The True Costs Of Bad Ideas

As people and media organizations seem to note every few years, the cost of nearly everything - including mailing a letter or package - keeps going up. While we generally know this to be true, there are often hidden cost increases that really should be receiving more media attention than merely the cost of a stamp.

We point this out as many communities across the country are discovering the "hidden" costs of electronic communication, as their post offices face the very real possibility of being eliminated.

A post office for a community is often more than just a building where mail comes to be sorted and delivered. Just like small-town schools and businesses are key to sustaining life in rural America, so too is the American Post Office, even in our modern era of electronic mail nearly everywhere.

As our staff have sadly noted more than once; no matter how fast your internet connection, you still can't send Grandma's cookies via your computer.

A similar issue has come up with the GOP's latest ideas on how to cut the budget, specifically Republican Paul Ryan's plans to turn Medicare and Medicaid into voucher-based, privatized systems.

Thankfully, it appears that an ever-growing number of America's seniors may not be conned by this particular GOP attempt to funnel more money to the wealthy and to insurance companies from those who can't afford it. In both CBS/New York Times and Washington Post/ABC News polls released last week, it's obvious that Americans are NOT in favor of sacrificing the stability of Medicare and Medicaid in order to continue financing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

To us, that's a no-brainer. The barely hidden cost of such a voucher system is obvious to anyone who has ever had to try and get private health care insurance in America, as every member of our staff have attempted, with varying degrees of success.

If you think it's difficult getting health insurance when you're young, healthy, and employed with a decent income, imagine trying to get private health care coverage when you're over 65, retired, and in less than perfect health. Even if you have a voucher, if no one is willing to take it - or costs are insanely high - any voucher the government would give you to cover the cost of health insurance would be rendered meaningless.

This is often the case with the attempt to privatize services that have worked well under government direction. In Washington state, they're finding this out with the cost of privatizing their state liquor control and sales systems. In Florida, the effort to privatize prisons is gaining the attention of many as a bad idea. There are growing numbers of bad ideas just like these.

We understand the appeal that ideas like this have for bean counters; privatizing the profits while socializing the losses of a business is, from the perspective of someone who is selfish, greedy, and myopic, a wonderful idea over the short term.

As we can see from the effects of the internet on the U.S. Postal Service, the hidden costs that come later - like the speeding up of the collapse of rural American towns - are the kinds of costs that corporate number crunchers rarely if ever figure into their claims that privatization will fix all of America's woes.

The true costs of bad ideas are rarely something their promoters will advertise up-front.