A New Year and predictions

Shannon Bohrer

(1/2019) Every New Year the major news sources always talk about what happened the previous year and then the experts tell us what they predict will happen in the coming year. Strange as it may seem we rarely hear anything about their predictions from the previous year. You would think that if they were right, they would tell us, maybe they forgot what they predicted. I could not find my New Year’s article from last year, so I will assume that my predictions were reasonably accurate. I do know that I kept my New Year’s resolution, at least for the most part.

We do have some politicians that predict the economy and world events, as if they have some expertise, which they generally do not. I think the politicians make optimistic predictions believing the voters will remember the optimism, even if they don’t remember the outcomes. If a politician makes a strong economic prediction that fails then the politician can always attribute the failure to the other party. Blaming the other party for any problems we have - is a prediction you can always count on.

The success rates for the predictions made by the self-proclaimed experts are probably no better than the odds of getting the long side of a wishbone from a turkey. Then again, the odds of getting the long side of a wishbone should be fifty percent, so that might be too optimistic for some experts.

Maybe we should start with the topic of predictions and why do we make them. If we don’t remember them and there are no rewards if they are correct, and there are no consequences if they are wrong, then why? Maybe it’s just a habit, like pulling apart the wishbone at a Thanksgiving dinner. While there is no science that predicts wishes that are related to wish bones, we still engage in this practice and probably more often than not – forget what we wished for. Of course, we should not forget - that for the wish to become true the wishbone has to be placed over a doorway.

Maybe that is part of our problem, that our predictions are just habits and rituals. I did a little research on political expertise and found some interesting past predictions.

This prediction is from 1936. "This is the largest tax bill in history. And to call it ‘social security’ is a fraud on the workingman," "I am not exaggerating the folly of this legislation. The saving it forces on our workers is a cruel hoax." These words were said by a former governor of Kansas who was running against Roosevelt for president in 1936. He was predicting the failure of social security.

There were a lot of negative predictions with Social Security when instituted. It was often called socialism and Mr. Silas Strawn, from the Chamber of Commerce, called it a plan "to Sovietize America."

Social Security was created because the banks went broke and lost the savings of millions of people. It was one of many programs to help the country out of the great depression and it worked.

In 1961 a future president said "If you don’t [write your senator in opposition to King-Anderson], about this program, I promise you, it will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country," He continued, "until one day… we will wake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free." That future president, Ronald Regan was speaking out against the proposed healthcare for the elderly (The future Medicare).

A few years later, President Kennedy and then President Johnson proposed a Medicare bill and were severely criticized. Senator Barry Goldwater was a candidate for President in 1964 and he spoke against the Medicare proposal saying, "Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind, why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink?"

Medicare was created because medical insurance companies cancelled insurance policies when people turned 65 years of age. At that time there was no mandatory coverage to ensure that the insurance industry would cover people. Even the American Medical Association called it "socialized medicine."

When President Obama signed the "Affordable Care Act" into law, it was predicted by the non-partisan budget analysis that "Obama Care would reduce the nation’s deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years." The critics predicted the opposite, saying the deficits would grow and "bankrupt the country." They were wrong and the non-partisan budget analysis was correct. Well almost correct, the cost of the Affordable Care Act was smaller than projected.

Prior to 2014, the first full year of the "Affordable Care Act" predictions from critics said the act, "would be an abysmal year for the American job market" and that "Obamacare" would result in lower job creation and "Affordable Care Act" would "push unemployment higher." Senator Hastings, from Delaware, said "passing the plan would ‘end the progress of a great country.’" Of course we also had the many predictions that the "Affordable Care Act" would result in "Socialism"

The predictions did not materialize. 2014 was a great year for job creation, the best in around 20 years. Unemployment numbers went down and "there’s literally no evidence that the ACA had an adverse effect on economic growth at all."

My prediction for 2019 is that some politicians will call for modifying, changing and or eliminating social security, Medicare and the affordable care act. The recommendations will state that we don’t want to become a dependent society and that the country cannot afford these entitlement programs. It does not seem to matter that the recipients of all of these programs – pay for them. Nor does it matter that all three programs work and are well liked. The recommendations will be made, out of habit, because habits are hard to change, and we don’t want to become socialist.