Civilization costly but makes us great
Older adults enjoy receiving the benefits of Social Security and Medicare. It is oddly inexplicable that the same population could logically take issue with these same social "welfare" programs stating they are not "revenue neutral," pay for themselves.
Civilization is costly. What makes us a first-world country is not just our GDP. That has been heavily skewed and falsified by all the paper "profits" in the investment banking industry. What makes us a first-world country is our low poverty level.
Republicans and the U.S. military have both gone on record as saying that, if they could, they would do away with Medicare, Medicaid. This group also considers public schools too expensive and an "entitlement." What good is a voucher for a charter school if you can't get your child across town? What happens if your child doesn't meet charter school admittance requirements? Public schools are imperfect but everyone may attend. Isn't that what the U.S. wants to stand for - equal opportunities?
Some programs are worth the expense in the civil society they help create. Tax dollars spent on alleviating unnecessary suffering like health care for all, Social Security, Medicare are worth the price if we want to pretend we live in a humane civilization.
Our tax dollars should fund food stamps, health care, education, infrastructure renewal, benign aid - not military aid or weapons - to foreign countries. Let us spread not big "D" democracy, but nutrition, shelter, education, pure-water technology, schools. Then, perhaps, we will largely eliminate our "enemies" abroad and we can save all the money we spend hunting them, and not very effectively, down. No one can hate the country that feeds their hungry children.
I believe in fiscal conservatism, too. Let us exercise control over bank bailouts, Pentagon black budgets, privatized military contracts and lobbyist-suborned government officials who no longer represent the taxpayer. Social programs deserve supervision and intense scrutiny, but let's not single them out in our fiscal conservatism. I'm not an isolationist, but charity begins at home.
Anita Mitchell
Sugar Grove