RAFFI WILLIAMS AND RNC IRRATIONALITY

A guest on +Steven Kornacki’s show UP on MSNBC this morning made an interesting comment that reminded me of a consistent Republican failure in logic. +Raffi Williams, a member of the Republican National Committee, made the comment almost in passing, as if it was an accepted truth; the establishment of “health savings accounts” would have saved us from what he saw as the “evils of Obamacare”.  Remember the parallel idea that privatizing social security would have saved the country from all the evils of having old people living on Social Security. Although, I fail to see what the evils of affordable health care and socials security really are, his message was clear, all people should pay for what they get or they should not have it. The underlying fallacy of this kind of thinking is so fundamental it is almost embarssing to have to put it in writing. Yet, it is so fundamental it is worth mentioning.

It sounds so right to demand that people pay for everything they get; however, we know that everyone has to grow old and will reach a stage where they cannot work. We also know that people get sick and need health care. We know that people need to be educated and we know that society needs prisons to defend us from each other, and we know that the country needs an army to defend us other nations and ideologies. We need many things either the individual could afford or that they cannot do for themselves even if they had the money. There is another principle of government, which is that we all should collect taxes to pay for what we need and for what we want the government to do for us; this is sixth grade civics; this is how government works.

There is another principle, which is that everyone should receive a fair day’s wages for a fair days work. We should define a fair days wage as an amount of money that allows them to support themselves and their families, pay health care, pay tuition, to save for retirement, and to pay taxes to run the government. Republicans have done everything in their power to prevent this from being the case across the range of society. Consider the minimum wage. The Republican position is that the government should not raise salaries to a fair wage; in fact, according to them there should not even be a minimum wage. Consider taxes; everyone one should pay an equal amount of taxes as a low percentage of income, which they call flat taxes. Consider education; everyone should pay tuition, go to college, and get a good job. They cut State and Federal government support for Universities, which forces colleges to raise tuition. Consider pensions, everyone should save for their own retirement. People are living longer and longer which would require well over a million dollars savings in the stock market to provide a return on investment for a minimum living standard. The same problems exist with health care. Republicans seem to deny the insurance principle when it comes to health care. One day in the hospital cost more money that 99% of the people have in their savings account, the same money they are saving for retirement. Everyone needs insurance to make the cost affordable. In spite of this fact, they insist that young health person should not have to pay for health insurance they “thinks” they do not need; therefore, the cost of “free enterprise” insurance is out of reach. In addition, they insist that free enterprise apply to healthcare, when they know failed.

The bottom line is that the Republican world is an unreal place. Wages are going down and expenses are snowballing. Instead of aiming to make things better, every single political stance Republicans take they aim at making things worse. They failed to learn simple civics in the 6^th grade but also they seem to have failed to learn simple arithmetic; they cannot add savings for health care, saving for retirement, paying for transportation, to the cost of education, food, and lodging and make it equal to the return from a $7.50 per hour job. The sad thing is that not one of my Republican friends can really afford to be a Republican—they cannot help themselves for their irrational political views, which is why I insist that their politics must be in their genes.  If I am wrong, contact me and explain otherwise.

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