Yep, there is widespread unemployment, and yes, there is also the need to support two wars, as well as try to pay for the deployment and other costs of the military.
What does this cost each household per month? Well, best guess right now is around $600. Each and every household in the U.S., through taxes will pay for the costs of these wars at a rate higher than a lot of the mortgages after the housing crisis.
Where are things going? History shows that wars only do one thing, create inflation, because the costs of waging those wars must be paid, even when there is little left over in any budget for those payments.
Here is where it gets scary.
Most of the wars in history began from civil unrest, unemployment, and international or internal national stresses. The collapse of the international banking and monetary systems have created both. Resentment is already growing, and blame is being placed on the American banking system, the relaxation of the regulations on that banking system, and the lack of real resolve to restore regulation.
Who is going to pay for all the veteran’s benefits and the costs
The Bush Administration has not asked the American people to sacrifice for the war effort. In fact, the Bush Administration did not even put the costs of the war into the national budget at all.
The tax payer will be paying this bill for years, if not decades, and with the whole idea that you can wage a war on “terrorism” being a limitless war, there will be far more costs coming, and coming soon.
The departments created by the Bush Administration all add to the yearly bills, and with each incident, there are more and more paycheques created by the endless number of “possible threats”.
So, currently there is a really nasty set of circumstances that are hitting every single household in American. Jobs are no longer available in the marketplace, the wealthy are keeping every dime and asking for more money from the government (read tax payer, poor or middle class) and the inevitability of taxes being raised.
Republicans will scream, no doubt, about more taxation, but unless they manage to get their ‘pollyanna’ thinking geared more to the grim reality that the Bush Administration got the entire country into, they are NOT facing wars or reality!
Irony here is really bitter. The American society did (yes, that is past tense) have a real drive to improve their world, to invent, to create new and more efficient ways of producing items. Then the businesses realized that those same items could, and are, far cheaper to make in other countries. Jobs will NEVER return to the U.S. as they once were in the “good old days”. It will NOT happen. Why?
Simple, there is NO reason to want to move those jobs back to a location where wages are higher and costs are higher. So, unless the American worker wants to be paid less than other workers elsewhere, and still pay that $600 per month, those companies will just keep paying dirt poor wages and watch the economy those very companies depend on shrivel.
There is a second reason, the unpredictability that private health insurance puts on not only the business sector, but the working people themselves. Each company that even tries to provide basic coverage is now facing a completely unpredictable cost structure for that coverage.
Let me try to put this into a simplified story here.
Jack is working for a company that once had a very comprehensive health care package, but with the rising costs, that company (I will call it by a totally fictitious name, Kitchens and Cabinets of New Hampshire) cut back. Now Jack gets only very minimal coverage, and his co-pay has risen. KCNH now finds that the private insurers are looking to get rid of his company from their files, so they are looking at Jack for any possible pre-existing conditions in his medical past.
KCNH decides to look elsewhere for a location. The boss at KCNH finds out that he can move his entire operation to another country where his costs would be 40% lower for health care coverage and that coverage is far better than where he is now. He looks at his bottom line, the operating costs, and realizes just how better off his company would be after the move. The money he is spending on his employees would allow him to expand, rather than drain the company further. So, he chooses to move the entire operation to that country.
Jack is now faced with a real problem. His boss tells Jack that either Jack immigrates, or he will no longer have a job.
Jack goes home to his family, and is totally devastated. His daughter is already dealing with a lingering health problem and Jack and his wife have already had so many arguments over which bill to pay first, that both of them are showing signs of stress on their own bodies.
There is instability growing in the Jack family, mostly caused by the demands of the mortgage which has now become worth more than the real value of the home, and the realization that, without the basic coverage Jack did get from his employer’s health coverage, their entire family is at risk.
Jack talks with his wife, tells her what the company is going to do, and starts to look at the option of going with the company to the new location. He does some research, looks at the taxes, looks at the new location, looks at the housing costs, then, finally, looks at the health coverage the country provides.
Hmmmmmm this is looking good! All ambulance, hospital, doctor, specialist, and other services are covered! No wonder his boss is moving the company to the new location!
Jack talks to his wife about the changes they would face. His wife points out one thing. Predictability!
