Article by Howard Sachs in "The American Thinker":
One of the very many reasons I would never vote Left (Democrat) is because of the child-like view of the world embraced by those with this ideology. Children, or adults with childish notions, running the world are a recipe for disaster. Would any adult with his head even modestly screwed on really want to have a world run by the likes of this disturbed teenager, Greta — the leftist Time Magazine's person of the year?
This is particularly true in the economic part of our world — a world that deeply impacts each of our lives, every day of the year. This childishness begins with their utterly naïve belief that government workers and politicians are basically competent, kind, and compassionate, hence deserving great power over each of us. It sweeps across their foolish and destructive open borders policies, their twisted view that American history does not live up to a utopian view of life, the preposterous notion that a boy or girl in the womb is not a living human being, their cosmically foolish calls to end fossil fuel use, and their suicidal notion that disarming the good guy will help smite evil.
This is why the normative Left calls for giving the vote to our clueless 15- and 16-year-olds like Greta. They see these young tabula rasa kids as not very different from their 50-year-old unwise selves. They are children in their views of every topic, particularly regarding creating wealth, money, investments, and business. "Soak the rich," they say. "Free stuff for the masses." "Down with disgusting capitalism and profit." "Redistribute income" (never distributed in the first place). It's why, frighteningly, a large percent of Americans now embrace socialism or communism.
The Left's takeover of our schools and media has brainwashed a whole generation. We've got millions of befuddled biological adults walking about with the minds of kids, cheering on the likes of foolish teen Greta, who should be at home practicing for her soccer meet or piano recital. Give any of these kinderlings or their kind the reins of adult power, and what you get is an utter economic and societal wreckage. You get the squalor, poverty, and degradation of the socialism of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and now Venezuela. You do get nice slogans and cool tee-shirts emblazoned with "Health Care Is a Human Right" and "Medicare for All," but such things won't put food, let alone an MRI scanner or anti-cancer drug, on the table.
People embracing this childish world of the Left will come into my medical office and complain passionately about a $750 bill for an MRI scan. They typically see it as dripping with greed, inequality, privilege — all the woke tropes. They resonate with our first hardcore leftist president, Mr. Obama, who denigrated our noble field of medicine by telling the world the lie that doctors regularly do unnecessary surgeries to fund fancy homes and ski vacations.
But, like children, these men and women of the Left haven't a clue about what goes into creating all the goods and services that soften and dignify their lives. They are clueless about the hundreds of factors that go into that MRI cost or the cost of almost anything. That's the definition of leftism, a puerile ideology where, as the great Dr. Tom Sowell always states, "a man never asks at what cost." They, like their ideological kindergarten mates, think $749 of the $750 charge goes into my pocket rather than the real adult reality of the $5–10 that actually makes it there. Hundreds if not thousands of skilled people are involved in producing that scan and that $750 bill. Beyond the doctor who has spent 12 years after high school training to diagnose illness on an MRI study; it's the multitude of engineers building and maintaining the $1.5-million machine; the chemists producing the liquid nitrogen cooling the magnet; the miners retrieving the copper to form the magnet; the construction guy and architect creating the complex room to support the machine and its high magnetic field; the technologist who uses hundreds of computer and technical parameters to create an interpretable image of the patient; the realtor and builder who provide the rental space; the drug company scientists and owners who spend hundreds of millions developing the solutions injected into the patient for his scan; the insurance agents; the dozen administrators scheduling, documenting, and complying with massive number of government regulations; and on and on.
