I just watched a few minutes of CBS' evening news. The piece I caught was about health care reform. This is all over the news right now it seems. The newscaster announces that it comes to light that there are ""staggering sums involved", and adds that it could be as high as $1 trillion over ten years (and still 36 million will be without insurance we are told). This is a "shocking wake up call" is the term he uses.
But this sum is not so staggering. One trillion dollars over ten years . The big business politicians have allocated $11 trillion of taxpayer's money to bail out the speculators, investors and other moneylenders that brought the system to a halt. The US spends three quarters of a trillion a year on the arms industry. Just today, the Wall Street Journal reports that a government audit finds that the state dept. overpaid Blackwater, the mercenary company in Iraq, some $55 million.
Then there is another $11 trillion that has reportedly been stashed away in off shore accounts in order to avoid taxes. This is money from private individuals, not corporations.
And the $11 trillion bailout money. What is some of it being used for? Much of this money, wealth that is or will be the creation of working people, their government is lending to speculators and other parasites so they can lend it to back to us so we can buy the cars and stuff we make because they don't pay us enough in wages to buy them without borrowing from them. How nice of them to do this on our behalf. But it seems a bit convoluted doesn't it?
Trillions of dollars of health care money ends up in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and the private hospital industry. Trillions of dollars has been pocketed by a few thousand individuals over the past years that came from people who paid made mortgage payments, no interest payments, credit card charges, car loans and other scams until they could pay no more. This is our wealth going in to the pockets of socially unproductive individuals and enterprises.
Health care would not be a business in a civilized society. In the US we have the worst health system in the industrialized world spending some twice the percentage of our GDP on it than France and getting less in return. As it is now, much of the expenditure and most of the cuts that Obama says he will make to curb waste, will come at the expense of those who actually use and need health care. A major waste is contributing to an insurance company. Why do we need an insurance company in order to get treated when we're sick? It's a complete waste of resources. But it's good business.
We are told that the public running of anything is inefficient and bad. But not bad enough for the capitalist class to resort to it to save them from ruin. As of April this year, the governments of the world (mostly the richer countries obviously) spent $8 trillion in public funds to pull their precious system back from the edge of the abyss.
The figures above are but a tiny tip of a huge iceberg. There is not just the outright theft, but the "legal" theft, profit. I remember during the French transit strikes of 1995-96 when an American journalist approached a striking worker and asked how he could justify a strike when the subways are not making any profit. Who cares was his answer, it's a public service. Profit is money a few get by exploiting the many; it's not something we should worry about as it's illegitimate income.
No, a trillion dollars over ten years is nothing by their standards. It is only something when it social spending.
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