Taxation, the Economy, Equality, and Fiscal Policy

The point is that we already do pay for poor people's healthcare as part of a vastly inefficient, unwieldy capitalist/socialist hybrid healthcare delivery system. It could be much better, but no one is going to avoid paying for other people's healthcare.

 

This.

I also have not understood the fear of universal health care, especially when I have never heard of anyone from a country that has universal health care, begging to have a system like ours. Sure there are a few wealthy Canadians who might come to Seattle or Buffalo for a knee or hip replacement surgery, because they have enough money and they can, but that is not the same as advocating for our system to be in place there.

We have a lot of people from outside the United States on this forum--any of you want our system in your country? Seriously, prove me wrong if you want, I'm interested in the answer whatever it is.

As Hydronium says, there seems to be the attitude among a lot of Americans that "Who cares if someone else goes bankrupt due to their health care bills or avoids the doctor due to lack of insurance? Who cares if everyone, through higher costs passed on to the insured, pays for the uninsured to go to the emergency room for routine treatment because they get turned down at doctors' offices? Who cares if we actually spend more per capita than other countries? As long as my taxes don't go up and as long as I don't have to wait for a non-emergency procedure that I want to get when I want to get it, it doesn't matter."

Note: that is not directed at anyone on this board, in fact, if someone opposed to universal health care on this board has a better solution to our health care crisis, one that does not involve "let them eat cake," I'm interested in hearing it. I've mentioned before that I think the Swiss system is a good one. It's universal but it's also privately run and very capitalistic.

 

Wow. I must have really hit a nerve or something, for you to get that snarky.

If you are going to advocate raising your taxes, then show it through deeds, not just words. Don't just talk about raising taxes on the rich, talk about raising taxes on everyone. I shared this thread with my office mate, and his description of your posts was as follows. It's like getting into the UFC ring and saying "If I take a few blows to the head, that's fine as long as I knock him out." (My response to that was to ask, "Does that mean that you are advocating that I punch you in the head?")

Also, you still are avoiding my previous questions. Are you ever going to even acknowledge them? For reference, this was the post:

I eagerly await your response, and strongly advocate you reply to it.

 

There you go again, implying some sort of villainous motive on the part of those who object to being taxed at the level YOU want. Your disingenuous little note notwithstanding,.

 

KK: As far as Obama only advocating raising taxes on those making $250K plus, the last Presidential candidate who ran on the platform of raising everyone's taxes, got creamed. Americans have an innate fear of taxation, which is understandable given our history. Obama has broken a few campaign promises, but from what I've kept track of, he has kept more than any other President in my lifetime. A few that he has broken, such as renewing the Patriot Act, I believe were not so much acts of "Ha! Never meant that anyway!" but more acts of changing his mind after he became President and got more information. I believe that if he can finance a good health care system by only raising taxes on those making $250K plus, he will. But if that isn't possible, I'm not going to be angry if my taxes go up.

Smuggler: Since I specifically said that my comment was not directed at anyone on this board, I don't know why you're getting upset about it, unless I've hit some sort of nerve. I also don't know why you are not answering my question about an alternative solution to the health care crisis, if you don't believe that universal health care is the answer.

You've also ascribed villianous motives to all liberals and in fact attributed comments to me that I have never said (like slamming the Palin children when I in fact defended them), so is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

The reason I asked for alternative solutions is because I am giving members of this board the benefit of the doubt, that your solution is not "let them eat cake". In which case, what is your solution to this crisis?

 

As far as Obama only advocating raising taxes on those making $250K plus, the last Presidential candidate who ran on the platform of raising everyone's taxes, got creamed. Americans have an innate fear of taxation, which is understandable given our history. Obama has broken a few campaign promises, but from what I've kept track of, he has kept more than any other President in my lifetime.

Sending the US deep into debit was part of his promises? Well I'm glad I did not vote for him. He should have been cutting the the government waste not helping to get more useless spending bills passed.

