Allow me to turn your attention to a quote from page eleven (11) of Mr. Greenspan's book: "After many years of Social Security and lesser programs, such 'government social benefits to persons' totaled 4.7 percent of GDP. But starting in 1965, with the addition of Medicare and Medicad, and shortly thereafter a major increase in Social Security through benefit inflation indexation, we embarked on a truly bipartisan unprecedented four-decade rise in outlays averaging nearly 10 percent per year. The unfortunate consequence of our magnanimity, as I demonstrate in later chapters, is that these benefits have been crowding out private savings almost dollar for dollar. That loss of funding for capital investment led to slowed productivity growth, a phenomenon that would have been even worse if we had not turned to borrowing so heavily from abroad. Moreover, to fund our generosity we have foraged into every corner of out federal budget to meet the rise in social benefit spending. We are eating our seed corn, and damaging the very engine of America's comparative strength in the world."
Another quote: "Medicare was enacted in 1965 and benefits embarked on their unrelenting rise from 4.7 percent of GDP to nearly 15 percent of GDP by 2012" (p. 293).
Consequently, the rate on non-farm output per hour has dropped from 2.2% between 1870 and 1970 to 2.0% between 1965 and 2012 (see: p. 208). This created a gap in the U. S. economy of $1.1 trillion ($3,666 per person average, based on 300 million Americans) (see: p. 208). And this loss was absorbed primarily by the lower income quartile households (students and the poor) through suppress wage rate gains (see: p. 209).
A $1.1 trillion dollar net loss to the economy to pay for Medicare translates to a net loss of 11,000,000 jobs, based on the rough math I was taught in my economics studies. A job that paid $8 an hour in 1984, should be an $18 an hour jobs today, but it's a $10 an hour job. Our children's futures are being eaten up to feed our elderly, according to Greenspan.
With the expansion of the 2nd plank of "The Communist Manifesto," Obamacare, we know that this trend will continue at a faster rate, as anything government touches, it inflates. Just a few days ago, I saw on the "CBS Evening New with Brian Williams" that a northern state, I believe it was Michigan, saw "a 40% rise in the cost of health insurance" after Obamacare challenged the marketplace.
With no end in appetite for the current political establishment, there is no structural solution other than revolution, a new form of government. As a Gandhian, I hope to help in leading a non-violent transfer of power to the people, independent of the state conception of life, known as the Kingdom conception of life by Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi's teacher. That revolution, if not led by the non-violent, will be led by the violent. What we do know is there will be revolution, and the revolution will be televised.
Gene Chapman
Tolsotyan-Gandhian Libertarian Candidate for Texas Governor
[Endorsed by Dr. Noam Chomsky (Intellectual of the Age) and Dr. Ravindra Kumar (World's Most Prominent Gandhian Intellectual)]
ChapmanForTexasGovernor2014.com
gkchapman2012@hotmail.com