Our So Called “Rights” Are Expensive!

One of the fastest ways to make things more expensive is for the government to provide easy access to money to pay for such things. Nothing illustrates this better than the cost of a college education. As has been widely reported for years now, the costs of a college education have skyrocketed.

A Forbes headline last year noted that the cost of college in the U.S. is increasing nearly eight times faster than wages are increasing. As Forbes reported,

The price of going to college has been increasing since the 1980s. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost per year for the 2015-2016 academic year was just over $19,000 for a public four-year university. The figure jumps to nearly $40,000 for a private university. These totals include tuition, fees, room and board. 

The average for all four-year institutions comes out to $26,120 per year. This brings the total cost of attendance to an astronomical total of $104,480 over four years. The comparable cost for the same four-year degree in 1989 was $26,902 ($52,892 adjusted for inflation). This means that between the academic years ending in 1989 and 2016, the cost for a four year degree doubled, even after inflation.

As we’ve also heard often the last few years, these rising costs have resulted in astronomical student loan debt. With the total now north of $1.5 trillion, student loan debt for Americans is nearly equal to the total amount of auto loan debt and credit card debt combined. There’s little doubt that the easy supply of federal funds is almost completely responsible for the catastrophic rise in student loan debt. As Kevin Williamson recently put it,

If you make a few gazillion dollars available to finance tuition payments with underwriting standards a little bit lower than those of the average pawn shop, you create a lot of potential tuition inflation. Another way of saying this is that if Uncle Stupid puts a trillion bucks on the table, there are enough smart people at Harvard to figure out a way to pick it up.

What’s even more stupid—and expensive—than a mountain of easy money from “Uncle Stupid” is for “Uncle (or Aunt) Stupid” to declare wants or needs a “right.” A parade of democrats—including many of the score-plus running for president—have now decided that education is a “right.” Of course, in a leftist’s mind, if something is a “right” then it almost always should be “free.” And of course, as I noted a few years ago, the quickest and surest way to make things more expensive for most of us is for someone in our government to attempt to make such things “free” for some.

If you think a college education is expensive now, just wait until it’s “free.” Big Education already reaps billions of dollars under the current college scam. If democrats are allowed to make college “free,” the college scam will only grow, and U.S. taxpayers will be swindled out of even more money.

Healthcare in the U.S. is the lesson here. Most of the problems with U.S. health care come down to two issues, and of course, both are the result of Big Government and the foolish idea that healthcare is a “right” and that it should often be “free.” First of all, almost no one knows what anything in healthcare really costs—including the doctors who provide it.

As Dr. David Belk, MD, notes in “The True Cost of Healthcare,”

[U]nlike any other business in America, almost all of the financial transactions in healthcare are hidden from the providers as well as the patients. We order tests, procedures and medications to manage our patients, but very few doctors, or other healthcare providers, have any idea how much any of those things cost.

As an indication of the mystery surrounding health care costs in the U.S., Belk highlights medications:

Anytime you go to a store you expect to see all of the products being sold with their prices plainly displayed. When you go to the checkout, that’s the price you expect to be charged. You also expect to be able to check the price of the same or a comparable product in competing stores so you can shop around. That’s how the free market works.

Now imagine your trip to the grocery store were more like a trip to the pharmacy. As Belk points out,

Imagine what it would be like if a grocery store never displayed the price of anything. And the price you’re charged might be totally different from the price the next customer is charged for the same product. In fact, suppose you couldn’t even pick your own groceries. A grocery list would be handed to you by a food expert and you’d be billed based on your particular ‘grocery plan.’ Eggs might cost you $5, the next person $10 and some poor guy who doesn’t have a grocery plan would have to pay $50 for the same carton. Don’t even think about shopping around.

The first issue with health care costs is a result of the second (and Belk’s analogy brings this out): the manner in which we purchase health care differs greatly from how Americans purchase any other item. The vast majority of Americans with health insurance obtain it through a Third Party Payer System—whether an employer or the government. Of course, under Obamacare, the government also has a large say in employer healthcare plans.

This is not how we purchase homes, automobiles, gas, groceries, entertainment, or even other forms of insurance. As usual, when our free-markets falter, look no further than our government. In 1960, Americans paid over 55% of their medical care costs out of pocket, while the government covered just over 21% of such costs. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in 2010, for the health care system as a whole, Americans paid only 12% out of pocket. For hospital care, it was only 3%, while 97% was paid by a third party.

