Taxes versus Tax Rates [Reader Post]

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Taxes

While it is true, as the OWS gang claims, that the “rich” are making more of the income (20%), they are also paying most of the income taxes (38%). Since 1980 the rich’s share of income has doubled, but so have income taxes. Those making at least $114,000 in 2008 (the last complete year from the IRS), earned 45% of the nation’s income, and paid 70% of all taxes. The top 25% of earners, those earning at least $67,200, took in 67% of the income, and paid 86% of the income tax total. The average income tax rate paid by those in the bottom half of the income scale is only 2.6%. Couple those facts with the fact that, in 2010, 47% of households paid no income tax. In fact, some in that group will be getting money from the federal government.

Studies show that the largest portion of the federal income tax burden is paid by a small group of the richest Americans. Payroll taxes of 15% are charged on the first dollar of income earned by a worker, and most of the tax is capped at an income of just below $100,000. The richest 1% pay 27.5% of taxes collected, the top 20% pay 72%, and the bottom 20% pay just 0.4% of taxes collected. One reason that the disparity in tax shares is so large is that Americans in the bottom quintile who have jobs get reimbursed for some or all of their 15% payroll tax through the earned-income tax credit.

Tax Rates

One thing the MSM and Democrats love to focus upon is how tax rates have fallen for the “rich.” The latest manifestation comes in the form of the “Buffett Rule.” “[Last year] what I paid was only 17.4% of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than what was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office,” wrote Buffett. Obama chimed in, “Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires. That’s pretty straightforward.” That is what the MSM reported, but the MSM did not report WHY Buffett paid a lower rate. There are two fundamental reasons. First, Buffett makes a lot of his money from investments, which are taxed at a lower rate than wages. Second, the Social Security tax applies only to the first $106,800 in wages, which means that Buffett and his secretary (assuming he/she makes $106,800) pay the same Social Security tax.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chairman of the DNC, said that we’re at the lowest tax rate since the 1950s. When Wolf Blitzer of CNN (no bastion of conservatism) pointed out to her that the “rich” pay a huge chunk of the federal income tax, Wasserman-Schultz responded, “But they’re still at the lowest tax rate since the 1950s.”

In terms of who pays taxes, there is a big difference between taxes paid and tax rates. Besides, if some of the “rich” want to pay higher taxes in the form of gifts, they are free to do so.

The Deficit and “Tax the Rich”

To partially offset his massive overspending, Obama proposes to raise taxes on the “rich.” His class warfare plan can take him only so far since the rich don’t earn enough to make up the difference for all the spending he plans. The proposed Obama tax hikes, in the next ten years, will take almost $700 billion from taxpayers. That is only 8 percent of the nearly $9 trillion President Obama’s budget adds in debt over that same period. Low tax revenues are not the cause of the debt explosion, spending is. There is no correlation between tax rates and deficits in recent U.S. history. The federal deficit was caused by massive spending increases.

But will it matter? A poll by 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair, conducted from November 29 to December 2, 2010, showed that 61% of Americans polled want to raise taxes for the wealthy as a first step to reducing the deficit

Bush Tax Cuts

The MSM and Obama administration never tire of demonizing the “Bush tax cuts.” They contend that the tax cuts put more of the burden on the backs of the middle class and the poor. But that is simply not true. An analysis of Treasury Department data shows that the “rich” are paying more than they would have paid, not less, after the Bush tax cuts.

And they like to maintain that the “Bush tax cuts” favored the “rich.” In a static world that is true. But the world isn’t static, it’s dynamic. There was more investment, more hiring by businesses, and a stronger stock market. Comparing taxes paid under the old system with those paid after the Bush tax cuts, the rich actually paid a higher proportion of income taxes. The latest IRS data show an increase of more than $100 billion in tax payments from the wealthy by 2005 alone. Why can’t Obama and his economic advisors learn this one fact? But I guess it’s easier to promote “class warfare” by mixing apples and oranges, a static world with a dynamic world.

They also maintain that gains by the rich come at the expense of a declining living standard for the middle class and poor. Again, that is simply not true. The middle class (defined as those between the 40th and the 60th percentiles of income) isn’t falling behind or disappearing, it is actually getting richer. The lower income bound for the middle class has risen by about $12,000 (after inflation) since 1967. The upper income bound for the middle class is now roughly $68,000, $23,000 higher than in 1967. A family in the 60th percentile has 50 percent more real income (buying power) than 30 years ago. And the same thing is happening to the “poor.” Real income levels of the poorest 20% of Americans have actually risen. Economics professor Steve Horwitz explains why this is true.

Conclusion

The rich aren’t paying their fair share, they’re paying their unfair share. But the MSM and the Obama administration ever let facts or the truth get in their way. And have you noticed that they never cite references or analyze data? All they can do is repeatedly play the “class warfare” card.

But that’s just my opinion.

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Who came up with that logo?
The Wobbly cat from the commies in America in the 1930’s (IWW)
crushing the American eagle.

The Sabotage Cat was a symbol of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Wobblies.

People play a lot of games with percentage comparisons.

If I have just enough annual income to support my family and the tax man takes 10% of it, the 10% rate is totally immoral. I don’t have enough left for my family to live on.

If I have income of $5 million per year and the tax man takes 35%, my family can probably get by very well indeed on the remaining $3.25 million. If the top rate is capped at 35%, it probably isn’t going to kill my incentive to add an addition million or 10 million to my annual total, either. So, the 35% rate is not only moral; it’s also highly unlikely to have much effect on anyone’s ambition.

Nor does the argument that tax rates for the richest should be lower because it’s unfair for them to collectively pay a disproportionately higher share of total taxes really hold water. The richest collectively pay a higher percentage of total income taxes simply because they collectively have a higher percentage of the total income. Keep in mind that they’re individually paying taxes at some of the lowest rates in history.

The same republicans who have suddenly found religion with regard to fiscal responsibility totally reject any tax increases that would affect the class of Americans collectively having the highest percentage of total income and collectively paying the greatest share of total taxes. Essentially, they would “balance the budget” entirely at the expense of everyone else. This would be accomplished through a tax reform scheme that would shift a significant portion of revenue collection onto consumers without regard to their income level, combined with a roll-back of spending on social programs primarily benefiting those who don’t count themselves among the rich.

This is the bottom line that the whole republican fiscal solution scheme actually boils down to. It’s the pea in their shell game. Everything else is a matter of distraction and diversion.

Holy cow Warren. You have put out some major socialist troll bait. One already pounced on it.

We’ve had progressive taxation since — forever. It used to be much more progressive than it is today. Marginal rates were 91% under Eisenhower and 70% from Kennedy to Reagan. No one ever called it “class warfare” back then. It was simply “progressive taxation.” The most outspoken proponent of progressive taxation in American Presidential history was Theodore Roosevelt, not Barack Obama, who timidly proposed raising the top marginal rate from 35% to 39%.

