OPINION:
President Obama’s State of the Union this week was an entirely appropriate speech for a country on the brink of collapse (“The state of the president,” Comment & Analysis, Jan. 21). It was once again a diversion for short-term political gain.
There are two really big bubbles about to burst, and the effects have already been felt for some time. Higher education does not really seem to understand the significance of the student-loan bubble, and it is without a doubt a bubble. So far all we’ve experienced is reduced consumer spending by college grads who upon graduation are immediately insolvent. The banks don’t lose on this one; the federal government covers the debt and then resells it to the bank that gets to collect twice from the student who carries the debt — all the way to the grave.
What happens to big universities when people finally realize that most of the time, the product these places are putting out is not worth anything? What happens to the massive new buildings, the gigantic staff of six-figure deans, the pensions, the health benefits, the overpaid faculty whose course material can be viewed for free on YouTube? They go away, just like Detroit.
The other shoe to drop is public health. Chronic disease has never been worse. In fact, if you went back in time to the beginning of the 20th century and overlaid current medical technology to deal with acute illness and trauma, you could probably eliminate half the medical community. Chronic illness has replaced acute illness, and it is eating the host, which is the U.S. population.
Doctors don’t cure chronic disease. There will be no cure for Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer, etc., in the form of a pill because that makes no sense. These diseases have multiple causes and they build over long periods of time. Your doctor may drug you, but you will carry the disease to your grave. These diseases are likely environmentally based, with nutrition being the prime suspect, and the main determinant of that has been the U.S. government and the medical community that went along with it. Obamacare does nothing to address this, and all of the progressive dogma about socialized medicine ignores it, which means it has amounted once again to a political diversion.
The future in store for the United States will be disease-ridden indebtedness.
SAMUEL BURKEEN
Reston
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