Tag: government control

Affordability

Prices on everything continue to go up. Is this a new trend? No. Do we need to put up with it? Absolutely not.

In America we have choices. Whether it’s the array of similar products available to us or the capacity to earn money based on our time and talents, Americans have continuously improved on their standards of living. This standard is available to everyone if you understand what your potential is for your own circumstances. It is this potential that drives market forces and to a large extent pricing. The “keeping up with the Jones’s” mentality only exists if you are spiritually depleted because having what the Jones’s have becomes a false idol.

What is your standard of living like? If you’re like most people you at least have a warm safe place to live, nutritious food in your cupboard, clean clothes on your back, and reliable communication and transportation. And you also love your extra comforts, whether it’s a daily trip to Starbucks or a well deserved annual vacation, these things matter to you. After all, everything you do supports someone else’s standard of living. Ultimately, happiness is living a life that you enjoy with the people you love in a community that you cherish while having the freedom to live up to your own standards.

My parents couldn’t afford to take me to Disney. I took myself at age 19 when I could afford to.

Unfortunately our standards are actually dropping. I believe this has been an intentional government strategy in order to prevent the growth of wealth in general. Think about it…For example , why would our government want to manage your healthcare coverage? Is it to make the costs of care go down? Of course not! It is to keep you dependent on a system that offers a standard of care that keeps you in a position of submission. Today, if you make enough money to afford THE BEST CARE and actually have more and better choices, then you are probably not in the government system. In fact, you’re probably in a PPO not an HMO.

A PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) is a flexible health insurance plan that allows you to visit any doctor or specialist without a referral or a primary care physician (PCP). While you get the lowest out-of-pocket costs when using in-network doctors, you still have coverage if you choose to go out-of-network. An HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) is a budget-friendly health insurance plan that requires you to use a specific local network of doctors and hospitals to get coverage. It relies on a Primary Care Physician (PCP) to manage all of your care and provide referrals for specialists. According to Reddit, Insurance companies are less likely to offer PPOs on the ACA Marketplace because they have less control over patient care costs. That word control is everything you need to know about government initiated systems. Once costs are controlled, standards are lowered, and availability decreases.

Government systems such as the ACA are administered by our fourth and unelected branch of government, bureaucrats. In fact, the once private health insurance industry is now part of the bureaucracy. Of course these companies can opt out, but that leaves fewer options for people who rely on the ACA. AND as people rely on programs such as this the government must either raise taxes or pass a bill to print money. Haven’t we all learned that printing money causes inflation? Yes!!! And what about the abuses that can occur with all this money being handed out to favored companies and NGOs? The money stream never seems to end or go in reverse. Audits? Yeah right.

Affordability will never actually begin to happen until we get government out of our way. Bureaucracy tends to lower wages and cause inflation both of which happen whether the stock market is up or down. The best way to afford something is to work hard for it or save for it…This has been true FOREVER. Public schools never taught us about how to actually live according to our means. Why is that? Would we have listened anyway? Probably not because they were always teaching to the test, and once we passed the information was rarely thought about again.

Life is a bunch of hard knocks for most people. We live and learn and regroup if we are smart enough to understand our ways. The choices are there. We simply can’t afford not to recognize them. Make sure your government representatives know you’re watching them and their choices too.

No Longer Slaves

Working for “the man” is changing in the coming few years. How? Well, consider how closely special interests and corporations have been working with the federal government over the past decade or two. Lobbying is a true art, and those doing the lobbying on behalf of a company or industry have often also once worked in government. The art of the “steal” has been working against employees and small businesses yet benefiting corporate America. Congress has known this and now Congress can take meaningful steps to turn this cronyism around.

Who better to initiate this change than the great deal maker himself, DJT. Our next president is poised to help working men and women in a way that a government program never could. To route out federal regulations that over burden businesses the next president must himself have a strong staff and reliable Congress committed to excellence and hard work. Lowering our tax burden and inflation won’t be easy because the taxation machine has been growing for far too long. Negotiated deals with Congress will have to emphasize the positive impact their votes will have on the constituents, WE THE PEOPLE.

For too long WE THE PEOPLE have been slaves to a governmental system that pits us against each other in order to remove our focus on their power. Why should WE THE PEOPLE be angry and frightened of our political differences? We don’t need to be, you see, because it’s only one of the “whips” that the system uses to maintain power. And, like an overseer who controls the slave, the Congress has allowed a bureaucracy to control the taxpayer by forcing continuing resolutions as another “whip”.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

– Aldous Huxley, in the Foreword to Brave NewWorld

What is a continuing resolution (CR)? A continuing resolution continues the pre-existing appropriations at the same levels as the previous fiscal year. CR’s typically provide funding at a rate or formula based on the previous year’s funding, always growing and never slowing. This will generally happen when Congress and the President fail to agree on and pass one or more of the regular appropriations bills, and this is the problem. Congress MUST get back into the habit of annually questioning the spending of each department which then adequately provides them a cost/benefit analysis…This process should not be partisan yet it has become such. Working together with the best interests of their constituents, not the interests of federal departments or lobbying corporations MUST be Congress’ goal.

But what about all the profits that the business sector makes? They should be paying their “fair share” in taxes to the programs people need! Spoiler alert…They already do. Businesses exist because of consumer demand. A business grows because of the demand. More employees and better equipment must be acquired in order to meet this demand which is where much of the profit comes from, but profits must also be sheltered in order to meet hard times when they happen. No one can really anticipate the impact of a natural disaster or a pandemic on business activity. Insurance and/or FEMA never act quickly enough, but a business’s profits in a bank account can be accessed easily. Federal safety net programs (like FEMA, HHS, SSI) don’t make money, they only spend your tax money.

But what about greed? Corporations are too greedy and can’t be trusted to pay their employees well enough to live in these inflationary times. This is only partially true. The biggest reason why workers can’t afford inflation is because the federal government (which doesn’t actually make money from their services) has to print their money thereby creating inflation…One more “whip” that keeps us in check!The Shrew believes that the next two years will show us how greedy the federal government has been and how letting you keep more of your money actually makes you more free and less dependent on them.

Free to create more value, free to spend on your needs and free to help those you know who need your blessed contributions. We all shall be slaves no more!