In the USA, student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt. We have a crumbling infrastructure. 25% of people don’t have health insurance. We have lousy wireless connectivity, relative to Europe and Asia. An American baby who wants to live the American dream and strike it rich would have a much better chance were he born Danish or Finnish or German than were he born American. We talk about American exceptionalism — well, that’s a crock. We were exceptional, back in the days when we were paying off the World War II debt, while funding the Marshall Plan, GI bill, Interstate Highway system, Medicare, Vietnam War, War on Cancer (which has paid huge dividends), and the Apollo Moon program.

We aren’t exceptional, any more, and it’s not because our taxes are too high.

Here’s yet another depressing stat, which blew my mind: Twice as many students graduate from college with degrees in psychology as in engineering and physics, combined.

Popular culture is all about “relationships” and cops and robbers (we also have a huge lawyer glut) and making money with capital gains, as opposed to with work. And capital gains aren’t venture capital; it’s secondary markets and exotic securities, which are about money churning, more than about growing the economy. Oh yeah, we are also into sales and marketing. That’s the business of today’s America. Money churning and sales and marketing and working on our “relationships” through our social media.

Anything other than exceptional. Well, maybe exceptionally depressing.

Since Reagan introduced supply side (voodoo) economics, we’ve accumulated massive debt and are well on our way to creating a “to the manor born” permanent upper class, and our upward mobility rating has plummeted.

http://economy.ocregister.com/files/2011/10/EPI-wealth-gap-chart.jpg

“Class warfare.”

The reason we never had “class warfare” before (as opposed to merely progressive taxation) is because America was previously an upwardly mobile society, without a permanent upper class. But we gutted the inheritance tax and flattened the tax structure and now we’ve got the beginnings of angry mobs, which is how it always goes, when you’ve got a permanent stratum of society with a “let them eat cake” approach to macroeconomics.

A lot of the bottom half don’t pay income taxes, but they do pay payroll and Medicare taxes and these taxes are hugely regressive in nature. At the same time Reagan cut income taxes on the rich, we raised the regressive social security tax. The bottom 50% effectively subsidized the the Reagan tax cuts with higher social security tax payments. And now conservatives complain that social security is “broke” (even though it has $2.1 trillion in treasury bills, which conservatives claim isn’t “real money.”). Guess the joke’s on you, conservatives say. Back in the 80s and 90s, when your higher social security taxes were financing the income tax cuts for rich people, we promised you that you’d get T bills in return for your surpluses. Well, turns out, we didn’t really mean that, after all.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

I wonder which bankers the OWS’ers want to behead?
Look at their pay:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_UDFqN_tgW8/Tqfi1KOmeeI/AAAAAAAACJs/qEgqPQnHi-8/s1600/Picture%2B3.png

Oh, c’mon, Nan. My mother in law was a “personal banker.” OWS isn’t about “personal” bankers or about branch managers, etc. It’s called Occupy Wall Street, not Occupy the Nearest Building with a Drive-Through ATM.

– Larry W/HB

There’s a pretty good YouTube video of Peter Schiff discussing these issues with the OWS people here. “I employ 150 people. How many do YOU employ?

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:

Here’s yet another depressing stat, which blew my mind: Twice as many students graduate from college with degrees in psychology as in engineering and physics, combined.

That’s because psychology is easier and pays better than engineering. I don’t like the situation either, but that’s the way it is.

Hi John. Thanks for that last comment (re: psychology vs engineering). Let’s play with this one a little bit, O.K.?

This is where authoritarian capitalism (China and to a lesser extent Singapore) has an advantage. Brain resources. China is graduating 10 times as many engineering and science PhDs as we are graduating. In my own field, this is already showing up. In the early 1980s, I got a post-doctoral fellow from Guangzhou, China that came and worked with me and ended up staying on and working with me for almost a decade. Then she got a job in another American lab. Now, she’s back in China. We used to get huge numbers of Asians in our grad schools and post-doc labs. Now, the main Asians in those labs are the home grown variety. We aren’t the magnet that we used to be and the restrictive immigration policies don’t help.

This is going to hurt us — big time. At international medical meetings, US scientists no longer dominate. We used to monopolize the Nobel science podiums. This era is coming to an end. Tomorrow’s technologies of the future are going to be developed in China’s equivalent of Silicone Valley (for tech) and San Diego County (for Biotech).

What’s the answer? Just more Laissez-faire?

I’d start by giving free tuition to majors in engineering, chemistry, physics, etc. Paid for by raising the taxes on the rich. I’d put out the welcome mat for engineering and hard science post docs from abroad. I’d forgive all the educational debt for anyone who takes a job in engineering and biotech and stays in the field for 10 years. Paid for by raising taxes (including inheritance taxes) on the rich.

Well, that’s my solution. What about yours?

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:

What’s the answer? Just more Laissez-faire?

Whom would you chose to determine which disciplines are more valuable than others?

I’d start by giving free tuition to majors in engineering, chemistry, physics, etc. Paid for by raising the taxes on the rich.

Oh, puh-leeze! There are so many things wrong with that statement on so many levels, It’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, it’s not the proper function of the federal government to choose winners and losers in the marketplace. Second of all, even if they unconstitutionally usurped that power, they would fail for the reason F.A Hayek demonstrated: It’s simply not possible for even a well-meaning bureaucracy to have enough information to make that choice; Only the free market can do that.

For the same reason that you went into medicine, engineers, chemists, and physicists go into their chosen professions because they love the work and have the abilities for it. It’s obvious to the most casual observer that if the government were to offer subsidies for engineering, then we would be flooded with people who know nothing about engineering but only went into it for the government handout.

For a more detailed discussion of this issue, you might care to watch the video of the Richard Epstein interview from PBS. Sorry, the only place I can find it is at a blog:

The NewsHour Hits a MUST-SEE Homerun With This Interview

@John Cooper:
That was outstanding!
He took on an entire herd of Lefties and prevailed.
Peter Schiff is now also a talk radio host:

HOME

and keeps up a video blog: http://www.youtube.com/user/SchiffReport

@runswim,
So, which is it? The “progressive since forever tax system” from your post #4 or “more Laissez-faire” from your post #9?
By your own admission Laissez-faire hasn’t been tried since WWII. And WWII is exactly the reason progressivism took so long to fail (as any unsustainable fairy tail must). We didn’t dominate the economy of the world for almost half a century because we were “progressive”, we dominated it because every other industrial power had been blown to smithereens.

Hell, when you consider how many American companies are/were owned by the British during the post-war period (unless something’s changed in the last decade they’re the #1 foreign owner of US companies), the amount of money British subjects made/make in US equity markets (for which they are taxed), and the jump start of the Marshal plan, American capitalism is what made British socialism (also now crashing and burning) possible. The Brits kicked Winston out, and plowed their share of the Marshal plan into cheap socialist housing projects while the Germans used theirs to re-build their industrial base. . . the outcome was very predictable.

Now the leftists from all over the world want the mule (US) to sit up on the wagon (Euro-style socialism) that it’s been pulling, I wonder how that will work?

There’s nothing “Progressive” about forced income re-distribution, it is simply theft, nothing more, nothing left. Trying to re-define a nifty sounding word to cover it doesn’t change it.

