CBO has a very bad track record in making estimations of these health care systems, in fact I'd say most organizations got Obamacare wrong.
CBO estimated there'd be 20 million who purchased Obamacare and then factored this in their calculations for Obamacare.
The figure was actually around 11 million, which you know would throw off every forecast they ever made for Obamacare.
I don't believe they were doing this intentionally, but the attempts to estimate Obamacare by organizations have been so wildly off from reality, that's its apparent they cannot simulate reality well enough to forecast.
America cannot sustain any universal health care with its massive debt anyway, so any system is doomed to failure.
If only America, the richest country the world has ever seen, could afford universal healthcare like Canada. We're #3 in population in the world the country with the closest population, Indonesia, who is not close to us economically, can afford universal healthcare (satisfaction is 80%). Maybe instead of ramming healthcare that gives a tax cut to the wealthiest 400 families and multinational corporations, they could pay their fair share. Maybe we could spend less on defense.
If we had universal healthcare, we'd even pay less for healthcare as a country.
Taking advantage of people economically when they are sick or dying is morally wrong. It's not like you can say well I had a heart attack, but I want to go get some bids before I do anything about it or maybe I'll go with the off brand doctor for my procedure. Healthcare is just one of those things that should NOT be profit based.
Ah my mistake, I thought that part about rewriting seemed contradictory and should have checked . Of course the problem is that it's often hard to rewrite these foundational texts isn't it? That's one reason why I mentioned Japan's tortured reinterpretations of its constitution, and Nepal's relatively recent rewriting- just a few years had elapsed from the original drafting which made it easier. And if we can't rewrite we go back to reinterpretation...
I'm not arguing that we disregard authors entirely, I'm suggesting that texts can have viable interpretations which are not necessarily intended by the original authors, therefore evidence of authorial intention does not necessarily invalidate interpretations which are contrary to it. This is a feature of human communication in my view, and not genre specific.
(How do you feel about originalism by the way, is that close to your view of the constitution?
Bearing in mind @semiticgod's suggestion I don't have much else to add to my last post. Truth = entertainment + self-fulfilment is not however I would characterise my arguments/ attitude (err, well possibly on my days off ). More like understanding is a struggle, something we forge together rather than find ready made.
If only America, the richest country the world has ever seen, could afford universal healthcare like Canada.
Calling America the richest country in the world is far too simplistic.
Good Universal Healthcare is not possible in America with its debt, brought on by the last two administrations.
As the debt increases, Government must use Tax payers dollars to pay back the interest and other things on its loans which puts a downward pressure on being able to invest in building infrastructure and any other welfare program, it impacts the ability for the Government to subsidize.
Furthermore, I have no idea whoever thinks that Universal HealthCare is ever Free. It is not and has never been, any Government-run Health Care system is subsidized to some degree, but the Citizens must pay more tax also to cover it.
Rising taxes for a Health-care system becomes a monopolized health-care system run by the Government, as the Government runs out of money to subsidize, the citizenry therefore fully pay for a health-care system and it is simply a Government monopoly business.
When you spike Tax for a Universal Health Care, you are destroying huge segments of the populations ability to even provide Education for their children, for the trade-off of Universal Health Care.
They were assuming it wouldn't be sabotaged. How else are they supposed to score it except on it's own merits??
America was founded, and still operates with a great degree of autonomy and agency of the States. Assuming a Universal Healthcare would not be challenged in some way by any State is naive, there is literally not one thing that the Government has ever mandated in its history that hasn't been challenged by States.
High debt didn't stop other advanced Western democratic countries from implementing it. If universal healthcare isn't possible in this country, it's certainly not because of our debt.
The national debt is not, and has never been a issue of significant importance. The US government does not run like a family budget, though many people over many years have tried to convince us otherwise.
I also don't know why your using GDP, GDP is not Government money, do you know what it is?
Gross Domestic Product, the sum of all economic transactions--that is, all products sold and services rendered--excluding retail, in a single country. It's used as a neutral term that indicates the size of a country, much like population.
No need to suggest I don't know the definition of a word. I've never implied you were ignorant of anything.