 

We have a political process. It's ok to object to the tax structure, to the priorities of our welfare state, even better to provide sound reasons why you object. Darth-Ghost made the best point to-date in this thread: Obama won because a majority of Americans are ready to move forward on universal healthcare.

On the plus side for starve the beast conservatives, almost every state and city in the country is bankrupt, and the Federal government may have overextended itself to the point where the welfare state will soon collapse.

The even better news is that states will load up on regressive taxes that soak the poor to try to get out of hoc, whereas the federal government will continue to soak the rich with progressive taxes to try in vain to pay for its massively expensive welfare state programs.

In the end, nobody wins. I promise you that.

 

They never voted him in so they could get universal healthcare they voted him in because they thought they were getting someone who would be able to stop the waste spending that is going on. They rushed to bills through on the bases of helping people and it's only costing people more and more money. It's attacking people just for making money.

 

Actually, Obama planned on a stimulus package before he got elected and has always been pretty Keynesian. What he promised to stop was the pork barrel spending. One of the few promises he's broken, unfortunately. (Meaning unfortunately he's broken that one, not unfortunately that he's only broken a few promises.) I wish he had vetoed the budget that Pelosi and Co. pushed through at the last minute, even though he would have had to shut down the government to do it. There was some pretty stupid crap in that bill.

 

When it came to the stimulus bill, I was very dissapointed that the President broke his promise to give no less than five days for every Congressman and American to actually read a bill before he signed anything.

Unfortunately, I don't recall anyone reading the damn thing.

 

Excuse me, one of the strongest reasons why I voted for Obama and the Democrats in November were for Universal Healthcare. I also believed Obama was overall a smarter, more composed candidate than McCain, someone who would actually listen to people and would not blindly "stay the course" in all circumstances but could be flexible. I liked his focused, disciplined, strategic-thinking, mostly positive, eyes-on-target management of his campaign and knew if he managed his administration the same that he would be able to achieve some real change, like Universal Healthcare. McCain and company's initial responses to the recession also made me feel like I couldn't trust the GOP on the economy. And I was scared that Sarah Palin would become Vice President, who I did not believe was qualified, after her botched interviews and the hateful, ignorant people her rallies tended to attract.

But the biggest policy position of why I voted for Obama was for Universal Healthcare. If he does not deliver, he would have to fulfill all of his other major promises and completely excel as President to the level of Lincoln or Roosevelt for me to consider voting for him in 2012.

This is not just an abstract "I'll feel good if we have universal healthcare" sense either, but also a personal one. I know people who have been financially ruined for trying to keep someone they love from dying. My family has been in debt so much after my grandparents' battles with cancer. My cousin is over 5 million dollars in debt for keeping her premature baby from dying, which they will never be able to pay off in their lifetime. I also have Crohn's disease, my treatments are covered by my parent's insurance which will no longer cover me in a few years. I have to have this treatment once every 8 weeks, for the rest of my life, or until they come up with something better. It costs thousands of dollars for just one treatment of remicade, and I doubt any insurance company would want to cover me if they knew I had a chronic disease like this that needs regular, expensive treatment.

So don't assume healthcare wasn't a major reason for how I or others voted, and I know I am not alone in this.

 

Said "villainous motive" is nothing more than the natural (and very real) predisposition of most neocons to not give a damn about their next door neighbour. That motive exists. Neocons just can't say it out loud without coming off looking like the selfish, self-centered scum that they are.

So they call it standing up to socialism. A nicer spin on a selfish motive which makes it palatable to a brain-dead contituentcy.

 

I'll just add, I'm MUCH more interested in a system like the Swiss model (I believe Germany uses the same) because I do think that the element of competition is a key one, and I also don't want the government being the one paying the bills because I think it will lead to the government using it as a rationale to justify imposing on people's freedoms when it comes to their own bodies since they pay for what happens with it. I don't want the government making those sorts of decisions or getting involved in my own personal health.

 

First of all, to quote Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it a means what you think it a means." The way you keep using the term "neocon" has nothing to do with neoconservatism. Neoconservatism is a school of thought dealing with foreign policy, not domestic social policy.

