Comments from a college student.

Michael is currently a Junior at Temple University's Boyer School. He wrote the following comments and suggested to me that they might make a good post on my blog.  He is right, so his comments are below:

It's easier for society as a whole to share the burden than to put it on each person individually. Simple logic actually. Fiscal Conservatism is fundamentally flawed because of the increases in technology paired with the decrease in cost of technology. Because the potential quality of life for each person can increase so quickly and cheaply on the whole, a belief that one cannot progressively create programs for a nation as a whole to enjoy under an umbrella of equality is utterly false. Health care is a good example, i.e. in Canada.



Without foreign wars or the burden of the Euro (Europe's financial woes are more the result of the poorer E.U. countries struggles with maintaining an economy strong enough to stay in pace with the strength of the Euro), Canada maintains a spending equilibrium while providing its citizens with a strong minimum wage (more than twice of the average in the U.S.) and nationalized Health Care. Canada has no shortage of health professionals, and nobody is going out of business because they need to pay their employees a livable wage. In addition, I believe the U.S. has the potential to do this better than the Canadians because if one can seek and destroy the corporate corruption within our alphabet agencies covering prescription drugs and health care, our government is incredibly effective at keeping us safe.

Ironically, if you cut the spending as proposed by the Republicans (aka spend less earn less, where instead of everybody losing, everybody must suffer to make the top 1% of the country richer), these agencies will either be destroyed or hampered in some way, possibly severely, which directly effects you and your family, Mrs. Milone. Think of me, for instance. How long do you think it will take in this world for me to get health care paid by my employer, especially when the trend is leaning towards them not paying it despite record revenues for corporate entities nationwide? It might not even happen. If President Obama had not made it mandatory for UPenn to provide me with care until I was 28, I likely would have not even had it, costing taxpayers should I have an emergency (wait for it, the irony is so DELICIOUS) even more.

Multiply that by all the young people my age growing up now. I'm going to be an educated person living in utter poverty for what could be a decade or two after I graduate, so what's that to say about the 1/3 of our country that drops out of high school, let alone the small percentage of the remainder that get in and stay in college? Educational cuts have destroyed the system here, which spending cuts would further hamper an already severely crippled system. No money in schools, at home, or for college are leaving more and more people out of the possibility of obtaining the education and comfortable life living in a first-world country should garner for them.

How many generations before our family is left behind mom? It's going to be immigrant life in the 1900s all over again. We can't live in a society that allows robber-barons to profit off of the labor of thousands of people, we as a country decided that 80 years ago. I know you worked your ass off all your life, and in my opinion, deserve more than the richest man in the world. But the fact is, you worked too hard in your life to be where you are. To be quite honest, both you and dad have. I know you're comfortable, but let's be honest, without you and the minimal rewards of your immaculate work ethic to rely on, my Uncle would not have his business success. If you worked as hard as a rich kid needs to succeed as an adult, we'd all be on food stamps.

I'd just like to put things in perspective for you. Someone who works as hard as you firmly believes in work ethic. You know I share those same beliefs mom; you know I work my ass off here. I just can't stand a hard worker being taken advantage of so that someone who isn't working nearly as hard can profit off of his toils and not compensate him in a respectful way. The day our nation's leading employers decide that a pay system that more fairly shares the profits amongst its employees rather than give the people up top huge spending bonuses for work never done, the day they decide that living in a poisonous atmosphere (literally, and I'm not talking CO2 emissions so spare me) is an unacceptable risk for profits, and the day they decide to make safe, useful products people want rather than make unsafe products marketers make people think they want, and until the day corporate funding of campaigns is made illegal (again), I will be voting Democrat (but, if it makes you feel better, only for a lack of a better option, lol).