Where's mine?

Yesterday was a rough one for me. Somehow, people seem to think I'm a therapist as opposed to a CPA. Although for some of these folk's tax situations, I can see why they'd need therapy.

None the less, I was struck by a conversation I was having with the daughter of one of my clients.

The mother is now in a nursing home. So I started my meeting with the daughter (by the way she drives a Prius with a rainbow sticker in the back) by asking how her mother was.

"She's doing a great job spending my inheritance."

So as our meeting starts, her first question of me was how to shelter her mom's assets so that medicaid will pick up her nursing costs, which now run about $100,000 a year.

I referred her to an attorney who specializes in Medicaid law.

But the whole day, it bugged me about the implications of her comments.

1) That her mother was spending her inheritance for her own medical care. Her inheritance is no more hers than it is mine. Her mother's money is her mother's money. Period.

2) That somehow her mother shouldn't pay for her own health care but Medicaid should pick up the tab.

3) That when and/if medicaid starts paying, who do you think pays medicaid? If you guess you and me, you would be correct. So somehow people should expect you and me to pay for what they won't pay for. Sounds like a deal doesn't it.

While I'd like to rip this woman a new a-hole, the fact remains. Why shouldn't she expect someone else to pick up the tab for what ails her?

After all, her taxes are going to pay for kids she had no say in. Her tax dollars are being used to bail out banks she didn't manage. Her tax dollars are going to bailout yahoos who bought bigger better houses than she lives in.

So in fairness to her, why shouldn't she be able to get some feed at the trough like every other dead beat American out there?

This is the problem when government takes the very first dollar from one person to give to another. I don't care what benevolent purpose you have in mind, you have just established a moral relativism that's it's OK to steal from one to give to another as long as you can justify it as a better cause. From that point on, you now have a system where people are moving money from one to another and the people who aren't in the loop feel like they're out in a game of Musical Stimulus Chairs; even though they're the ones who fund it.

Watching everyone run to the trough of "free" government money, aka stimulus, is disgusting and really unbecoming of an American. Is it too late to turn back the clock when every American used to care for themselves and their families or are we in the middle of an overdose of stimulus gluttony that will ultimately ruin, what used to be, a great country?