“But let’s face it, Clinton is hardly the only politician to duck a tough issue. It will take a new breed of politician to push meaningful reform. It requires a risk-taker with titanium nerves and vision.”
About long-term healthcare, he says:
“There’s one more aspect of the medical-insurance story that is almost totally off the typical radar screen. This one involves long-term care. With the baby-boom generation heading toward retirement and their parents already there, this is a huge issue.
“A few numbers tell the story: The number of elderly will double to seventy-five million by 2030 and the number of seniors living in nursing homes will increase fivefold.
“I know the response: Doesn’t Medicaid pay for nursing homes? This question is often asked by Boomers who figure their parents will be covered, as they will when their time comes to book some long-term care.
“Here’s the answer: Medicaid was never meant to be a long-term care provider. And as Senator John Breaux and Representative William Thomas have pointed out, ‘The growing demand for long-term care is pushing Medicaid into bankruptcy.’
“Nearly one in two Americans will need some type of long-term care, but only one in four can afford long-term private nursing home care, which now averages $41,000 (in 1999 dollars) a year. Only 1 percent of Americans have bought long-term healthcare insurance. So most are hoping to rely on Medicaid. As things are right now, they’re in for a major disappointment.
“After a short initial contribution, Medicaid will drop out of the picture until the patient’s resources are spent down to the poverty level. If the patients are your parents, that means everything they’ve worked for in life will be gone. And that often means one parent is left destitute. It can also create a massive financial burden on families. The Boomer who planned to sail around the world on his own boat might find himself selling his car to keep mom or dad in a decent facility.”
As I’ve said, after my first meeting with Donald, I knew why we had come together to write this book. But once I read The America We Deserve, I knew—without a doubt—what our shared concerns were, why we were teachers and why we wanted people to be rich.
In the green room, that day in Dallas, I drew the following diagram:
“You’re saying it’s $72 trillion in off-balance sheet obligations?” Donald asked. “Says who?”
“Two economists,” I replied. “In 2004, Kent Smetters and Jagadeesh Gokhale painstakingly spent the time to compute how much, as of 2004, our government’s obligations to the American people were.”
“That’s a lot of money,” said Donald.
“That’s more money than all the money in all the bond and stock markets in the world,” I said. “I believe the value of all stocks on the world stock markets as of 2000 was around $36 trillion and the value of all the bonds on the bond markets of the world was only about $31 trillion. We owe our people more than all the money in the stock and bond markets combined.”
“I knew it was bad,” said Donald, “but not this bad. We can’t pay it.”
“Only if we print more money, which would wipe out the savings of everyone. One possibility is hyperinflation, but that wouldn’t really solve the problem. Not only would savings be wiped out, people on fixed incomes would also be wiped out.”
“And this is not just an American problem,” Donald said. “While we are discussing in terms of American people and American finances, this problem is being felt around the world. People are living longer, and countries from Europe to Asia are concerned about how they are going to be able to provide for the health and welfare of their people.”
Back to History
In the 1930s, the German government had printed so much money that the money nearly lost its value. One story tells of a woman who pulled a wheelbarrow full of money to buy some bread. When she came out of the baker’s to get her money to pay for the bread, someone had stolen her wheelbarrow and left the money.
Hyperinflation devalues money. And while the social, political and financial environments that enabled Adolf Hitler to be elected German Chancellor in 1933 were complex, his rise to power was in no small part due to the middle class having their savings wiped out.
Back home, the 1930s brought the Great Depression, leading to Franklin Delano Roosevelt being elected president. Roosevelt brought in Social Security in 1935, a solution to a problem we still have to solve today. In other words, a solution to a problem caused over 75 years ago is again a problem today—an even bigger problem, in fact. We are trying to solve a problem with government money, instead of solving the real problem. Other government programs that were meant to be solutions were Medicare (1955) and Medicaid (1966). Today, these problems are much bigger problems, again because we failed to address the real problem soon enough.
We want people to let go of the entitlement mentality and become rich so they can solve the problem…their own problems.
– Robert T. Kiyosaki
In 1971, President Nixon took us off the gold standard, which is exactly what the German government did, and today the U.S. dollar is falling and savers find their savings wiped out with very little left for retirement…except for Social Security and Medicare, which are also in trouble. History is repeating itself; only this time the problem is bigger.
What We Are Concerned About
Donald said it first: “I’m afraid we have developed an entitlement mentality as a nation. And I’m not talking about just poor people. Too many people, from the president and senators on down, expect a pension from the government. I really wish we could afford to solve their problems, but to do that would bankrupt our nation. We could ask the rich to pay for everyone, but would it solve the problem? And for how long would it even solve the problem?”
I agreed. Donald and I want people to let go of the entitlement mentality and become rich so they can solve the problem…their own problem.
Consider the following diagram:
The best way to solve the problem of bad financial results is to change our thoughts—to start thinking like rich people rather than poor and middle-class people. That means losing the entitlement mentality—whether you are a military officer, government worker, schoolteacher, employee or just poor. If we do not stop expecting the government to take care of us, we will continue to have the same results—a bankrupt nation filled with well-educated but financially needy people.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In this case, it is my opinion that it is insanity to keep sending kids to school and not teaching them about money.
When you look at the CASHFLOW Quadrant pictured below,
E stands for employee
S stands for small-business person, self-employed or specialist
B stands for big-business owners such as Donald Trump
I stands for investor
I believe we need to train more kids to be Bs, entrepreneurs