Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
Americans can no longer afford to get sick and there’s a reason why.
That’s because a growing number of Americans are struggling to stretch their dollars far enough to pay their bills, get out of debt and ensure that if and when an illness arises, it doesn’t bankrupt them.
This is a reality that no amount of partisan political bickering can deny.
Many Americans can no longer afford health insurance, drug costs or hospital bills. They can’t afford to pay rising healthcare premiums, out-of-pocket deductibles and prescription drug bills.
They can’t afford to live, and now they can’t afford to get sick or die, either.
It’s a gamble any way you look at it, and the medical community is not helping.
Healthcare costs are rising, driven by a medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industry that are getting rich off the sick and dying.
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Appallingly, Americans spend more than any developed country on healthcare and have less to show for it. While Obamacare (a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act) may have made health insurance more accessible to greater numbers of individuals, it has failed to make healthcare any more affordable.
Indeed, health care in America has become just another way of making corporations rich at consumer expense.
This is how the middle classes, who fuel the nation’s economy and fund the government’s programs, get screwed repeatedly.
We’re living a financial nightmare.
We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.
If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.
Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect” wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.
Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers under the 16th Amendment to the Constitution to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the government’s power to penalize or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.
All the while the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.
If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.
Still, the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its money grabs.
While we’re struggling to get by, the police state is spending our hard-earned tax dollars to further entrench its powers and entrap its citizens.
For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out $5.6 trillion since 9/11 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called “war on terrorism.” The 16-year war in Afghanistan, which now stands as the longest and one of the most expensive wars in U.S. history, is about to get even longer and more costly, thanks to President Trump’s promise to send more troops over.
In this way, the military industrial complex will get even richer, and the American taxpayer will be forced to shell out even more funds for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.
This is no way of life.
Yet it’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry.
We’re also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.
Are you getting the picture yet?
The government isn’t taking our money to make our lives better. Just take a look at the nation’s failing infrastructure, and you’ll see how little is being spent on programs that advance the common good.
We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.
This is nothing less than financial tyranny.
“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.
It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.
There are a few things we can do (demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people), but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.
We’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the powers-that-be want to pit us against one another. They want us to adopt an “us versus them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided. Trust me, the only “us versus them” that matters anymore is “we the people” against the police state.
We’re all in the same boat, folks, and there’s only one real life preserver: that’s the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The Constitution starts with those three powerful words: “We the people.”
The message is this: there is power in our numbers.
That remains our greatest strength in the face of a governmental elite that continues to ride roughshod over the populace. It remains our greatest defense against a government that has claimed for itself unlimited power over the purse (taxpayer funds) and the sword (military might). As Patrick Henry declared in the last speech before his death, “United we stand, divided we fall.”
This holds true whether you’re talking about health care, war spending, or the American police state.
When ZOG has taken all our money and Rights, will sheeple still do nothing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3jZmSHyFUQ
Whistle?! What, it was not obvious to every cognitive person with mere remedial knowledge of US troops in Afghanistan?
The largest yearly expenditures in the Federal budget are entitlement benefits such as Medicare and Social Security. And any politician who tries to reduce these benefits will be replaced in the next election by one who will continue the uncontrolled spending.
Mel- Technically BUT, SS/Pensions 19% , Medicare/healthcare 22%….that is 41% total of 100%.
Welfare is 6% SO that still leaves 53% that.Gov spends on military/education/interest /other(?black hole). That’s more than half of our money Mel.
General Welfare, Medicaid, EBT Food stamps, the Plethra of Special Programs for Minorities, public education and housing etc are half governments expenditures. Social Security came from workers pay until Hussein turned it into another pot to plunder for Welfare Maggots.
Medicare isn’t free, you pay a monthly premium for it on top of Medicare payroll taxes your entire working life until you are old enough to qualify for it.
Likewise, SS is paid for through specific payroll taxes.
And thus the motivation for all those congress-critters screaming for “gun-control” is exposed to the light.
The congress-critters are worried. And rightfully so.
Those armed tax-slaves might get “uppity” and decide they don’t like slavery.
Health insurance is really ‘anti-bankruptcy’ insurance. If you have no assets (money / investments) then you don’t need the health insurance.
However, anyone can afford to die.
Dying is expensive too. Took my dad eight years and every penny he had.
Amazing some of the stuff printed.
This article assumes so much to be true that just ain’t so. Some of it is indeed correct, but much is total bullshit.
Government has no business – none – in the provision of healthcare, pensions, etc. Where would the tens of millions that are sucking up those bennies be without that largesse, paid for by others, and at the expense of future generations?