20 Trillion is not comparable to a few billion of another country.
People use public debt as a ratio of GDP specifically because comparing public debt in absolute numbers isn't fair. If you say France has 50 times the national debt of this African country, do we conclude that France is 50 times as reckless with its spending? No, we have to take into account the differing size of the two countries. So you compare debt as a percentage of GDP, to control for France's larger economy.
I think you're trying to say that two countries need to be compared fairly. But that's the reason why people use the ratio rather than the absolute number: because it accounts for a country's size.
China has more murders than Sudan. That doesn't mean China is a more dangerous country. The important factor is if China's murder rate per capita is larger. You use a ratio instead of an absolute number.
Debt sucks and it's almost inconcievable the numbers. I wish the budget was balanced, like it was under President Bill Clinton. But it's not.
At any rate, the USD dollar is the world's reserve currency. We have the world by the balls with our currency. I wouldn't worry about the debt overly. The US debt is not like a mom and pop checking account.
We are only out of money for things that help society. When it comes to the tax cuts for multinational corporations, tax cuts for the ultra wealthy, and money to throw at the military industrial complex we have plenty of money.
Debt-To-GDP has little bearing on the ability for the American Government to subsidize a welfare system, it in fact does not tell you much on the ability for Government to run or invest something because GDP (ie. Goods and services that are produced including mostly those in the private sector) is not something the Government uses in some form to sustain their Government welfare system, they merely use the taxes.
It's only relevant use is in a relative comparison of country growth to lending against each other, attempting to take out size, but it's not a ratio that is meaningful in terms of whether the American Government (not Economy) can sustain a Welfare System.
Debt sucks and it's almost inconcievable the numbers. I wish the budget was balanced, like it was under President Bill Clinton. But it's not.
Interestingly America obtains nearly 4 trillion in taxes a year, if we didn't have such gross mismanagement of Debt and economy, America could conceivably be swimming in surplus and nearly completely subsidize Universal Health Care (Literally almost free).
I am slightly exaggerating, but the amount of money mismanagement is staggering.
If we used absolute numbers, the result vis-a-vis health care is the same. It's true that a universal health care plan in the U.S. would cost more in absolute money due to our higher population, and the U.S. has a higher absolute debt.
But the U.S. also has a higher absolute GDP, which means it has a higher absolute source of tax revenue, and it also has higher absolute government spending, which means it can cut the absolute deficit more by cutting more absolute spending and raising more absolute tax revenue, both of which mean the U.S. has more absolute money to pay for a universal healthcare system.
Raising taxes isn't a viable strategy for now, because it has forced corporations to go overseas to tax havens, shifting their entire money out of the American system.
Raising Taxes is a lesser and more destructive strategy then encouraging economic growth, because doing that properly raises everyone income (which indirectly means they fall to higher tax brackets and therefore you actually do get more taxes without compromising their spending).
Improving the economy literally will net more taxation without actually raising taxes.
That is why improving the economy is more important then raising taxes (because it can become unnecessary).
GDP tells you nothing of how viable a Universal Health Care system is, but if you want to grow the GDP, you cannot raise taxes because that stunts business growth (which negatively affects how much goods and services is produced) and you would be looking at virtually everything Trump has done to encourage business growth.
On the other side of the Atlantic if the UK and the EU can't come to a deal then the present UK Government has threatened to exit negotiations and move to a low-tax low-services model, which would almost certainly spell the end of universal health care in all but name. Which would be painfully ironic because the NHS is presently suffering from a funding crisis which one wing of the Leave campaign promised Brexit would solve... Of course the fact that a funding crisis exists in the first place shows the financial discipline that is necessary to maintain universal healthcare even if you can get it passed in the first place.
Agreed, and were still experiencing the unfolding crisis where welfare needs is skyrocketing as the amount of elderly to be taken care of is increasing dramatically.
This on top of Europe's inability to manage the migrant crisis (which is going to be a permanent drain on Government expenditure to handle), The EU looks set to implode no matter how you look at it.
Every country seems to be feeling the pinch, and the problems aren't going away soon.
