Lets talk Ryanism

Truth be told I didn't know what to call this post because is a bit more than Ryan but is much to do with his budget plan.

First of all the timing of the announcement is curious. Many others in the political analysis world have already discussed the timing so I won't spend much time on it, just wanted to say it seems desperate at most. Maybe rushed etc, but this weekend not much going on in the political world and with the convention two weeks away and a national stage, probably better served to wait. I know most analysis are on board with the wait, but I had to chime in. Romney needs a way to generate momentum coming out of the convention and announcing the running mate now takes away one of his chances to do such.

Lets be honest, I am not a fan of our huge deficits and anything to reduce them has to be considered. I know the Republicans will go back to blaming the deficit on the Democrats with Ryan's budget plan on the table, however, the reality is both parties are to blame for our deficit. I do agree Democrats are responsible for building up an entitlement program that adds to our deficit problem that overall is not solving the problems they are suppose to solve. Most federal government spending though is from both parties.

Deficit spending is a problem, but will Ryan's plan really solve it.

If you look at Ryan's plan in a vacuum and I do mean in a vacuum it is something worth discussing. If you could say lets balance the budget and not worry about anything else reduction of spending will work. Problem is the budget discussion cannot be held in a vacuum. We have real world problems with our economy that need solutions to the problem. The Democrats at least try to deal with our problems, but their tired old ideas are failing the people they are meant to help.

So why is Ryan's plan an issue. There is the truth that if the government were taking up less of our capital then that money could be invested to help the economy. Pretty straight forward and yes we want that to happen. Federal spending doesn't create long term jobs. I wish I could remember who said this, but I heard a good example awhile back. You cannot make a profit filling potholes. Yes a company could charge the government to do it for them, and they would generate a profit for their company for a short amount of time, but there is no real production for just fixing the infrastructure. It needs to be done and we need to find ways to afford it, but in the large economic picture it doesn't add to the economy. Our economy right now needs new industries creating new products not only for jobs here, but for trade balance issues. We need earned capital coming back to our country.I don't hear this too often from Obama or Romney, they maybe saying and I apologize if I have missed this issue, but it is something I want to hear more of.

So why am I not happy with Ryan's plan? I will try and break it down a bit and this is not an all inclusive list of the plan, but just some talking points for now. I do want to mention that I said a few posts ago I would bring up an idea for Social Security and I will soon. Not that my idea is improving, I just come across some other ideas while I have time to sit down, but the first point of Ryan's plan I want to address is his ideas for Medicare. Now some people would say that is a solution to a problem if you read a bit about his plan. Moving some of the expenses to the private sector with vouchers or whatever you want to call them.

I will first address some of the problems with this idea from what I heard from Mr Forbes on Fox News yesterday. Mr. Forbes mentioned this is good because it will allow competition from hundreds of insurance companies and that will hold costs down. I really don't see hundreds of insurance companies with the ability to provide health coverage on a national level. Or if there are hundreds of companies, how does anyone sort through all the choices? Who gets the business? And if only a few companies are able, where is the competition? One of the pieces of Mr. Ryan's plan is that competing plans are suppose to offer a level of benefits at least as good as Medicare. Okay who determines that? And then if there are few how are premiums determined? There are stipulations about how much they can charge, but if there isn't hundreds of competing companies, how is the public protected from price fixing.

And now how does this fix the real problems facing our country? The high cost of health care. How can private insurance companies which run on a profit be held accountable to costs? There is no incentive to hold down costs of healthcare by them if their customers are subsidized by health insurance vouchers which are based on rates they control? Again in a vacuum it sounds good to put Medicare in a competitive pricing world. You get out of the vacuum and what do you do about the continuing growth of costs.