In fact, this week, after decades of helping run my medical business, I finally understood an important economic-business concept of depreciation — another serious and important adult- level item that goes into the cost of any thing we consume or service we receive. Goods and services need capital input to be created and maintained. Someone has to buy the $1.5-million MRI scanner before a single patient is scanned. That money does not come from some government fantasy money tree. It comes from ordinary American businesspeople like me and you reaching into our pockets and writing the check. Then that vital piece of capital, the scanner, has a shelf life. After maybe seven years, it needs to be junked, and another $1.5 million is needed to continue the business. Hence, the cost each year for that capital input is about $22,000. That is depreciation. It is, by the way, only a fraction of the service contract each year of over $100,000. Hence, before a dime of profit from the farmer can be put in his pocket, all the typical costs of business, including the important one of depreciation, must be accounted for, must be subtracted from the gross intake of money per year.
The more I think about it, the more the $750 for the MRI feels like a bargain — but not to our friends on the Left. It is raw greed and injustice, that $750 bill. Obama would tell us it's for our multiple BMWs. In the Disney World view of life of the Left, such things should be free — given to each man from the pretend government money tree because everyone has a "right to health care." And if not free, some Princeton grad in gender studies working for the government should be able to announce that a socially just price for an MRI scan should be, what, $50? $73?
Children like this can talk about price all they want. The adult world, the anti-Leftist world, recognizes the fact that things cost money and that most of those costs are hidden from or not apparent to the consumer. Adults, versus Leftists, recognize that things cost money; good and important things cost lots of money, and a man must pay for them. They also understand that it is capitalism, not government, that best can bring us such things in abundance and excellence and at the lowest cost. That is because with capitalism there are true costs accounted for, true vibrant competition, the energizing effects of the profit motive, and true free choice by the producer and consumer to exchange money for services and goods.
Demanding that government step in and give us "free stuff" is clinging to a childish vision of life. It is always a guaranteed recipe for waste, high costs, rationing, and low quality. So yes, indeed, Bernie and Elizabeth and Mayor Pete, I say, grow up; get a job; run a donut shop; pay some light bills and employee salaries and some depreciation and service contracts before you leap on that stage and spout your foolish, utterly childish notions about all this free stuff you kind, compassionate woke folks of government are going to give us. It's just a Disney fantasy, and most American adults still have the sense to change the channel. They changed that channel in 2016 and hopefully will do it again in 2020.
One of the very many reasons I would never vote Left (Democrat) is because of the child-like view of the world embraced by those with this ideology. Children, or adults with childish notions, running the world are a recipe for disaster. Would any adult with his head even modestly screwed on really want to have a world run by the likes of this disturbed teenager, Greta — the leftist Time Magazine's person of the year?
This is particularly true in the economic part of our world — a world that deeply impacts each of our lives, every day of the year. This childishness begins with their utterly naïve belief that government workers and politicians are basically competent, kind, and compassionate, hence deserving great power over each of us. It sweeps across their foolish and destructive open borders policies, their twisted view that American history does not live up to a utopian view of life, the preposterous notion that a boy or girl in the womb is not a living human being, their cosmically foolish calls to end fossil fuel use, and their suicidal notion that disarming the good guy will help smite evil.
This is why the normative Left calls for giving the vote to our clueless 15- and 16-year-olds like Greta. They see these young tabula rasa kids as not very different from their 50-year-old unwise selves. They are children in their views of every topic, particularly regarding creating wealth, money, investments, and business. "Soak the rich," they say. "Free stuff for the masses." "Down with disgusting capitalism and profit." "Redistribute income" (never distributed in the first place). It's why, frighteningly, a large percent of Americans now embrace socialism or communism.
The Left's takeover of our schools and media has brainwashed a whole generation. We've got millions of befuddled biological adults walking about with the minds of kids, cheering on the likes of foolish teen Greta, who should be at home practicing for her soccer meet or piano recital. Give any of these kinderlings or their kind the reins of adult power, and what you get is an utter economic and societal wreckage. You get the squalor, poverty, and degradation of the socialism of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and now Venezuela. You do get nice slogans and cool tee-shirts emblazoned with "Health Care Is a Human Right" and "Medicare for All," but such things won't put food, let alone an MRI scanner or anti-cancer drug, on the table.
