Quote from bighog: Medicare is not FREE and if you make over 80 k you pay even more. You MUST pay extra to BlueCross/Blue shield or another supplemental provider to pay what medicare does NOT pay for. Mrdicare does not pay willy nilly for care, ask your favorite Doctor on that one and see what he/she says. hahaha. Medicare is RATIONED as we speak, some services are only partially paid for on a schedule and rejected if off the time frame. Also lets admit this: This generation that is retired today paid their dues and deserve every penny they get. The retired generation now gave many many sons and daughters to fight WW11 and save us all from hanging a picture of Hitler and that other loser from japan that ashed everyone to take a sword for "TOJO" and then he saved his own sorry ass after the troops lost the war to ours and the allies terrific youth (the retired you are upset about). The retired generation today were workers with gusto and brave to fight corporate greed by joining unions and getting a decent days pay for a decent days work. Todays retired persons fought for healthcare for their children, they fought for retirement bennies, they fought for better working conditions, they looked the boss, the owners in the eye and told them , we get decent pay or we shut this shithole down, the owners blinked because they knew they were not paying the workers for all their efforts. I could go on and on but to put it in a nutshell: Todays youth screwed thenselves by letting the corporations run over them and allowing unions to be busted, by allowing healthcare to be taken away without a fight. Todays youth as workers are wussies and if they do not like the older generation enjoying the fruits of their labor and efforts well thats just tough shit. Todays youth complaining about retired people should be more worried about how they are being screwed by the fat cats instead of complaining about the "GREATEST GENERATION" in retirement now. Todays youth threw in the towel to the crooks a couple decades age, now they say such things as: we will not get what the older generation get now. NO SHIT!!!! You will not get anything unless you chumps fight for it like your parents and grandparents did.
Iâm trying to figure out exactly what your angle is. You start off with the typical WWII generation stuff, which is well deserved, but we all know it and have heard it before. But then you somehow contrast that the fighting our Grandparents did is on par with what we need to do know with corporate greed. First off I think that we have not fought it recently because we have, for a lack of a better term, been told that essentially greed is good. People invent and produce things in hope of taking risk and making a profit. Wouldnât it have been nice if Henry Ford invented the car out of the goodness of his heart, but really he was doing it to make a profit. This is ok because what he produced was a good product, that worked well, brought value to the consumer and was affordable. This works fine until one day the owners decide that they havenât had enough and kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Think about the past 10 years. Really, what has been invented and what businesses have thrived because of the value they have brought. Very few. In fact, I can really only think of Google and Aaple. However the rich have continually gotten rich despite their ability to produce. Why is this? I believe itâs because the rich have moved from becoming rich as a result of what value they bring and instead now are becoming rich by the value that they take. To make more money, instead of selling more, they instead lay off workers and ship their jobs overseas. Instead of paying Americans a decent wage, they have touted this notion that there are jobs Americans wonât do, and therefore they import cheap immigrants to take our jobs here.
I believe all of this will continue until one of two things happens. Either somebody will come along and start a movement of paying employees well and as a result those employees will work exceptionally well and the business will take huge market share from those other companyâs that plunder wealth. Or the cycle will continue until one day the rich realize that nobody is buying their products anymore because nobody has any money to pay for their products because their jobs were given to other people who donât buy their products. In effect the rich basically created the problem that will ultimately be their demiss. I believe we have started to see this in this present recession. Except now the rich have introduced a new way to screw the masses â the bailout.
As to why we donât fight like other generations did. Well let me tell you, I have said many of the same things you have said above and have been soundly rejected on both ET and to people I know. Anytime I dare critisized big business, Iâm usually written off as trying to interfere with âthe free market. â When I suggested that an honest days pay should be rewarded with an honest days pay, regardless of whether that person has a âskilledâ job, Iâm usually written off as a Communist with an entitlement mentality who wonât work for anything and instead thinks heâs owed everything. When I question the Fed for printing money out of thin air and essentially taxing the poor through inflation and thereby creating a constant squeeze on people that is difficult to get out of because their cost of living is continually going up while their wages are stagnant, people tell me I am blaming others for my own problems.
But mostly I canât find people who will work with me to stop being screwed and instead make a better life. Itâs so hard to do things alone. It seems everybody I meet is satisfied being screwed and doesnât want to try anything. I could tell a couple of stories later of times when people just donât bother to do anything and instead just sit there and take it.