Tax reform.
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Thursday, August 31, 2006 12:55
VIEWED: 6117
PAGE 6 of 8
DT -
Please private email.
You seem reluctant to credit the experience of other first-world coutries (all but the US) who took the leap into the massive social experiment of public medicine.
I'm not sure where you think their results are 'false'.
Do you not believe it's cheaper? Do you not believe people live longer, have higher vaccination rates, lower infant mortality, lower disease rates et al with better and more inclusive medical coverage? Do you think the US is so genetically different from Canada, England, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden AND Japan that their results are immaterial?
Do you not trust the figures showing private medicine and wasted money go hand-in-hand?
Your hasty dismissal of vast amounts of information puzzles me. It's like you repeatedly walk into a wall you claim is not there.
Please let me know your thinking.
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Quote:Seems like a lot of wheel re-invention to me.
This is the part where I'm a right-winger. These are all the debates we should have, and ideally, we should try both people's way, state by state. None of this national system, then we just do it one way and don't get to find out whose right. Some states go your way, some go mine, some go some other way, and time proves one of us is right.
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Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Rue,
I know quite a lot about the situation. If the state of Vermont had a socialized medicine system, it might work, and be like Sweden. But if the US govt. did, it would become like the Soviet Union, with reused needles spreading AIDS as it tests for Bird Flu, etc.
The system we have is not a private system. It's a private-public hybrid, and a disaster. Korea has a private system, as does the UK. UK also has a public system, both work, my british friends tell me that the private system works better.
I think you've been sold on half the story. The other have the story is a world of zero quality, zero choice, zero accountability, and it's available in most of the world, which has a much lower standard of living than the United States.
The truth is a wealthy first world, and yes, capitalist, nation like sweden is going to do okay. The US will not. This country is a big lumber empire that gets very little right these days.
The reason Hillary Clinton and her democrats want a national healthcare plan is so that they can create an enormous corporate welfare giveaway to their friends to the tune of a trillion or more a year.
But the nightmare that follows is a public health which starts out great, and in fifteen years is going about black neighborhoods giving everyone vaccinations and free AIDS with every shot.
I want the accountability of the true free market to put the talentless practitioners out of business.
In general, I think I'm an extremely well informed right wing extremist. The amazing this isn't that we don't reach agreement on this point, but that we can agree on anything at all.
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Quote:Huh? There is no such thing as money doing "nothing". How do you suppose the banks pay you an interest rate? They loan it out, is how.
I favor a 'fat tax' as I call it. Money which isn't doing anything, it just sits there. Large amounts of cash are sitting in someone's bank account somewhere, earning interest, but not creating any business. If money isn't active in the economy, it's not doing anyone any good....etc...etc.
Quote:In addition to your egregious historical inaccuracy, I'm going to say that I think we should just kill the whole idea of profit. End of problem.
Taxes. Hoover hiked taxes to pay for social programs. Payroll tax comes from payroll which comes from the company budget, ie,. profits. If you didn't have a a pre-tax profit margin of >20%, you folded. And never came back. Industries don't exist in America now because they are not economically feasible, ie, they cannot generate >20% of pre-tax profit, and payroll tax is a tax on the number of workers, whether there's a profit or not. 100s of businesses would open up if we killed the stupid income tax
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"I think you've been sold on half the story. (The rest is) ... zero quality, zero choice, zero accountability, and it's available in most of the world, which has a much lower standard of living than the United States."
See ... I know Canadians /Canadiens, and they overwhelmingly love their system (80%) ! And it does well by them. I don't know how many statistics you want, but their coverage, quality, 'outcomes', and cost outshine the US like a star next to a dusty moon.
And you seem to think that the marketplace, and only the marketplace, creates accountablity.
First, of all the marketplace doesn't create accountability in medicine, while regulated medicine does. Yes, even factoring in big money influence on the regulators. To use a previous example from this board: who would you trust to cure your Hodgkins? A medical clinic in MeHEEko with their hand out for mucho American $ and a sales-pitch worth of promises for their untested cure? Where the conflict of interest is so strong you can smell it? Or medical care up to international standards?
