Your Government Cares... How Much You're Costing Them

Whilst commenting on what Nancy Pelosi thinks of you, Fearsome Comrade uses an excellent example to ask why many people trust the government to solve the nation's problems:

Remember: To the government, you are a number in a computer. You think your insurance company doesn't care about you? How about if your insurance company had guns and the means to enforce its will on the population? How much would they care then?

For serious! People gripe about how corporations like banks, HMOs, and particularly insurance companies are so uncaring, impersonal, and exploitative. And it can certainly be true, but at the end of the day that company is still making money off you. You may be nothing more to them than the pasture on which they grow fat, but at least you're that. You're still on the black side of the ledger. To the government, you are a liability, an expense. You're still just a number, but to them that number's in red.