I.O.U.S.A. - 2

Ok, so we're not totally screwed. Things are not looking good, at least according to this book. The national debt is growing like Tiger Wood's list of 'lovers' and programs such and Medicare and Social Security are poised to squeeze out other programs as they begin to require more funding. I.O.U.S.A is not just a book though, it's also a movie. In fact it was a movie before it was a book. The book seeks to summarize the film, in less than 100 pages. In addition to the summary, the book includes interviews with many of the subject of the film. These folks come from all ends of the spectrum of politics. Most, but not all, see the mounting debt as 'the' issue of our time.

The emotion in the film makes it a far more effective communicator than the book. When David Walker, former Comptroller General, speaks he has a passion about the state of things. That's largely missing from the book. Granted, it's hard to capture that kind of thing in the written word, unless you're a great fiction writer. The advantage of the book is the fact that you can reference it and show people key points, hi-lite and take notes.

The best interviews, in my opinion come from David Walker (it's worth youtube-ing the guy as well), Ron Paul, Arthur Laffer, Paul Volcker and Paul O'Neil. This section is good just because you get more information from these folks than could be found in the film.

What I find interesting based on reading the book is potential dire situation we may be heading toward. In the next 30-40 years, the government will have severe difficulty meeting its obligations. The issues are Social Security and Medicare. Meeting them will be near impossible according to current trends, and that's if you eliminate every other federal service; thus the US government becomes a health care/retirement program. The likelihood of this actually happening is quite low. It just means that things will have to change so the balance sheets don't get all out of whack. That means either a cut in benefits, increase in taxes, reduction in other programs, or a combination of all three. What concerns me, after reading this book is the push toward public health-care, a la France.

I'm not against a way to provide health-care to those who struggle. I do think it has to be reasonable. Even if Obama states that the public option would be covered without needing additional tax funds. That may be true now, it may not be true in the future. I believe that when Social Security and Medicare were rolled out, they weren't expected to bring such a perceived burden looming over our heads or our children's heads. Reason had an interesting take on health-care. I know that this situation won't be the same for the 40 million uninsured, but it fits some:

It distresses me that when John Mackey expresses his point of view on health-care he gets crucified, virtually. If we're concerned about finding solutions to these problems, then we should be willing to look into as many realistic options as possible and find the best. I don't like the knee-jerk reaction that we need to turn to the government to solve our problems. There have to be creative ways to solve some of them ourselves. Imagine in auto insurance functioned like health insurance. Filling up with gas or getting an oil change would include a copay, not the actual price of the service. Imagine if each fill up were just $10 or $20. You think pollution is bad now? Granted that's an analogy that may not fit perfectly, but it's the kind of thinking that needs to be looked at. That said, here are some of Mackey's comments from Reason:

Back to the book. In short, I get the message that we need to be more conscious about what we expect from the government. Even when they try to do the right thing, they often get it wrong. It spans from programs to feel good laws, like these at Cracked.com. We're in this mess because people wanted to do the right thing and help others out. Maybe sometimes that's not really the right thing. Providing health care and social security may in the end not be in the country's best interest, over the long run. In a statement from Alexis de Tocqueville in his Memoir on Pauperism he said "It is necessary to do what is most useful for the receiver, not what pleases the giver".

In the end. the book was not near as inspiring as the film, but it's worth checking out, from the library (assuming you can't access the movie). A 30 minute cut of the movie can be found here. For some reason they had the embedding capability disabled.