© 2009 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
A political phrase being used often these days is “bait and switch.” It refers to political promises to create attractive government programs that then are switched to the detriment of the citizens. The health-care debate smells of bait and switch, just like past government betrayals.
An example is income tax. Our current income tax came from the 16th amendment in 1913. That first year the federal income tax was paid by less than 1 percent of the population.
The bait was that only the “rich” would pay income tax, and almost every American was not going to be bothered by this tax on the rich. The switch came little by little as more and more Americans were required to pay income tax.
If Americans had understood in 1913 that income tax would be applied to them at some point, it would not have passed. Likewise, it would be abolished if all Americans could today vote on whether to allow it.
A Ponzi scheme
In 1913 the people baited by the federal income tax were the 99 percent not paying the tax. In 1935, a new program baited Americans. It was the Old-Age, survivors, and Disability Insurance Program that we now call Social Security.
Initially, 3 percent of a worker’s wage went into a savings fund. Today it is 12.5 percent. But the switch was that in 1969 Congress turned Social Security into a Ponzi scheme by no longer saving any of the money paid into it. Instead, they put all of that money into their current government coffers and wrote an IOU from themselves to themselves.
I started paying Social Security in 1969 and not one cent of the money paid by me into Social Security over my 40 years of work has been saved for me. The Social Security lockbox only has an IOU instructing the future government to tax its citizens if I need any benefits.
Imagine if the citizens of 1935 were told that Social Security was going to take their money and not save it. They may have fallen for it because they did not learn from the bait-and-switch income tax. Will we learn our lesson before approving government health care?
The switch that’s coming
The core bait on health-care reform is the notion that, with the government in charge of health care, it will be available to all citizens and in unlimited abundance.
Our desire for health care in America is unlimited. The resources for healthcare are limited. When unlimited desire meets limited resources, something must give. That is the switch that’s coming.
We all want to live longer and better, but the resources to provide that health care are limited. Someone will have to decide which of our desires are wants and which are needs. An old saying goes, “Needs come in two sizes: yours and mine.”
My problem is that the government and I may not see eye to eye on my needs. Then what? President Herbert Hoover campaigned in 1928 saying everyone would be prosperous with him — “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” When you see depression-era pictures, there seem to be lots of cars and chickens missing amid the lack of prosperity.
Promises to be broken
Given the track record of our government in bait and switch, all of the promises of national health care are just that — promises to be broken. Maybe there will be a few years before the full impact of the bait and switch is felt by citizens. But given the past actions of our government when implementing programs, our future is clear.
What is the litmus test for this bait and switch? Will members of Congress drop their own health care and embrace this new plan with the common peons? No, they understand that they do not want that health care.
What they want is control of you.
The saying is, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” Will we ever learn from the past government scams? Evidently it is doubtful.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.