Deregulation and Privatization - Terrible Twosome

Can you imagine if the Republicans had gotten their way during the Clinton years and if Social Security had been privatized and was dependent on the very financial institutions now collapsing? And McCain wanted to put your health insurance in the same pocketbook. Sure it sounds good: you make your own choices and have more control. But this is the same rationale my dad made for not wearing a seat belt: he imagined he could throw himself out of the way of the accident, never mind the physics of 2 cars moving at 65 miles per hour. It sounds good, but the laws of physics are not amenable to personal ideas.

Privatization and deregulation are masks for corporate greed. Talk about government taking over health care and the cry against "socialized medicine" goes up and people figure if it's like the old Soviet Union and must be bad. But what are these bailouts but all the bad parts of socialism - no responsibility, taxpayer supported fat cats - without any of the benefits. Unregulated businesses make tons of money taking foolish chances for quick profits knowing they will receive bailouts when their house of cards collapses. The Republican Party, for all its "free market" posturing, only wants government to stay out of the way of its own greedy backers, but when they overreach, they expect we-the-people via our government to bail them out WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED. No regulation. No personal responsibility. So you and I essentially buy the failed banks' bad debt. Then the Republicans will say we need to let the private sector handle money, and so some corporation will buy the failed banks at pennies on the dollar for what we paid to help them. We eat the loss and the private buyer reaps the rebound profits. This is socializing risk and privatizing profit.

But when individual taxpayers fall on hard times, all the babble is about personal responsibility and letting the market correct itself through foreclosures. There is no bailout for you, the taxpayer, even as you foot the bill for the banks. Not even bankruptcy will clear your debts now or ever.