The costs of the health coverage are set, and cannot be changed without solid reasoning. The company will have total predictability too! Their employees will no longer have to work with the increased stress of trying to come up with the co-pay and find ways to pay for even one doctor visit. Yep, this definitely looks much better for all concerned.
A stable work force needs to have some predictability, if they are to remain stable. Simplicity itself, but right now, that is exactly what is NOT happening in the American economy.
Even dogs know that being stressed will make them sick, so they will, with animal wisdom, try to find a way to get rid of the stress.
Back to the big picture, now.
Wars on two fronts, the banking mess which seems to have become a business plan (build huge wealth on faulty housing insurance or multi-level mortgaging) which has now become the BANK OF AMERICAN TAX PAYER, which covers the “mistakes” or screw-ups by banks, and unemployment that has skyrocketed, and there is massive instability. Add as the icing on the cake, the demands by private insurance more money from those same tax payer pockets, and the recipe for a collapse is baked and served.
Republicans want their cake and they want to eat it too! NO more taxes, but pay for the wars, the banks and cover all those millions of Americans without health insurance with what? Buttons?
Jack may be lucky, because at least his employer is willing to take Jack along, but how many companies are willing to do that?
War has one guaranteed effect, inflation. This has been true since the 1600’s, and remains true now. So the future of the American family is set. MORE taxes, inflation driving prices up again, and jobs that will stay outside the country.
Essentially the U.S. will soon become what Britain became after WW2. A far lesser power, with debts and the need for reconstruction that may take decades.
Ah yes, speaking of the U.K. post WW2! What most Republicans and Democrats have not even understood is this. Europe, the U.K. and WW2 faced 6 years of 9/11! Daily bombing, fires, orphans that were lost, much like Haiti now, and houses obliterated. If you compare photographs of Port Au Prince and London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Danzig (Gdansk), or any other major city in Europe with photos of Port Au Prince, you will see only small differences. The U.K. went through years of this, over and over, all the while trying to keep their own forces on the battlefront!
Most current universal health care systems were implemented in the period following the Second World War as a process of deliberate healthcare reform, intended to make health care available to all, in the spirit of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, signed by every country doing so. The US did not ratify the social and economic rights sections, including Article 25’s right to health.
This is the mistake that is now coming back to bite the U.S. big time!
Here is more irony, the U.K. had a debt that was at least 100% of their entire Gross Domestic Production at the end of the war. Much higher than even the current debt the U.S. has now!
The Members of Parliament were dealing with housing crises all over, the repatriation of wounded soldiers and POW’s, as well as trying to find some way to rebuild, so even considering changing the costs to the government and increasing the debt to fund a national health care program must have been highly unlikely. “We cannot afford it!” That was far more true then than the current cries from the Republicans and those who are fiscally conservative now!
What happened? The British Parliament, along with the House of Lords passed a bill that created the National Health Service in 1948, just a very few years after going through years of 9/11!
The National Health Service passed in 1948, a bill which extended health care security to all legal residents. So now I listen to the “reasons” and all the rubbish that those who are trying to block any kind of real health care reform, and wonder this. If YOU had lived through years of 9/11, had an entire country to rebuild, would you have the guts, the leadership, the foresight to change?
A country where workers KNOW what that they can get sick, in an accident, or face contagious diseases and get treatment that is not going to BANKRUPT them are far more likely to work better, be healthier, and their employers are also going to be able to expand!
The health care “system” is highly over controlled by corporate interests, and capitalism has been allowed to determine who, literally, lives or dies.
The “good old days” of America being the super power, the “leader of the free world”, the shining example of “democracy” are done, over, kaput, fini, GONE!
The rest of the world has gathered steam, is progressing, and is matching the U.S. in innovation, in production, and will continue to. The companies based in the U.S. have absolutely NO interest in bringing jobs back home. The U.S. forgot to rebuild infrastructure, forgot to make their own back yard a priority, forgot the middle class worker in favour of profitability. The U.S. financial “wizards” found a way to once again, put the onus on the tax payer for screwing the world economies, yet there was an enormous outcry of “too big to fail!” Credit default swaps were a way to run around insurance regulation, and with all the mess created, it will take at least a decade or more to undo the damage, IF those in the Congress or Senate are even willing to take on the leadership and have the guts to make stiffer regulation a possibility.
The big picture does NOT look good, and without some real leadership on everyone’s part, the U.S. will be paying for all this neglect for years.
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