Politics

Yes, the rich do pay more in taxes than the middle class, but that's not really the point. The point is that they could pay so much more and they would still be filthy rich, but instead they exploit as many tax loopholes as they can in order to pay less, so the middle class is given more of a burden. The US has some of the worst income inequality in the nation and it's gotten exponentially worse in the last few decades because the rich are only looking out for themselves.





i'm a liberal

Thought I made my views regarding "Politics" pretty clear...in terms of whom i vote and all...I have skipped voting last couple of times because it doesn't make any difference whom I vote (they all look more or less same to me, may be there exists a little bit of difference but no opposition, really)...if it did, I would have voted The only Left Wing Political Party in India (that believes in Parliamentary Democracy), The Communist Party of India Marxist CPI(M)...

__________________
To Suggest Is To Create, To Name Is To Destroy

I am a supporter of the hindu nationalist parties---the BJP /Shiv sena alliance . But in this election the alliance broke and I voted for BJP .

Well my argument's not appealing to religion. I'm not a Christian and don't agree with Jesus' principles to be honest, and I think that individual success does much better for the world in the long run than collectivism - that would lead to a very boring place.

My view's a lot more pragmatic - basically I believe in limited govt, with the exception of things that I consider essentials and survival necessities - I consider healthcare one of those. My idea is for the govt to cut back spending on the whole, but to re-invest in areas like healthcare which are bare bones issues - the average American can't afford medical care without insurance in this economy, and since healthcare is needed for survival, just like food, I'd consider our current state similar to if the price of bread was inflated to $1000 a loaf - in a situation like that I'd be all for the govt stepping in and fixing this problem.

That's basically the role of the govt IMO - to step in and help out in critical issues, not to spend superfluously. Anything beyond the basic necessities of our survival as a nation such as military defense, heatlhcare, police, fire services, etc - should be privatized.

I think that if we Americans had had a single payer healthcare plan for the past 20 years, we wouldn't be nearly as objecting to it as we are. For example I mentioned the post office being superfluous expenditure (ex. there aren't many life-threatening situations which would require sending a letter or a package), however you don't see nearly as many people objecting to it, since it's something we've grown up with and are just conditioned to.

You mean like medicare and state funded health programs and indigant care?

__________________
Letterboxd

I'm talking about healthcare for all, with universal coverage of life threatening ailments. not just to selected demographics.

Actually you just reminded me of a good point though - as far as I know of there was never any serious movement lately to repeal medicare, medicaid, etc - I think that a lot of the objection is just natural human resistance to change, this is part of our evolutionary wiring

This is something that comes up a lot in these types of debates. It is something that needs to be addressed but is a separate argument from the one I am making. Again the rich are not the only one exploiting the system, it is simply more glaring because of the amounts of money we are talking about. I don't know a single person that won't take every tax break they can get. Everyone wants to keep as much of their earnings as possible. This may be easier to digest for us when talking about the middle class compared to the upper but it doesn't make it more right.

I am a simple mind. I can be easily convinced that a flat tax is the way to go. I know this is a pipe dream but I think if you earn a dollar throw in fifteen cents. Everbody, everytime. The word fair comes up in these discussions constantly now. To me there couldn't be anything more fair than that.

I don't disagree with your last statement about change, but that is not just a conservative problem. My overall point is we have systems in place and instead of fixing them we developed new problems.

Real world example and more than I usually share but here it is. I have worked in Healthcare for the past five years. I am very middle class, I make about $16 an hour living in the southeast. I have always paid about $35 dollars a week to have insurance for me and my two boys. I get my premiums for this year and it will now cost me $13 a week for myself but $130 a week for me and my children. Do the math above and consider 30% of my income goes to child support. Now if I don't cover my children and pay out of pocket I will have an additional tax at the end of the year. I was basically pushed to put my children on a state run health program, which means more burden to the tax payer and less to big business. It is exactly the problem that conservatives were screaming about 6 years ago.

I don't know a single person that has gone to Obama care. Why? Because its not affordable. Plus now we have people who were paying their own way going to subsidized programs. Conservative or liberal you cannot like how this turned out for the middle class. The segment I keep hearing we are trying to grow.