Hi Al, Firstly, even Adam Smith favored progressive taxation, noting that the rich owed more to government than the poor. The higher up the economic food chain, the greater the debt to government for success achieved. The wealthy should pay more to government because they OWE more to government!

With high taxes, we paid down our debt, despite all of the massive government spending programs. With low taxes, we go more deeply into debt, while creating a permanent, to-the-manor-born, upper social class.

Theodore Roosevelt had it correct. It was the principles espoused by TR that made 20th century America great. It is because we have moved away from those principles that we are in decline.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@openid.aol.com/runnswim: As for achieving the American Dream, there is a direct correlation between education and income. Since 1960, those with a college degree have seen a significant increase in wages while those without have remained stagnant because there has been a shift in the labor market away from jobs that don’t require a college education to those that do due to globalization of the economy and automation. The number of single parent families have also increased further adding to the income disparity. If people want to achieve the American Dream, perhaps they should, as you alluded to, get an education in a field that will yield more income potential. Increasing taxes will not accomplish this as it’s an individual choice. As for those wanting a free education, there is this thing called the GI Bill. It is what opened the doors to higher education for the middle class post WWII and thus the increase in income many experienced. It’ll not only pay for their education but it will also pay them to go to school. I realize that you are not that big on the military, but at least people will be earning their keep as opposed to getting free handouts. An added bonus is they will learn responsibility and hopefully some leadership type skills.

Hi Another Vet: It’s an unfair charge to say that I’m “not that big on the military.” I’m HUGE on the military. What I’m not “big” on is civilian Presidents starting horrible wars (Vietnam, Iraq), with the resulting horrible casualties, with casualties and expense being an order of magnitude out of proportion to benefit to America. I was 1A for a year during the Vietnam War year of 1969-70, but had a lottery number of 268 in a year where they didn’t go above 125 or so. My brother had a lottery number of 12 and got his “Greeting” telegram on Christmas Eve. Later on, I worked in three different VA hospitals for a total of 8 years and 7 months. I did my best to honor veterans by giving them the best care I could. As sort of an ironic post-script, as a “veteran” of the US Public Health Service (aka “Yellow Berets”), I was and am entitled to same veterans benefits as a former US Army Green Beret. Never took a dime out of the system, though, and I never intend to.

I agree with the education thing, obviously. Everywhere else in the civilized world, college is free or nearly free or, at the extreme, affordable. I have a very good friend who lives in the UK with two kids who went through medical school and have no debt and who have no compelling interest in making a ton of money to pay off debt. I’ve got one kid in med school and the other on the way; the first one is borrowing $70K per year for 4 years and the second will face something similar. That’s starting out a career with $280K in educational debt. If you don’t think that impacts medical decision making — even for the most altruistic young doctor — well, you don’t understand human nature, if you think that. So young doctors get into a pattern, right from the get go. What starts out as necessity (paying off the loans) later on just morphs, quite naturally, into greed, for a great many.

We are being penny-wise and pound foolish, as a nation, in tolerating these financial barriers to education, which exist nowhere else — all in the name of avoiding government “theft” of our earnings.

Primary care mdical residencies are not at all competitive. 98% of medical school graduates who want a residency in family practice, or internal medicine, or pediatrics can get one, but only 50% who want a plastic surgery residency can get one. You want to know the smartest doctors (in terms of board scores and med school grades)? It’s not the “House” type of doctors and it’s not psychiatrists or neurologists; it’s not even the egghead combined MD/PhDs who go into academic medicine and vote for Obama (mea culpa), it’s the plastic surgeons and dermatologists (another lucrative and highly competitive residency). Lucrative specialty residencies are exceedingly competitive. We have a glut of specialists and a shortage of primary care docs. The majority of our graduated docs have huge debt and a greater imperative to make money than to heal the sick.

Just as an aside, in case you ever decide you want a face lift, just be aware that the guy or gal who’s going to remove your face from your skull and then put it back after slicing it up got selected for his/her specialty not on the basis of manual dexterity combined with artistic aptitude, but on the basis of scores on multiple choice tests. Keep that in mind while signing your personal check for $30,000.

What Barack Obama just did was HUGE. Henceforth, federal education loan borrowers won’t be required to devote more than 10% of their income per year to debt repayment, and remaining, unpaid debt will be totally forgiven after 20 years. Of course, this is “socialized” federal loan subsidies. It still leaves America far behind the rest of the world. But it’s a great use of taxpayer funds.

The real “job creators” are not the rich. The job creators are the bright, ambitious young people, with the education to create new business paradigms and contribute to the growth of existing businesses.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@ Larry
First let me say that what Obama did was not huge, it was illegal, insignificant, and criminal. Buying votes is just outright illegal, buying votes by saving students $10 a month is insignificant, buying votes and forgiving loans after 20 years, thereby strapping our children and grandchildren with the bill is criminal.

Second, you want to tax the rich to give away tuition. Shouldn’t someone just look into why college is so expensive now. I read somewhere that tuition has increased over 400% since the 80s. Books are insanely expensive and a great majority of professors mandate a book that one of their buddies wrote. The Universities need to cut the amount of administrators by half, at least. Maybe have the faculty work the same hours the rest of the nation could cut some costs as well.

I will never understand why the first reaction a liberal has is to throw money at a problem and get that money from someone else that earned it. Raising taxes on the rich isn’t going to do anything as long as the current tax law exists. The republicans are willing to work on tax reform to close loopholes and broaden the base. Did you watch Paul Ryan’s speech at the Heritage Foundation the other day? Awesome speech, and it actually made sense, which is more than you can say about anything Obama and Biden have said in the last few years.

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
So what if Adam Smith and TR liked it? Thinking people think for themselves instead of regurgitating “accepted” dogma because somebody wrote a book about it, after all, Marx thought it was great to, Hitler was all for re-distribution as well.

The rich most certainly DO NOT get more from the government (as outlined by the Constitution) than anyone else, nor do they owe more for it. Liberty and rights (including property rights) protected EQUALLY under the law is the goal, not some prog wet dream about “means and needs”.

Aqua,
great, that is something we don’t hear about, because it’s sponserd by GOVERNMENT,

@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Thanks for clarifying your position on the military. From some of your past posts, I did come away the impression that you somehow held a negative view. I also appreciate your service to the VA. My apologies if you were offended.

It seems like we are both in agreement that education is the best way for people to get ahead, we just differ on how to go about it. As for the rich not being job creators, they are not job destroyers either. Which leads to me to the next question, who creates and owns those existing businesses that those bright, ambitious young people find employment in that allows them to create new business paradiagrams that allow those businesses to grow?

My own personal opinon on taxes has me leaning to a flat tax whereby everything above the poverty level is taxed at the same rate for everyone, be it 20% or whatever. As for Obama forgiving tuition debt, it just promotes more irresponsiblity and gives people one more excuse to know that they don’t have to be responsible for the debts they incur. You’d think we’d learn a lesson from our current economic situtation and the one from the late ’20’s and 30’s.

