Here is Nancy Pelosi a few months ago telling a group of musicians and artists that because of ObamaCare they can now leech off of the rest of us saps who have to work for a living:
We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.
I’m thinking a lot of doctors will want to escape the grind and become entrepreneurs themselves. Why wouldn’t they? They will be paid pennies compared to the amount spent in school, and now will be told the what, why, where, when, and how by the federal government.
What a wonderful world they envision eh? Our artist class will now have the time to “create” while the rest of us pick up the tab.
If liberal Boomers such as Nancy Pelosi insist on creating government incentives for a generation of people to be unemployed artists who nonetheless have their health care paid for by productive members of society, there will be fewer productive members of society.
If they insist on creating a generation unable to care for itself up to and past the ripe old age of 26 by incentivizing “children”—and I use to term loosely— to stay on parent’s health insurance policies until they’re turning the corner from Clearasil to Botox, there will be fewer educated, able-bodied people who ever learn to take care of themselves.
If they insist on creating a generation incentivized to “move out of the money-making industry” entirely and “into the helping industry,” as Michelle Obama put it, with student loans forgiven by government if and only if students stay away from icky, profit-making industries, there will be fewer people making a profit.
These are the workers—and I may soon be using that term loosely— upon whom liberal Boomer Pelosi must rely to pay her Social Security through their working years. The ratio of workers to retirees has already shrunk from 41:1 in 1942 to 3.3:1 in the mid-2000s, and is expected to dip into to 2:1 in the next decades. Does Pelosi really want one or more of those young people supporting each worker to be a really keen charcoal sketch artist whose earning potential went as thoroughly unrecognized as his genius?
When imagining Pelosi’s economy, liberal Boomers should also imagine what comes with it. The mediocre melodies of their street-bard children will be cold comfort indeed when they’re warming their hands over hobo fires in Haight-Ashbury.
“Sorry, Pops! No more money! I’m a barrista-cum-unemployed-sculptor-with-benefits!”
I call all of this a larger welfare state….period.
See author page