The migrant crisis may or may not be a drain, it may create some social problems while solving demographic ones. In this interview a migration expert asserts that Germany's economy has grown 0.2% faster than it would have done without the impact of the Syrian refugees.
The European model does have tremendous pressure on it though. The economist Dani Rodrik's has posted about the difficulty of forming a political community when you have a 'lazy Greeks' narrative:
He argues that modern nations face a 'trilemma' in that they cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, economic globalization, and national determination- which in turn impacts on social services like healthcare There are some obvious echoes of Trump / Brexit there!
The migrant drain will be massive, as the migrants are not integrating into the economic or social structure of their parent country well. since European nations hastily created what is really internal refugee camps where the migrants keep rioting like Calais.
The very need for these things tells me the situation is not good.
Humans will always revert to nationalism and globalization will never succeed because of simple Geography.
Just like the American Revolution, The more distant the Government is, the more people will rebel because the edicts of the Government don't match their concerns and is seen as oppressive and harmful.
Globalization will never work until we get cheap and affordable teleportation devices.
If we are worried about corporations leaving and going to tax havens then we should do something about it. Instead of cutting the IRS, as Donald Trump wants to do (of course right?), we should take responsibility and not let companies do that. Import tax, stricter regulations are needed not deregulation which lets these companies run wild in the first place. The problem is that multimillion dollar companies have bought off our republican party completely. The party does not represent the people at all. Democrats are not much better. If the parties were not representing these corporate donors and were representing the American people then we wouldn't have all these companies paying 0 in tax. They absolutely can afford to pay more taxes without the need to cry poverty. Just look at the stupid pay their CEOs get. Instead of one CEO you could have 300 extra workers.
How, exactly, do you propose forcing companies to stay here is the tax situation becomes, from their point of view, intolerable? Don't misunderstand me--I want corporations to pay their legally-required taxes just like I have to pay mine but basic economics tells us that whenever a company is presented with a new expense it simply raises prices and passes the expense along to the consumer.
Incidentally, one question which no one ever seems to be able--or willing--to answer is this: exactly how much is "fair"? Who gets to determine what "fair" means? Is "fair" a dollar amount, a percentage based on my income, a sliding scale which increases as my income increases, or what? For the sake of argument, suppose my annual income is $1,500,000, which places me in the top 0.1% of income. How much should I pay in tax?
Those questions are for the government to decide based on what society (voters want). Ideally, politicians are mostly moderates that can work together for the good of the USA or they get voted out. That's not reality - but it's not an impossible fantasy either to tweak the current system to be closer to that system.
The system is currently broken due to a number of things chiefly Citizens United allowing corporate money to own politics so that politicians represent big money not main Street.
Assuming our politicians are not bought off I'd trust them to do what's fair and right. Could I say what is the exact percent of tax to charge someone who earns $1,500,000? No, not me I couldn't say.
But I could also ask how much money does the $1,500,000 earner need? Do you need one billion or two or ten before it's enough? Will it ever be enough? Once you are richer than everyone else then what? Will you ever care about the people outside your pearly gates? It's the governments job to make sure you do your bit and are not just a huge drain overlording on on the rest of us.
How much would you be willing to contribute to society so that the peasants don't revolt as you eat cake? How much to fund education, transportation and the military? Surely you are better off if the populace outside your castle are not hopeless and addicted to oxycodone? You could think of the rich paying their share of taxes as insurance to keep the populace in line so they don't storm the castle.
When you reach those loftier amounts of wealth, you're also able to start businesses, finance other people's businesses, start charitable organizations, and buy higher end merchandise that employ highly skilled artisans that would otherwise be unable to sell their wares for what they're worth. Yeah there probably are some greedy bastard rich people that sit on their wealth, but I'd bet it isn't most of them...
Picking and choosing what class of people to tax as a solution is arbitrary and is just a form of selective discrimination.
It is not for one group of people to decide how much to take from another group of people, that flatly goes against the very basic ideal of America which was to protect Rights and to ever increase the Freedom of the people.
That line of thinking is communism, which we know does not work.
Furthermore, everyone who wants to 'Tax' some class of people, Always incidentally chooses that class of people who is not them.