I have no plans to seek out a plastic surgeon for a facelift. I kind of enjoy breaking the lenses on cameras when people try to take my picture as I am camera shy!

Hi Just Al (#17): On this blog, we’ve had a lot of prior discussion on the issue of the degree to which successful people depend on government for creating conditions essential for their success. Way too much to go arguing all over again. I’ll just give a brief, personal example, but you could do the same sort of exercise for anyone else, at any income level. But the higher on the economic food chain, the greater the dependency on government — even in the case of someone like an artist or actor, and certainly for a businessman or corporate CEO.

What allowed me to succeed is a well-educated workforce, a transportation, shipping, and communications infrastructure, hundreds of billions of dollars in government supported basic and applied research, intellectual property protection through the patent and court systems, health care for my workforce (supported in many ways by government research and infrastructure), the availability of Medicare and Social Security, lessening my obligation to employees and retirees and allowing me to invest my resources in my business, as opposed to the care of my aging parents, public safety institutions (police, fire, paramedics), and on and on and on. I also owe my success to the existence of customers for my services, with the customers owing much of their own economic success to the existence of the above government services. The higher up on the economic food chain, the greater the aggregate debt to government for the success obtained. The rich should pay a higher share of taxes to government, because they owe more to government. This was a principle first espoused by none other than Adam Smith.

With regard to higher education cost, textbooks have always been expensive and professors have always hawked their own books. Fortunately, this is something which is improving. University of California Medical Schools issue iPads to incoming students, with most of the curriculum pre-loaded. The problem is massive tuition hikes over the past 20 years. We are pricing higher education out the reach of increasing numbers of prospective students, which is a factor in our declining world ratings with regard to upward mobility.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

Two quotes and I’ll leave it at that:

“In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.” Edward Gibbon on Ancient Athens

“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” –Presbyterian clergyman William Boetcker

Hi Aqua: One unfortunate tendency on this blog is to try and make every single item of news into a struggle between two competing philosophies — government tyranny on one hand and individual freedom on the other hand. You are basically claiming that the likes of me are in favor of government tyranny and you are the champion of individual freedom.

It’s not nearly that dramatic. We aren’t talking about government tyranny versus individual freedom. We are simply having what should be nothing more than a dry economic debate about progressive taxation and how progressive taxes should or should not be. My own position on this (which has been very consistent) is that the Bush tax cuts were a bad thing and we should go back to the tax rates of the 1990s, with regard to both income taxes and inheritance taxes.

It’s the sort of thing on which we ought to simply be capable of having an honest difference of opinion, without talking in terms of “helping the poor man by destroying the rich.” This is sloganeering and it’s a straw man. I am not in favor of destroying the rich. I am in favor of the rich paying their fare share of taxes, as they did for most of the 20th century — back when we didn’t have a debt crisis.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

openid.aol.com/runnswim
what is the point,
they already give more to GOVERNMENT THAN ANYONE,
THE PROBLEM could be, that OBAMA KEEP ASKING FOR MONEY FOR HIS CAMPAIN TO BE REELECTE,
THOSE MILLIONS SHOULD GO TO LESSEN THE DEBT OF THE AMERICANS WHICH KEEP PAYING TAX,
WHICH ARE SPENT OVERSEE INSTEAD OF FOR THE AMERICANS BEST INTEREST,
HE DOESN’T SPENT HIS OWN PERSONAL MONEY,
AND HE IS ONE OF THE RICHS,
AND ALWAYS WANTING MORE.
WHY WOULD OBAMA GET BILLIONS TO SPEND ON HIS OWN POLITICAL CAMPAIGN,
WHEN HE ONLY SPEND THE AMERICAN MONEY, TO GET OVERSEA’S VOTES AND SUPPORT,

Let’s look at what Obama said,
As a State Senator:
Provide state-funded tuition and fees to any Illinois student who attends a public college or university as long as they maintain a B average. 1998 IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test , Jul 2, 1998

To get elected:
We’ll recruit teachers in math and science, and deploy them to under-staffed school districts in our inner cities and rural America. Speech in Flint, MI, in Change We Can Believe In, p.250 , Jun 15, 2008

As President:
We need to invest in the skills and education of our people. Now, this year, we’ve broken through the stalemate between left and right by launching a national competition to improve our schools. And the idea here is simple: Instead of rewarding failure, we only reward success. Instead of funding the status quo, we only invest in reform–reform that raises student achievement; inspires students to excel in math and science; and turns around failing schools that steal the future of too many young Americans, from rural communities to the inner city. 2010 State of the Union Address , Jan 27, 2010

Seems Obama USED to want to get graduates out of schools and colleges who might be able to contribute to society.
Has the Union broken him?
Now all he cares about is that more teaching majors’ with passing grades get hired and paid a lot.

Aqua
you found some jewels, and only from one man who reflect on what
is going on, an think not, yes we can,
but think no you cannot,
bye

@Aqua:

Great quotes.
Presbyterian clergyman William Boetcker’s words have been updated by a political cartoonist.

OBAMA:
Elect me and I promise you FREE Health Care!
CROWD:
Yippie! Yay!

OBAMA:
Also FREE Housing and FREE Clothing!
CROWD:
YEAH! Wohoo!

OBAMA:
And FREE Food Stamps!
YEA!!!!

OBAMA:
And jobs for everybody!
CROWD:
????

OBAMA:
Any questions?
Man in CROWD:
What do we need jobs for?

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
And every single thing you pointed out as a key to success was put there primarily by private industry, for profit, sure the government paid private contractors of some of the infrastructure, but government did not “create” any of it. And each of those items were and are equally available to all citizens.

Class guilt generously seasoned with closeted self loathing, appear to be keys to being “progressive”. I’m sorry that you feel so guilty for whatever success you’ve had that you “owe” more. . . well go ahead and write the check, there’s nothing stopping you.

Hi Just Al:

And every single thing you pointed out as a key to success was put there primarily by private industry, for profit, sure the government paid private contractors of some of the infrastructure, but government did not “create” any of it. And each of those items were and are equally available to all citizens.

You can say the same thing about Medicare. The government didn’t “create” any of it. It simply paid private contractors to administer the program and provide the services. And Medicare is vastly more “socialized” than ObamaCare.

According to your reasoning, we can and should raise taxes to build bullet trains all over the country, because they will be built by private contractors.

No self-loathing here. Simply exultation. After 3 years of head-butting here on F/A, a level-headed conservative has explained that when government spends money which is laundered through private contractors, this is not government-provided service or government-provided infrastructure, but is really just private enterprise at work.

Game/Set/Match !

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

JustAl
yes, and beside, the fact is, that the government paid from the people’s tax collected,
which is not their pockets, only the pockets of the citizens paying tax,
so if someone get paid by GOVERNMENT, THEY SHOULD THANK THE PEOPLE
INSTEAD OF THE GOVERNMENT.
AND FURTHERMORE, THE BIG COMPANIES DON’T NEED TO REWARD THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN, BUT TO GIVE IT TO THE GOVERNMENT TO REDUCE THE DEBT,
WILL OBAMA GIVE BACK THAT FREE MONEY TO THE DEBT? HE WITH THE DEMOCRATS BENEDICTION, HE ALONE SPEND BY MILLIONS AT A TIME, which is the TAXPAYER’S MONEY.

