Universal Health Care, Secure Retirement, Fair Taxes?

My son is 26 years old, and a graduate student at Middle Tennessee State University. He is in one of the Psychology programs. He was home this past weekend, and as the family sat around the dinner table Saturday night, we were treated to the sound of words that had not been heard in the house all during the week. Halliburton. Bush's cronies. Fat cat oil barons. Stupid war. Money-grubbing insurance companies. Ad nauseum. Now, don't get me wrong... my son is very intelligent, working towards a good education, is dependable, holds two part time jobs besides school, and I love him dearly. But he also has to spend most of his time at school. I have found it difficult to keep him thinking properly when the ratio is 5/2 for being exposed to that type of thinking versus being around me. The point of this information is to indicate that we frequently hold very spirited 'discussions' concerning areas that are of great concern to all of us, him in particular. Health care, or rather lack thereof. Taxation (always a hot topic around this time of the year.) Health care. A living wage anent current gasoline prices. Health care. Did I mention health care? Health care. So a couple of weeks ago we were heavily into one of these discussions, about health care in particular. I asked him pointedly "And what are YOU going to do?". He kept parrying with some lame answer, ranging from "I'm not going to get sick" to "We can do it like Canada, where EVERYBODY has good medical care". Each parry from him elicited the same response from me... "And what are YOU going to do?". Finally he realized that I was looking for a specific answer, and asked what I meant. At that point I told him that HE , personally, needed to do something to alleviate the problem. That constantly griping about the situation and having absolutely NO proposal for a solution was not an effective strategy. So at least he's now thinking about answers instead of just griping, although the griping continues unabated. I know he's thinking about it because each time I talk to him I ask again... "And what are YOU going to do?". So tonight I emailed a link to him of Dan Morgan's post at NoSpeedBumps that DOES make some concrete proposals. Not only about health care, but also taxation and retirement. According to President Bush, everything should be on the table. Maybe this will push my son along the right path. I certainly hope so! (Hat tip to Joe Katzman at Winds of Change for the link, and he has some good commentary, too.)