You would pick millionaires because your not a millionaire, but the very poor might pick you since in their eyes you are far more wealthier then them.
Some of them might argue that since we can spend so much free time on this thread, obviously we can be taxed more.
Taxing the rich has never worked and is just a dream solution that we can take away huge amounts of someone elses wealth as a solution and try to rationalize it because 'they probably don't mind'.
The rich are more likely to sit on their wealth, though. The wealthy spend a smaller portion of their income than the poor, saving the rest for a rainy day or for their kids. It makes them more secure, but it also means less money is moving quickly through the economy.
The very rich are rich because of asset ownership ie Investment.
The idea that the very rich have bajillion amounts of cash in banks is not accurate.
The ones who sit on their wealth are the poor and middle-class, they more then the rich pursue wealth through savings.
This is because asset ownership or investment is a form of wealth that can grow, while savings is wealth that loses value over time.
The rich know this well, Donald Trump for instance is not rich because of bajillion cash in banks, but his wealth comes from asset ownership and the valuation of his businesses.
The wealth of the richest people in the world are all like this, some own islands.
I don't just want to tax the rich, never said that. But I do want them to actually pay taxes. Right now the rich have bought our politicians who serve their interests at the expense of the middle and lower classes. The question that was brought up was how much do you tax this rich guy making $1,500,000. We should all pay our share of taxes, is that communism? No it's government.
It is more feasible to encourage the rich to invest in the economy then to tax them, as that is a gamble that the Government will invest their money better then them.
Government being bought out by Corporations is definitely a problem, there needs to be far stricter legislation to prevent that.
The very rich are rich because of asset ownership ie Investment.
The rich know this well, Donald Trump for instance is not rich because of bajillion cash in banks, but his wealth comes from asset ownership and the valuation of his businesses.
Trump said this in sworn testimony about his net worth during a 2007 deposition. "My net worth fluctuates," he said, according to the Wall Street Journal, "and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings."
It is more feasible to encourage the rich to invest in the economy then to tax them, as that is a gamble that the Government will invest their money better then them.
Government being bought out by Corporations is definitely a problem, there needs to be far stricter legislation to prevent that.
Trickle down economics doesn't work. I don't expect the government to invest tax money they should be using it for government services such as the military and veterans programs, Medicare, roads and public works, preventing companies from polluting our air and water etc. Wal-Mart or a rich guy isn't going to fix our roads or pay for our schools voluntarily they just want to make a buck.
Nor is straight out trying to tax corporations or the rich, as we already know that corporations just shift everything overseas when you try to do that.
It's an interesting idea, but doesn't work in practice.
But I could also ask how much money does the $1,500,000 earner need? Do you need one billion or two or ten before it's enough? Will it ever be enough? Once you are richer than everyone else then what? Will you ever care about the people outside your pearly gates? It's the governments job to make sure you do your bit and are not just a huge drain overlording on on the rest of us.
How much would you be willing to contribute to society so that the peasants don't revolt as you eat cake? How much to fund education, transportation and the military? Surely you are better off if the populace outside your castle are not hopeless and addicted to oxycodone? You could think of the rich paying their share of taxes as insurance to keep the populace in line so they don't storm the castle.
The slope of asking how much money people actually need is more slippery than you might think. If I make $45,000 annually but my basic bills--mortgage, car, utilities, food, etc--run $37,500 then technically that last $7,500 isn't "needed". Following the logic presented here we could ask "isn't $37,500 enough? It pays your bills so you don't need anything extra" but do we have the right to tell someone else how much money they should receive based on their necessary monthly expenses? Follow the logic a little farther down the line. The house in which you are living has a monthly mortgage of $1,000 (numbers chosen at random) but a comparable house--same square footage, same school district, same number of bedrooms, etc--has a mortgage payment of $950 so shouldn't you sell your current house and try to buy that one so that your monthly need is reduced? Similarly, you really didn't *need* that car you just bought that has a monthly payment of $250 when you could have bought an older model that runs for only $175 per month. When a lower-cost option exists anything extra you spend over that lower option is money that, technically, you don't "need" since you could have fulfilled the need and saved money.