And then we have health of ourselves? We are not the most healthy nation on the planet. The libertarian in me says we cannot tell people how to live their lives so how does one rectify controlling health care costs against how we live. That is quite frankly an issue we need to find an answer. I previously posted we could base how much health care you get from Medicare or the government based on how well you take care of yourself. (an aside this is one of the reasons I push a progressive conservative party than being a true libertarian I cannot stand by the values of a true libertarian if I see some control in government rules being allowed) Yet in some ways we can hold ourselves accountable if we rely on tax payers money to help us. Ah but the but, technically we already make premium payments to medicare, if you get paid by paycheck read your stub, there is a medicare tax now separate from the Social Security deductions. So we are already paying ahead into Medicare ( and yes I am not naive enough to know there are problems with how that money is being managed right now). To the point, though, you can say we will save money somewhere down the road if we just give everyone an equal amount of money to go buy equivalent insurance to Medicare. Basically you are saying that somehow through some magical world of competition we will all get good insurance to buy good health care at whatever amount is approved by a future Congress based on what they are told by the health insurance companies that fund their campaigns. And somehow this is going to be cheaper than Medicare starting ten years from now. Too many unknowns, too much can happen, and too much is already being spent by the American worker to feel comfortable about what will happen.

And again the actual health of a human being plays into this equation. Do health insurance companies do what I, as a libertarian, say we cannot do and tell people how to live? Or they get charged higher? They already do that by charging higher premiums for cigarette smoking and honestly I am for this type of thinking.. Do they though get to do and again to make a profit what we don't want our government to do? Yes I am arguing a bunch in circles, but for a reason that I can't kick out of my brain right now. Long and short is giving over control of medicare to private interests that will put their interests first on a program we have built through our taxes is not going to give us the savings we are promised now.

I promised something on how to help social security previously so I have some ideas, but will hold the specific till a later post.

Another issue I see that sounds good in a vacuum is our infamous government safety net for the poor. And he does have some good ideas here, like requiring food stamp recipients to go through work training programs. This fits into actually trying to solve the problem. The problem with his plan is there is no incentive to be successful. He wants block grants to hold down costs and make states try to hold down costs. So states get left with the burden on how to manage costs without any accountability for helping people get off welfare. And this is a part of a major problem in our country, the generational poverty and welfare that we face. Cutting costs without finding a way to reduce poverty/people on welfare will not solve the problem and create a huge cost to society in other ways. Where do the poor get help? Can we rely on there being enough money from charities? The real issue is to hold accountable and motivate welfare recipients that they don't want to be on welfare. And this will not happen overnight just because costs are cut. Truly solving the welfare problem in this country is going to be tough. We have created multi-generational families on welfare who know no other life. This is where I say the Democrats have failed. You cannot throw people money and expect them to feel good about themselves if you don't give them something to live for. So just cutting costs by block grants sounds good in a vacuum, but leaves on the table one of the biggest cancers facing our nation.

Tax rate and who pays. That is an issue for another day and I have previously posted some scattered ideas on tax policy before. Trying to say who pays and who doesn't fails to look at the whole. I have talked previously about not wanting to hang out religion and Bible verses because I feel your relationship with God is your business, but in the Bible it does talk about if one suffers we all suffer or if one is held high we should all. Yes this is simplified, but in general you have to feel our taxes should fall under that thought whether you believe in God or not. Just some basic common sense. There are some Nuns actually advocating for this thought. And Nuns are some pretty under rated people on this planet. You may not be Catholic, but you could admit they go the extra mile on this planet more so than any other group of people I know or have heard.

And since this is getting way too long and I am not being as succinct as I would like to be I will finish with this thought/worry. There is also talk of reductions in education expenses. And right now this is the last thing we need to cut. Our education system is not where it should be and yes money alone won't solve the problem. I have even proposed a rough draft sketch of some ideas I think are better than our current system. Yet we cannot think about reducing the investment in education. And really I cannot think of why anybody who cares about our country and democracy would think of cutting education. The only reason to dumb us down even further is because you don't want others to be successful, think through problems, or maybe because you want a dumb electorate so you can get away with crap. Cuts in education are stated by people who are treasonous bastards to our constitution. Education gives us true democracy, a better opportunity, the ability to move people off welfare, to make better health care decisions throughout our lives, an understanding of public policy so we can all make informed decisions and learn to spend less on public policy, you know build a better country.

So next time people talk about the budget remember we live in a dynamic world, things change, so if you want to hold down government costs etc (AND WE DO) you have to solve the problem that is causing the expense or you will only find the expense creeps up somewhere else and will probably be even more.

Hope you had a good weekend and still praying for more rain for our country.