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Too cute!! game set match, LMAO.
You’ve proven nothing but that your a leftist, so what? Did I forget to mention that the government you worship also do not create wealth?

You seem all to quick to declare, “Match” without response to the central argument of the contest, that no citizen owes any more or any less to the government or the nation than any other. Yet the Progs like you insist that free-loaders don’t owe anything and successful citizens owe everything.

Now that you’ve declared victory you can toddle on home.

Hi Just Al:

without response to the central argument of the contest, that no citizen owes any more or any less to the government or the nation than any other. Yet the Progs like you insist that free-loaders don’t owe anything and successful citizens owe everything.

No, that’s not what I said. Everyone who lives within a community of other people owes not just “something” to government, but owes a lot to government. Government is simply people coming together and deciding on a common set of rules under which they can all safely co-exit and prosper. Government is also people pooling their money and spending it on things which benefit all of them and which individuals can’t provide for themselves.

If you have a business with one employee, you owe more to government than does your employee. You depend on government not only to provide transportation for you (roads, traffic signals, etc.), you also depend on government to provide transportation for your employee, so that he can get to work. So you are deriving more benefit from government than is your employee. You benefit from your mobility and you also benefit from your employee’s mobility. You get double benefit from transportation infrastructure. If you have a hundred employees, you get 100-fold benefit. You create a place of business, and your employees are clogging up public roads in driving to work. So you should pay a higher percentage of your income in taxes, because a higher percentage of your income is dependent upon the infrastructure provided by your government.

And then you have education. etc. etc. If you think about it, you’ll not only agree with the likes of me (whom you don’t respect), but also with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Adam Smith (whom you should respect).

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Quiet a bit of education actually, thanks awfully for the thinly veiled ad homonym, no discussion with a leftist is complete without one.

You seem confused (or perhaps are intentionally misdirecting (should I say “projecting)), “respect” for you has nothing to do with it, I disagree with you, and in this instance with Smith, and in several respects with TR who started the federal government land grab and even admitted that he “stole Panama”. As a human being, your are entitled to a measure of respect, as a citizen, your right to express your ideas merit respect. But none of that means that your views or ideas deserve respect.

Your reasoning (being generous here) is quiet simply wrong, it isn’t that I don’t understand what you are saying, nor that I lack “respect” for your right to express such an incorrect viewpoint, the point is that I don’t “respect” what you are saying because it doesn’t deserve respect. In fact, your views don’t warrant any more key strokes either.

etc. etc.

Thanks, JustAl. For what it’s worth, I not only respect you as an individual, but I also respect your opinions. I don’t agree, but I do understand and respect your viewpoint.

– Larry W/HB

Hmmm. Someone who basically says, “if you were smart like me, you’d understand and agree” doesn’t sound too respectful.
Then again, I expect that from an elitest leftist.

@ Larry, #22
We always come full circle in our debates Larry. I believe it is government tyranny. I’m not against government as a whole, I’m against a central, “all powerful” government. It is not the way our country is intended to function. Most of the things you advocate should be done at the State level if the State so desires. I have no problems with California having their cap and trade law. Good for your guys. I will not push for a federal law banning all cap and trade laws among the States. And I believe California should be able to keep most of their money. They shouldn’t be paying taxes to the feds for the feds to redistribute that money to other States to fund federal programs.
Let the States implement the programs they want on a State level, not a federal level. If it works, other States will try or even improve. That is how our republic is supposed to work.

Speaking of State college programs, California used to have a great program. You could go to a California State college almost free of charge. Georgia has a program called the Hope scholarship. If you graduate high school with a certain GPA and maintain that GPA in college, your education is paid for.

Why can’t the feds just stay out of it Larry? This is the problem I have with the left. You guys figure your ideas are so good, they should be enacted on everyone and paid for by someone other than you. Keeping it at the State level is a much better idea.

@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, re: comment #28, are you a disciple of Elizabeth Warren? She has made a few statements lately about private enterprise.

Hi Warren; We’ve been discussing progressive taxation around here for quite some time and I’ve been making the point about the fact that there is an increasing debt to government, the higher one goes on the economic food chain, for a couple of years, at least. I have always been frustrated at the ineptitude of the the Democratic Party leadership, with regard to the way it communicates. The Democratic Party message has basically been that the “millionaires and billionaires” should pay more, because they can afford to pay more. This is a vacuous argument. Adam Smith and Theodore Roosevelt had it right; the rich should pay more because they owe more to government, in terms of achieving and maintaining their financial success. So I was very pleased to see Elizabeth Warren actually articulating this point of view.

Hi Aqua, back with your last comment later on.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@ Larry, #37
I look forward to it…seriously. This is the issue that I have with democrats and republicans. There are only a few republican primary candidates that address the issue of allowing the States deal with their citizens on their own. I have much more influence on my Governor, State Senator, and State Rep. than I have over the President, US Senators, and Congressman. Our country is too big and too divided to be governed by a central government.
I just read that the OWS folks are drafting a constitution and discussing succession. I think that’s where we are headed if we don’t fix this.

Hi Aqua (#35):

You say:

We always come full circle in our debates Larry. I believe it is government tyranny. I’m not against government as a whole, I’m against a central, “all powerful” government. It is not the way our country is intended to function. Most of the things you advocate should be done at the State level if the State so desires. I have no problems with California having their cap and trade law. Good for your guys. I will not push for a federal law banning all cap and trade laws among the States. And I believe California should be able to keep most of their money. They shouldn’t be paying taxes to the feds for the feds to redistribute that money to other States to fund federal programs.
Let the States implement the programs they want on a State level, not a federal level. If it works, other States will try or even improve. That is how our republic is supposed to work.

Speaking of State college programs, California used to have a great program. You could go to a California State college almost free of charge. Georgia has a program called the Hope scholarship. If you graduate high school with a certain GPA and maintain that GPA in college, your education is paid for.

Why can’t the feds just stay out of it Larry? This is the problem I have with the left. You guys figure your ideas are so good, they should be enacted on everyone and paid for by someone other than you. Keeping it at the State level is a much better idea.

I reply:

The above is an entirely excellent piece of writing/philosophy and I do agree with you. I like the idea of having the states be laboratories for testing new ideas, e.g. Massachusetts for universal health care; California for control of carbon consumption; Illinois for a degree of gun control; Wisconsin for curbing public sector unions; maybe even Iowa/NY for same gender marriage, and so on. Let’s allow the states to experiment and see what how it goes. Good results would lead to more widespread adoption. Bad results won’t be replicated. It’s very efficient, actually.

Though I do agree with you as a matter of general philosophy, what do I advocate when issues come up at a national level? Well, for one thing, I want to see top marginal tax rates raised back up to 39.6%. You probably want them lowered. This is a national issue. What about drilling for oil? I’d leave this up to the states. If Alaska wants to drill, let them drill. If California wants to keep its beaches clean, then let us do that, as well.

How about abortion? Well, I view that as a matter of individual autonomy/liberty. Here’s what the 14th Amendment says:

nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

Now, we could quarrel over the meaning of “liberty” — to me, liberty begins with having dominion over one’s own body — but the point is that the Constitution does limit the power of states to do certain things: abridge civil rights; abrogate functions reserved by the Constitution for the Federal government, etc. So there are limits to state autonomy.

Perhaps my biggest complaint about things which conservatives write on this blog is the way everything is spun as being a choice between government tyranny and personal liberty. If I advocate raising tax rates, this isn’t government tyranny — it’s just fiscal responsibility. Paying our own bills. Paying for our wars in real time. Paying for our social programs in real time. If we want to stop the wars — fine. Stop the wars first, then lower tax rates. If we want to cut the social programs — fine. Cut the social programs first and then lower tax rates. I consider it irresponsible, however, to cut taxes without cutting spending and to make up for the shortfall by borrowing.

I think I’ve spent most of my time on this blog arguing against wars and arguing against “unbalanced” tax cuts. My other issues have been anthropogenic CO2 emissions, which I view as being a science issue, as opposed to a political issue, and health care.

Since I believe that RomneyCare is a big success and I believe that we are currently experiencing a health care bubble which is about to explode, I’m in favor of advancing this to the federal level, if it’s politically feasible.

I think that ObamaCare is truly a win/win for the country, no matter how it works out. If ObamaCare survives, I think it will be a great first step toward gently deflating the health care bubble, before it bursts. If the GOP has great success in the 2012 elections and repeals ObamaCare, then the GOP will take ownership of the health care bubble and will be forced to deal with it, as they’ll have been the ones to have killed the solution put in place by their political opposition. Think two moves ahead. Kill ObamaCare right at the time when the health care bubble is set to explode. You sure you want to be in charge of cleaning up the ensuing mess?

Obama would have been much better off losing to McCain in 2008 and running against McCain in 2012. The GOP was fortunate to lose in 2008 – thus leaving the Democrats to deal with an economy losing jobs at the rate of 700,000 per month.

Lot of rambling. To get back on task, I do mostly agree with what you wrote in #35. Again, well argued.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@ Larry
Great response. You need to be careful with the 14th Amendment though. It has been used wrongly for a long time. It was originally intended to ensure all former slaves were considered citizens of the United States. Now it has taken on a life of its own to include the anchor baby debacle. There is a bill in congress to promote concealed carry permit reciprocity for the whole nation. I’m a fan of concealed carry permits, but I’m also a State’s rights advocate and believe the States and their citizens should decide such things.
As for abortion, I’m a Catholic and I consider it murder in almost every case. But I do not want abortion to be illegal. I think it would result in more deaths. What I would like is for it to become a non-issue. You say:

Now, we could quarrel over the meaning of “liberty” — to me, liberty begins with having dominion over one’s own body — but the point is that the Constitution does limit the power of states to do certain things: abridge civil rights; abrogate functions reserved by the Constitution for the Federal government, etc. So there are limits to state autonomy.

Suicide is illegal, drug use is illegal, prostitution is illegal. Therefore dominion over one’s own body is not an absolute. Personal responsibility is though. There are some great birth control devices out there. Also, the constitution guarantees life as well. A baby that is born except for the head and then killed is murder.
But enough about abortion, it is its own topic.
I agree with you a lot about taxes. I am an engineer by trade and I build things. Some times we try to save legacy systems by upgrading designs and adding new features. But there comes a time when the system needs to be ripped out and a new one installed. That time has come for our tax code. Setting the upper rate at 39.6% will not do a bit of good right now. Congress is still picking winners and losers and the loop holes will ensure a great many people with a 39.6% rate will still pay somewhere in the 20’s. GE paid 0% in corporate taxes, UPS somewhere around 34%, and DHL somewhere around 28%. How is this possible? This is a small sample, but if we average this out it is just over 20%. Logic tells me that if we lower the corporate tax rate to 20% and remove all loopholes, there will be growth and the fairness that the left always calls for. Plus the move would be revenue and deficit neutral. Make the rate 22% and increase revenue, lower the deficit and it’s still low enough to attract investment. The same could be done with personal taxes. The GOP is actually trying to do this and the left is shutting them down.
The constitution requires congress to apply all laws equally. When that doesn’t happen, it is tyranny. They need to start with themselves and a constitutional amendment needs to be passed that makes congress live under the same laws that they pass. If nothing else shows how urgent this needs to happen, the insider trading uncovered by a conservative author and reported by 60 Minutes does.
Before I hit healthcare, I would like to bring up one State’s right issue that I think would reduce the size of the federal government. There does not need to be a Department of Education. The States should deal with education themselves. Congress should have a committee on education, it is their job anyway, but we do not need a federal bureaucracy for something the States can take care of.
Healthcare. I do not believe we have a healthcare bubble, I think we have a health insurance bubble. And like the tax code, I think it is time the system is ripped out and a new one installed. But it doesn’t need to be run or dictated by the federal government. Health insurance rates are soaring in all 50 States, including Massachusetts. If Romney/Obamacare were the answer, Massachusetts would be doing just fine and the other 49 States would be jumping through their skins to implement the same type of program. You cite medicare as an example of a great system, but the 2011 actuaries show that it will be paying out more than it brings in for the foreseeable future. http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html
Any business person can tell you that this is the sign of a failed business model. Plus, I don’t have time to list all the things that Obamacare is going to destroy, such as the medical device industry. Does something need to be done? Yes, but Obamacare is not the answer.

Larry: If I advocate raising tax rates, this isn’t government tyranny — it’s just fiscal responsibility. Paying our own bills. Paying for our wars in real time. Paying for our social programs in real time. If we want to stop the wars — fine. Stop the wars first, then lower tax rates. If we want to cut the social programs — fine. Cut the social programs first and then lower tax rates. I consider it irresponsible, however, to cut taxes without cutting spending and to make up for the shortfall by borrowing.

Little disagreement here as an exercise of fiscal responsibility. Where we have disagreed in the past, Larry, is that you advocate raising taxes without *reform* (not cuts) of the entitlement programs. You have always had the order backwards, IMHO. Yet in this paragraph, you do say “cut” spending first, then lower taxes.

So why is it is you are for the reform/cuts first when it comes to lowering taxes, but you advocate for raised taxes without reform/cuts?

INRE the 10th Amendment rights for the states, and your idea they are a laboratory, I have no qualms with that notion. One of the reasons we are a Republic is that if a citizen doesn’t like the State laws, they can move to another State. Thus the reason we were founded on a very limited in power central government… something that as been abused and grown exponentially since the New Deal era.

However, using healthcare as an example, State laws still need to honor Constitutional rights. In the case of RomneyCare, he’s on a losing tangent with it being a 10th Amendment issue. If a mandate is unconstitutional at the federal level, it is just as unconstitutional at the state level. He will not escape his culpability using that argument.

@Aqua: I do not believe we have a healthcare bubble, I think we have a health insurance bubble. And like the tax code, I think it is time the system is ripped out and a new one installed. But it doesn’t need to be run or dictated by the federal government. Health insurance rates are soaring in all 50 States, including Massachusetts. If Romney/Obamacare were the answer, Massachusetts would be doing just fine and the other 49 States would be jumping through their skins to implement the same type of program.

I agree that this is all about insurance premiums. The base cause of rising health costs is the cost of administering medical. A health insurance premium is based on risk assessment of the insured pool, and the costs of covering that risk.

All O’healthcare and RomneyCare did was to attempt price fix premiums…. i.e. with the HHS having to approve premium rates, as was refused when MA insurers tried to increase theirs. With costs that continue to soar, unabated, a capped premium just results is whittled down coverage… not better or more coverage.

You can’t price fix the retail price of a product, and expect that will result in the cost of manufacturing that product or service remains low. All it will do is result in inferior products and service, until it is no longer provided by a private entity.

Hi Aqua: Great response. I’ll reply when I can. For now, I just want to make a single point:

You cite medicare as an example of a great system, but the 2011 actuaries show that it will be paying out more than it brings in for the foreseeable future. http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/index.html
Any business person can tell you that this is the sign of a failed business model.

This is because Medicare can’t raise Medicare tax by 25% to 40% in a single year, as many health insurance companies have done with their premiums. Private health insurance premiums have gone up close to 200% in ten years; I carried Cadillac insurance (two policies) for several years: near 2001 it was about $12,000 per year; by the time I dropped it, several years later, it was up over $25,000 per year. Now I get by on $8,000 deductible per individual Blue Shield, which costs $12,500 for me and my wife.

What’s relevant is this: Medicare delivers the best health insurance product of all major insurance plans. Widest provider network — national in scope. My mom lived in Kentucky, but went to the best doctors in three states (KY, NY, and CA). On “customer satisfaction” surveys, Medicare ranks #1. Health care outcomes are unsurpassed. Administrative and overall costs are the lowest. And the system is far more transparent and responsive to consumer complaints than is the opaque and frankly dictatorial private insurance system. So the question is this: get rid of Medicare and with what do you replace it? Anything you replace it with will cost more and deliver less and provide lesser consumer satisfaction and lesser choice in providers and hospitals.

I turn 65 on my next birthday and I look forward to trading in my Blue Shield policy for Medicare.

BTW, the goal of RomneyCare was to provide universal coverage, not to control costs. RomneyCare succeeded brilliantly. It’s got a greater than 60% approval among voters and close to an 80% approval among doctors. RomneyCare wasn’t a panacea for health care costs. No one has anything approaching a panacea. But the most promising approach is to change the whole reimbursement model — away from paying for procedures to paying for outcomes. This is the approach advocated by Tim Pawlenty, among others, and ObamaCare has $11 billion for pilot programs to determine how best to implement this in the real world and to gauge the results.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

Larry, Romneycare was meant to control costs. To say otherwise is a flat out lie. Romney’s words:

Then-Gov. Mitt Romney said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed when he was on the cusp of signing the bill: “Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114472206077422547.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Democrat state Sen. Richard Moore was quoted making similar predictions in the Boston Globe:

Sen. Richard Moore, Democrat of Uxbridge, co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, said he does not believe that the program will run a deficit, partly because legislators have included several cost-control measures.

Those measures include a new pay-for-performance program that will require hospitals and doctors to meet quality and efficiency standards to earn Medicaid rate increases starting in the second year of the plan.

The same article quoted Democrat state Rep. Patricia Walrath as saying of the legislation, “I assume medical costs will at least stabilize, and we won’t see the double-digit increases we’ve seen.”

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/04/13/joy_worries_on_healthcare/

Hi Hard. I’ll go research the issue some more, but what I said was not a “flat out lie.” A lie is where a person knows something to be false, but then presents it to others as if it were true, with the intent to deceive. I may be wrong. I may have made an honest mistake. But I did not “lie.”

– Larry W

And don’t come back with the recent excuse they defered the cuts. That’s BS. The quotes I posted are from the time the bill was passed or about to be passed.

Besides, I’ve told you before that claim you made about cost was false.

Hi Hard:

Here’s a short summary of the way I read (and remembered) it:

http://www.healthbusinessblog.com/2011/10/romney-vulnerable-on-massachusetts-health-care-costs-not-really/

Politico argues that Mitt Romney may be haunted by Massachusetts health care costs. I disagree for a couple reasons:

As the article mentioned, the Massachusetts health reform law Romney signed was about getting people into coverage, not reducing costs

Although Massachusetts health insurance costs are high relative to other states, that’s not due to the health reform law and doesn’t take into account affordability compared to income

One reason health reform wasn’t passed until 2006 was that opponents argued we had to get costs under control first, and only then take on universal coverage. After a couple decades of that thinking the state decided to try to do things the other way around, an approach I think is more likely to succeed. Universal coverage improved the environment for long-term cost control by getting everyone into the system and making it clear that cost containment would be needed to sustain the gains of reform. Although it would be great to have achieved cost containment in the five years since the law went into effect, it takes longer than that to change health care. Efforts by private health plans to control costs with innovative approaches such as Blue Cross’s Alternative Quality Contract are showing promise. Meanwhile the state is moving forward –albeit slowly– on payment reform and cost control.

Massachusetts insurance costs were high before reform and remain high. Key drivers are our overuse of academic medical centers for primary care, extensive benefits mandates, and guaranteed issue/community rating requirements, which mean that people with pre-existing conditions can purchase insurance –even though it drives up costs for everyone. Overall Massachusetts is a high cost state and health insurance is no exception. But incomes are high, too. Only Connecticut had a higher per capita personal income in 2010.

Statewide health care reform isn’t sufficient, since states can’t control Medicare policies and have only partial control of Medicaid. That’s why federal reform is necessary for Massachusetts and other states to succeed in cost containment, quality improvement and universal coverage.

Now, you are quoting a couple of random claims by politicians, after the fact. The issue is how RomneyCare was “sold” to the voters. Was it sold as a law to control health care costs or as a law to provide universal coverage? I’d have to go and research the campaign related literature of the time.

Anyway, it’s crazy to criticize RomneyCare on the grounds that it didn’t instantly solve a problem which has been getting worse everywhere in the world, and especially so in the American private health care system, which has the greatest out of control health care inflation in the world.

