I believe that government programs are money pits. Like old, rickety houses, they demand more and more of your hard-earned cash in order to stand upright and resemble something somewhat pleasing to live with.

In an old home, the furnace will blow, the pipes will burst, the roof will leak, and just as you’ve sunk another chunk of your nest egg into a repair, something else will go wrong. Government programs are much the same way in that the need for constant influxes of cash never goes away.

Government is a necessary evil. We need roads. We need elected officials. We need cops and firemen. What we don’t need aregovernment programs. They are unsustainable and riddled with fraud and abuse. Take Medicare and Medicaid for example. Even the Government Accountability Office admits that it’s a high-risk program. It’s estimated that 20 percent of Medicare and Medicaid payments are fraudulent. That’s a lot of my money in someone else’s pockets.

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“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” — Margaret Thatcher

Not a day has gone by in the past two years that I have not heard, spoken, or at least thought these words. I have been frustrated over and over again by well-meaning friends that believe that the government should take care of us from the moment we enter the world until the moment we leave it.

The government should pay for our mother’s prenatal health care, our childhood vaccinations, our educations, our food and housing, medical care when we need it, and our retirements.

It’s the right thing to do. Everyone deserves a good life, and it’s just so unfair that some people are born as Paris Hilton while others are born in slums. (Although it’s probably a toss-up as to which of those two fates is worse than the other.)

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