Isilion

One of my guilty pleasures is my Live Journal. In a recent discussion of political things a fellow eljayer mused on her changing ideals and posited that “we need nationalized health care.”

I asked her to reconcile that with this (9 minutes, and worth it):

Her response was:

Every civilized nation on the planet has nationalized health care except us. How do they do it? (That’s rhetorical, though I suppose you can answer it if you like.)

And no, I have not sat through that entire youtube thing.

p.s. Bush ran this country into the fiscal ground.

I did my best, and I can only hope either she or her other readers will grasp the gravity of the situation.

Every civilized nation on the planet does not spend between six hundred billion to one trillion dollars a year, depending on who’s doing the counting, maintaining over 700 military bases in more than 130 countries with a nine trillion dollar debt and over fifty trillion dollars in unfunded future obligations.

You really should watch the youtube thingy. Whatever you might think of Glenn Beck, the other guy is the Comptroller General of the United States. He is doing a very courageous thing in trying to get people to pay attention. He also addresses the nationalized health care issue head on.

p.s. Woodrow Wilson started this train wreak in 1913, but it really kicked into gear when Richard Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971. In his own pitiful way George Bush is trying every trick he can think of to stave off the inevitable.

Source: U.S. Dept, of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI	Source: U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt
Note: These charts only go up to 2001. I couldn’t find any pretty graphics of the current numbers.

It is, I suppose, understandable that the one presidential candidate who talks about this situation is dismissed as kook. For the rest, the splendor of the imperial purple and the adulation of the mob is simply too irresistible.

As I was posting this here she replied:

Enh. We’ll all be dead soon.

But more seriously..every dog has its day. Maybe the US day is coming to a close…at least for our ‘glory days’.

I can’t spend my time worrying about things I have zero control of.

p.s. I’m not an economist. I have no way to really evaluate this. I’ve seen other arguments suggesting that wheeee…you can deficit spend all day long. It made no sense to me. But a very smart person I know finds it sound so there must be something compelling about it.

To which I could only reply with this: