Like I have been saying for some time, medical technology is what is killing America. We are taking care of more and more people who without those medical improvements would not be with us. Its the cost of living longer, and no so healthy.
The global economic downturn is what's really driven the US federal debt in recent years. The housing meltdown is also pretty huge, hence more regulations on lending standards and mortgages.
Old people are important too. The elderly don't just drop out of the economy because they retire. There's a reason why McDonald's has a senior citizen's discount. Japan, China, Europe have significantly longer life expectancy than we do in the States, and their health costs are significantly lower.
Like I have been saying for some time, medical technology is what is killing America. We are taking care of more and more people who without those medical improvements would not be with us. Its the cost of living longer, and no so healthy.
The global economic downturn is what's really driven the US federal debt in recent years. The housing meltdown is also pretty huge, hence more regulations on lending standards and mortgages.
Old people are important too. The elderly don't just drop out of the economy because they retire. There's a reason why McDonald's has a senior citizen's discount. Japan, China, Europe have significantly longer life expectancy than we do in the States, and their health costs are significantly lower.
Thats because in those countries you mention, the children become responsible for their parents when they are retired. Yes costs are less, but the countries have not made an industry out of their elderly either, like America has.
The housing market was bound to happen. Anyone that was in the construction trades would have told you it was going to happen.
If you want to blame something for the economic down turn, it was 9/11. After 9/11 investors lost confidence in the American markets. When I say markets, I mean from the stock market, to the housing markets, to select business's. Building of homes is starting to go up again, first time in almost 10 years. House sales are starting to creep up again, after 5-7 years of dipping constantly. How many business's have gone out of business or been consolidated with other business's in the last 10 years. If you are a mom and pop shop and have made it thru the last 10 years, you will be golden for a while. Times are getting better on certain areas, but not all.
Like I have been saying for some time, medical technology is what is killing America. We are taking care of more and more people who without those medical improvements would not be with us. Its the cost of living longer, and no so healthy.
The global economic downturn is what's really driven the US federal debt in recent years. The housing meltdown is also pretty huge, hence more regulations on lending standards and mortgages.
Old people are important too. The elderly don't just drop out of the economy because they retire. There's a reason why McDonald's has a senior citizen's discount. Japan, China, Europe have significantly longer life expectancy than we do in the States, and their health costs are significantly lower.
Thats because in those countries you mention, the children become responsible for their parents when they are retired. Yes costs are less, but the countries have not made an industry out of their elderly either, like America has.
Japan absolutely has since 2000-ish, retirement homes are one of the fastest growing businesses in Japan these days.
And bocephus, on the entire hypothesis - why is it that the insurance that guesstimating ~90% of the elderly hold (I can't find the specific number strangely - best I can see is it's less than 18% (the amount of Italy's elderly population that we're #4 in the world to) of our population, and 11% of our population has Medicare under normal [non-disability] criteria) known as Medicare actually CHEAPER per patient than any major medical plan?
Based on your statement Medicare should be costing an arm and a leg compared to other healthcare - and it's actually costing less per patient.
[Also note the person who posted a bit earlier at the end of the last page - you're neglecting to mention the fact that Medicare actually has a premium cost that only 7% of Medicare recipients get an exemption for - the premium cost is roughly $2000 per year - and no, an average policy with employer contribution doesn't hit $20k regularly - you might see the cost of a plan post-COBRA being about $20k (Although mine that was very good, Wegman's health coverage is top-notch especially for management as I was - was only $10k/year after COBRA where I lost the employer contribution) but that's largely from being in your own group at that point, not because of the fact that a policy in normally that much. It's very rare for an employer to give more than a 1:1 contribution for health care coverage (since that's where the tax benefits for doing it end) - Wegman's was heralded as one of the best places to work in the nation because amongst other things they went in 3:1, and only four other companies in the nation do similarly last I researched it - but those companies have high thresholds for hiring [Google and Microsoft... forgetting the other two, but they were other tech companies that you really need a hefty degree to get in the door])
And how many retired/disabled people do we have living off the system, compared to those other nations? I dont care the cost per unit price, when you have millions more units to take care of, its going to cost you more in the end.
I did not know about Japans sudden eldery home business. How many are being paid for by the family, and how many are living off the system?
I'm not sure how the Japanese system is financed personally - but I know the industry is booming, one of the few off-shores interests I have money tied up in.
[Also note the person who posted a bit earlier at the end of the last page - you're neglecting to mention the fact that Medicare actually has a premium cost that only 7% of Medicare recipients get an exemption for - the premium cost is roughly $2000 per year - and no, an average policy with employer contribution doesn't hit $20k regularly - you might see the cost of a plan post-COBRA being about $20k (Although mine that was very good, Wegman's health coverage is top-notch especially for management as I was - was only $10k/year after COBRA where I lost the employer contribution) but that's largely from being in your own group at that point, not because of the fact that a policy in normally that much. It's very rare for an employer to give more than a 1:1 contribution for health care coverage (since that's where the tax benefits for doing it end) - Wegman's was heralded as one of the best places to work in the nation because amongst other things they went in 3:1, and only four other companies in the nation do similarly last I researched it - but those companies have high thresholds for hiring [Google and Microsoft... forgetting the other two, but they were other tech companies that you really need a hefty degree to get in the door])
I didn't neglect to mention that. Medicare Part A (the basic insurance) has no premium cost. Medicare Part B (the supplemental insurance) and Part D (the prescription drug plan) do have premium costs, but these premiums do not come anywhere close to paying for the costs of these programs. In fact, the premiums pay less than a third of the total costs of these programs, the rest of the money gets borrowed.