Second, you are generalizing and stereotyping in order to build a straw man argument against small-government conservatives here. Most of the conservatives I know who favor small government (and oppose most government social programs) are also extremely active in their communities through volunteer work and charitable giving. Just because they are opposed to the government having programs to help the needy doesn't mean that they oppose helping the needy. They simply feel that the government isn't the best way to do it. (Incidentally, most of them also don't seem to feel the need to make a big deal out of their volunteer work or donations.)

So, beyond inaccurate stereotypes and completely misused terminology, do you have anything else you'd like to add to the discussion?

Kimball Kinnison

 

I have heard the statements along the lines of "The government will tell you that you can't smoke if we get universal health care" but I'm not buying it, especially given how many more people smoke in, say, France and the UK (the two European countries that I've visited), than in the US, and they have universal health care. Their governments aren't telling them that they can't do it. Not telling them that they can't eat transfatty food either.

But that being said, I like the Swiss system for the reasons you mentioned. I think it would be a good compromise. It's a very capitalistic system but everyone is still covered.

 

There was an article today about the number of people seeking downward adjustment of their property taxes has jumped in some placed by a factor of ten.

The reason, of course, and this obviously is not news: the housing market has utterly collapsed. The June housing starts/building permit data is out today: new starts are down 46%, permits down 52% from June 2008. The local tax picture must be incredibly bleak. I have to assume there is a mounting catastrophe here for the municipal/county government residential property tax base.

 

If you go to the CBO's blog(hehee. they have a blog) They suggest the current spending is unsustainable.

here: cboblog.cbo.gov

 

Well, the UK is discussing withholding healthcare from people based on lifestyle choices:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1576704/Dont-treat-the-old-and-unhealthy-say-doctors.html

Health care costs was cited in some of the reports I heard of the Mississippi law that was going to ban obese people from being served food in restaurants a couple years back.

 

Being old is a lifestyle choice?

Britain has obesity rates rivaling those of the U.S. I'm sure it has driven up the cost of socialized medicine there.

 

The unhealthy is, and that was the part that I was focusing on.

 

There's a trick to it I think. You want people to be healthy enough so that they don't die young in a way that imposes a lot of extra health care costs on society, but you don't want them to live such healthy lives that they live long past their statistical lifespans and draw many more years of pension. Live healthy, die young would be the ideal.

An example would be something like age-related macular degeneration. If white people live long enough, they tend to get AMD. The trick is not to live so long that you outlive your eyes and subject yourself to a lot of treatments that can be expensive, aren't much fun, and typically don't do a lot to restore sight. If there's anything people hate more than getting old, it's getting old and going blind. But fortunately dementia happens a lot too so the person going through all that can also check out mentally.

 

A great look at the state tax collection catastrophe

[image=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/07/17/us/0718-nat-STATES.gif]

The anemic economy decimated state tax collections during the first three months of the year, according to a report released Friday by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. The drop in revenues was the steepest in the 46 years that quarterly data has been available.

As more people lost their jobs, took pay cuts or worked fewer hours, personal income tax collections fell 17.5 percent in the quarter. Weak retail sales sent sales tax collections down 8.3 percent. Corporate income tax collections, which are often highly variable, declined 18.8 percent.

This recession will end with states being much leaner and service poor. People will be looking to the Federal government even more to bridge the gap.

 

The transit system here, which my husband works for, relies on a .5 percent sales tax for 2/3 of its funding. Charlotte is a banking center thus it lost a lot of jobs when the system collapsed last year, and lot of those people have either moved away or are just unemployed, therefore people are spending less. I'm just glad my husband still has a job, because Charlotte Area Transit laid off a lot of people, but he's working fewer hours than he did before. The school system is feeling the pinch too. This is the first time in my lifetime that I've known a school system in North Carolina to lay off teachers; there has always been a teacher shortage before, especially in certain fields.

 

Jabba
People will be looking to the Federal government even more to bridge the gap.

Which it can't do.

 

Here in Utah state workers now work a 4 day week with longer days. California is also closing on Fridays too.