From Eric Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:
One of the reasons people haven’t got much money anymore is probably due to the fact that the insurance mafia takes more and more of it all the time.
Using the government as its muscle.
First car, now “health.”
Soon, no doubt, mandatory life insurance will be required as well.
Insurance has become a de facto second income tax. Except instead of paying the government mafia, we’re forced by the government to pay the insurance mafia.
In economics, this is called rent seeking.
So-called “private” (and inevitably, for-profit) businesses make money the new-fashioned way, by seeing to it that laws are passed requiring the populace to purchase its products or services. So much easier (and so much more profitable) than the old-fashioned way of having to persuade people to freely purchase what you have to offer.
Imagine the Hamburger Lobby ( a consortium of McDonalds, Wendys and Burger King) got Congress to pass a law requiring the purchase of at least one hamburger a week from the “provider” of your choice. Would you expect the price of a hamburger to go up – or down? Probably the only reason there isn’t a mandate to buy hamburgers (yet) is because the Hamburger Lobby hasn’t figured out a way to frame such extortion in terms of a “public good.”
Give them time.
Meanwhile, insurance costs continue to skyrocket – precisely because we’re not permitted to say no.
How much is the average person paying out to be “covered”? (Which, by the way, is not the same thing as actually getting anything, in the event you file a claim.)
At-gunpoint car insurance costs in the neighborhood of $1,300-$1,500 a year for most people (see here) or about $120 a month.
How about health insurance? It’s currently about $250-$350 month for a very basic (and basically worthless) Obamacare policy for a single (healthy) young adult (see here). This works out to about $3,000-$4,200 annually. You will be (forced) to pay much more if you are older – or have a family. Just as you will be forced to pay more for car “coverage” if the mafia’s enforcers select you for a roadside “tune-up” (i.e., give you a ticket for the manufactured, victim-free offense of driving faster than they like), the fact that you’ve never filed a claim – or had one filed against you – being immaterial.
But, let’s call it $600 a month – a very conservative figure – to be “covered” for car and health insurance.obamacare pic
Grab your pay stub. Have a look at federal and state tax withholding. Odds are you are paying less to the federal and state mafia (er, government) than you are to the insurance mafia.
To continue reading: The Second Income Tax