Also, I'm not sure where you get your numbers from. The average healthcare premium cost for an (employed) family of four in 2012 was $15,745. That's an employer contribution of $11,429 and a worker contribution of $4,316. The average cost to Medicaid for a family of four was just shy of $20k, mainly because Medicaid families are generally in poorer health and there's more fraud.
We are probably going to default. If my taxes get raised to astronomical levels, then I'm out of here. Plenty of other countries I can be an engineer in.
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"No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory." - Murray Rothbard, Cited from "War, Peace, and the State"
I didn't neglect to mention that. Medicare Part A (the basic insurance) has no premium cost. Medicare Part B (the supplemental insurance) and Part D (the prescription drug plan) do have premium costs, but these premiums do not come anywhere close to paying for the costs of these programs. In fact, the premiums pay less than a third of the total costs of these programs, the rest of the money gets borrowed.
B is hospital insurance, not "supplemental insurance" - and you can't have Medcare and say you just want A. (C & D is truly optional however - in fact C looks to be getting obsceleced [and note C is referered to as "supplemental" quite often - AKA Medicare Advantage)
A & B are mandatory if you're getting Medicare. Except for the less than 1% of people with Medicare that are still working that are allowed to opt out of B - so except for a worthless statistical blip, yes, people are paying the premium.
Medicare is my only insurance and being disabled these days, I'm on a fixed income and would love to avoid $2k/year in premiums - but it's not even an option to avoid part B and the $180/mo premium in any but corner cases. (And all my health care costs are maintenance visits that fall under A except the rare MRI every couple years which they put under B - but at $1200 for a MRI without insurance, that's cheaper to do every few years than monthly premiums)
And B generates a profit from it's premiums, whatever data you're saying contrary is wrong - had to get an award letter for Medicare and SS this morning for some will changes my parents are doing so I asked them how it was doing - A has the hole like you're talking about, and B has a profit that it helps with the hole a little but not enough.
And D is assessed by non-government insurance programs, so is completely moot. (except for those below an income threshold, but those get it through Medicaid managing the Part D program - for example my personal Part D plan was managed and paid for [and to] Caremark/CVS, soon to be Safeway/whatever once the new calendar year hits)
Also, I'm not sure where you get your numbers from. The average healthcare premium cost for an (employed) family of four in 2012 was $15,745. That's an employer contribution of $11,429 and a worker contribution of $4,316. The average cost to Medicaid for a family of four was just shy of $20k, mainly because Medicaid families are generally in poorer health and there's more fraud.
Ah, I missed the "of four" caveat, I was referencing largely individual/two-person plans (and badass ones at that - why they're even in the same ballpark apparently) - however the employer contribution numbers are wrong when it comes to the truly average worker - its a point where the mean is much more valuable than the average - because so many upper management/CEO types have extreme plans that are paid for in full by their company that skews the contribution data.
Straight from HumanResources magazine (again like last time, print edition, since I can't find any magazines on their website - they need to get with the times), this time it's the Jan 2009 issue - the average employer contribution per worker (rather than doing per dollar that obfuscates things) is 1.6:1 which works out quite a bit lower than the current infographic but their article does caveat the fact that it includes some CEO's and execs that pull up the number because their health care is compensated at 100% by the company, while being much more expensive plans.
Some companies will go up to a 3:1 contribution in some cases, as I mentioned, but there's no real tax benefit for them to go past 1:1 so many do not, or do not go far past it.
Additionally note that depending on the on how the survey was run - which there's no data in the article - a company does (and they get a tax break for it) pay a base amount that is used as the "seed" of the pool of employees if it's beyond a certain size (I believe 20 employees?) in addition to the premium assistance that the employer will give to the individuals - which in an average would be a fair addition to the math simply, with the one that I'm quoting, would be horrendous to try to add into the math. Also note that they sampled 3k employers only, with as few as 3 employees according to their notes - that's a pretty bad sample size - especially since small pools like 3 person one's are going to skew the numbers drastically. [Pool size is why my insurance jumped so drastically post-COBRA - the only absolute benefit in my case (one thing my employer wasn't awesome about) was continuing to be part of the pool, they gave $0 contribution to COBRA, since it wasn't required to - I wouldn't be shocked to see normal plans double in cost from a 200 person company to a 3 person for the same policy]
Additionally note on the small employer size - it paints a poor picture to include any under a certain size (50 I think?), starting this year since the provisions to provide slack on insurance premiums from the Fed for small employers are supposed to begin this year - and the way those are being set up will currently be eaten by the Fed but by 2016 are supposed to be done by combining various small employers into shared pools with similar plans/costs to spread out the risk for the insurance company. (The reason small pools are inflated currently)
We are probably going to default. If my taxes get raised to astronomical levels, then I'm out of here. Plenty of other countries I can be an engineer in.
Not many with a similar standard of living, lower taxes and easy immigration. And even fewer where you'll be able to get by without learning a new language and/or adjusting to a radically different culture.
The rest of the Anglophone world is more "socialist" than the US with higher taxes or considerably poorer (e.g. Jamaica). Switzerland does not actually have taxes that much lower (although there's less income tax, they also have things like a national VAT) and they have universal healthcare (including a freedom-killing individual mandate!). Singapore has universal healthcare and relatively low levels of political freedom.
I always find it amusing when pampered libertarians talk about how they're going to move out of the US. To where?
He said "plenty of countries I can be an engineer in" so I assume he intends to keep working.
But yes, if you're independently wealthy, you have a lot more choices - especially if you don't care about how free the country is for the average resident but only what kind of freedom you'd get as a wealthy Westerner.
Of course, depending on his application of engineereing - telecommuting could be an option for him now that I think about it - sister-in-law works for British Telecomm and telecommutes from Boston - no reason the reverse couldn't happen. (She's a telecomm engineer I think? I know she used to use her degree for Google before wanting to move back to the east coast...)
I agree he's likely just blowing smoke, but there's a possibility - remote, since not many people hire telecommuters (and those that do have an ENORMOUS applicant pool potentially) - but still a possibility.
I'm told Bolivia is a decent place to go. I can't vouch for that personally.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
Bolivia has a straight up socialist president. Latin America on the whole is moving more towards European-style socialism than libertarian principles.
Now that Pinochet is gone in Chile, even they are not "pure" anymore (not that the murderous regime of Pinochet should have ever been considered a real libertarian).
And B generates a profit from it's premiums, whatever data you're saying contrary is wrong - had to get an award letter for Medicare and SS this morning for some will changes my parents are doing so I asked them how it was doing - A has the hole like you're talking about, and B has a profit that it helps with the hole a little but not enough.
Using the 2010 federal budget data, (the latest I can use because the numbers aren't messed up by the temporary SS payroll tax holiday) the government collected $631.7 billion in revenue from payroll taxes for OASDI. (Old Age Survivors/Disability Insurance, which comprises Social Security) Social Security expenditures for that year were $695 billion, for a deficit of "only" $63.3 billion.
Medicare/Medicaid, on the other hand, collected $180.1 billion in revenue on $743 billion in expenditures. ($453 billion Medicare, $290 billion Medicaid) This $566 billion deficit is almost half the debt that year. Remember, the current massive federal debt is heavily inflated due to them having to pay out billions for unemployment insurance and higher than normal welfare/food stamp costs. That situation won't last forever. The Medicare/Medicaid costs, however, sure as hell aren't going to go down. In fact we're looking at them going up by double-digit percentages per year.
To put it another way, in 2010 total income tax revenue was $1.1 trillion and corporate/excise tax revenue was $127 billion, and total discretionary spending was $1.378 trillion. There's not much debt here. We've already established Social Security is mostly solvent for now. The entire remaining ~$1.05 trillion deficit is composed of Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and interest on the debt. Medicare and Medicaid are paying out almost five times as much as they're taking in. I'm not sure how the accounting breakdown works that shows Part B is turning a profit, but as far as the big picture goes, that's completely bunk.
As for Part A being the part having the hole, that's not what the sources I've read say. See the chart on page two of this link, 85% of Part A is paid for, while 73% of Part B costs are coming from "general revenue," which means borrowing. Only 25% of the costs are covered by beneficiary premiums.
Imho the debt problem is easy to solve. Texas is currently petitioning to break off from the union and become their own country. Once Texas has become independent, it simply needs to declare war on the US, the US then surrenders, and becomes the United States of Texas. And thus, the USA, along with its debt, no longer exists
Using 2010 numbers is going to be inherently flawed for Medicare since Medicare reforms that I'm referencing started in Fall 2010 for the first pieces - and I was not referencing Medicaid at all.
Just the 'Scooter Store' fix alone was supposed to be nearly $100b a year fix between all the Medicare fraud types it addressed, for example. And that wouldn't have shown on 2010 numbers. (At all for FY partially for calendar)
And note while you rail on about that, there's nearly $300b/yr being spent on overseas military bases that are protecting nations with their own armies. Sure some have secondary benefits that should keep them going (I.e. Germany has 58 that are pointless but the 59th is a major military hospital) Nearly the same 'waste' as your Medicare numbers pre-ACA yet no tangible benefit to US citizens bit yet its brushed under the carpet.
Additionally from what I'm reading of those charts and following up with other research that hole in '10 wasn't just B it was B &C of which C is being phased out because it ended up increasing costs not decreasing them. (On both ends)
And A is literally unpaid for should I be in a non poverty case where I can cancel my Medicare premium - A still continues until the day I die - $0 is assessed to it directly it exclusively leeches off B and Social Security to exist # not that it's a bad thing but literally can never be in the black on its own because of that.
Imho the debt problem is easy to solve. Texas is currently petitioning to break off from the union and become their own country. Once Texas has become independent, it simply needs to declare war on the US, the US then surrenders, and becomes the United States of Texas. And thus, the USA, along with its debt, no longer exists
This troll post would elict considerably more hilarious responses if posted on freerepublic.
yeah we will see who gets hit with the taxes. it is going to fall on the middle class to pay it.
Companies and businesses don't pay taxes. they pass those costs onto customers.
so yes the middle class will end up paying for them.
obama is an idiot.
unfortuantly i have to live with the consquences of other people.
under obama my taxes would go up. which means less money for me and my family.
Such irony. You don't want to pay your share to climb back out of the financial hole we are in as a nation and it's not fair to make the wealthy suck it up but job loss for government employees is perfectly fine (they certainly don't deserve money to support their families as much as you).
I also enjoy when GOP fanboys refer to Obama as an idiot. I'd hazard to guess his intellect is significantly higher than a vast majority of Republicans calling him such. Hate to break it to you but your idiology does not make you smarter than someone of the opposing idiology.
You have been living in a world economy that forces you to live with the consequences of many people's decisions. If this concerns you perhaps you should start by stringing up all those responsible for the housing bubble. You better get a lot of rope...
When our taxes go up, you have no one to blame but your boys in Washington. At this point, Obama should get his way and let the chips fall where they may. If he's wrong, you won't have to worry about the "idiot" democrats come 2016. Isn't that what it's all about for republican party anyway?
Considering the lack of research and reading the article you provided fully enough to realize what it actually said... I'd watch using words like that, personally.
yeah we will see who gets hit with the taxes. it is going to fall on the middle class to pay it.
Companies and businesses don't pay taxes. they pass those costs onto customers.
so yes the middle class will end up paying for them.
unfortuantly i have to live with the consquences of other people.
under obama my taxes would go up. which means less money for me and my family.
sorry but those taxes are going into effect and they will hit working american people. if you think they won't then i don't know what to tell you.
Although we see things completely differently you are quite right about this point. However the same can be said about the reverse. Most GOP say that lowering the taxes will help the economy, but all that does is put us further into the hole as no corporations are going to pass their tax savings on to the working class.(or hire any new workers)
We are slaves to the corporations which pretty much own our government. The sooner we accept this the sooner we fall back into line and become good little americans the worse it gets. This is the biggest problem with capitalism as described in several threads on these forums. Eventually wealth is gained by so few that they alone control the markets which leads to bubbles, high inflation, and limited resources. The only way to avoid this is serious legislation to limit corporations power to effect the market by regulating how they do business. unfortunatly this idea is looked down upon by a big percentage of americans which really isn't significant since we don't really have any power.(not like we vote for legislation) Not to mention the fact that it would never pass because of corporate "pay offs".
The only way to fix our country is to take a balanced approach between spending cuts and increased revenue. A big part of this is welfare reform, and the cutting of excessive/unnecessary military spending.
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"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
Not sure how much money welfare reform would actually save - some of the reports on such really paint a picture that it wouldn't be too much - but it's still a good idea regardless to build a better path to people getting back to work.
And absolutely on the military - I'm still flabbergasted that we have 59 bases in Germany active today (down from about 100 at peak) - of which only one serves any real function anymore (our major overseas hospital for the military), the rest are just us defending a nation that has its own standing military. (That is pretty substantial considering the territory in question)
16 trillion or so is a substantial amount of debt when GDP is 15-16 trillion a year. It's far more manageable when GDP is 50 trillion.
There are a number of issues with the whole analogy of "I manage my household's finances and stay out of debt; so too must the government". One big one is the Paradox of Thrift, which states (in a nutshell) that saving and paying down debt is good for the household but bad for the economy. After all, every dollar I spend is a dollar of income to someone else, who will save a bit of that and spend the rest, becoming an addition 90 cents or so of income to the next person, and so forth - the Keynesian multiplier effect, for those familiar with the concept. And if the government decides to get its fiscal house in order, that means that $700 - 1100 billion is being drained out of the economy, on top of any multiplier effect that that may have, creating a huge drag on the economy and dragging us back into the recession that we're just ever so slowly crawling out of. Due to automatic stabilization programs (lower taxes due to a lesser number of people with jobs, and those jobs being lower paying, and more people qualifying for government outlays such as food stamps), there's a positive feedback loop, which continues to shrink the economy, making the debt a larger issue as a percentage of GDP.
Based on what I've read, if our economy starts growing at 2.8-3.4%, our long-term average, unemployment drops to 5.8% (which is pretty close to full employment), and inflation stays moderated, the deficit of 1.1 trillion would be cut down to around 500 billion. Ending the Wars for Oil would cut 100 billion, and if we can make some fairly minor structural adjustments to Medicare, we could probably get 100 billion more.
Cutting that last 300 billion would take some work, but if we grow at 3% a year for the next 20 years and have 300 billion deficits, we go from 108% of GDP worth of debt (16 trillion on 15 trillion in GDP) to around 75% (22 trillion on 30 trillion in GDP).
That's how we "solve" this debt not-crisis.
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Former Level 2 Judge (Retired / Renounced)
Went to a new shop from a friend's recommendation, DQ'ed for willful violation of CR 100.6b.
Not sure how much money welfare reform would actually save - some of the reports on such really paint a picture that it wouldn't be too much - but it's still a good idea regardless to build a better path to people getting back to work.
And absolutely on the military - I'm still flabbergasted that we have 59 bases in Germany active today (down from about 100 at peak) - of which only one serves any real function anymore (our major overseas hospital for the military), the rest are just us defending a nation that has its own standing military. (That is pretty substantial considering the territory in question)
I for one actually want welfare reform that would probably cost a bit more at first, but that is more than just a safety net. If we can get most of our current welfare recipients trained in different fields it may cost more now, but in the long run it will mostly pay for itself. There are tons of jobs out there but try to meet steep qualifications and experience requirements. I live in a pretty small place(about 22,000) and we have at least 100-150 jobs open but no one that is unemployed is qualified.
16 trillion or so is a substantial amount of debt when GDP is 15-16 trillion a year. It's far more manageable when GDP is 50 trillion.
There are a number of issues with the whole analogy of "I manage my household's finances and stay out of debt; so too must the government". One big one is the Paradox of Thrift, which states (in a nutshell) that saving and paying down debt is good for the household but bad for the economy. After all, every dollar I spend is a dollar of income to someone else, who will save a bit of that and spend the rest, becoming an addition 90 cents or so of income to the next person, and so forth - the Keynesian multiplier effect, for those familiar with the concept. And if the government decides to get its fiscal house in order, that means that $700 - 1100 billion is being drained out of the economy, on top of any multiplier effect that that may have, creating a huge drag on the economy and dragging us back into the recession that we're just ever so slowly crawling out of. Due to automatic stabilization programs (lower taxes due to a lesser number of people with jobs, and those jobs being lower paying, and more people qualifying for government outlays such as food stamps), there's a positive feedback loop, which continues to shrink the economy, making the debt a larger issue as a percentage of GDP.
Based on what I've read, if our economy starts growing at 2.8-3.4%, our long-term average, unemployment drops to 5.8% (which is pretty close to full employment), and inflation stays moderated, the deficit of 1.1 trillion would be cut down to around 500 billion. Ending the Wars for Oil would cut 100 billion, and if we can make some fairly minor structural adjustments to Medicare, we could probably get 100 billion more.
