Everyone Gets a Scooter

Have you seen the commercial on TV for The Scooter Store? I hate that ad more than any commercial on TV....ever. The pitch from The Scooter Store is that if you want a scooter or power chair, you can get one at "little or no cost to you". However, these products are not free, in fact they are pretty darned expensive. So the unspoken truth behind these hideous advertisements is that you can have an expensive product paid for mostly or fully by someone else.

 Now we are seeing ads from our government for "free" health services. Mammograms, bone density checks, adolescent counseling, etc all available at no cost thanks to the new healthcare law. Really? Free services? I must have missed the part of Obamacare where healthcare providers don't charge for their services. Maybe I overlooked where GE was providing its MRI equipment free to hospitals and clinics across America. These things aren't free. Thanks to Obamcare, they will be paid for involuntarily by someone else.

 I have also noticed that social welfare programs like food stamps are being advertised as "benefits", like they are something we should all hope to get from our employers next year. Let's all make sure we take advantage of the government handouts...oops, I mean benefits, because they are "free".

 Food stamps are benefits? Scooters are free to anyone who needs them? It's okay for someone else to pay for my health services? What is wrong with us that this is okay and an expected?!? Have we become so morally bankrupt, so greedy, and frankly so lazy that we only want what we want as long as someone else pays for it? We have evolved past subsistence farming. We have a specialized economic model where people freely buy goods and service from each other in a free exchange. Well, we had that model, until goverment giveaway programs made it possible for some clown on TV to offer free scooters. I guess my only question is which clown is worse, the one on TV giving away scooters that those who pay taxes have to buy or the clown in the White House giving away health care that is free to some, but not to most.

I never thought I would say this, but we are broken as a country and as a people when this is okay. The only silver lining I see is that as a kid I always wanted a scooter and never got one. I guess someday, I will get my scooter, no matter how much it costs us all.