http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...less-popular-than-obamacare-when-it-launched/
Polls during the transition period are pretty meaningless long term.
Polls during the transition period are pretty meaningless long term.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...less-popular-than-obamacare-when-it-launched/
Polls during the transition period are pretty meaningless long term.
Well wealth transfers through taxation are about as constitutional as it gets. Congress has the power to tax, and the power to spend on basically whatever it wants. Whether you think that's a good idea or not is one thing, but the law is pretty settled on this fact.
As for wealth transfers, they don't bother me. (And I am definitely well on the giving end of the income spectrum.) The percentage of income gains that have gone to the top few percent of earners has increased at a rate that far exceeds their increased contribution. I am fine with giving some of that back. Three years ago my girlfriend had am AGI of nearly half a million. She is one of the biggest advocates for higher taxes on high income earners I know.
Next time you pass a homeless guy, make sure you don't give him anything because unless everyone gives him something it won't help. When my friend back in high school needed a place to stay and we took him in, it didn't do him a bit of good because we didn't take everyone we knew?
You really need to check that logic.
That's probably it. The just get so crazy with the wealth transfers!
All health insurance is a transfer of wealth from the healthy to the sick. Just like car insurance is a transfer of wealth from the people not in car accidents to the people in car accidents.
While I agree that a single payer system would be preferable, that would also be a wealth transfer from the healthy to the sick. I imagine in that case you would be telling us how it's evil socialism though.
The implementation of the ACA alone serves a fine example.Why do you think government has been able to successfully do so in basically every other industrialized nation on earth, but don't think our government could do it here? Are we uniquely incompetent and helpless in America?
It's puzzling for rightwingers that healthy young, and affluent should provide for care for the old, sick, and poor? Comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted?
when we go back to being an agrarian society with virtually unlimited land
True but this really isn't an apples to apples comparison. The scope and impact of ACA is much larger in scale.
Medicare is, these days, an incredibly popular program. Americans overwhelmingly oppose cutting it. No politician would consider repealing it. Most think providing health insurance to all Americans over 65 is worth the both the trouble and the cost.
This was not always true. Back in 1966, as Medicare was just about to launch, nobody knew whether the new program would provide benefits to millions or fail completely. Sound familiar?
"What will happen then, on that summer day when the federally insured system of paying hospital bills becomes reality?" Nona Brown, a New York Times reporter, wondered in a story published April 23, 1966. "Will there be lines of old folks at hospital doors, with no rooms to put them in, too few doctors and nurses and technicians to care for them?"
Oh weird I missed the part in the Constitution detailing that this was and must forever be a purely 'capitalist' country.
But why were these social programs necessary in the first place if free markets were taking care of these problems?
So healthcare under free markets is a luxury like a BMW or beachfront property? Do tell us more.
Who regulates interstate commerce?
Wow. Society has changed. In the 1960s you would be labeled a red and treated as a traitor to your nation for saying that the US should have anything at all to do with communism/socialism. Now communism/socialism is not only accpetable. Its all the rage.
Fuck, why does anyone have to work at all? That's not fair. Everyone should have everything for nothing, because everything is a "fundamental right."
You are presuming that such social programs were necessary, which they were not and are not.
Not saying that healthcare didn't need to be reformed. But it is definitely not a fundamental right. Just like driving ANY car is not a fundamental right.
This is my primary beef. The supreme court from ~1890-1950 totally fucked up the interpretation of the commerce clause, which has ultimately lead us down the path we are on now. And now they are too scared to change it, because of "stare decisis" (i.e., the weight of old decisions). Nevermind that those interpretations are going to ultimately bankrupt the damn country.
It doesn't (so it's a good thing no one is claiming it does).
My point is that it's a vapid argument to claim that America 'just is' a capitalist country, as if that's an a priori obvious and good thing. America has always used mixes of social organization that you could today call capitalism or socialism (though the terms would be anachronisms, having changed meaning in important ways lots of times). Historically, we've had socialized libraries, school, police, military, post office; private health care, factories, etc. What 'the Founders' believed the country should be for themselves is irrelevant to how we should govern ourselves today. If today we think more socialism can be helpful, it's stupid to argue that America is a 'capitalist' country and thus it must always be so. We are and always have been a country where we govern ourselves with some capitalism, some socialism, and some policies that don't fit either model.
Socialism isn't the enemy any more than capitalism is the enemy. They're ways of organizing things, both of which we use all the time, both of which are sliding scales rather than binary options, both of which can be poorly implemented to disastrous consequences.
More succinctly, health insurance should not be a wealth transfer from the Wealthy to the poor (or the "sick" to adopt your analogy).
What was the top income bracket tax rate in the 60s? When they talked about communism/socialism in the 60s, they were talking about the real thing, not government health programs or progressive taxation. They passed Medicare in the 60s.
If you can't see it, you are simply blind.And what, pray tell, is the difference between "real" communism and social welfare programs like the ACA, medicare, and social security?
If they could have been dealt with in other ways, why weren't they? You don't find it to be strange how none of these problems were dealt with by the free markets until they got so bad that social programs were created to deal with them? I bet you think it's a complete accident of history.They are all cost centers which could have been effectively dealt with in other ways. Oh wait. Those ways would have relied on personal responsibility and not on passing the buck to someone else.
The top 1% takes home basically twice as big a slice of the pie as they did 30-35 years ago at lower federal tax rates.
When socialism is necessary, it's because capitalism didn't deliver, other than to capitalists.
On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.
An overwhelming 49.9 percent of Americans responded enthusiastically to the Bush speech.
"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent.
If you can't see it, you are simply blind.
If they could have been dealt with in other ways, why weren't they? You don't find it to be strange how none of these problems were dealt with by the free markets until they got so bad that social programs were created to deal with them? I bet you think it's a complete accident of history.
And what, pray tell, is the difference between "real" communism and social welfare programs like the ACA, medicare, and social security? They are all cost centers which could have been effectively dealt with in other ways. Oh wait. Those ways would have relied on personal responsibility and not on passing the buck to someone else.
Jesus Christ. Now we are arguing about whether socialism is necessary? My head literally might explode. Time to start buying foreign property, cause I'm going to need somewhere to live when the U.S. implodes in about 40 years.
See, these statements are just articles of faith for conservatism. They're not actually self-evident or obvious to people outside that world. Especially people who actually know US history, because especially the last statement is explicitly false.Wouldn't you rather donate that money to a cause that will use it far more efficiently than the government will? All you are doing by advocating for higher taxes is feeding a never ending debt machine. And don't say that the government knows best or can implement a program the best. Never in the history of the U.S. has the government done anything more efficiently than private industry would.
Of course socialism is necessary to some degree or another, has been for a long time. That dates back 100 years or so. We live in a mixed economy with capitalist, socialist, & other undefined features. It's been that way since long before any of us were born.
Not sure if serious. Socialism doesn't work and it's a complete violation of liberty. Capitalism is the way and anyone who believes in the BS about socialism needs to have their head examined.