Local control may not be EZ but is worth it.

The Washington Post recently ran an article titled, When a Deep Red Town's Only Grocery Closed, City Hall Opened Its Own Store. Just Don't Call It 'Socialism.'

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-florida-food-desert-city-owned-grocery-store/)

The thrust of the article is the irony of this conservative stronghold employing socialism to allow their community to survive. Surely these "salt of the earth" deplorables must hate having their local governemnt involved in what has traditionally been a private enterprise. If they don't, then shame on them, seems to be the voice in the article, for not supporting Basic Minimum Income, Wealth Redistribution, Medicare for All, and the Green New Deal.

What the author (and editor) and the far left in general seem to miss, completely, is the key word "Local."

Our nation has a long and proud history of neighbors helping neighbors and running communal institutions to do that. My father and grandfather in the late 19th and through the mid-20th century were members of local agricultural co-operatives. Most unions started as local organizations of workers. Conservatives are not against neighbor helping neighbor.

What conservatives DON'T want is for bureaucrats in a far-off national capital telling them what they must do, how to do it, and punishing them with taxes or worse if they don't toe the line. Conservatives want local goals, actions, and control.

It wasn't hard to understand in 1890. I don't know why it isn't EZ to understand today.

Business is not EZ

As a part-owner of a business, I find it distressing that so many people think that business owners are greedy and "rich." We employ people in several states, Ohio included. Of each and every dollar of company revenue, 42.4 cents go to direct salaries, 16 cents to employee benefits, our overhead (taxes and cost of doing business) averages about 37.9 cents on every dollar (higher in Ohio, lower in Texas.) On average, that leaves about 3.7 cents of every dollar in "profit." From that 3.7 cents we have to maintain and reinvest to grow and meet any contingencies. We are barely able to be price competitive now, despite making all the economies we can find. Any increase in taxes or costs MUST be passed along to our customers or we must close and eliminate the jobs we have slaved to create. If the increases cause us to become non-competitive, we may have the choice of moving to a lower cost environment. Here's a secret for you to share: No business has ever paid a penny in taxes. Businesses simply collect the taxes from their customers and pass them along to the government. Businesses aren't taxed -- people are taxed. George Soros is rich. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are rich. Very few businessmen ever reach those pinnacles -- and if they do, it is because they have offered something of value to millions of working people. I personally don't agree with George Soros' politics, but I love his Progressive Insurance Company because they offer good service and value for the cost. That's good business, and good business is good for the economy and good for the Republic.

The U.S. Senate Health Control Plan...I mean Health "Care" Plan.

The only "entitlement" is life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and equal treatment under the law. We PAY for everything else: police to protect us, highways to drive on, the FAA to monitor air safety, the schools that educate us, we that pay taxes pay for it all. The representatives who pass our laws? They are our employees, not vice-versa, we pay their salaries and expenses. When I show up sick at the ER and cannot pay, the rest of you will pay through taxes or higher insurance. There is no free lunch. I think health care is something that we, as a society, should choose to pay for. An online acquaintance put it to me this way through a quote from a renowned American Jurist: "I like paying taxes; with them, I buy civilization." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Seems my opinions are considered strange by both extremes: I'd like to see a national single-payer system available for all (and I do mean all) which would include good health maintenance (including encouraging people to take appropriate responsibility for their own health -- liberal social engineering at its finest that this near-libertarian loves) as well as routine, emergency, and catastrophic care. This should be paid for through taxes, and it should be administered by a not-for-profit agency accountable to congress. All this, while at the same time allowing people who can and choose to do so to pay for care above and beyond -- like for purely cosmetic, experimental, or luxury-spa-type clinics and hospitals which are allowed to operate on a for-profit basis--call it a hybrid between public and privately funded systems. Our streets and highways are an analogy: The government (local, state, national) builds and maintains the roads with our tax money where we as individuals could not do so. Each person then can buy the compatible transportation module of his/her choice and means from many for-profit sources. I can drive my eco-friendly ultra-low-emissions econobox or a scooter while a person who can and wishes to pay more for the vehicle itself (and more in highway costs through sales taxes and fuel taxes) can drive the luxury boat of their choice. States run their own highway programs, meeting Federal standards. One difference from highway funds -- I'd like to see the states collect ALL the tax money for health care and manage the single-payer health care within their states -- meeting, of course, Federal standards. On the plus side, this builds incentive (and competition) for efficient management. On the minus side, it opens up more opportunities for fraud and would have to be closely monitored as we do now with the collection and management of employment taxes and sales taxes.

How about the Constitutional issues of requiring everyone to have coverage and the issues of how to fairly collect the taxes that would pay for universal health care? These are two topics worthy and needful of discussion on their own merit but are much too involved to touch here.