There is a major debate going on in our country about which group is better suited to run a business, government or a private enterprise.
The country is about evenly divided regarding which is better. So, how does government do at running businesses? Not so hot it turns out! The Post Office loses billions of dollars each year. The public school system spends about $130,000 over 13 years to build a product of which 30 percent fail to meet specifications (don’t graduate).
The War on Poverty, begun 50 years ago, costs taxpayers about a trillion dollars per year while 50 million people (the same percentage of the population as 50 years ago) are still in poverty, and they lack the skills to earn a living wage in today’s labor market.
Social Security is bankrupt because the government doesn’t understand the concept of actuarial. Social Security and Medicare, predicated on recipients dying at 65 years, will not be solvent if the recipients live to 80 years or more as they do today.
Additionally, it might behoove the managers to be sure that the “Lock Box” stays locked.
Now, the government wants to enter the health insurance business to insure the uninsurable at no premium differential by forcing the healthy to purchase health insurance when they never otherwise would.
We taxpayers are the investors in these cockamamie schemes including Solyndra, and it is time to say stop!
However, there is a business that the government doesn’t want to run. That is energy. Because we are up to our derrieres in natural gas we could convert our automotive fleet to compressed natural gas. We could also build the Keystone pipeline and make this hemisphere independent of OPEC.
All of this would create millions of jobs for the under-skilled. But no, the government blocks this program to avoid alleged climate change that may hurt us hundreds of years from now. Meanwhile, we still have 15 percent of our population living in poverty, and the nation is going bankrupt. It’s time we learned that Big Government is not the answer!!
Wayne Pearson
Smethport
