perfidy

Over in the comments to Johno's health care post, I started talking about poverty. I have been hit by the accelerating catastrophe machine in the past, and know what it feels like. The fear of acquiring lifelong debt for an injury. Having everything come due on the same day, and then have the car break down. But...

We are approaching something unprecedented in human history. A time when all but a very small fraction of Americans are poor not by any absolute standard - but only in relation to other Americans who have more money. It won't take anything miraculous, just the continued moderate growth of the economy. The poverty line in this country is orders of magnitudes larger than the per capita incomes of most nations. There is no starvation in this country. We are in the middle, if you will believe the media, of a nationwide epidemic of obesity. And there do seem to be an inordinate number of lardbodies out there. This is not the sign of a subsistance economy.

The people on the left end of the bell curve here have it hard, but only by comparison to richer Americans. Poverty in the traditional, historical sense is gone.

I think that in the future, when we are richer (and barring insane socialistic or Al Gore presidencies, we will be) we can afford more services for the poor. But on one condition - we don't do it the way we have for the last seventy years.

Instead of providing a nightmarish singlepayer system like in Canada, or nationalized health care like in Britain, why don't we just give insurance vouchers, to preserve the free side of the system? Why don't we give huge tax benefits to those who set up medical savings accounts? (Fuck you money immune from taxation.) Why don't we let people save the money that they pay in Social Security taxes? Benefits yes, but in every case the choice for how to use them should be in the hands of the citizen, and out of the hands of the government.