Yes, deep-pocketed people have bought enough politicians over the decades that the tax code has loopholes and exclusions which benefit them more than the rest of us. I didn't write the tax code--clearly, had I done so it would actually make sense--and the people who have been adjusting it have not yet reached out to me for my input so my only option is to discuss it in an online forum.
It is curious, though, that you describe very wealthy people as if they were pre-French Revolution aristocrats who are "drains" and lording it over us. (aside: what are they lording over us? their money? probably their political influence) Some of them probably do view themselves thusly, I am certain, but most likely the majority of them are just as boring and mundane as the average person you meet on the street
Trivia: the people in the top 0.1% income bracket are as poor compared to those in the top 0.01% bracket as we are to them. Let that sink in for a second and the numbers become staggering.
Disclosure: my grandparents had money. Not swimming pools full of money like Scrooge McDuck but significantly more than enough to retire in luxury and travel around to livestock shows displaying the prize horses from their breeding ranch in which they were co-owners. That was a long time ago, though, and since then my aunt and my former mother-in-law managed to squander and pilfer every dollar they could grab. The only money my wife and I have is money we have scraped together for ourselves. This is all for the best--that money turned my grandmother into a greedy dragon-lady who liked to remind everyone that anything good in their life came from her money. In the end, no one was really all that upset when she died, especially me.
I wouldn't consider your 37k vs 40k as need, with those amounts it is not a reasonable question. A medical emergency and you are wiped out anyway. But as you say once you start getting up to the millions of dollars how much do you need. 10000 times the average salary enough or 10001? How much tax free wealth do you need before you can give back to society and contribute? They keep paying politicians to pay less taxes instead of just paying taxes. That question is just like the inverse to think about of how much tax is appropriate for that situation. Lording over us is political influence as I say our politicians represent wealthy interests not the people.
If we are afraid of businesses going overseas they already are all doing that. Don't let them do business in the USA if they are tax cheats. Instead of doing their bidding, do your job. But the problem is, as exemplified by Trump's Swamp Cabinet is putting the companies in charge of their own regulations. Government via Goldman Sachs executives and Exxon. They have their companies interests at heart.
Comments
If we had universal healthcare, we'd even pay less for healthcare as a country.
Maybe we'd move up from being the lowest rated health care in the world. Maybe we'd be better than 37th best.
Taking advantage of people economically when they are sick or dying is morally wrong. It's not like you can say well I had a heart attack, but I want to go get some bids before I do anything about it or maybe I'll go with the off brand doctor for my procedure. Healthcare is just one of those things that should NOT be profit based.
I'm not arguing that we disregard authors entirely, I'm suggesting that texts can have viable interpretations which are not necessarily intended by the original authors, therefore evidence of authorial intention does not necessarily invalidate interpretations which are contrary to it. This is a feature of human communication in my view, and not genre specific.
(How do you feel about originalism by the way, is that close to your view of the constitution?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism)
Bearing in mind @semiticgod's suggestion I don't have much else to add to my last post. Truth = entertainment + self-fulfilment is not however I would characterise my arguments/ attitude (err, well possibly on my days off
Good Universal Healthcare is not possible in America with its debt, brought on by the last two administrations.
As the debt increases, Government must use Tax payers dollars to pay back the interest and other things on its loans which puts a downward pressure on being able to invest in building infrastructure and any other welfare program, it impacts the ability for the Government to subsidize.
Furthermore, I have no idea whoever thinks that Universal HealthCare is ever Free.
It is not and has never been, any Government-run Health Care system is subsidized to some degree, but the Citizens must pay more tax also to cover it.
Rising taxes for a Health-care system becomes a monopolized health-care system run by the Government, as the Government runs out of money to subsidize, the citizenry therefore fully pay for a health-care system and it is simply a Government monopoly business.
When you spike Tax for a Universal Health Care, you are destroying huge segments of the populations ability to even provide Education for their children, for the trade-off of Universal Health Care. America was founded, and still operates with a great degree of autonomy and agency of the States.