Cutting that last 300 billion would take some work, but if we grow at 3% a year for the next 20 years and have 300 billion deficits, we go from 108% of GDP worth of debt (16 trillion on 15 trillion in GDP) to around 75% (22 trillion on 30 trillion in GDP).
That's how we "solve" this debt not-crisis.
I agree with this a lot. I also like the spend money now to grow our economy while slowly raising taxes and decreasing spending. If we try to cut too much now we hurt people who are facing hard times, if we increase taxes too much now the same thing happens. If we spend money to invest in infrastructure we can generate more jobs which over-time pay for themselves with tax revenues.
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"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
However the same can be said about the reverse. Most GOP say that lowering the taxes will help the economy, but all that does is put us further into the hole as no corporations are going to pass their tax savings on to the working class.(or hire any new workers)
The number one goal of business is to expand and make more money. when they expand they need more workers. the thing is you have to give them a reason to expand.
I have posted the artcile time and time again. since obama took office his regulations that he has passed on businesses has cost them 1.8 trillion dollars. that is 1.8 trillion dollars that could have been used to employee people.
My tax plan is very simple. easy and only has 5 lines on it.
for companies it is even simplier.
they get 1 deduction for healthcare. they pay a 10% tax that it is.
for upper income people. the top marginal rate is 20% but their deductions are capped as a percentage of their taxable income.
so lets take warren buffet. say he makes 30m in salary. right now he wipes out all of his income through charity donations and carryover from the previous year.
under my plan he would only be able to write off 3m he would then pay 20% tax on the other 27m. that doesn't include his captial gains.
so if he had 100m in capital gains he would only be able to write off up to 10m in losses and would have to pay 15% on the other 90m.
lower income people those that make 500K or less pay 10% tax.
there is no cap on their deductions. the standar deduction could be increased from 11k to 20k.
the CBO just came out with a report that stated that obama's tax hike plan would only run the government for 9 days. that is it. just 9 days.
it is idiotic.
Eventually wealth is gained by so few that they alone control the markets which leads to bubbles, high inflation, and limited resources.
This only happens when there is things in place that make that happen. Capitalism is to fluid of a market to hold all the resources.
the only way this happens is if you restrict the flow of goods and serivces. the only entity that can do that is government. which is why limited government and common sense regulations are the only way in which to ensure the fluid movement of the economy.
By slimming down the tax code you can free up resources like the IRS. it costs tax payers billions of dollars to run the IRS. mostly spent to ensure compliance on the tax code which is so huge that no one understands it fully.
you could fit my tax plan on about 50 pages if that.
You don't want to pay your share to climb back out of the financial hole we are in as a nation
If my share actually went to do something about the debt then maybe but it doesn't. my share get sucked into the 100b dollars of annual waste that the government spends.
why would i want to pay more of my money to people that obviously can't or won't spend it wisely? it is a waste of my hard earned money.
I'd hazard to guess his intellect is significantly higher than a vast majority of Republicans calling him such.
If so then he doesn't show it. He has proven that he has no clue about economics, business management or leadership in general.
Why? because he has never been in a position to manage anything in his life. He has never had to grow a business from nothing.
he thinks that it is government that creates wealth and prosperity and it doesn't. it does exactly the opposite.
If this concerns you perhaps you should start by stringing up all those responsible for the housing bubble.
Jimmy carter, bill clinton, Chris Dodd and barney frank. all democrats.
job loss for government employees is perfectly fine (they certainly don't deserve money to support their families as much as you).
Government jobs don't create wealth. in fact they suck money out of the economy. Those people get paid by tax payer dollars. I think for every government job it costs the private sector 2 or 3 i would have to look it up.
With more private sector jobs available they can get a job in the private sector.
And if the government decides to get its fiscal house in order, that means that $700 - 1100 billion is being drained out of the economy, on top of any multiplier effect that that may have, creating a huge drag on the economy and dragging us back into the recession that we're just ever so slowly crawling out of.
I have to disagree. If i get my home in order and i pay down my debt that means i have more disposable income for other things. whether that is saving or buying stuff. i have choices.
if i am constantly in debt then i am just paying debt and not really getting anything else done. that is the drag on the economy.
Government wise works the same way. if the government pays down the debt or even the deficit and begins running surpluses that means it has money to spend on other projects. that is why having a balanced budget is so important.
once you know the budget is balanced you can then make exceptions and increase spending in other area's and lower them in ones that don't need.
the government spends 100b dollars annually in fragmented and duplicate programs that they could easily cut.
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He didn't say anything about tax cuts. He said regulations. You could argue that the money is spent on more accountants but that is just broken window theory.
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The global economic downturn is what's really driven the US federal debt in recent years. The housing meltdown is also pretty huge, hence more regulations on lending standards and mortgages.
Old people are important too. The elderly don't just drop out of the economy because they retire. There's a reason why McDonald's has a senior citizen's discount. Japan, China, Europe have significantly longer life expectancy than we do in the States, and their health costs are significantly lower.
Thats because in those countries you mention, the children become responsible for their parents when they are retired. Yes costs are less, but the countries have not made an industry out of their elderly either, like America has.
The housing market was bound to happen. Anyone that was in the construction trades would have told you it was going to happen.
If you want to blame something for the economic down turn, it was 9/11. After 9/11 investors lost confidence in the American markets. When I say markets, I mean from the stock market, to the housing markets, to select business's. Building of homes is starting to go up again, first time in almost 10 years. House sales are starting to creep up again, after 5-7 years of dipping constantly. How many business's have gone out of business or been consolidated with other business's in the last 10 years. If you are a mom and pop shop and have made it thru the last 10 years, you will be golden for a while. Times are getting better on certain areas, but not all.
Japan absolutely has since 2000-ish, retirement homes are one of the fastest growing businesses in Japan these days.
