By now most of us have heard the term -- "Ponzi scheme". Named for Charles Ponzi who used the technique back in the '20's, the idea is fairly simple. Get two investors. Pay the first investor back with "interest" using money from the second investor. Pocket a sum of the cash, then show people how much money the first investor made so they'll invest, too. Pay the second investor back with money from the new investors. Pocket more cash and then ... And so on. If it looks good enough, the scheme can go on for a long time as new investors pay off old investors (without knowing it), but, obviously, without any real investments going on, eventually there won't be enough money for Peter to pay off Paul ... literally.
Ponzi did it to some "small" amount in his day, got caught, and went to jail. Bernie Madoff pulled in something like $65 billion and is now in prison. But Ponzi and Madoff were not the only ones. The con happened before Ponzi did it and has happened around the world. Lots of people are hoping to make a fast buck and will believe the lie that this guy can do it, and lots of people are hoping to make their own fast buck by stealing money from investors.
The question I have, though, is not about investors and con artists. It's not quite the Ponzi scheme. It just seems a little too close to the scheme to ignore. Consider this fictional example. In this hypothetical scheme, people are not offered the option of investing. They are required to invest. The return on investment, they are told, will be a better life for all, and what they invest ought to cover it just fine. Now, other investigators say, "No, no, that won't cover it! 'A better life for all' is going to be much, much more expensive!" But the scheme is in place and the investors are not investors by choice and the decisions are made. So the investors pay in first because they have to but also because they're told that this will make life better and their contribution will cover the cost. As it turns out, the investigators are right. The money dropped into the investment scheme doesn't cover the cost of the scheme. More money is needed. As in the Ponzi scheme, this payment due is shuffled off to new investors (or old investors paying in more money) who didn't ask to be investors, don't much care about the "better life for all", and don't have an option to not invest. The costs rise and the debts rise and now the investor pool has to rise, extending beyond the existing investors to the next generation of investors who need to support their own investments as well as pay off the debts of the previous generation of investors. The primary difference between this hypothetical scheme and the Ponzi scheme, it seems, is that it's not operated by greed, but by coercion. False promises are made. Investments are required. And the demand for payback exceeds the ability to pay it back.
Of course, the Ponzi scheme is illegal and those who get caught doing it go to jail. This other hypothetical scheme includes such plans as "universal health care" and these perpetrators are hailed as heroes and forward-thinking politicians. Oh, and while the cost of some Ponzi schemes may extend into the billions, the cost of these "hypothetical" schemes could exceed the trillions. But, since the former scheme is voluntary and greed-based and the latter scheme is "humanitarian", it's clear that the latter scheme is a good one ... right?
11 comments:
There you go again… …defending a system that is nearly twice as expensive (on per capita basis) than any of the other western systems, and falls below the marks of other systems in objective measures — infant mortality, life expectancy, critical care treatment (only surpassing those systems in elective care), favors the rich over the poor, and leaves out ~50 million Americans from care, according to medical peer reviewed studies kills 45K people a year…
Sounds like we already have a Ponzi scheme in place…
So sad, seeing fellow Christians on the side of the rich and powerful over the poor and powerless…
Doesn't look like the Gospel I read and take to heart…
Naum,
Odd, very odd. I don't see anything that I wrote that was intended as a defense of anything. I did write that we are looking at greater expenses (according to the budget folks in Congress) with diminishing returns, and the news media reported yesterday that the budget deficit tripled from last year, so there appears to be reason to think that there will be more and more "investors" required, doesn't there?
It is sad to see fellow Christians falsely accusing other fellow Christians. I don't get where you think I sided with the rich and the powerful over the poor and powerless by claiming "This is going to get very expensive very fast." (If I read that, I'd assume it's going to get very expensive very fast for everyone, including the poor and powerless.) (And, oh, by the way, the government classifies me as poor and powerless.)
Now, if you could, please show me the "Gospel" that says, "Thou shalt favor universal health care because it is a right for all. Thou shalt take from the rich and give to the poor. Thou shalt do whatever is required to see to it that everyone has medical care and everything else they might need. Thou shalt, bottom line, insure that your government brings this about." I'm generous. I won't require a word-for-word quote. Anywhere that the Gospel (which in my understanding is about salvation, not feeling better) says that we must require better care out of our government at all costs will do.
