The Publics’ Will and Politicians
Data disclosed that in 2010, 18.3% of American’s income were welfare from the government which included SSI, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits. Meanwhile people’s income related to salaries decreased to 51%. In February of 2011 this figure is decreased even more to 50.5%. In 2010 benefits that government handed out on average was $7,427 for each American. The amount will double within 20 years. In New York State, each person spent $9,442 government’s money in 2010 and $2,903 was related to health care.
18.3% of Americans’ income is welfare from the government and that is not included in the salary of government employees. However, a Government that carries such a big burden is actually facing bankruptcy. In 2011 the U.S government has to raise their debt limit which is 1.43 trillion dollars. Meanwhile we have $3 trillion in debt with over 50,000 state and local issuers in the municipal bond market. Plus our State retirement systems had deficit of 1.26 trillion dollars. The situation could lead to a rash of municipal bond defaults. The picture shows: a lot of poor people tied up with a bankrupted government. Politicians switch the troubles from left hand to right hand and tell us the economy is recovering.
Other data shows that under such a kind of financial situation, over 50% of Americans don’t want government to cut the Medicare, Medicaid and military budget. They take that kind of position because they care about their lives: Medicare and Medicaid take care of their health and the military protects their lives. They don’t realize that cutting the medical fee doesn’t mean to bring down the quality of medical service.
In New York City the nursing home’s monthly fee is $14,000 for one person and government would like to pay the amount for those low income people. A New York doctor used a patient’s name and claimed the same kind of operation fee over 10 times and every time he got paid by Medicaid. A senior citizen who has no particular illness was forced to take $800 medicine per month after moving into a nursing home and the bill was paid by the government. In New York, a certain organization gets $140 payment from the government every time they help a low income senior citizen to visit a doctor. Such kind of travel fee is even higher than the doctor’s fee sometimes. It surprised me that over 50% of Americans ignore the wasting phenomena listed above and prefer government to maintain high Medical and Medicaid fees.
Over 50% of Americans don’t like to cut the military budget because they need a secure homeland. They ignore one fact that America is such a strong country and no country dare to attack our homeland. In history, Russian’s GDP maximum was 30% of the United States. Japan once was 50% and China today was less than 50% of our GDP. In 2010, the Chinese military budget was 12% and Russia’s military budget was only 2% of the United States. Small countries such as North Korea and Iran are not strong enough to attack us. Those two dangers and the big countries China and Russia are far from our homeland. They have other goals to meet rather than launch wars against us. Yet we spent 636 billion dollars as military expenses in 2010.
People might say that we need a high military budget to prevent terrorists from attacking. Terrorists are hiding somewhere if they want to attack us no matter how much we spend on the military budget we still cannot prevent things from happening because we don’t know where they are and what they are going to do. The only way to stop them is requesting negotiations. Carrying that big debt and needing a secure home, what should we do? Spend 636 billion dollars on the military budget or ask for a negotiation? If our public don’t know how to make a choice our leaders should know. But where is our leader? An unselfish and wise leader!
I am kind of upset that the public cares about nothing but their health and lives. That is why 50% of them don’t want government to cut the budget on medical care and military spending. They need wise guidance from our leaders. Unfortunately, to earn votes our politicians just try to please those majorities. This is what happened in a country where there are democratic elections.