Secondly, in a democracy the government IS held accountable through different means. It's called the vote. When France had elderly people die during their heat-wave, the health system, no matter little responsible - was taken to task.
Thirdly, there are business reasons - like low overhead, efficiency and lack of a profit - itself a conflict of interest in medicine - to give government the health care business. On strictly economic reasons alone, government is the clear winning vendor.
YES, I agree that it COULD be open to corruption. And sadly, there is a large part of the US that eats shit and says it tastes like steak. So you can't count on a large minority of your fellow USers to be intelligent consumers of government products.
But your fantasies of free AIDS come across as truly unhinged.
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So, what really caused the Great Depression? Hoover REDUCED income taxes from 73% to 25% by 1925, and didn't increase them until 1932. Clearly, it wasn't "tax increases" (as DT erroneously claims) that created the Crash of 1929. By then, the top 0.1% had the highest percentage of wealth and income ever seen in American history... levels that we're just now re-approaching today. Much money in the hands of the average American was based on stock market speculation, not on wages or assests. When the stock market crashed, their wealth evaporated too.
---------------------------------
Reality sucks. Especially when it contradicts our cherished ideas.
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Quote:
So, what really caused the Great Depression? Hoover REDUCED income taxes from 73% to 25% by 1925, and didn't increase them until 1932. Clearly, it wasn't "tax increases" (as DT erroneously claims) that created the Crash of 1929. By then, the top 0.1% had the highest percentage of wealth and income ever seen in American history... levels that we're just now re-approaching today. Much money in the hands of the average American was based on stock market speculation, not on wages or assests. When the stock market crashed, their wealth evaporated too.
Hoover wasn't president in 1925. That was Coolidge who reduced taxes.
Is this true? This is the opposite of what I was reading, which went on and on about hoover tax and spend. But wikipedia half agrees with you, the tax hike was in 1932, that's too late to be the cause of the depression, though it I would hazard a guess that it didn't help.
Anyway, I think I'm going to suffer a defeat here, because some of my information on Hoover appears to be wrong.
We really need a tax scholar to settle this. The top bracket is not of much importance, it's the total % of the payroll which goes to payroll tax which most strongly effects the economy. I actually don't care if the rich pay taxes or not, I think it's a dumb idea to tax them heavily, because they and their money will just leave, but I don't think it has that major an impact on the economy either way.
well, the average american's wealth is not a major issue either. The reason a stock market crash feeds a depression is that the stock price determines a companies valuation, and that company may have to sell shares in order to raise capital. If the shares are more valuable, it can raise more capital to expand business, hire workers, etc. Ultra-low capital means no expansion possibility, hence the creation of no new jobs.
The war debt with germany is also a major issue, and one for which hoover was responsible for re-instating, though it had been wilson's idea in the first place, i hold them both responsible.
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I'm interested in this subject enough that I think it should become a new thread.
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Rue,
not at all, this has already happened. I think youre accountability is 'called the vote' is pure fantasy. By this logic, America openly supports a policy of torture killing and wholesale theft of its own money. Capitalism is accountability. In captialism, if the product doesn't work, the people stop buying it. In religion and govt., that is not the case.
But overall, I've really gotten quite offended (not by this specifically) and am thinking of bailing.
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Quote:
How do you suppose the banks pay you an interest rate? They loan it out, is how.
This is a flawed process called Usury, which, combined with Fiat money, is and always has been a recipe for disaster.
Our founding fathers made some pretty good attempts to set conditions where this problem would never occur, aided by Roger Sherman (See Also: A Caveat Against Injustice) who knew full and well what would happen down that road and was very intent on preventing it.
Trivia point: name the first, last, and only time the United States was debt-free, and how did this come about ?
-Frem
Answer: During the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who vetoed the charter of the national bank in 1832.
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