Social Security, American Style

In the US, when you get unemployed, are sick, or whatever, only limited help can be expected from the federal government. Capitalism rules, and if you cannot help yourself, you are crewed. Really, well, it is more nuanced.

Take the current crises in the financial markets. They are big enough to bring the US economy on its knees, and most of it is caused by the idea that you should lend for everything, even when yo do not have the means to pay those bills..... And so it began. bad credit, here is a loan anyway. A mortgage for the house? Sub-prime, no problem, here it is...... And then the economy did not exactly do what the Bush administration wanted, so you give everybody a stimulation package (Thanks Uncle Sam), but did it solve the issues. No, it just made the deficit sky rocket, but heck, most of the people making those decisions will be embalmed and put in their grave fault before those worries will hit our children and grandchildren. Who cares, we can at least live rich and destroy our earth....

But lets stop that rant there. I wanted to address another aspect of this insane system. First the government encouraged sub-prime loans because that was good for the economy. But the economy did not do what they wanted, so they nationalized two semi-private corporation, Fanny mae and that other one when they came in trouble. (O yes, they tried a few things in between, but that did evidently not help a bit either. Anyway, so what to do next? Well, uncle sam is going to be a mortgage broker, and is going to buy mortgages. Congratulations.

So, who is going to pay all this? We, the tax payers (remind me, no taxation without representation, but I as a foreigner am not allowed to vote, but I do have to pay taxes!)! So, instead of directly developing some system that will help those in need, the US does it inderect by first pushing those people into debts to deal with the life-emergencies, after which they will hekp them anyways, and along the road, leave a lot of money with finacial instititions that could have been left out of the equation if a more sensible social security system would have been in place.