GOP healed nation, Dems are distressing

By Richard Pulsifer, Henderson

Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Three Democratic social programs are celebrated by the writer of the letter “Democrats represent ‘we the people,’” (Las Vegas Sun, Sept. 16). I want to concentrate on the No. 1 sacred cow, Social Security.

When it was created in 1935, you had to be 65 to collect. But the actuarial tables of the time show that the average white male had a life expectancy of 56 years, and the average black male 48 years. In other words, the program was set up so that only a small percentage of people would be able to collect and only collect for a short time. That is the basis of a classic Ponzi scheme. Everybody pays in but only a very few reap any rewards.

The enabling legislation said the tax would never be more than 1 percent on the first $3,000 in earnings, or $30 a year. The current rate is 7.65 percent on the first $118,500, for a total of $9,065. And if you’re self-employed, you pay 15.3 percent. I call that the Nanny State penalty for believing you are capable of taking care of yourself rather than needing someone else to take care of you.

What they didn’t know in 1935 was that the free market, for-profit, medical industry would create medicines, machines and techniques to greatly increase our life span, which wreaked havoc on their original scheme. Today, for many people, 65 is considered young. Social Security can’t afford that.

So the government responded by raising the concept of “means testing,” in which some anonymous bureaucrat in Washington decides you have too much money, so you are denied your benefits even though you have been forced to pay in all of your working life.

If, instead of the government stealing that money, you had been allowed to invest in a 401K or IRA account, you would be far better off financially.

Before the IRS, Medicare and Obamacare destroyed their viability, there were innumerable Shriner and Catholic Charity hospitals that took care of the least among us, including those with no insurance, and survived on charitable contributions. Then the IRS started to crack down on charitable contributions because the Democrats’ Nanny State got perturbed that some were doing things without the government’s help. For decades the Democrats lusted after the single-payer system, with the government being that single payer. Obamacare was the result.

Conversely, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and healed a wounded nation.

So I’ll stay with the party of Lincoln.