Disclaimer: I am no political guru, I just got out of the Borg late last year but I do listen things and read articles and try to be at least somewhat informed. I have no dog in this race but find Bernie's stance interesting and know and have spoken with some of his vocal supporters. What follows is my experience and opinions based on such.
I grew up poor-ish. We had a cheap house in a fairly bad neighborhood and drove old beaters. My dad worked for a factory and I don't think he ever made more than $10/hour, and mom didn't work. When dad's factory went on strike, things would get really tough. However, there was always a program to get us through and we never did without. We could have been in a better position but my mom chose not to work, and my dad turned down overtime often because of JW responsibilities.
Fast forward to a few years ago. Dad didn't take care of himself. He was told for years to get his blood sugar under control, actually for decades, and didn't. He was wasting away and we got him to go to a doctor and found out that his blood sugar was off the charts. He was put on medication and a new diet. He wasn't very compliant. Within that next decade his kidneys failed and he went on dialysis and couldn't work anymore. My parents still never went without. They got all kinds of benefits, benefits that he paid in for over all of those years, but again there were programs there for them.
Let's talk food stamps for a minute. My mom was appalled by the program. She said that she had more money on food stamps to spend at the grocery than she had ever had. In fact, for the first time she could afford to buy the brand named items and had to in order to even come close to spending her share. She felt bad spending so much because it didn't feel right to her.
So when people say "what will the poor people do as things are currently constructed" I say that some choose that lifestyle. Poor people sometimes refuse to do the things it would take to get out of their situation. Mom could have worked and didn't want to. Dad could have taken overtime and didn't. It isn't like wealthy people are sitting around all day not working. The highest earners I know are usually the ones working the most. They live their businesses. My parents never chose to get new skills or reach out for anything. They were stuck of their own choosing, and even then with bad decisions over the years they always got a big tax return for being low income with kids and there were programs galore to bail them out.
Of course, those programs came with the ulcers that my mom probably has from dealing with governmental red tape for everything. She was sent a summons to court to appear for fraud because the government kept putting money on her account after she no longer qualified for food stamps. She had stopped spending them and told the government that they were on some other program and no longer needed or qualified for them. She was honest and because she didn't spend them the government eventually got their act together and dropped the charges. But dealing with the government was a part-time job for my mom, constantly fighting them tooth and nail for every program they qualified for.
So it surprises me to see so many people advocating for more governmental control. They are inefficient idiots. Why do we want them controlling health care or anything else? They are deeply in debt and yet we want them to have more of our money?
Most of the people that I personally know that love Bernie are rather entitled. They have parents that have worked hard to give them nice lives and they think that everyone should get college paid for and more. But how many people waste their college years on something totally non-productive? Getting a degree in something with no marketable potential, and now we're all supposed to front the bill for that? Drinking and partying is now government sanctioned? What about everyone with student loans now? Are they forgiven? And how many people go to college and get a degree in something just because mom and dad want them to? College isn't for everyone.
I worked my ass off to get out of the situation that I grew up in. I had scholarship offers to engineering school and turned them down to pioneer (ugh). But rather than expecting someone to hand me something I worked hard and my wife and I make roughly $30-35k each cleaning houses after expenses. We work long hours at times, much more than the 40 hours that for some reason we've set up as a standard by which everyone theoretically should be able to support a family based on current rhetoric. We don't run to the doctor for every hangnail, or rarely ever (haven't been in years other than check-ups). We take reasonable care of ourselves, don't smoke or drink or anything and are reasonable weights for our heights. We've been lucky to keep our insurance from pre-ACA so far and our rates are low, but if we are forced into Obamacare our rates will triple and our deductible will rise for service that actually pays a lower percentage of covered events than what we currently have. That is messed up.
So where would Bernie benefit me/us? It looks like I'd pay more so that other people can go to college and run to the doctor every time they get a sniffle on my dime. I'm not averse to helping people, but as a person that's scratched and clawed for everything he's got and that hopes to maybe this year be able to finally put something back for retirement, you're telling me that the government could tax me and take away that money too.
The ACA actually forced my mom to go find a job. She had to work to pay for the insurance that she now had to have because previously there were actually programs that helped my parents that went away with the new system.
I guess I just don't see how more programs funded by my dollars are a good thing. Abuse of the system is so rampant, and the government is too inept to take care of the abuse. You can't just throw money at problems and expect them to go away. You can't out-earn your stupidity. The government will find a way to screw up the programs and probably end up further in debt. Our country goes into other lands and hands out money and programs that cripple communities because they lose any desire or will to improve themselves. I'm afraid that if Bernie is elected we'll just do more of that here too. People like I saw growing up will have less incentive to get out of their situations. They will become more dependent on others instead of more independent.
With that said, I like the ideas that Bernie puts forth on some levels. I just don't think that humans can be counted on to use them wisely. More control just reminds me of my j-dub days with people making my decisions for me and I don't like that much. Maybe in the end it is the lesser of the evils presented for candidacy, but those are my concerns about Bernie. I'd love to know how he's really going to fix things, not just throw money at things, because most issues in life are behavioral and I'm not sure how those things get changed. I've talked to some Bernie supporters and so far the answers haven't been anything more than "feeling the Bern" and I'd love to have more substance as far as how things really benefit and change under him.
