Rotten Wood

Do we ever learn? Or more specifically, do the people on the left ever learn? They just elected a communist to be the mayor of New York City. We can look at the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, etc., as proof that communism is and will always be an abject failure. I thought this was a well-established fact. Communism does not work. Communist used to be a bad word in American politics. If you wanted to discredit someone, label him or her a communist. But not anymore. Candidates can proudly proclaim they are a communist, and in certain left-leaning areas of the country, that person will get elected overwhelmingly. Zohran Mamdani is the perfect example. He was recently elected to be mayor of New York City, and he has not been shy about his intentions of imposing his socialist policies on the city. In his acceptance speech, he said, "we will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about." Which means, he wants the tentacles of government in every aspect of New Yorkers’ lives – big or small.  He wants to create government run grocery stores. He wants the city to seize private property and turn them into “affordable” public housing. He wants to make the buses and subways free. He wants free daycare. He is pushing to pass the New York Health Act, a bill that would establish a single-payer healthcare system within New York State. And all of this is under the promise of making living in New York City “affordable”.

We do not have to look at all those other countries to see the failures of socialism and know how everything will turn out in New York City, we can look at our own country, and see how we are dealing with the fallout of the socialist programs that we have implemented because far-left politicians promised they would make things more “affordable”. Whenever you hear a leftist politician promise that he is going to make something “affordable”, he is actually going to make it “unaffordable”.  

In 1993, President Bill Clinton created the Federal Direct Student Loan program promising that it would make student loans more assessable and more “affordable”, while saving taxpayer money. Since 1993, the cost of college tuition has increased by 114%. The colleges and universities simply increased their tuition to take advantage of this new government guaranteed loan program. And the amount of student loan debt carried by American citizens has skyrocketed, reaching an insurmountable $1.18 trillion. And over 90% of that debt is held by the federal government. Clinton’s plan to make college more “affordable” has made college tuition and paying back student loans completely unaffordable. People, on average, carry so much student loan debt, that a major policy platform for the Democrat candidates in the last two Presidential elections has been government forgiving student loan debt, which would essentially socialize college education. And we know how that always ends.

In 2010, without one Republican vote, President Barack Obama signed into law, the Affordable Care Act which, as predicted, made healthcare unaffordable for most people. At the time, Obama promised that the ACA would reduce the national debt by $4 trillion. He promised that it would reduce healthcare premiums for our families by $2,500 per year. What has happened? Healthcare costs in America have more than doubled for the average family of 4 – increasing from $18,000 in 2010 to $35,000 in 2025. The national debt has almost tripled since 2010 – going from $13.5 trillion when Obama Care was passed, to $38.1 trillion today.

There have been other things that have increased dramatically over the last 15 years as well – health insurance company stocks. The stock performances of the major health insurance companies over the last 15 years have increased astronomically – United Health Group is up 1177%; Cigna is up 822%; Anthem is up 414%; Humana is up 490%; Molina is up 859%; Centene is up 604%; Aetna is up 595%. That’s unprecedented growth, especially when you consider that health insurance stocks have always been categorized as value stocks not growth stocks like the tech sector. It also came out last week, that retiring former Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, made $130M in stock profits during her Congressional career – a return of 16,930%, greatly outpacing the most successful stock investor of all, Warren Buffet.

So, when the government takes over a sector of the economy, as they did with healthcare in 2010, every problem in that sector becomes infinitely worse and never better. A lot of politicians and corporate cronies get much richer, as we have seen, but every problem becomes much worse. The Affordable Care Act made healthcare for the average American family unaffordable. It has also driven our country into massive debt, as it does to every country who adopts socialized medicine. There are no exceptions.

You may ask, what about Canada and the United Kingdom, they have socialized medicine, aren’t their healthcare systems great? The leading cause of death in Quebec last year was medically assisted suicide. Let me say it again, medically assisted suicide. And it wasn’t people in their 90s with terminal illnesses writhing in excruciating pain who chose to kill themselves. The majority of the people who elected medically assisted suicide in Canada were younger people who were diagnosed with a chronic illness, that could have been managed with proper medication and healthcare to help them live another 30 to 40 years, but those patients decided to kill themselves rather than get involved with the Canadian government run healthcare system. In fact, when people are diagnosed with a chronic illness in those countries, the first person they meet with after the diagnosis is the medically assisted suicide consultant. That is their protocol. Let’s try to convince the person to kill themselves rather than have the government foot the bill for their care for the rest of their lives.

The leftists will rave and rave about the healthcare in Canada and the UK being free because that helps them achieve their more diabolical agenda. Both of those countries are being overrun by Middle Eastern illegal immigrants, who come there looking for a bunch of free stuff. And that’s the main issue when socializing anything. As soon as people hear that something is free, you’ll be flooded with people who want it for free. None of these migrants have paid into the system, but they have no problem taking from the system. That’s the issue. That’s one of the reasons why socialized anything becomes unsustainable. These migrants can only afford to live in Western countries if most of their needs are being taken care of by the government, and the leftists are more than happy to use your tax dollars to keep them here.

Mamdani wants to socialize as much as possible in New York City, not for the current citizens who are living there, but for the people from foreign countries that he hopes to import into the city. That is the far-reaching plan of the left. They want to change the electorate by flooding the Western countries with third world uneducated, unskilled migrants who do not speak our language or align with our culture or values, who also could not live in this country unless they received massive benefits from the government. They are doing this not just to win in the upcoming elections, but to create an electorate that is completely dependent on government for their survival. 59% of illegal immigrant households and 52% of legal immigrant households are on one or more welfare benefits. There are two ways of creating a slave – working someone without pay or paying someone without work. The Democrats already did the first 150 years ago, now they are on to the second. They want to create as much government dependency as possible, just like they did to the black community back in the 1960’s with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Now over 90% of the black population votes for the Democrats even though Democrat politicians do very little to help the black community. That is called modern day slavery. Every welfare payment is a form of ownership. The Democrats want to own the immigrant communities as much as they own the black communities.

Socialism will not work in New York City. It is incompatible with what New York City has been all about for centuries. The problem is that socialists never learn. Even when socialism is proving to be an abject failure like it already has in this country, the socialists never back down from their socialism. They never admit that they were wrong; they never learn from their failures; the socialists’ answer is always more socialism. Bernie Sanders solution to the failures of Obama Care was not get rid of Obama Care, but for the government to inject even more and more money into the failing program which would only socialize medicine even more, making it more unaffordable which would require even more government subsidies, and around and around we go. Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana called Bernie Sanders plan, putting “fresh paint on rotten wood”. And that is what the socialists Democrats always do – double down on their failures.

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Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.