NCPA also notes that, “Prior to the advent of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health care spending never exceeded 6 percent of gross domestic product. Today [2010] it is 17 percent.” In 2019 that number is about 18%. In other words, once Big Government got deep into our healthcare industry, costs significantly increased.

Along with education and healthcare, many democrats are also now campaigning on the notion that Americans have “a right to a home” or “a right to housing” or that “having a decent and safe place to live should be…a basic human right.” According to the Huffington Post, new legislation proposed by Elizabeth Warren would increase annual spending on the National Housing Trust Fund from $200 million to $4.5 billion. That’s a 2150% increase! Of course, this massive increase would be paid for by higher estate taxes on the “super rich.”

Cory Booker wants to commit a staggering $40 billion a year to the Housing Trust Fund. According to Politico, Booker has also proposed a “Baby Bonds” plan that

would help future generations with down payments by establishing a federally funded savings account with $1,000 for every American child at birth, with future government contributions determined by income. According to Booker’s staff, that plan would give 45 percent of account holders sufficient funding for a 20 percent down payment on the national median starter home.

According to Politico, this plan would cost $134 billion a year—but almost certainly would cost significantly more—and would be paid for “by raising the estate tax and closing ‘loopholes’ that benefit the wealthy.” Of course, as with education and healthcare, a vast increase of taxpayer funds into the housing industry will do nothing to make things more “affordable.”

On the contrary, as we’ve seen with education and healthcare, the more government involvement with housing, the more expensive housing will become. This is almost always true of anything we should be responsible for purchasing for ourselves, but that politicians have declared a “right,” and certainly true of anything politicians want to make “free.”

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2019, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Preachers and Politics: An American Tradition

This election season really has liberals off their game. In spite of all their efforts in Ferguson, Missouri, and all the time and energy spent defending women from the perpetual “war” waged against them by the big bad GOP, they’ve now stooped to what they so often accuse their republican opponents of doing: blaming the victim.

Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun-Times recently chronicled what she described as a “nasty incident involving the Rev. Corey Brooks.” Brooks is the pastor of New Beginnings Church on Chicago’s South Side. Last Saturday thieves broke into New Beginnings Church and stole $8,000 from a charity box that was sitting in the church’s lobby. The money was being collected to build a community center across the street from the church.

After the robbery, Brooks declared, “Nobody has ever stolen stuff from our church. We do a lot of work in the neighborhood, and no one has broken into our church. Never.” According to Mitchell, Brooks’ recent political activities “made him a target.” Evidently, in the liberal land of make-believe, a justifiable one.

Brooks, a black man, committed the cardinal political sin in liberal circles: he publicly endorsed a republican. The republican he endorsed is Bruce Rauner, the GOP candidate seeking to unseat Pat Quinn as governor of Illinois. Brooks went so far as to appear in a television ad for Rauner.

Just prior to the robbery, Brooks received many threats via telephone and social media that were the result of his involvement in Rauner’s campaign. After the robbery and the vile threats, Brooks has decided to relocate himself and his family while the threats are investigated. According to Mitchell, while no one should be threatening—and I would add robbing—Rev. Brooks “because of his political choices,” the good reverend has made himself a target because he let himself “get dragged into a street brawl.”

Mitchell also concludes that religious leaders such as Rev. Brooks—who have “brought politics into the pulpit” and whose “efforts to serve up the community to politicians”—explains why “there has been such a huge loss of respect for the black clergy.” Yet, Mitchell seems to have no problem granting respect to the race pimp and publicity prostitute known as the “Rev.” Jesse Jackson, whom she describes as “one of the remaining legends” of the civil rights era, whose “commitment to fighting for equality is evident.” She also gives props to Jackson’s pimpin’ partner, the “Rev.” Al Sharpton, who, as Mitchell glowingly notes, is the kind of “street activist who has sway over the brothers on the corner.”

Such dumbfounding duplicity by a modern liberal is unsurprising, but it is a bit surprising that a large American newspaper would run such drivel on its editorial page.

While setting up her blind critique of Rev. Brooks, Mitchell fondly recalls the glory days of the civil rights era and the strong respect commanded by black clergy, especially in the South, “where churches became sanctuaries for civil rights leaders.” It evidently escapes Ms. Mitchell what these civil rights leaders were doing behind their pulpits.

I doubt we’ll find a column by Ms. Mitchell or any of her comrades that bemoans the efforts of modern black clergy who “bravely” stand up for “marriage equality,” the “right” to healthcare, a “living wage,” contraception, open borders, abortion, and whatever other perverse cause modern liberals have embraced.

