart. Now we are a capitalist system with a large central government.
The era of trickle down economics was somewhat hampered by the direct funnel of income taxes from the wealthy to the unemployed. There was a safety net that kept people in a sort of socialist state where getting ahead meant living in greater poverty. There are losers under capitalism, but there is a certain disincentive to rise up when that act can threaten what little way of life you already have.
As bad as capitalism can be, it often drives the success of socialism. Countries like China and Cuba rely heavily on the revenue from countries like the United States. Socialist democracies, on the other hand, are finding that societal factors like declining birth rates are bankrupting their safety nets. Countries like Germany and France have had to dial back their public systems.
Now the US government is taking over banking, energy and health care in order to leverage socialist policy. But they are doing it by overextending the country’s own credit line. Unlike Hugo Chavez, the federal government is buying the economy.
There lies the problem. Democrats who want single payer health care are not going to get it under this administration. The insurance industry wouldn’t have it. Instead, the government is financing a giant risk pool that will keep the sick people off the private insurance system. Instead of a system like universal care where the healthy defray the costs of the sick, government health care in America will be massively expensive, rationed, or both.
No matter what the system is, the people in power try to hide the pain by spending around it. Cash does not solve a problem. Solving a problem solves a problem. All this president is doing is pushing the pain onto the people he doesn’t like, the people who think for themselves.
