We Are Losing Our Choices
by James Glaser
July 19, 2010

I don't know all the reasons why, but we are losing, or I should say, my grandchildren have lost their God-given right to make choices about their lives.

When I was in high school, I had the choice of a college prep or trade school education. After high school, I could have chosen college, joined the service, gone to any of the many vo-tech schools, or I could have started out as an apprentice in one of the union locals.

I joined the Marines, and later on, I went to a vo-tech and then went to college, and after all of that I joined the carpenters' union. So you might say, I chose everything. The big difference between back then and today is that I didn't have to choose any of the choices I made, because I could have had all sorts of good paying jobs without any increase in my education.

I had friends who started work at American Can or the Ford plant in Saint Paul right after high school, and they were paid well with great benefits. Some guys my age went to work in the woods and became loggers, while others became paper makers for Boise Cascade. There were guys who worked at one of the breweries in town and others who started changing oil at the local gas station and learned how to be mechanics.

Everything seemed easier back then. No matter what you did, there was always a good paying job around the corner for you to take. Another thing, back then few kids quit school. In fact I can't remember anyone in my high school class not graduating.

Today's kids don't have it as good as I did. Now they push everyone to go to college. Even President Obama and the First Lady talk about how every American high school grad should attend college. That isn't bad, but it cuts out a lot of choices.

Many of our choices left this country when we signed international trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Both of these agreements meant better trade and profits for our corporations, but we the American worker paid a heavy price.

With the signing of those two agreements and many more, we lost millions of good paying jobs in manufacturing. Canada and Mexico started building our cars and trucks. The American textile industry was almost totally wiped out, and a high school diploma was no longer a ticket to a good job.

Now the only place that a high school grad can get a good paying job without further education is with the Government. Local, state, and federal government jobs now pay way more and have better benefits than jobs in the private sector.

You can go to a vo-tech or as we called them, a trade school, but no longer is there a job waiting for you when you finish. Even a college degree no longer guarantees you a job in your field of study. So your choices are limited.

But that limiting of choices isn't just in education or jobs. Now it seems to me that many parts of our life are dictated by others. Clothing styles are a good example. The cost and quality of clothes might be different at different stores, but style seems to be pretty universal. Kids on the east side of town dress about the same as those on the west side. About the only real difference is how different races dress.

Cars. Cars look almost the same no matter which brand you buy. The same is true now in housing. You ever wonder how people in those large developments find their house, when they all look the same. It would be hard after a night out on the town with the boys.

Restaurants. Even eating out has lost its choices. It seems that every restaurant is part of some chain, and the menu in Minnesota is the same as the one in Florida. Family owned and operated places to eat are harder and harder to find.

Banks. Banks no longer compete with each other for your business. They all pay the same interest rate and are all closed at the same time.

Churches. They are becoming the same, too. I have gone to several denominations down here in the South, and you would be hard pressed to see much difference in the service at each.

Now I read the same is coming true with our health care. The federal government has decided with the help of insurance companies to cut our choices. It seems that the fears of so many before President Obama's Health Care Bill passed are coming true. Here is how Reed Ableson explains it in the New York Times:

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country's biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.

As the cost of health insurance goes up, more and more employer-based health care plans will switch to cheaper coverage, which will mean fewer choices for their workers on where to go for medical help. Obama's promise of "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" is proving to be a lie. Here is how Mary Lu Carnevale reported it on the Washington Wire on June 15, 2009:

President Barack Obama's address to the annual meeting of the American Medical Association today didn't break new ground, but attempted to assure doctors and their patients that his prescription for overhauling the health care system would be good for them.

For patients, he made a sweeping pledge that "no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what. My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: fix what's broken and build on what works."

You and I both know with 30 to 40 million new people coming into America's already overcrowded health care system, things are going to change, and choice of doctors and health care plans will be the first thing to go.

Choices for Americans have been changing ever since our country started. Some of my ancestors could go out and choose the piece of land they wanted, and it was free. At one time in this country, there were no income taxes or Social Security payments taken out of your check if you worked for somebody else, nor out of your profit if you owned a company. Today, you have no choice, you are going to pay those costs. There is no opting out of either.

The same goes for many things in America today. No choice. You are going to have car insurance if you want to drive, and if you want a house loan, you are going to pay for home owners insurance. It wasn't always that way. Now you pay taxes or "fees" to do most things in America, and it wasn't that way not that long ago.

At the rate we are going, some day soon, Americans won't have any choices left. Government will tell everyone what to do in every aspect of their lives. People my age can see it coming, because we have lost so many choices in our lives in such a short amount of time. Our grandchildren will only be able to read what it was like to live in a free America where a man or woman could make the choices that set them on the path of a life they chose. That's right, the American dream, will be just that, a dream told in a history book. That is a shame.

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