I think that the GOP will manage to kill ObamaCare, in the same way that they’ve killed bullet trains. But the fallout of killing ObamaCare is that the GOP will take ownership of the health care bubble (or health care insurance bubble, in a nod to Aqua). As I wrote before, good luck with that and have a nice day.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

I was hoping this wouldn’t turn into healthcare.
@ Mata
On the topic of State’s rights and the individual mandate, I don’t know that it being unconstitutional for the feds would mean it would be unconstitutional for the States. Since congress is pulling it out of their commerce clause backsides, it might not relate to the States. The States are allowed to do a lot of things the feds can’t as long as it doesn’t violate the US Constitution or their State Constitution. So a State can’t take away 5th amendment rights, but they can have a State sponsored religion. I believe there is still some debate as to how the 14th amendment applies to sponsored religion after Everson v. Board of Education. I would love, really love to have the Massachusetts individual mandate hit SCOTUS on a 14 amendment stand. I would like to see the current court define the 14th amendment. Of course it would be much better is we get a republican POTUS and Justice Ginsburg retires. waking from my dream now.
On the costs of health insurance, a couple of things I read that help drive up cost really caught my attention.
Cost-shifting: medicare and medicade not paying the same rates as the private market costs a family of four almost $2,000 a year.
Prescription drug costs: I believe more competition and less lobbying would help here.
Mandates and regulations: Yep, costs hospitals and doctors a pantload to meet uncle Sugar’s requirements.

Aqua, leaving aside your religion reference, it’s my belief that a State still cannot mandate their residents purchase a product from the private sector, simply because they live and breathe. Again, this comes back to compulsory insurance for car registration and/or drivers licenses. This offers an option not to drive, or purchase a car.

As first year law students learn, when you deal with federal central government authority, you read the Constitution to see if it allows it. For the States, you look to the constitution to see if it forbids that activity. Since the Constitution doesn’t elaborate on what a State may forbid, that is usually referenced in the individual State Constitutions. Many states are now attempting to codify a protection *against* a mandate in their Constitutions. Forty – five of them as of a few days ago, to be exact.

The base question is whether or not health care decisions are a protected right – whether federal or state level – or not. The US Constitutional arguments used would be a combination of the 9th and 10th Amendments, right into the 14th Amendment. When discussing Wyomings Health Care Freedom Act, the WY Liberty site goes into the principled doctrines of “Incorporation”, “Judicial Federalism”, and the 9th/10th Amendments vs a Supremacy Clause argument.

My personal belief is that forced mandates for purchase of a private product, as it pertains to the liberty of one’s decisions regarding their health, is unconstitutional and antithesis to our founding at all levels. They can play games anyway they like to get to the desired end goal of a mandate, but the fact is the only argument that justifies the attempt is one of commerce – interstate or intrastate. Why else would they infringe on such a personal decision of citizens?

But like everything else legislative at all levels of government, the only way a State’s act.. i.e. a health care mandate… can be labeled officially unconstitutional (in this case referencing the state constitution as opposed to the federal) is if someone challenges this in a court of law with the proper arguments. RomneyCare had Fountas v Dormitzer. The defendant’s attorney did cite conflicts with many federal Constitutional rights, and approached the argument with the mandate being an unconstitutional “bill of attainder”.

RomneyCare got around details of that pesky 5th and 8th Amendments, as well as Article I Section 10 by using State’s police powers, and the powers of taxation… in other words, they imposed a “fine/penalty” that was collected thru their personal income tax. And a State’s police powers have no conflict with the US Constitution. If you did not comply with the indirect mandate, the penalties are the loss of a personal exemption and ends up a “tax” on anyone who did not purchase health insurance.

Using this “play or pay” option under the banner of police powers (an arena that also includes zoning and eminent domain), they also dodged any legalities of a “direct” mandate which may, or may not conflict with any forbidden activities in the State Constitution as to individual liberties. Or a simpler way of putting it, MA allows for a very liberal “general welfare” legislative body with undefined boundaries simply because their Constitution does not forbid it. See pg 5 of the opinion linked above, and read the judicial view of the no boundaries on the MA legislators if you’re thinking of moving there.

Crafting these laws to accomplish the desired end result… “play or pay” at either the State or federal level.. often involves playing loopholes of legalese. Congress knew levying this as a tax was troublesome, so they evoked the Commerce Clause as their authority. They were very careful to do this, and had many behind closed doors about it. Of course, once it started showing up in the courts, they tried to reverse themselves too.

You’ll generally find that courts are reticent to buck public demand, whether you have precedents or not. And in fact, the MA appellate decisions specifically stated that:

A court evaluating any law enacted under police power must make all rational presumptions in favor of it’s validity. Such legislation may be struck down only if no rational basis of fact can reasonably be conceived to sustain it. Where the question of rational basis is “fairly debatable”, a court may not substitute it’s judgment for that of the Legislature.

So because the Legislature found that a mandate was key to the general welfare of the State’s health, and it was exercised using the State’s police powers, the defendant’s insufficient plea for relief had to be more concrete in it’s citation of the US Constitution than the defendant’s counsel provided.

Personally, I think the RomneyCare challenge evoked all the wrong US Constitutional Rights – many which cannot be usurped by a State’s police power – and think that the WY Liberty document’s argument of Incorporation and Judicial Federalism may have been a wiser way to go. But I doubt you’d find any liberal Judge in Mass that would use his bench to reverse RomneyCare simply because it was instituted by popular demand. They’d find any way possible not to step into that arena.

Larry, not only has it NOT even begun to solve the problem, it’s made it far worse. Popularity with people isn’t how you measure succees, but you know that. Your dishonest attempts to tout it as a success gets old very quickly. Yes I said dishonest. I simply can’t believe you are so far in denial that you think what you posted is true.

Prescription drug costs: I believe more competition and less lobbying would help here.

The GOP (in the back pocket of big pharma) forbids Medicare to negotiate with drug companies on prescription drug prices. That’s why we pay so much more than the rest of the world. It costs very little to manufacture drugs. Every new cancer drug coming out is costing more than $10,000 per month in the USA. Of course, the drug companies have to do R&D. But they spend multiples of their R&D budgets on sales and marketing; so there’s lots of flexibility. And the R&D they do is mostly to develop “me too” drugs. Almost every month, it seems, there’s yet another tyrosine kinase inhibitor (the anticancer drugs ending in “nib”) getting FDA approval, and being sold for $10K per month.

Anyway, just let Medicare use its buying power to bargain for drug costs. Let Medicaid bargain. Let the VA bargain. Let the rest of the world pay their fair share of drug development costs.

Hi Hard:

RomneyCare is a success because fewer than 2% of MA residents are now uninsured, contrasted with greater than 25% in Texas. Plus the law is even more popular with MA residents now than when it was voted into law. Plus it’s overwhelmingly popular with providers. You are unhappy that they are happy.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntingon Beach CA

@ Larry
I don’t think they were/are in the pocket of big pharma. Well, that’s not true, after the insider trading reveal I think both sides are in the pocket of someone. However, Part D allows private insurance companies to negotiate and Part D has actually been a pretty successful entitlement, as entitlements go. I you would like it to be more like medicade, that would mean:

Medicaid follows a rigid formula: If a manufacturer wants its drug available through Medicaid, it must offer a rebate of at least 23.1% off average wholesale prices for brand-name drugs and 13% for generics. If the company offers a bigger discount to any one of its other customers, it must match that price for Medicaid. According to the Congressional Budget Office, one consequence is that to make up for the revenue lost on Medicaid patients, drug manufacturers have to charge everyone else more.

http://www.forbes.com/2011/06/29/medicare-part-d.html

This would just mean more cost-shifting.