By now, you've no doubt seen or heard the quotes from Nancy Pelosi, extolling the virtues of universal healthcare:
Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer, a writer, without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.
Imagine an economy where people could follow their passions and their talent without having to worry that their children would not have health insurance, that if they had a child with diabetes who was bipolar or pre-existing medical condition in their family, that they would be job-locked.
From the American Thinker:
The problem with Pelosi's remarks, however, is that from hindsight, they are not bright, new, or liberating. On the contrary, almost identical words were penned over a hundred years ago by another champion of economic "freedom": Karl Marx. Marx criticized the private economy because it led to the "renunciation of life and of human needs."
Like Pelosi, Marx was deeply troubled by an economic system that left most people job-locked and unable to satisfy their "human need" to become more authentic. In other words, the more you have to work, said Marx, "the less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theater or to balls, or to the public house, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc."
...This kind of sheer lunacy could have been hatched only by an unemployed academic and journalist like Marx, who, by the way, was supported financially in his authentically job-liberated struggle against capitalism by his wealthy colleague Friedrich Engels. What's most disturbing is the number of wild-eyed crusaders, both then and now, who have fallen for Marx's creative definition of "freedom."
So I guess I can quit my day job and become a full time blogger. Sure, it doesn't pay as well, but we're well on our way to the point where so much will be "free" that we won't really need money anyway.
It's like that cartoon where Obama gives everyone freebies and then promises them jobs, too: What do we need jobs for? Money's the same way -- once everything's paid for, what will be the point of money?
The problem is that doctors, like the rest of us, don't work for money. They work for the things the money can buy. And when you guarantee that someone doesn't have to actually produce anything to get money -- or health insurance -- you're left with the question of who, exactly, will produce the things of value that doctors work for. Call it a wild guess, but I'm thinking your doctor appreciates the net value of your contribution at your regular job more than your fine art. Your job is supposed to be what you do in exchange for the things you consume, and the idea is that everything you produce should be equal in value to everything you consume.
So I guess healthcare reform is now an extension of the National Endowment for the Arts -- another fringe benefit added to the compensation package for people who receive an entitlement for doing whatever they want instead of doing what other people might actually be willing to pay them for.
If the economy actually makes it that far, we're approaching the point where you'll be able to lose your job, take unemployment for as long as two years, and have your healthcare paid for.
Think about it: The classic unemployment benefit problem is one of denial -- a laid-off worker holds out for his old job, his old salary, his old benefits; it's only when the money runs out that his hand is forced and he finally accepts his new position in the economy.
In a way, it comes down to an agreement about your job title. You may call yourself an assembly line worker for as long as you receive unemployment, but the truth is that you cease being an assembly line worker the day the factory shuts down. And all that time you think you're still in manufacturing while you're drawing a benefit? Well, that's just the period where you don't yet realize that from now on you're going to be in retail.
By Pelosi's line of thinking, your lost job is no longer a signal that you're more valuable elsewhere. Now it's an opportunity for you to throw your energies into producing nothing of material value -- without having to be worried about living on the nothing that you produce.
Pelosi just increased the benefit: Instead of waiting for the day when a furloughed assembly line worker figures out that his new future is in retail, we're going to throw in a little something extra so he can try his hand at painting. Wonderful.
Let's just hope all the doctors -- and all the people who produce all the things starving artists need -- don't suddenly decide to become violinists. Or glass-blowers. Or whatever.
The real mind-boggling going on here is that we're supposed to feel sorry for people who could be artists if only they weren't "job locked" in occupations of actual value.
And it's interesting how your boss -- your job -- is something to be liberated from. People don't realize that it's your needs that enslave you -- your boss and your job are actually part of the solution.
That's the John Galt Line.
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