Republican @ 20 .vs. Democrat @ 40

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There's an old saying that goes something like this:

If you vote Republican at 20 you have no heart.  If you vote Democrat at 40, you have no brain.

The problem is that young voters have, for the last eight years, been voting for their own destruction, and now they're getting it -- in spades.

The worse news is that the Republicans are simply asking whether you'd like to go in the wood chipper feet first or head first rather than offering actual policy fixes.

Let's just focus on two, both of which come from the same problem: Monopolies.

First, education.

What happens when you throw what amounts to unlimited amounts of money at something by allowing people to borrow virtually any amount?  The price shoots the moon.  Then you change the law so that the borrowed money can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and voila -- instant slaves. 

You demanded crazy resort-style colleges, instead of plain cinder-block dorms and a place to learn something.  The colleges engaged in an arms race of stadium and gilded "student center" building, all financed (that is, with debt that will have to be paid) and in some cases they were (and are) crazy enough to issue century bonds for it (that is, 100 year maturities.)  What are the odds that said building will be standing in 100 years?  I'll take the other side of that one, but when you (and your parents) march into the financial "aid" office and file that FAFSA and then sign on the line you are directly and intentionally blowing your own financial brains out.

I remind you: You voted for this with both ballots and your wallet over the last couple of decades and you're still doing it today.

What you didn't demand and vote for was no student loans -- at all, period -- and level pricing so that you cannot be forced to pay for the "poor kid" sitting next to you in class, refusing to consent to anything else.  Without students there is no school which means you had the power as students and parents to stop this crap but you refused to do so and instead advocated what has happened.  While it sounds really good to "help" said poor kid what happens is that he pays the same and you pay his bill in full.  He used to be able to flip pizzas to afford college but now he doesn't have to -- you get to pay both his bill and yours.

Still feeling good about your alma mater and the policies you demanded with your applicaton and attendance, never mind voting for them -- just so you didn't have to flip those pizzas and live in a basic cinder-block dorm but instead could drink beer all Friday night in a gilded "suite"?

Talk to me about how good you feel since avoiding that pizza-flipping means you will never be able to buy a house or start a family because of the crushing debt you are carrying as the policies you voted for and demanded have inflated the cost of college by a factor of at least 5 times!  The result is over a trillion in student loan debt and a default rate of roughly 1 in five.

Oh, and we'll get to another part of this issue shortly, which bears on this too.

Second, health care.

Take the price of a routine birth from 1963 and inflate it by the CPI from then to now.  You find that you should be able to have a routine birth in a hospital for just under $1,000 in cash.

How much does it really cost?  Eight, ten, 20 times that much.

Why?

Because you again voted for and demanded an infinite money supply to feed the medical system through "benefits" at your job and the price rose as a consequence from monopoly practices and protections, exactly as it did in "higher education."

Now you can't possibly afford even routine medical emergencies without "insurance" and nearly 1/5th of the economy is now medical care -- which comes directly out of your hide.  This is a major part of the reason that wages have collapsed and your standard of living and the job market are both in the toilet.

Even very poor people could come up with $1,000 for a birth if we hadn't done that, especially when you have 9 months to do it.  How do you expect a poor, or even middle-class person, to come up with 20x that much?  You don't, but this is what you voted for and demanded both in the ballot box and at your place of employment.

Then you went even further and demanded (and voted for) Brosurance, otherwise known as "Obamacare."  And you got that too -- I warned at the time that this would roughly double the cost for health "insurance" for healthy, young people. You called me names and said it would make your prices go down. 

I pointed out that this claim and your belief in it was irrational; after all, what's the price of fire insurance on your house if you call the company to buy it after lighting the house on fire? 

This is what Obamacare forces and the result was utterly predictable, even as to magnitude.  I wasn't off by much with my back-of-the-envelope guess, as it turns out.

Now where's my apology and admission that I was right -- you again voted to put the shotgun of government in your own mouth and blow your brains out.

Crickets I tell you, crickets....

What's worse about both of these fields is that they're technologically strong fields -- both are heavy users and exploiters of technology -- that is, productivity improvement. 

As a result you should see dramatically lower costs for both over time because the cost of technology over time makes things cheaper virtually everywhere -- except in these two places.

How much is a computer today .vs. one five years ago of the same capability?  Much less.  How about of 10, 15, 20 years ago?  The capability that I have on my desktop today was not available at any price -- save perhaps in mainframes that consumed an entire floor of building and cost millions.

So why are education and medical care different? 

They're not -- but the reduction in cost due to technology has been siphoned off and turned into an escalation of cost instead, while you are being literally extorted to pay those funds after you in fact both demanded and voted for exactly these policies, irrespective of whether you voted Republican or Democrat!

So enjoy the pain folks.  All you've gotten thus far is the tip and that has hurt badly enough but I assure you the rest is going where that went, and you're going to get it good and hard to the limit of your ability to take it -- if not beyond.

I, and a few others, warned you but you either called me names or turned what was a populist movement (e.g. The Tea Party) into a "Guns, Gays and God" distraction rather than sticking to the demand that those who lied, cheated and stole deserve to go bankrupt and then be indicted, prosecuted, tried and imprisoned for their offenses, thus deflating the excess leverage and returning sanity to prices througout the economy.

And by the way, before you whine that this politician or that lied about the outcome, may I ask you exactly when you've ever had a politician not lie to you, especially when it comes to outcomes?  Ever read PJ O'Rourke's Parliament of *****s?  Written in 2003 there's damned little excuse more than a decade later for continuing what you've been doing, whether you're Democrat or Republican.

You can't call something you consent to******and as such you may as well smile because you are getting exactly what you asked for, indeed, what you demanded.