We need to consider rationing health care and social security.

[grasswire]

The story about the Dutch allowing citizens over 70 to have assisted suicide has made me face reality.

There isn't enough money to provide health care and old age pension for everyone as those programs exist now and in the face of aging boomers. We can't even borrow enough money for this.

It's over. We have no money for safety nets.

Currently, politicians are trying to patch problems. But we can't just perpetuate the current systems. All the political fighting over "entitlements" and "benefits" and "coverage" are simply theater-for-power, and doomed to fail.

So we're going to have to make difficult choices.

We could do as the Dutch. At age 70, Grandma could choose life-ending pills. She could even be encouraged to take them as a patriotic gesture. That same way out could be extended to the disabled, the handicapped, the ill. The jobless? The unhappy? Trillions of dollars freed up.

This sort of "culling" of the herd is already happening in this country. But those making the decisions each day are the insurers and the bureaucrats and the rationing is involuntary, imposed on the people and bringing chaos and anguish to lives.

So I say it's time to encourage voluntary rationing. Planned rationing. Man up, square those shoulders, and face the truth. Someone's got to go.

And someone with more mathmatical and statistical understanding than I have can figure out the formulas, the criteria, the methods of determination.

I do have one suggestion. The rationing should be in inverse proportion to the resources an individual already has on hand.

Yes, yes, this is contrary to the usual concept of the way most real money is distributed. Usually those who have the most GET the most. You can't get a loan unless you have money. You can't get a house unless you have a high credit score. You can't deduct interest payments or business losses unless you have a certain level of resouces. You can't get a bailout unless you're a bank.

That way of doing business is why we're in the ignoble spot we're in. Broke and broken.

So under my plan, those who are in the most precarious positions would be served first... and best. The wealthy would be urged to volunteer to leave us. Their fortunes do nothing now, tied up in trusts and assets. So many of the wealthy have built their fortunes on the backs of workers who are now without employment or medical care or pension benefits -- in danger of not even having Social Security after a lifetime of paying in. It's only patriotic for the wealthy and the powerful to go first. When they go, tax their estates heavily.

Or.......we could just stop paying for wars. We can't have both.