Reply #32: Re: "You can't get blood from a turnip"...

[ljm2002]

...a few years ago, I was unemployed (for the first and only time in my adult life) for 15 months. I was living off savings, and soon enough those also became depleted. Eventually it was down to paying for rent, food and utilities and shining on the credit cards, insurance and car payments.

So I get yet another call from one of the credit card companies -- or one of those collections agencies they hire, I don't really remember. But anyway, the guy starts trying to pressure me, and I tell him "You know what, I don't have the money. I just don't have it. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip." And he replies, "Ma'am, you are not a vegetable."

Honestly, I had to laugh. It was just so bizarre, so surreal, so un-fucking-believable to be having that conversation with some little twerp half my age who felt fine about pressuring me to cough up money I did not have, I had to laugh so I wouldn't cry.

Anyway, as far as your question goes, I know there will be folks here who say "But those people will be subsidized." Well, no, not always. Some of those people will be "above the poverty level" by enough that they won't get any subsidies. Usually it's the people right on the dividing line who get hit the worst with mandates like this: they make too much for the subsidies, but don't really have extra money for things like health insurance. Especially when the premiums will take up to 15%, maybe even 17% of their income. That is a hefty chunk of change, and that is just to have a policy. If they want actual health care, there are still deductibles and co-pays to shell out.

It's a crying shame that we have a bottomless pit of money for the endless wars we engage in, but we don't have money for services to our own citizens -- ourselves. The powers that be have succeeded in dividing us against ourselves, and we don't even see it.

It's class warfare, folks. The more the stooges at the top complain that we on the bottom are engaging in "class warfare", the more you know that is exactly what they are doing. Because they always, a.l.w.a.y.s accuse us of the very thing that they are doing.