And bocephus, on the entire hypothesis - why is it that the insurance that guesstimating ~90% of the elderly hold (I can't find the specific number strangely - best I can see is it's less than 18% (the amount of Italy's elderly population that we're #4 in the world to) of our population, and 11% of our population has Medicare under normal [non-disability] criteria) known as Medicare actually CHEAPER per patient than any major medical plan?
Based on your statement Medicare should be costing an arm and a leg compared to other healthcare - and it's actually costing less per patient.
[Also note the person who posted a bit earlier at the end of the last page - you're neglecting to mention the fact that Medicare actually has a premium cost that only 7% of Medicare recipients get an exemption for - the premium cost is roughly $2000 per year - and no, an average policy with employer contribution doesn't hit $20k regularly - you might see the cost of a plan post-COBRA being about $20k (Although mine that was very good, Wegman's health coverage is top-notch especially for management as I was - was only $10k/year after COBRA where I lost the employer contribution) but that's largely from being in your own group at that point, not because of the fact that a policy in normally that much. It's very rare for an employer to give more than a 1:1 contribution for health care coverage (since that's where the tax benefits for doing it end) - Wegman's was heralded as one of the best places to work in the nation because amongst other things they went in 3:1, and only four other companies in the nation do similarly last I researched it - but those companies have high thresholds for hiring [Google and Microsoft... forgetting the other two, but they were other tech companies that you really need a hefty degree to get in the door])
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
I did not know about Japans sudden eldery home business. How many are being paid for by the family, and how many are living off the system?
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
I didn't neglect to mention that. Medicare Part A (the basic insurance) has no premium cost. Medicare Part B (the supplemental insurance) and Part D (the prescription drug plan) do have premium costs, but these premiums do not come anywhere close to paying for the costs of these programs. In fact, the premiums pay less than a third of the total costs of these programs, the rest of the money gets borrowed.
Also, I'm not sure where you get your numbers from. The average healthcare premium cost for an (employed) family of four in 2012 was $15,745. That's an employer contribution of $11,429 and a worker contribution of $4,316. The average cost to Medicaid for a family of four was just shy of $20k, mainly because Medicaid families are generally in poorer health and there's more fraud.
B is hospital insurance, not "supplemental insurance" - and you can't have Medcare and say you just want A. (C & D is truly optional however - in fact C looks to be getting obsceleced [and note C is referered to as "supplemental" quite often - AKA Medicare Advantage)
A & B are mandatory if you're getting Medicare. Except for the less than 1% of people with Medicare that are still working that are allowed to opt out of B - so except for a worthless statistical blip, yes, people are paying the premium.
Medicare is my only insurance and being disabled these days, I'm on a fixed income and would love to avoid $2k/year in premiums - but it's not even an option to avoid part B and the $180/mo premium in any but corner cases. (And all my health care costs are maintenance visits that fall under A except the rare MRI every couple years which they put under B - but at $1200 for a MRI without insurance, that's cheaper to do every few years than monthly premiums)
And B generates a profit from it's premiums, whatever data you're saying contrary is wrong - had to get an award letter for Medicare and SS this morning for some will changes my parents are doing so I asked them how it was doing - A has the hole like you're talking about, and B has a profit that it helps with the hole a little but not enough.
And D is assessed by non-government insurance programs, so is completely moot. (except for those below an income threshold, but those get it through Medicaid managing the Part D program - for example my personal Part D plan was managed and paid for [and to] Caremark/CVS, soon to be Safeway/whatever once the new calendar year hits)
Ah, I missed the "of four" caveat, I was referencing largely individual/two-person plans (and badass ones at that - why they're even in the same ballpark apparently) - however the employer contribution numbers are wrong when it comes to the truly average worker - its a point where the mean is much more valuable than the average - because so many upper management/CEO types have extreme plans that are paid for in full by their company that skews the contribution data.
Straight from HumanResources magazine (again like last time, print edition, since I can't find any magazines on their website - they need to get with the times), this time it's the Jan 2009 issue - the average employer contribution per worker (rather than doing per dollar that obfuscates things) is 1.6:1 which works out quite a bit lower than the current infographic but their article does caveat the fact that it includes some CEO's and execs that pull up the number because their health care is compensated at 100% by the company, while being much more expensive plans.
Some companies will go up to a 3:1 contribution in some cases, as I mentioned, but there's no real tax benefit for them to go past 1:1 so many do not, or do not go far past it.
Additionally note that depending on the on how the survey was run - which there's no data in the article - a company does (and they get a tax break for it) pay a base amount that is used as the "seed" of the pool of employees if it's beyond a certain size (I believe 20 employees?) in addition to the premium assistance that the employer will give to the individuals - which in an average would be a fair addition to the math simply, with the one that I'm quoting, would be horrendous to try to add into the math. Also note that they sampled 3k employers only, with as few as 3 employees according to their notes - that's a pretty bad sample size - especially since small pools like 3 person one's are going to skew the numbers drastically. [Pool size is why my insurance jumped so drastically post-COBRA - the only absolute benefit in my case (one thing my employer wasn't awesome about) was continuing to be part of the pool, they gave $0 contribution to COBRA, since it wasn't required to - I wouldn't be shocked to see normal plans double in cost from a 200 person company to a 3 person for the same policy]
Additionally note on the small employer size - it paints a poor picture to include any under a certain size (50 I think?), starting this year since the provisions to provide slack on insurance premiums from the Fed for small employers are supposed to begin this year - and the way those are being set up will currently be eaten by the Fed but by 2016 are supposed to be done by combining various small employers into shared pools with similar plans/costs to spread out the risk for the insurance company. (The reason small pools are inflated currently)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Not many with a similar standard of living, lower taxes and easy immigration. And even fewer where you'll be able to get by without learning a new language and/or adjusting to a radically different culture.
