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Nice try, but you missed the point by a country mile.
I didn't say "taxes are theft". Transferring money from Group A to pay it to Group B, using the power of govt to take it from Group A, is theft, if the govt doesn't have the authority to pay it to Group B. (BTW, it's also flatly unconstitutional, not that the transferers care.)
Nice try, but what you ARE saying is more than a little hard to understand...
Review who is paying what taxes in America to cover what expenses and no one can deny that those getting the lion share of revenues from our economy, are also paying the lion share of taxes that covers the lion share percentage of government expenses. Clearly, "Group A" (those who have the highest levels of income and wealth in this country) are paying what the rest in "Group B" can't, or this country would default overnight. No doubt you too are in that Group B...
A progressive tax code is obviously necessary to make the numbers work, and a progressive tax code is NOT unconstitutional.
IOWs, I have no idea what you are going on about, but do the math and all should come into better focus for you I think...
Not to mention, what Obamacare really is, is the Republican alternative to Hillary's 1990s proposal. Republicans invented the mandate in their plan.
They want to pretend that never happened.
They also want us to forget they yelled and screamed about "everyone having skin in the game".
They also talk about what Trump is going to do or what he wants to do without mentioning that 90% or more that comes out of his mouth is BS.
All of those facts are very relevant to this discussion...unless one is stupid enough to believe Don the Con. I lived and worked in the Atlantic City Area when he went bust and ripped that place apart. Took bondholders, contractors, taxpayers and everyone else for 100's of millions.
Unfortunately, government is not the same type of game. The idea here is that you are supposed to make everyone win (or improve) - not give more to billionaires at the expense of the poor and middle class.
Comedian Will Rogers once told a story about a rich man who met a beautiful woman at a party. After they'd both had a few drinks, he asked her, "If I offered you a million dollars, would you sleep with me for that much?"
She was stunned, and after thinking, replied, "Well, that's certainly a huge amount of money. Yes, I suppose I would."
The rich man then asked, "Would you sleep with me if I offered you ten dollars?"
She snapped instantly, "Certainly not! What do you think I am, anyway?"
He replied, "We've already established what you are. Now we're just haggling over the price."
Nowadays, when I hear a liberal saying something like, "Wealth redistribution isn't bad as long as it's used to help some people. Taxing the rich to help the poor, doesn't hurt the rich anyway, they'll never notice it, so it's OK to do it." .......I think of Will Rogers. The liberals have already established what they are. Now they're just talking price.
I have worked for the Food Bank. I have paid more taxes than most Americans have made in income...
I have done both, because I feel it is only appropriate to help those struggling with poverty, perhaps out of appreciation that I have been so much more fortunate, but I know very well that churches and volunteers can't help those in need like more stable government resources can. So yes, both, volunteer and then a progressive tax code that helps address the needs of those disadvantaged with tax revenues from those making the most money. Simple, and necessary. No two ways about it...
I wonder what Will Rogers would say about the person making a million bucks haggling over paying a higher net tax rate than someone making only a thousand bucks. For all too many Americans, it boils down to something essentially like that...
Don't get me wrong, it would be a fabulous world if health insurance companies had to accept everyone, couldn't charge more for sick people, and the healthy didn't have to buy insurance or if they did it was cheap. The problem is you're missing one important player who wouldn't be happy in this scenario - the insurance company. They just wouldn't do it.
Imagine you run a candy store and the government tells you you have to charge the same amount for every candy you sell, no matter how much it costs you, and you can't turn away any business. A pack of Wrigley's (costs you 10c) would cost the same as a box of Godiva (costs you $10). How do you make money? a. You must have more customers buying the Wrigleys for $5 to offset the costs of your Godiva-buying customers. b. You game it so you aren't open during the days when the Godiva customers tend to come. c. You set your price high enough to hedge your risks of taking on more Godiva customers. This is what the insurance companies are doing - relying on the mandates to force healthy people to subsidize the unhealthy ones, exiting markets where they have more unhealthy people than healthy ones, and raising the price for everyone.
If you take away the mandate without changing anything else, the only way the insurance companies make money is by exiting most markets (unhealthy, low-income, sparse populations) and raising prices. That is not going to help anyone.
You can have tiered levels of service at higher levels of cost, "bronze, silver and gold" for example, so that health providers and/or insurance companies can get more money from those who want to pay more than just the pack of Wrigley's plan.
What you can't have is people choosing not to pay for the candy they are going to consume eventually even if they don't want candy now. What you also can't have is people buying what isn't really candy at all, sub-acceptable plans that don't even amount to the minimum basic bronze level, essentially to avoid paying for what is real candy like everyone else is paying for, especially families with kids that insist on real candy...
HRC was for maintaining the Carried Interest rate Romney and the Clintons enjoy.
Trump wants to abolish that rate, subject that income to higher, general income tax rates.
The history and prior votes are all well documented, and no doubt one reason the rich keep getting richer while the rest get nowhere is because the rich are in a position to do so, casting those votes over and over again, against real tax reform, appropriate tax reform.
What happens now and into the future is always the important question, and while I had hopes that Trump would do the right thing in this regard, along the lines of some things he has said he would do in the past, apparently this too is another false promise made by Trump, just like most others before him.
because even when you remove the mandate, obamacare is still a bad law. its not just the mandate, but all the other things in the law that hurt the economy, and top that off with all the regulations, 20,000+ pages worth, that also screw things up.
Specifics please...
And you will find the Ds want to get on with fixing those specifics, making those improvements, but when it comes to a law that essentially overhauls the health care system in America, you are likely to end up with a few more pages than a comic strip. A lot of pages is not necessarily too many pages when it comes to all the players involved wanting to know what they can and/or can't be doing.
It is that simple. Personal responsibility for their families and themselves.
Yes, and no one should do harm to another. Got it...
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