He talks about “our tax dollars”. What the hell? It is largely not “our tax dollars” but the tax dollars of the top few percent. That the bottom 50% who pay zero net tax get to vote and elect vampire squids to steal the money and assets of those that actually pay taxes is an abomination.
There is so much wrong it is hard to know where to start. But big government and the welfare state are the root of all evil in my book. Personal responsbility, family, the ability and willingness of local communities to look after themselves, the drive to provide for oneself and one’s family’s future, the core values of education, family, thrift, hard-work, and the reward for effort and excellence and achievement – all these things are disappearing because of big govt, its cronies, and the welfare state.
Life was never meant to be easy. Government was never meant to be a controlling force in the people’s lives. The idea that govt can give everyone a great life is false. To attempt such means that the hard-working are sacrificed in order to support those that cannot or will not, and you cannot be successful by eating your seed stock. You will have nothing to sow soon enough. And the seed stock is running out.
The middle class attained their exalted status during a period that is unlikely to re-occur. Manufacturing dominance after WW2 allowed it, when the US was the last man standing. When competition increased in the 1970s, that exalted lifestyle began to be funded by debt. The debt can never be repaid, of course, but eventually when debt can no longer fund the lifestyle, the lifestyle collapses. And so it is happening.
There is no going back. But to go forward will take a monumental shift in attitude and policy. And it will not happen until great misery is foisted onto the people – a collapse and reset is the inevitable.
The biggest question is – what will the reset lead to? I do not believe there is a plan.
I believe TPTB have a Plan that eliminates population with starvation, war and disease. We are headed into at least a Mini-Ice Age with more volcanoes (ref Grand Solar Minimum) that will cut food production maybe 90% yet TPTB have Useful Idiots thinking we are going to over heat and the oceans will flood us. TPTB gave all the stored emergency food (cheese & butter, powdered milk and eggs, flour, sugar, etc) to minorities in the late 60s. TPTB are cramming Perverts and 3rd World Barbarians down our throats; the result will be new diseases, spreading crime & poverty, and ethnic wars. TPTB will soon utterly destroy the fiat dollar by printing and spending trillions of them each year; the Petro-dollar is history and the BRICS have put sanctions on their traders accepting dollars for sales; to buy oil, fertilizer, food, etc in the future, the Americans will have to earn Yuan & Rubles etc to pay for foreign goods. After hyperinflation destroys the dollar, TPTB will issue just e-money and users will have to receive The Mark of The Beast to buy and sell.
Rhs , you made me think deeper……when shtf having these deplorable refugees to fight will make a great diversion and distraction. The govt will try and ban us together in a common cause with them to fight said refugees put will shall remember it was our own govt that brought them here against a loud opposition in the first place. I now strongly believe that’s why our own govt is shipping them in. They know these people already hate us and will hate us more when the freebies stop and these people have no moral issues raping and killing us (their sworn enemies). So the citizens will be fighting these zombie refugees with a secondary enemy (the dictators army, uniforms). They know many in our own military will abandon such treason and will side with the citenzry so they brought in a very unique and different army. An army that will lie in wait and will awaken during a full unraveling during the height of chaos……
Greetings,
The smartest thing that Uncle Sugar ever did was to get rid of the draft (I know, I know – it still exists on paper). By 1970, the U.S. Army found itself with an army that was more or less in open rebellion. Officers that tried to keep order found themselves as targets and we all got to learn a new word – fragging.
No, it was much smarter to have a volunteer army and not only a volunteer army but one that welcomed the new recruit and his or her family. The fort and arsenal gave way to what looks like a giant day care & food court. Brilliant. In my time in the service, any grumblings were met with the “you volunteered for this” response and, of course, we did. No soldier with a family wants to risk punishment while watching his family turned out into the street.
Now, this current system of taxation without representation is voluntary as well. You DO NOT have to participate in it. There is an underground economy and there is also a barter economy. 20 million + illegals do it each and every day. There are lots of ways to starve the beast but, like anything, it requires some work. Nothing worth having is ever easy.
Nickel – you cannot starve a beast that prints money. You have to wait for it to collapse, I fear.
Greetings,
Starving the beast causes it to print faster and it will bring on the collapse that much quicker. As for myself, I’m hoping for a soft landing Soviet Union style collapse and not the zombie apocalypse.
Watching govts play the long game I came to realize Obamacare (tax) was put in place so when shtf and we are all bartering to survive they can still tax you for not paying a fascist insurance company $25,000 for the health care policy premiums just to use the insurance. That gives them the right to then come after your real assets, like a farm, it’s produce, and home and tax you into submission when you try to get off the grid. Additionally, many cities now made a law that’s you cannot disconnect from govt services like water, power, or sewage. This is the long game they play and will enforce these with vengeance when the time comes for your submission. Know this..