Beating a Dead Horse
Everything is just wrong and production of moral hazard just went into overdrive.
I know this beating a dead horse, but I say again - everything is wrong.
When a government begins to terminate members of the border patrol (government employees) for not being vaccinated as they not only ignore, but they also brazenly refuse to demand that illegal aliens even be tested as they flood into the nation, and they have corrupted private industry to the point that unvaccinated medical professionals are fired after being hailed as heroes just months ago, no sane person cannot see the insanity.
The massive bills moving through Congress are certainly expensive in monetary terms, but they are catastrophic in terms of the near complete power given to government - and make no mistake, it will be a guaranteed, leftist, authoritarian government from here on out.
Consider this: the Democrats have gone so far left, they are hell bent on stealing from you the ability to save and pay for things for your children in order to force you to pay for those things for groups they deem more worthy than you or your children - illegal aliens, welfare dependents, and members of other "protected" groups. Now we have a literal communist sympathizer nominated for Comptroller of the Currency, a person so far left, she campaigned for the idea that all private banks be eliminated so that people must directly deposit their money with the Federal Reserve.
Perhaps more overtly than ever, the weapon of choice for President Biden is class envy and class warfare. Combine that with the general tendency of politicians of all political stripes to use taxpayer funded government programs to buy votes, creates a tidal wave of moral hazard, a situation where a party will have a tendency to take risks or actions because they will never feel the true impact of, or be held accountable for, the resulting costs or conditions created.
The $3.5 Trillion “human infrastructure” orgy of spending and debt is moral hazard on steroids.
Can there be any question that for America, this is a clear and present existential crisis?
Perhaps today, more than ever, success for Democrats is defined as the end of an America they have loathed for a century. In my opinion, if it weren't for our Second Amendment and the fact there are already nearly 500 million firearms in private hands, the overt tyranny seen in Australia would be happening on our streets. Are there any principled Democrats who love the Constitution left? There sure aren't any in the House. There are even some Republican sympathizers in that body as well.
My congressman talked a good game to get elected but has proceeded to vote to keep Liz Cheney in the House leadership, held a fundraiser for her in October and just endorsed the far-left incumbent mayor of Park City for reelection.
Things are so screwed up, in an ABC interview, Obama even came out against Biden's de facto open border policy. Of course, ABC cut that part out of the interview, but Fox and a few others are reporting it.
I must admit that I didn't see Democrats Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin as the bulwarks against a communist conversion of America, but as absurd as our times are, it seems to make some weird sort of karmic sense.
But it isn't just the politicians.
For decades, simple natural facts have been redefined to become illogical fantasies bolstered by Orwellian logic and language. Children have been taught that their grandparents and parents are irredeemably racist, and if the kids are white, they are, too. The leftist half of this nation has been behaviorally conditioned to fear and hate the other half, and to such a degree they believe any opposition to their agenda is not political, it is evil. They are so infantilized and fearful, they are blind to the evil they are doing in the quest to destroy our institutions, our traditions, and our culture - and for reasons that simply do not exist.
In contemporary America, it has become a horror story as it has devolved from being a servant of the people as intended by the Founders, to being our master via “progressivism”. It has become so in the hands of politicians who believe that it is a both a tool of their ideology and a piggy bank to pay for it. Using it in this manner allows them to continually create tempests in a teapot to distract the public as to the seriousness of the true long term political and financial issues and their consequences.
This is the thrust of the current progressive meme of “income inequality”.
Both parties decry the “low information voter” even as they court these people with sleight of hand speeches, tortured rhetoric, and slick advertising campaigns. Far from trying to eliminate them, the political class in America cultivates them by dishonestly creating narratives and memes that avoid the facts and have a very loose association with the truth. This cultivation includes a depersonalization of the social contract to the point where the productive are deemed to bear the total responsibility for society and the non-productive bear absolutely none. The “rich” are blamed for everything.
In this case, the term “non-productive” is not meant as a pejorative, it is merely a description of those who receive more direct government transfer payments than they generate. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this category is not limited to the poor – it includes senior retirees who receive Social Security and Medicaid and much of the middle class who benefit from federal programs, the cost of which are borne by taxpayer funds and public debt. The Washington Post cited a 2012 study from the left leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that stated that over three quarters of the entitlement benefits written into law are directed toward the elderly and disabled and that the middle class received 60% of total entitlements. The same article noted that the conservative leaning Tax Foundation analyzed 2010 data and found that a full 60% of the US population received more in government benefits than they paid in taxes.
The combination of these two sources from left and right indicates that in fact, we are shifting the expectation of funding these government entitlements to a smaller and smaller segment of productive society.
At least half of America does not understand the danger of creating such moral hazards. Maybe it is due to successive generations growing up in households where large credit card and mortgage balances – with no expectation of ever paying them off. Maybe we have an under-30 demographic who never expect to be held accountable for student loan debt and they believe if their cash flow allows them to make the minimum payments, a disproportionate debt load is just peachy. Maybe they have abdicated their personal responsibility by rationalizing their situation through thinking that if they couldn’t handle the debt, the credit card company wouldn’t keep sending them the cards or the government will eventually pay off their student debt. Maybe the numbers have grown so large, people have become desensitized to trillions in government spending.
Perhaps we have created a society with expectations that they can live at the expense of others through government – but sooner or later, a day of reckoning will arrive.
Moral hazards are logical contradictions. Like the moral hazard that created the mortgage bubble in 2008, they cannot survive in perpetuity and when they burst, the potential for severe damage to society and the economy is great.
For politicians to knowingly create them is simply unforgivable.
And yet, here we are.