The rest of the Anglophone world is more "socialist" than the US with higher taxes or considerably poorer (e.g. Jamaica). Switzerland does not actually have taxes that much lower (although there's less income tax, they also have things like a national VAT) and they have universal healthcare (including a freedom-killing individual mandate!). Singapore has universal healthcare and relatively low levels of political freedom.
I always find it amusing when pampered libertarians talk about how they're going to move out of the US. To where?
(i.e. Monaco is a good one for rich folks that don't need to generate income anymore - although permanent immigration does look tricky)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
But yes, if you're independently wealthy, you have a lot more choices - especially if you don't care about how free the country is for the average resident but only what kind of freedom you'd get as a wealthy Westerner.
I agree he's likely just blowing smoke, but there's a possibility - remote, since not many people hire telecommuters (and those that do have an ENORMOUS applicant pool potentially) - but still a possibility.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
Now that Pinochet is gone in Chile, even they are not "pure" anymore (not that the murderous regime of Pinochet should have ever been considered a real libertarian).
Using the 2010 federal budget data, (the latest I can use because the numbers aren't messed up by the temporary SS payroll tax holiday) the government collected $631.7 billion in revenue from payroll taxes for OASDI. (Old Age Survivors/Disability Insurance, which comprises Social Security) Social Security expenditures for that year were $695 billion, for a deficit of "only" $63.3 billion.
Medicare/Medicaid, on the other hand, collected $180.1 billion in revenue on $743 billion in expenditures. ($453 billion Medicare, $290 billion Medicaid) This $566 billion deficit is almost half the debt that year. Remember, the current massive federal debt is heavily inflated due to them having to pay out billions for unemployment insurance and higher than normal welfare/food stamp costs. That situation won't last forever. The Medicare/Medicaid costs, however, sure as hell aren't going to go down. In fact we're looking at them going up by double-digit percentages per year.
To put it another way, in 2010 total income tax revenue was $1.1 trillion and corporate/excise tax revenue was $127 billion, and total discretionary spending was $1.378 trillion. There's not much debt here. We've already established Social Security is mostly solvent for now. The entire remaining ~$1.05 trillion deficit is composed of Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and interest on the debt. Medicare and Medicaid are paying out almost five times as much as they're taking in. I'm not sure how the accounting breakdown works that shows Part B is turning a profit, but as far as the big picture goes, that's completely bunk.
As for Part A being the part having the hole, that's not what the sources I've read say. See the chart on page two of this link, 85% of Part A is paid for, while 73% of Part B costs are coming from "general revenue," which means borrowing. Only 25% of the costs are covered by beneficiary premiums.
Just the 'Scooter Store' fix alone was supposed to be nearly $100b a year fix between all the Medicare fraud types it addressed, for example. And that wouldn't have shown on 2010 numbers. (At all for FY partially for calendar)
And note while you rail on about that, there's nearly $300b/yr being spent on overseas military bases that are protecting nations with their own armies. Sure some have secondary benefits that should keep them going (I.e. Germany has 58 that are pointless but the 59th is a major military hospital) Nearly the same 'waste' as your Medicare numbers pre-ACA yet no tangible benefit to US citizens bit yet its brushed under the carpet.
Additionally from what I'm reading of those charts and following up with other research that hole in '10 wasn't just B it was B &C of which C is being phased out because it ended up increasing costs not decreasing them. (On both ends)
And A is literally unpaid for should I be in a non poverty case where I can cancel my Medicare premium - A still continues until the day I die - $0 is assessed to it directly it exclusively leeches off B and Social Security to exist # not that it's a bad thing but literally can never be in the black on its own because of that.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
This troll post would elict considerably more hilarious responses if posted on freerepublic.
Infraction for spam.
Such irony. You don't want to pay your share to climb back out of the financial hole we are in as a nation and it's not fair to make the wealthy suck it up but job loss for government employees is perfectly fine (they certainly don't deserve money to support their families as much as you).
I also enjoy when GOP fanboys refer to Obama as an idiot. I'd hazard to guess his intellect is significantly higher than a vast majority of Republicans calling him such. Hate to break it to you but your idiology does not make you smarter than someone of the opposing idiology.
You have been living in a world economy that forces you to live with the consequences of many people's decisions. If this concerns you perhaps you should start by stringing up all those responsible for the housing bubble. You better get a lot of rope...
When our taxes go up, you have no one to blame but your boys in Washington. At this point, Obama should get his way and let the chips fall where they may. If he's wrong, you won't have to worry about the "idiot" democrats come 2016. Isn't that what it's all about for republican party anyway?
Although we see things completely differently you are quite right about this point. However the same can be said about the reverse. Most GOP say that lowering the taxes will help the economy, but all that does is put us further into the hole as no corporations are going to pass their tax savings on to the working class.(or hire any new workers)
We are slaves to the corporations which pretty much own our government. The sooner we accept this the sooner we fall back into line and become good little americans the worse it gets. This is the biggest problem with capitalism as described in several threads on these forums. Eventually wealth is gained by so few that they alone control the markets which leads to bubbles, high inflation, and limited resources. The only way to avoid this is serious legislation to limit corporations power to effect the market by regulating how they do business. unfortunatly this idea is looked down upon by a big percentage of americans which really isn't significant since we don't really have any power.(not like we vote for legislation) Not to mention the fact that it would never pass because of corporate "pay offs".
The only way to fix our country is to take a balanced approach between spending cuts and increased revenue. A big part of this is welfare reform, and the cutting of excessive/unnecessary military spending.
