@blatham,
blatham wrote:
We know that this new administration is going to go full bore on ridding America of Medicare. In the piece following, Josh gets everything right:
1) Trump did not campaign on this policy, in fact he said the opposite
If this is representative of your supposed 'thoughtful analysis' of events, then you have been wasting your time.
There are indeed serious financial problems out there for the United States and even more for Europe and other developed countries with comprehensive welfare systems. The long term financial fesability of these systems is based on the assumptions of long term population and economic growth. These prerequisites have long been absent in Europe with its sclerotic economic growth and impending popuulation declines. Their reckonings are fast approaching. The situation is a good deal less severe in the United States due to higher long-term economic and population growth rates, However it is degrading fairly fast.
The historical record is fairly clear that governments generally delay dealing with such problems until it is too late to fix them. It takes crisis and urgent necessity to make governments face them. It is quite clear that Trump has put a clear focus on restoring our traditional growth rates. Moreover despite all the hype he remains welcome to legal immigration. Indeed given the numbers seeking U.S, residence. we can readily afford to be selective.
The elephant in the room here is the mindless expansion of both social programs and ill-conceiverd regulations that inhibit economic growth that have occurred under the current Administration.
That is the real threat to MEDICARE. Indeed the many contradictions in Obamacare and its unfolding financial collapse is ample proof that our earnest progressives can't think their way through the operational details of the pie in the sky systems they force on us.
I also note in a recent report that Carrier Inc. has announced its intent to keep its manufacturing establishment in the U.S. and has cancelled its well advanced plan to transfer it to Mexico, following some dialogue with the Trump Team. The details aren't known yet, but the precedent here is likely to foretell future trends, among American firms.
There is indeed something refreshing in the actions Trump initiates, compared to the unworkable programs and empty rhetoric and scolding we routinely get from our current lightweight President and his progressive mentors..
