I’ve been a pansy-ass liberal for far too long. I’m done. I’ve seen the light of self-reliance and realized what a sucker I’ve been to support my fellow countrymen for all these years. When Congressman Chaffetz told Americans to forego a new iPhone to pay for healthcare, he wasn’t being literal. He meant that it’s time for Americans to become truly self-reliant. Stop sucking on the tit of the federal government and make your lives work. I, as left as they come, agree with him.
We can ditch Obamacare and replace it with nothing. Or Trumpcare – which will, effectively – be nothing. Fine by me. Every citizen for him and herself, that’s the American way. Think of the settlers of the old west, homesteaders and the like. They were pure, tough and didn’t need welfare. Hell ya.
But stripping Americans of Obamacare – even stripping them of Medicare – barely scratches the surface of making truly us self-reliant.
First, eliminate FEMA. If you’re dumb enough to build your house alongside a big, dry forest, don’t look to me and my taxes to bail you out when the big fire comes. That’s absurd and is the opposite of the new American self-reliance of which we preach.
In 2011/12 (for example) FEMA spent $5 billion dollars in Texas and $3 billion in North Dakota alone. Hey, if there’s a natural disaster, it stands to reason that Texans and North Dakotans should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and be self-reliant. You cowboys should give up your cell phones, your fancy saddles, and rebuild your houses and businesses with the savings.
There’s no way that I – or some large living Wall Street taxpayer in New York - should pay to rebuild some moron’s house because that fool happened to live along the banks of the Mississippi. Americans should live with the consequences of their choices. Live in a flood zone and get a once in a century flood that wipes you out? Idiot. You shouldn’t have lived there. Not my problem.
And then there’s our Federal Taxes. I lived most of my life in New York, Illinois and California, three states that consistently send more money to the federal government than they received back in federal spending. In short, I have been propping up the parasites in the rest of the country. Which states leeched the most from my largess? New Mexico, Mississippi, Kentucky and Alabama top the list. To hell with you folks, I say. You will not get a dime more in federal spending than you pay out in taxes. Stand on your own. Suckers.
Let’s keep going. Next up, our supposedly heroic heartlanders in Iowa -the very folks we incorrectly imagine to be our self-reliant heroes. These pests fed on $30 Billion dollars of taxpayer subsidies for a single product in 2014 alone – corn processed into Ethanol. Iowa and ethanol should stand on its own capitalistic two feet. If your product is so bad it can’t survive the market, don’t look to me to prop you up. Self-reliance rules!
While we’re at it, we recently subsidized the most profitable company in the world to the tune of $6 Billion dollars. Not only can Exxon-Mobile afford to pay their own way, it defies every ounce of logic for our country to subsidize any business, never mind the single most profitable company in the world at the time that we paid them.
Finally, when we’re done getting rid of tax-supported healthcare, unbalanced handouts to states and corporate welfare, we can turn to Social Security and Medicare. In our new world of self-reliance, every citizen would get only as much money as he or she had put in over their lifetime, with some modest interest less a management fee. Spent your life at a low-wage flex job while you raised your kids? You get squat. You hardly paid anything in, that’s as much as you take out. Show your true grit and independence, dammit.
I used to think of us as one large multi-faceted society. Sure, New Yorkers paid $20 billion more in federal taxes than they received in services back in 2014. But the old me saw New Yorkers as generous – basically transferring their billions to the good folks in Iowa to support their corn-growing ethanol largess. They supported the crazy notion of the United States of America.
My old liberal pansy-ass self was happy to see us rally behind New Orleans after Katrina, albeit badly. I was happy when my taxes went to support people who lost homes in the Mississippi flood, in the California earthquakes and in a range of wildfires. I thought Obamacare was a meek but important first step in our taking care of our fellow Americans. I believed in the idea of our country as single society, working together to keep each of us afloat, above water and – at a minimum – modestly successful.
No more. Self-reliance rules the day. If you can’t pull your own weight in Trump’s America, try moving somewhere where your nickels and dimes might take you further than they do here – you know, try scaling the fence and moving to Mexico.