Chicago PM Saturday 21 April 2012
Editors, the Wall Street Journal 282 words
Gentlepeople:
The Wall Street Journal Friday 20 April opinion piece “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Insurance” has Princeton University professor Alan Blinder writing: “Our country was founded on the idea that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable. Access to affordable health care is surely essential to two of these three rights....”
We got along for 190 years without federal government interference in personal healthcare, and became the strongest, healthiest civilization in world history. Why did it suddenly become a federal priority in 1965?
Ninety per cent of voters are wage earners. Before the Current Tax payment act of 1943 voters were required to write personal checks to the federal treasury annually for a tax on their income. The act moved that responsibility from employees to employers by requiring employers to withhold the tax from the employees' pay checks. Employers now needed to accumulate the money in their bank accounts, and write a check to the feds monthly. If the employer doesn't send it, he goes to jail – never the wage earner. The 2012 Statistical Abstract of the United states shows 73% of all federal taxes received in 2010 came from employers' bank accounts, not Wage earners.
But the wage earner has fistfulls of statements saying “You earned, and your employer paid...” After 20 years of this they start thinking: “Hey! I deserve medicare, I deserve Social Security, I paid in!”
Returning the responsibility of writing checks to fund the government to voters might help them figure out that the government has no money they didn't take from someone else, so they would be better off paying for their own health insurance.
Arnold H Nelson ah_nelson@yahoo.com
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