For some “social justice”, which is a fancy name for the exaltation of the human propensity to covet his neighbor’s possessions, has merged with the word “gospel”. But it is a new gospel of materialism that is based on the confiscation of one non-believer’s property by coercion, and redistributing it to other unbelievers, with no concern whatever for their souls. In return for this “favor”, the receiving unbelievers will ensure the enthronement of a god that is more to their liking; one who’s providence is equal for all, at least anyway for all but their new priests. With this new power purchased with the confiscated booty of those, for the most part unbelievers, who find themselves materially blessed, the true Gospel is expunged from all institutions now controlled by the new egalitarian god, and the new gospel of materialism and humanism is installed and so thereby institutionalizing hopelessness. It should be no wonder then that a god like figure could come along and whisk the walking spiritually dead, both noble and ignoble, off their feet with baseless promises of hope, which in the end will be shown to be vein hope. And all of this will be done in the name of love. All the while those who really do love enough to attempt to protect their fellow man from the onset of true poverty, as opposed to the concocted poverty that is flown like a banner over those who are held up as the basis upon which we should continue down this current blind and anti-Christ path, are impugned as being unloving, unsympathetic, and ungodly. Perhaps most ironically though is that these same people are the first, by abiding in their humanistic and Godless gospel, to reduce all truth to opinion and are absolute in demanding that this be foundation of society, shifting though it may be. Ravi Zacharias said it best, I think, by the statement: “The charge of hypocrisy is the unintended compliment that vice pays to virtue.
1) Naum: Is there a system in world history that did not favor the rich over the poor? In a related question, will the proposed overhaul of health care actually succeed in not favoring the rich over the poor? I doubt it, in both cases.
2) Life expectancy, to use one of your examples, may or may not be an objective measure, but more to the point, it's not a good proxy for the quality of medical care. See here for a fuller explanation. Neither is infant mortality.
3) Stan, I actually read your post as a clever takedown of Social Security, not universal health care. I think it works much better that way.
Dan,
You've been waxing eloquent lately. I'm impressed.
FzxGkJssFrk,
Seems to work for just about any government plan to make life better for everyone. Social Security, Medicare, Welfare ... you name it. It promises much but delivers little.
Stan,
Don't think you can read the Gospel, take it to heart, and consequently not embrace compassionate concern for 45K that die due to lack of health coverage and the families shattered by current system (most bankruptcies are due to health care costs, and the majority of those are people with health insurance).
Dan,
So many flawed and evil assumptions in your comment — in 21st century, we are interconnected and interdependent and stand upon the shoulders of giants… …everything about your existence today is predicated on sharing… …but when it's done to provide aid to those without, cries of "coercion" resonate, especially from those that, unlike the nation's founding fathers, see government as "them" and not "we the people"…
FzxGkJssFrk,
Way to shift the question to one of "absolutes" instead of looking at the degree of differences between systems that have provided more for those without — in our own history, FDR and New Deal created the middle class as the period from 1930s to 1970s saw the greatest expansion of the middle class and rise in living conditions for the masses… …the economic struggle is not between, as many blinded conservatives and fundamentalist economic utopians categorize it, socialism/communism/collectivism v. capitialism, but aristocracy/patronage v. freedom and opportunity for all…
Naum,
The Gospel: "Saved by grace through faith in Christ". Paul, on the Gospel: "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!" (Gal 1:6-9).
The so-called "social gospel" is not "force the government to force the taxpayers to pay for my compassion", but a command to believers to do what they can to love their neighbors. The "social gospel" is a result of the Gospel worked out in a person's life and not a command to be issued to the government.
Naum,
I fail to see where I used the concept of, much less the word, "absolutes". Perhaps you can clear that up for me.
FDR created Social Security and the New Deal. Social Security has been a dramatic political success but also, in my estimation, an economic and policy failure. I also would argue that the incredible prosperity wrought in the middle of the twentieth century was a result of the post-WWII boom, not the New Deal.
I take exception to your assertion that I do not strongly support "freedom and opportunity for all". Surely you're not arguing that a massive new entitlement funded through involuntary taxation counts as increased freedom and opportunity for all? It is, inarguably, increased mandated health care for a relative few who don't have it. It may even be a good policy idea to demand that healthy young folks shell out big bucks for minimal usage of health care resources - but that most certainly is *not* increased freedom. It seems to me that a government-mandated, Washington-run health system is at least as "aristocratic" as the present one.
Stan,
Government is "we the people".
All of our existence in the 21st century is predicated on the "evil" government, so when you say this, you are saying that it's OK for government to serve the wealthy, but not the poor — that my friend, goes totally against the Gospel and words of Jesus.
To reject the "common good" is to embrace the "individual as god" rhetoric and claim…
Naum: "Government is 'we the people'."
I like your optimism. I know that there is currently no one in government that represents my views. I know that my vote hasn't altered one iota the changes I've seen to which I'm dreadfully opposed. The government may wear the tag "we the people", but it's not. If it is, it is not representing me.
Nonetheless, if you could, please, show me one place -- any place -- that there is a command of God to a non-theocratic government. Anywhere. All of God's commands are to people, not group entities such as corporations or governments. Governments or corporations that fail to obey God do not go to Hell. Only people have commands from God.
I don't remember saying that government was "evil". If I did, I was misrepresenting my own views. What I said was that the commands were for me to be charitable and loving and caring, not to hand that off to the government.
Finally, your "Gospel" is not the biblical Gospel, so I'm not at all concerned about the "Gospel" you're trying to hand off as some mandate to the government.
government sharing
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