Assuming a Universal Healthcare would not be challenged in some way by any State is naive, there is literally not one thing that the Government has ever mandated in its history that hasn't been challenged by States.
That is not even how America works.
High debt didn't stop other advanced Western democratic countries from implementing it. If universal healthcare isn't possible in this country, it's certainly not because of our debt.
Ratio is not a relevant method of comparison.
A ratio won't show you if another country has high debt.
I also don't know why your using GDP, GDP is not Government money, do you know what it is?
No need to suggest I don't know the definition of a word. I've never implied you were ignorant of anything. People use public debt as a ratio of GDP specifically because comparing public debt in absolute numbers isn't fair. If you say France has 50 times the national debt of this African country, do we conclude that France is 50 times as reckless with its spending? No, we have to take into account the differing size of the two countries. So you compare debt as a percentage of GDP, to control for France's larger economy.
I think you're trying to say that two countries need to be compared fairly. But that's the reason why people use the ratio rather than the absolute number: because it accounts for a country's size.
China has more murders than Sudan. That doesn't mean China is a more dangerous country. The important factor is if China's murder rate per capita is larger. You use a ratio instead of an absolute number.
At any rate, the USD dollar is the world's reserve currency. We have the world by the balls with our currency. I wouldn't worry about the debt overly. The US debt is not like a mom and pop checking account.
We are only out of money for things that help society. When it comes to the tax cuts for multinational corporations, tax cuts for the ultra wealthy, and money to throw at the military industrial complex we have plenty of money.
It's only relevant use is in a relative comparison of country growth to lending against each other, attempting to take out size, but it's not a ratio that is meaningful in terms of whether the American Government (not Economy) can sustain a Welfare System. Interestingly America obtains nearly 4 trillion in taxes a year, if we didn't have such gross mismanagement of Debt and economy, America could conceivably be swimming in surplus and nearly completely subsidize Universal Health Care (Literally almost free).
I am slightly exaggerating, but the amount of money mismanagement is staggering.
But the U.S. also has a higher absolute GDP, which means it has a higher absolute source of tax revenue, and it also has higher absolute government spending, which means it can cut the absolute deficit more by cutting more absolute spending and raising more absolute tax revenue, both of which mean the U.S. has more absolute money to pay for a universal healthcare system.
Raising Taxes is a lesser and more destructive strategy then encouraging economic growth, because doing that properly raises everyone income (which indirectly means they fall to higher tax brackets and therefore you actually do get more taxes without compromising their spending).
Improving the economy literally will net more taxation without actually raising taxes.
That is why improving the economy is more important then raising taxes (because it can become unnecessary).
GDP tells you nothing of how viable a Universal Health Care system is, but if you want to grow the GDP, you cannot raise taxes because that stunts business growth (which negatively affects how much goods and services is produced) and you would be looking at virtually everything Trump has done to encourage business growth.
This on top of Europe's inability to manage the migrant crisis (which is going to be a permanent drain on Government expenditure to handle), The EU looks set to implode no matter how you look at it.
Every country seems to be feeling the pinch, and the problems aren't going away soon.
http://www.euronews.com/2016/11/01/refugees-in-germany-from-desperation-to-economic-fortune
The European model does have tremendous pressure on it though. The economist Dani Rodrik's has posted about the difficulty of forming a political community when you have a 'lazy Greeks' narrative:
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2012/12/an-interview-on-europe-globalization-and-the-future-of-the-eurozone.html
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2016/06/brexit-and-the-globalization-trilemma.html
He argues that modern nations face a 'trilemma' in that they cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, economic globalization, and national determination- which in turn impacts on social services like healthcare There are some obvious echoes of Trump / Brexit there!
since European nations hastily created what is really internal refugee camps where the migrants keep rioting like Calais.
The very need for these things tells me the situation is not good.
Humans will always revert to nationalism and globalization will never succeed because of simple Geography.
Just like the American Revolution, The more distant the Government is, the more people will rebel because the edicts of the Government don't match their concerns and is seen as oppressive and harmful.
Globalization will never work until we get cheap and affordable teleportation devices.