Mitchell ignores not only the efforts of today's liberals who operate behind pulpits, and the history of the civil rights era, but also the history of the very founding of this nation. From the Puritan ministers who, over a century prior to the American Revolution, established the first representative forms of government in America and gave us the first attempts at a written constitution and a bill of rights, to the firebrand preachers of the first Great Awakening who helped light the fires of revolution in America, to the abolitionists who preached the evils of slavery, the Christian clergy in the U.S., both black and white, have been instrumental in American history.

Written documents of governance from American ministers were the practice in virtually every colony founded in early America. Such practice laid the groundwork for the American Revolution. As my upcoming book notes, “for it was in the pulpits of American churches that the seeds of Revolution were sewn. The British certainly thought so, as they blamed what they derisively described as the ‘Black Robed Regiment’ for the thirst in the Colonies for American Independence. Modern historians have noted, ‘There is not a right asserted in the Declaration of Independence which had not been discussed by the New England clergy before 1763.’”

I don’t know if Ms. Mitchell claims to be a Christian, but her sad ideas of Christianity and what it means to be a Christian are very common these days. Whether it’s the Rev. Corey Brooks, Tim Tebow, Rick Warren, the pastors in Houston, or any other Christian today whose efforts run contrary to the modern liberal worldview, what liberals really want is silence.

As my pastor, who is also my father-in-law, often points out, when Christ truly comes into someone’s life, He is not simply a section of that life, as in a grapefruit. He is not something that we devote part of one day to and are supposed to keep separate from the rest of our lives—work, family, entertainment, politics, and so on.

Instead of a grapefruit, a person who has surrendered his or her life to Christ is more like a glass of milk that has had chocolate syrup squeezed into it. Once the chocolate and the milk are combined, it is impossible to separate one from the other. This certainly should be the case for those who occupy our pulpits. In fact, given the tragic state of morality in America today, we need more like Rev. Brooks who are willing to get into a “street brawl.”

Copyright 2014, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

The Greatest Civil Rights Battle of All Time

In their desire to wash their hands of President George W. Bush, Americans handed the keys of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to Barak Obama. In addition, many Americans, in their lust to cross a great racial and civil rights hurdle, voted into the White House a politician with one of the vilest voting records towards the unborn ever seen in American politics. How ironic that so many talking heads are trumpeting Barak Obama’s victory as an unmatched milestone for civil rights, while the most discriminated against humans ever, the unborn, continue their plight.

At its despicable peak, the African slave population reached about four million in 1860. Between the years 1880 and 1951 the Tuskegee Institute reports that 3,437 African-Americans were lynched in the United States. Approximately 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust during World War II. A total of about 1.3 million American soldiers have died in all U.S. military conflicts. Each of these figures represents events that are uniquely tragic. However, they pale in comparison to the over 48 million Americans who have died in the womb since 1973.

Male and female; black, white, brown; children of every people group imaginable have suffered. Barak Obama has shown at best indifference and at worst unusual hostility towards the most defenseless amongst us. He is on record as saying that one of his first acts as President would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act which would supersede any laws that restrict any abortion. Yet his election to the highest office in the land is being hailed by many as a victory for the downtrodden and the oppressed.

With Obama taking office and with liberals now firmly in charge of both houses of Congress it is more important than ever that pro-life Americans let their voices be heard. Obviously many Americans were more concerned with their pocketbooks than with the plight of the unborn in this latest election.

All of us are selfish by nature and so it is not surprising that most Americans voted with their wallet in mind instead of the womb. America needs to be continually reminded of the legal “lynching’s” that take place inside women’s wombs to the tune of over 1 million per year.

Our Declaration of Independence states that, “all men are created equal,” and to many in our nation the election of a black man as our President has never made these words seem truer. However, immediately following that phrase our Declaration declares that we are endowed by our Creator “with certain unalienable rights,” and, of course, the first of these “rights” is the right to life.

Slavery nearly tore our nation in two, and hundreds of thousands of died to bring it to an end. After the calamity of the Civil War, it still took over a century later for America to finally properly recognize the equal rights and protections that were due a certain group of its citizens. It is time for similar actions to take place for those still in the womb.

It is beyond comprehension how any person can consider themselves a champion of civil rights and ignore the unborn. Liberals in America must shed their blatant hypocrisy and, not only enlist in the greatest civil rights battle of all time, but also help bring to an end the greatest holocaust the world has ever known.

Copyright 2008, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com