No one wants to pay for the government they want.

Limousine liberals like the redistribution of income from the working class to the shareholding class. Last year, the Dow (DJIA) went up 27 percent in one year. This meteoric rise from 6500 in March 2009 (just six weeks after Obama took office) to 16,500 on Dec. 31, 2013, is astounding. The millionaires' club called the U.S. Senate loves it, but it's bankrupting the U.S.

Wages are tanking. Benefits are suddenly no more. Unionized auto worker new hires make half what the old hires make through Obama's Auto Bailout to match all the non-union riceburner plants down South mostly where the most poverty also still resides. Louisiana and Mississippi are 49 and 50.

We export jobs to places that pay $2 a day like Bangladesh and expect American workers to compete in the free global market and then whine that 47 percent don't pay income taxes and instead get tax refund wage supplements like earned income credit.

But "free markets" don't apply to the wealthy employees called CEOs who rely on the government to subsidize their workers.

Pick one: Mr. Ski-bum uninsured adrenaline junkie or Ms. Medicaid mom minimum wage earner or citizen under-the-table contract workers (once called employees) end up in the emergency room and two things happen: They get Medicaid (AKA your taxes) to pay the hospital or they file bankruptcy. And bill-skipping bankruptcies are a huge driver of exploding healthcare costs.

It's not complicated. The cost of a deadbeat customer is borne by the paying customers.

Retailers call it shrinkage, most call it stealing. Bad debts are spread over the good debts, so the good debts rise, shocking as that may be.

The government sees this unsustainable folly and gives us the Affordable Care Act, even though we're all holding our nose. It really stinks. I hate it too.

But demonizing the ACA is a little like a cancer patient railing against chemotherapy. Chemo kills too many good cells and fails far more than we like, but how else can the cancer of irresponsibility be handled? Evidently deadbeat patients and freeloaders matter. Someone always pays.

I remember Idaho congressman Steve Symms coming to my civics class in Sandpoint 40 years ago to say, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Guess what, there still isn't.

And now too many employers are paying employees as contractors with a 1099 replacing a W-2. As a contractor, one pays both halves of the payroll taxes, no unemployment ever again, and no benefits of any kind. Again, the government gets to pay the unexpected hospital bill eventually.

We need to re-acronym TANF (temporary aid for needy families) and just call it ANF because the income redistribution from the working class to the shareholding class is hardly temporary. Say hello to more socialism!

The socialism cow we already had in the ditch in 2008 because health insurance became too exclusive and too expensive didn't work too well, either. So we spray painted the cow with the Affordable Care Act and pretend it just got there. Same socialism cow. Different day.

But the stock market rose 27 percent in 2013. It's all good! The annual stockholders' report said so.

Mike Reno is a Post Falls resident.