Ok, so these are my fuzzy understandings of what has gone on in this country and in the world.
I have seen people who have magnanimously given of their resources to others and who have spent their lives in the service of others.
In fact I know of a lot of such people, one of whom is Jon Huntsman who came to speak to us at my graduation commencement and left us with a book about success. He and his wife had this theory as a young couple that they should give, not only 10% of their income to their church for charity but another portion of whatever they earned to charity, they believed in giving until it hurt. They continued this practice, not only through their struggling young married life, but further on into their years of success. They have donated countless amounts of money for cancer research and have travelled all over the world helping to build villages and bring water to families in Mexico, helping them restore their city after a devastating earthquake.
He is just one such example that I know of. There are a lot of people who spend their time serving others and trying to better others lifes.
Over the past 5 decades (or so, since WWII) we have seen a trend for people to become more materialistic, people have had this "I need more" attitude. More clothes, more food, more choices, more stuff, better stuff so much discontent and it is all producing waste.
The government made it easier for people to buy houses, so people bought houses. No money down, some times loans were made to people who didn't even have a job.
Well this increased the demand for houses, seeing the demand people flocked to the construction industry, people built houses, better houses, bigger houses, never ever enough for anyone! Impossible to afford unless you went for the deal of a loan for the down payment and a loan for the mortgage with the high variable interest rates of an ARM loan to make it worth (so it seemed) lenders while to loan out this money.
This was not only the deal with houses, but with cars, and with stuff (credit cards).
I hear about the theory of regulating all of this, but the deal wasn't lean regulation it was over regulation. It was trying to help the poor in the name of equity. If the market were allowed to run as a free market we wouldn't have had all of these loans being made, people in their self interest would have prevented these loans from being made. People would not have bought what they shouldn't have bought, people wouldn't have made what they shouldn't have made, landfills wouldn't have been filled with what shouldn't have been thrown away.
This is not to say that Republicans are right, democrats are wrong (in fact I don't like either political party). What I am saying is that I see problems. I see farmers being paid not to farm, big companies who have the ear of our government putting stuff in our food that gets people addicted to it (seriously). Lies being told, people getting sick, pharmacutical companies producing pills to cure all of our ills... and creating many, many more.
There is a different way, there is the way of being grateful for what we have, of eating what is natural on God's green earth, of working hard for things that you believe in, raising your family to be good and upright and to serve others.
If this is what the norm was in this country, all over the world, there would be far fewer people getting fat and sick because of what I think of as no care.
What we need is to care, to not let lawyers bring up frivolous lawsuits that raise the cost of health care. It cost me $25 frikin dollars for a multivitamin when I was in the hospital to have R that is 1 multivitamin!! Plus to be fair and square to all the nurses that worked there they rotated between the higher paid nurses and the lower paid nurses. Every hour they went from highest paid, to mid-level, to lower level nursing care when they hardly came into my room to say "boo" to me! Plus I got right up after having R and walked around, took care of myself got cleaned up and would have gone home, literally an hour after having her, but they kept me there for 12 hours.
It was my own initiative that kept the cost of having R down lower. I knew we didn't have insurance so I went out to find a cheaper option. I found a mid-wife didn't let them test for obscure minute possibility diseases, (I knew I didn't have diabetes I really, really ate healthy). I went to hypno-birthing classes, prepared and then (because its safer and cleaner) I went to the hospital, had her natural and saved a ton of money.
If you "give" everyone "health care" as is proposed, in an inefficient, care thee not for the cost way. Then there is no incentive for people to try and find cheaper options, thus inefficiency. When people forget how much it costs they are more likely to bring baby with the sniffles to the doctor every single time they get the sniffles. They don't care about losing weight because of the high cost of being overweight, they don't care if Johnny breaks his arm, thus the risk for people not caring about the cost of what they are doing will be transferred to every single one of us.
Did you like being tied to someone who didn't care about a project that you had to do in school? That is how I see it.
Yes I care about people, yes the cost of health care can be prohibitive, there are reasons for this. I think it is those reasons that should be explored. Not ignored and shoved under a collective rug.
I don't want to be forced to have health care, I don't want to force every body in America to pay for my problems, for my care thee not attitude. I want to care about my own fortunes, I don't have a lot of money, none in fact. But I would rather be free from the hindrance of a high tax burden, than chained to conglomerate government programs that encourage apathy.
That's what I think anyway, I know how much suffering there is out there, I hope I can help relieve it, and I hope to not be part of the problem...
and I know I cannot see the whole picture.