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson's letter to John Adams, April 11 1823
And absolutely on the military - I'm still flabbergasted that we have 59 bases in Germany active today (down from about 100 at peak) - of which only one serves any real function anymore (our major overseas hospital for the military), the rest are just us defending a nation that has its own standing military. (That is pretty substantial considering the territory in question)
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
16 trillion or so is a substantial amount of debt when GDP is 15-16 trillion a year. It's far more manageable when GDP is 50 trillion.
There are a number of issues with the whole analogy of "I manage my household's finances and stay out of debt; so too must the government". One big one is the Paradox of Thrift, which states (in a nutshell) that saving and paying down debt is good for the household but bad for the economy. After all, every dollar I spend is a dollar of income to someone else, who will save a bit of that and spend the rest, becoming an addition 90 cents or so of income to the next person, and so forth - the Keynesian multiplier effect, for those familiar with the concept. And if the government decides to get its fiscal house in order, that means that $700 - 1100 billion is being drained out of the economy, on top of any multiplier effect that that may have, creating a huge drag on the economy and dragging us back into the recession that we're just ever so slowly crawling out of. Due to automatic stabilization programs (lower taxes due to a lesser number of people with jobs, and those jobs being lower paying, and more people qualifying for government outlays such as food stamps), there's a positive feedback loop, which continues to shrink the economy, making the debt a larger issue as a percentage of GDP.
Based on what I've read, if our economy starts growing at 2.8-3.4%, our long-term average, unemployment drops to 5.8% (which is pretty close to full employment), and inflation stays moderated, the deficit of 1.1 trillion would be cut down to around 500 billion. Ending the Wars for Oil would cut 100 billion, and if we can make some fairly minor structural adjustments to Medicare, we could probably get 100 billion more.
Cutting that last 300 billion would take some work, but if we grow at 3% a year for the next 20 years and have 300 billion deficits, we go from 108% of GDP worth of debt (16 trillion on 15 trillion in GDP) to around 75% (22 trillion on 30 trillion in GDP).
That's how we "solve" this debt not-crisis.
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I for one actually want welfare reform that would probably cost a bit more at first, but that is more than just a safety net. If we can get most of our current welfare recipients trained in different fields it may cost more now, but in the long run it will mostly pay for itself. There are tons of jobs out there but try to meet steep qualifications and experience requirements. I live in a pretty small place(about 22,000) and we have at least 100-150 jobs open but no one that is unemployed is qualified.
I agree with this a lot. I also like the spend money now to grow our economy while slowly raising taxes and decreasing spending. If we try to cut too much now we hurt people who are facing hard times, if we increase taxes too much now the same thing happens. If we spend money to invest in infrastructure we can generate more jobs which over-time pay for themselves with tax revenues.
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson's letter to John Adams, April 11 1823
The number one goal of business is to expand and make more money. when they expand they need more workers. the thing is you have to give them a reason to expand.
I have posted the artcile time and time again. since obama took office his regulations that he has passed on businesses has cost them 1.8 trillion dollars. that is 1.8 trillion dollars that could have been used to employee people.
My tax plan is very simple. easy and only has 5 lines on it.
for companies it is even simplier.
they get 1 deduction for healthcare. they pay a 10% tax that it is.
for upper income people. the top marginal rate is 20% but their deductions are capped as a percentage of their taxable income.
so lets take warren buffet. say he makes 30m in salary. right now he wipes out all of his income through charity donations and carryover from the previous year.
under my plan he would only be able to write off 3m he would then pay 20% tax on the other 27m. that doesn't include his captial gains.
so if he had 100m in capital gains he would only be able to write off up to 10m in losses and would have to pay 15% on the other 90m.
lower income people those that make 500K or less pay 10% tax.
there is no cap on their deductions. the standar deduction could be increased from 11k to 20k.
the CBO just came out with a report that stated that obama's tax hike plan would only run the government for 9 days. that is it. just 9 days.
it is idiotic.
This only happens when there is things in place that make that happen. Capitalism is to fluid of a market to hold all the resources.
the only way this happens is if you restrict the flow of goods and serivces. the only entity that can do that is government. which is why limited government and common sense regulations are the only way in which to ensure the fluid movement of the economy.
By slimming down the tax code you can free up resources like the IRS. it costs tax payers billions of dollars to run the IRS. mostly spent to ensure compliance on the tax code which is so huge that no one understands it fully.
you could fit my tax plan on about 50 pages if that.
If my share actually went to do something about the debt then maybe but it doesn't. my share get sucked into the 100b dollars of annual waste that the government spends.
why would i want to pay more of my money to people that obviously can't or won't spend it wisely? it is a waste of my hard earned money.
If so then he doesn't show it. He has proven that he has no clue about economics, business management or leadership in general.
Why? because he has never been in a position to manage anything in his life. He has never had to grow a business from nothing.
he thinks that it is government that creates wealth and prosperity and it doesn't. it does exactly the opposite.
Jimmy carter, bill clinton, Chris Dodd and barney frank. all democrats.
Government jobs don't create wealth. in fact they suck money out of the economy. Those people get paid by tax payer dollars. I think for every government job it costs the private sector 2 or 3 i would have to look it up.
With more private sector jobs available they can get a job in the private sector.
I have to disagree. If i get my home in order and i pay down my debt that means i have more disposable income for other things. whether that is saving or buying stuff. i have choices.
if i am constantly in debt then i am just paying debt and not really getting anything else done. that is the drag on the economy.
Government wise works the same way. if the government pays down the debt or even the deficit and begins running surpluses that means it has money to spend on other projects. that is why having a balanced budget is so important.
once you know the budget is balanced you can then make exceptions and increase spending in other area's and lower them in ones that don't need.
the government spends 100b dollars annually in fragmented and duplicate programs that they could easily cut.
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