People embracing this childish world of the Left will come into my medical office and complain passionately about a $750 bill for an MRI scan. They typically see it as dripping with greed, inequality, privilege — all the woke tropes. They resonate with our first hardcore leftist president, Mr. Obama, who denigrated our noble field of medicine by telling the world the lie that doctors regularly do unnecessary surgeries to fund fancy homes and ski vacations.
But, like children, these men and women of the Left haven't a clue about what goes into creating all the goods and services that soften and dignify their lives. They are clueless about the hundreds of factors that go into that MRI cost or the cost of almost anything. That's the definition of leftism, a puerile ideology where, as the great Dr. Tom Sowell always states, "a man never asks at what cost." They, like their ideological kindergarten mates, think $749 of the $750 charge goes into my pocket rather than the real adult reality of the $5–10 that actually makes it there. Hundreds if not thousands of skilled people are involved in producing that scan and that $750 bill. Beyond the doctor who has spent 12 years after high school training to diagnose illness on an MRI study; it's the multitude of engineers building and maintaining the $1.5-million machine; the chemists producing the liquid nitrogen cooling the magnet; the miners retrieving the copper to form the magnet; the construction guy and architect creating the complex room to support the machine and its high magnetic field; the technologist who uses hundreds of computer and technical parameters to create an interpretable image of the patient; the realtor and builder who provide the rental space; the drug company scientists and owners who spend hundreds of millions developing the solutions injected into the patient for his scan; the insurance agents; the dozen administrators scheduling, documenting, and complying with massive number of government regulations; and on and on.
In fact, this week, after decades of helping run my medical business, I finally understood an important economic-business concept of depreciation — another serious and important adult- level item that goes into the cost of any thing we consume or service we receive. Goods and services need capital input to be created and maintained. Someone has to buy the $1.5-million MRI scanner before a single patient is scanned. That money does not come from some government fantasy money tree. It comes from ordinary American businesspeople like me and you reaching into our pockets and writing the check. Then that vital piece of capital, the scanner, has a shelf life. After maybe seven years, it needs to be junked, and another $1.5 million is needed to continue the business. Hence, the cost each year for that capital input is about $22,000. That is depreciation. It is, by the way, only a fraction of the service contract each year of over $100,000. Hence, before a dime of profit from the farmer can be put in his pocket, all the typical costs of business, including the important one of depreciation, must be accounted for, must be subtracted from the gross intake of money per year.
The more I think about it, the more the $750 for the MRI feels like a bargain — but not to our friends on the Left. It is raw greed and injustice, that $750 bill. Obama would tell us it's for our multiple BMWs. In the Disney World view of life of the Left, such things should be free — given to each man from the pretend government money tree because everyone has a "right to health care." And if not free, some Princeton grad in gender studies working for the government should be able to announce that a socially just price for an MRI scan should be, what, $50? $73?
Children like this can talk about price all they want. The adult world, the anti-Leftist world, recognizes the fact that things cost money and that most of those costs are hidden from or not apparent to the consumer. Adults, versus Leftists, recognize that things cost money; good and important things cost lots of money, and a man must pay for them. They also understand that it is capitalism, not government, that best can bring us such things in abundance and excellence and at the lowest cost. That is because with capitalism there are true costs accounted for, true vibrant competition, the energizing effects of the profit motive, and true free choice by the producer and consumer to exchange money for services and goods.
Demanding that government step in and give us "free stuff" is clinging to a childish vision of life. It is always a guaranteed recipe for waste, high costs, rationing, and low quality. So yes, indeed, Bernie and Elizabeth and Mayor Pete, I say, grow up; get a job; run a donut shop; pay some light bills and employee salaries and some depreciation and service contracts before you leap on that stage and spout your foolish, utterly childish notions about all this free stuff you kind, compassionate woke folks of government are going to give us. It's just a Disney fantasy, and most American adults still have the sense to change the channel. They changed that channel in 2016 and hopefully will do it again in 2020.
