Saturday, September 3, 2011

Entitlements and What?


Entitlements

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. George Santayana 

Today there are people who want to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and all regulations for business. There was a time when that is what we had in this county.

Under President Herbert Hover Business did what ever it wanted to and they polluted the water ways and land. [Love Canal] They called out police against labor unions. People died because of callous profit seeking companies who denied employees a safe place to work.

We may have some over zealous regulations but there are reasons for most of our regulations.

We did not have the Social Security safety net – people were encouraged to invest for them selves in a stock market with NO regulations. Most poor working class people did not save anything.

Then the stock marked crashed and Hover did nothing. The market is self correcting. A recession followed and Hover did nothing. The Depression followed and Hover did nothing.

Health care? There was none for most people and the average life span was 45 at best.

Do we really want to go back to the good old days of Herbert Hover?

3 comments:

  1. Really, Pastor? What did you do, pick up the FDR playbook and copy it verbatim? Did FDR bring us out of depression? No. WW2 did. FDR did what Obama has done and dragged out the recession for years and years...

    You've oversimplified a very complex period of history. I expect more of you.

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  2. Burstmode my friend yes these are simple statements of historical fact. I would not compare FDR and Obama. The depression was a horrible time. The 2008 recession brought on by out of control mortgage lenders is also very bad but not quite as bad as the recession of the 1930's. FDR gave the country hope and much of what he did was working. Yes WWII accelerated the recovery at a great cost.

    I am raising questions for discussion. As some one who paid into the Social Security insurance for 54 years and am now receiving what I am entitled to, I don't want to see it go away.

    More questions later

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  3. Pastor, sometimes when I go back and reread my comments, I detect a hostility in them that I do not intend. I think it has to do with the inability of the written word to carry vocal nuance. Thanks for the patience shown in your response.

    I trail you by a few years and I have paid a lot into social security. I would like very much for it to be there when I retire because otherwise, I might as well have squandered the money I paid on...camera lenses.

    But unlike you, I have young children. They've paid not a penny into the system. I want something better for them. I want to see a return on the money they put into their retirement funds. If the system continues as it is, it will fail.

    Society has always had safety nets like family and the church. Communities were more close-knit and we cared for one another. Sometime between FDR and LBJ, we lost that. The family unit began its downward spiral, the church diminished in importance and communities became places to sleep.

    It is time to overhaul the fundamental cornerstones of the New Deal and the Great Society. They can no longer meet the demands of the 21st Century.

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