Incidentally, one question which no one ever seems to be able--or willing--to answer is this: exactly how much is "fair"? Who gets to determine what "fair" means? Is "fair" a dollar amount, a percentage based on my income, a sliding scale which increases as my income increases, or what? For the sake of argument, suppose my annual income is $1,500,000, which places me in the top 0.1% of income. How much should I pay in tax?
The system is currently broken due to a number of things chiefly Citizens United allowing corporate money to own politics so that politicians represent big money not main Street.
Assuming our politicians are not bought off I'd trust them to do what's fair and right. Could I say what is the exact percent of tax to charge someone who earns $1,500,000? No, not me I couldn't say.
But I could also ask how much money does the $1,500,000 earner need? Do you need one billion or two or ten before it's enough? Will it ever be enough? Once you are richer than everyone else then what? Will you ever care about the people outside your pearly gates? It's the governments job to make sure you do your bit and are not just a huge drain overlording on on the rest of us.
How much would you be willing to contribute to society so that the peasants don't revolt as you eat cake? How much to fund education, transportation and the military? Surely you are better off if the populace outside your castle are not hopeless and addicted to oxycodone? You could think of the rich paying their share of taxes as insurance to keep the populace in line so they don't storm the castle.
It is not for one group of people to decide how much to take from another group of people, that flatly goes against the very basic ideal of America which was to protect Rights and to ever increase the Freedom of the people.
That line of thinking is communism, which we know does not work.
Furthermore, everyone who wants to 'Tax' some class of people, Always incidentally chooses that class of people who is not them.
You would pick millionaires because your not a millionaire, but the very poor might pick you since in their eyes you are far more wealthier then them.
Some of them might argue that since we can spend so much free time on this thread, obviously we can be taxed more.
Taxing the rich has never worked and is just a dream solution that we can take away huge amounts of someone elses wealth as a solution and try to rationalize it because 'they probably don't mind'.
The idea that the very rich have bajillion amounts of cash in banks is not accurate.
The ones who sit on their wealth are the poor and middle-class, they more then the rich pursue wealth through savings.
This is because asset ownership or investment is a form of wealth that can grow, while savings is wealth that loses value over time.
The rich know this well, Donald Trump for instance is not rich because of bajillion cash in banks, but his wealth comes from asset ownership and the valuation of his businesses.
The wealth of the richest people in the world are all like this, some own islands.
Government being bought out by Corporations is definitely a problem, there needs to be far stricter legislation to prevent that.
So he's as rich as he feels he is rich.
It's an interesting idea, but doesn't work in practice.
Yes, deep-pocketed people have bought enough politicians over the decades that the tax code has loopholes and exclusions which benefit them more than the rest of us. I didn't write the tax code--clearly, had I done so it would actually make sense--and the people who have been adjusting it have not yet reached out to me for my input so my only option is to discuss it in an online forum.
It is curious, though, that you describe very wealthy people as if they were pre-French Revolution aristocrats who are "drains" and lording it over us. (aside: what are they lording over us? their money? probably their political influence) Some of them probably do view themselves thusly, I am certain, but most likely the majority of them are just as boring and mundane as the average person you meet on the street
Trivia: the people in the top 0.1% income bracket are as poor compared to those in the top 0.01% bracket as we are to them. Let that sink in for a second and the numbers become staggering.
Disclosure: my grandparents had money. Not swimming pools full of money like Scrooge McDuck but significantly more than enough to retire in luxury and travel around to livestock shows displaying the prize horses from their breeding ranch in which they were co-owners. That was a long time ago, though, and since then my aunt and my former mother-in-law managed to squander and pilfer every dollar they could grab. The only money my wife and I have is money we have scraped together for ourselves. This is all for the best--that money turned my grandmother into a greedy dragon-lady who liked to remind everyone that anything good in their life came from her money. In the end, no one was really all that upset when she died, especially me.
If we are afraid of businesses going overseas they already are all doing that. Don't let them do business in the USA if they are tax cheats. Instead of doing their bidding, do your job. But the problem is, as exemplified by Trump's Swamp Cabinet is putting the companies in charge of their own regulations. Government via Goldman Sachs executives and Exxon. They have their companies interests at heart.