ObamaCare is not single payer healthcare like what exists in Australia, Europe, etc - ObamaCare is simply mandated health insurance.

Okay. So what kind of tax burden are you prepared to put on us for this type of system? I have yet to hear a polician in favor of it give us a number. I have a feeling this is because of what would be major sticker shock.

Part of the inflated costs is due to the fact that companies which manufacture the medical supplies have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want; if they had competition from a govt funded plan and manufacturer, then this would help drive the costs down.

Given what we spend on the military for example, I think that cutting back on the development of prototype weaponry which has little to no use in modern wars could help to offset any additional costs as well - that's just one example.

"Social security, unemployment, and labor" also seems to be one of the biggest cash cows - I'd have to do more research into that area to see what we can cut.

The next time you meet a middle class or poor person who doesn't try to minimize their tax burden, you let me know. And to even the flow of information, I'll let you know if I find any unicorns.

But this, right here, is the problem: "they could pay so much more and they would still be filthy rich." Sure, but what happens to the money they had? What would it have been spent on, what will it be spent on instead, and what are the costs of each? This isn't an issue of Scrooge McDuck having to downgrade to an above-ground pool full of gold coins. This has far-reaching implications.

In this case, the far-reaching implications are that way, way less money is invested, because that's by and large what wealthy people do with their money. And that's not something which only concerns them: investment is the lifeblood of virtually all new business, great and small.

Really? People started putting their own finances first just two decades ago? I could've sworn that was something that'd been happening forever. In which case pointing to that as the source of income inequality doesn't really work.

Let's trace out this hypothetical, because I think it reveals a serious flaw in thinking about economics.

In this example you say bread was "inflated" to $1,000 a loaf. Inflated how? What caused the price to go up? That could never happen today unless there was a genuine bread shortage--some major problem with the supply line, some shortage of wheat, or something else incredible like that. And if that happens, then what could the government do to fix the problem, exactly? They can't magically fix the shortage by decree. They can't legislate us into more wheat.

This is the whole point: when things cost a lot in a market economy, it's because there is actual scarcity or difficulty in providing them. It costs a certain amount to mine copper, and if the government says that's too much and issues a law saying that copper can't cost more than a certain amount per pound, how does that make mining copper easier?

That's kind of a bad analogy, because the post office doesn't take up a fifth of our economy the way healthcare does.

But sure, people can be eased into anything if they get used to it. But that's not an argument for single-player; if anything, it's an argument against it. One of the reasons people oppose these government programs is not because only terrible people use them (far from it), but because dependency and complacency can be bred in good, diligent people just as easily.

If there was a bread shortage, then the govt could grow its own wheat and offer it at a competitive cost (or for no cost at all), forcing the wheat manufacturers to drive their costs down in order to compete. The same is true with healthcare - much of the high prices is due to the manufacturers of healthcare equipment having a monopoly and being able to charge whatever they want without competition - in the UK, Australia, and elsewhere the private companies have to compete with the state funded supplies.

So one of your solutions is to cut two programs, SS and unemployment, that are already over burdened. I don't agree with a blanket cut military spending philosophy either. In theory it works, but in practice robbing peter to pay paul never works. See above mentioned SS. It will cost more to the tax payers, every single time.

I asked you what's causing the shortage.

Wheat manufacturers?

Wheat is a crop. A plant. Not some object created in a factory. Like all crops, it takes several months from the time it is planted until it is ready for harvesting. It takes a lot of land to grow a substantial amount of it and it requires the right conditions to grow.

If there was a massive shortage of wheat, it'd likely be as a result of some catastrophic event (natural disaster or the result of pests or disease). But the government is supposed to magically be able to find enough unaffected lands with the right conditions to make up for the shortage? What?

__________________

In this hypothetical situation, the shortage would be due to only 1 company being able to manufacture bread, and being able to charge as much as it wants without competition.

Uh, and what's stopping other people from making bread, exactly? If the government can just start making bread, what's stopping any other enterprising person from doing it, knowing full well they can undercut that $1,000-a-loaf price?