Yes. And, obviously, those with a greater ability to pay should pay more, and should pay a greater percentage. A graduated income tax is a fair solution.
Quite frankly, this country is and has been in dire need of a general tax hike. Or at minimum not the cuts we got in the last administration. Y’all were perfectly happy to start two wars halfway around the world, but you didn’t want to pay for them. Even leaving aside completely anything that has happened since Obama became President, Bush left this country so far in the red it’s not even funny.
While I certainly don’t advocate a return to the top rates of the Eisenhower era, I do advocate an increase in taxes from those who can afford to pay more, even if that includes me.
I believe he’s actually asserting that to cancel Medicare, we must give his money back, and wishes us to answer wether we’d want to, in an effort to make us ‘think’.
Of course, to even presume this is a question that’s valid to raise one has to assume that the liberals who ask “Do you want to cancel Medicare” have, themselves, seriously considered how one might change the law to do so, and for some insane reason agree with him that refunds are a necessary part of that process. It’s a fundamental failure to understand the intent of the question, or it’s deliberately acting obtuse in order to derail the discussion, one or the other.
It’s worth noting that, to his credit, in this thread he actually did address to the point of the original question he was attacking and agreed that that he really didn’t mind Medicare. It remains to be seen if he can expand from there to consider why UHC might also not be an automatic headshot to America.
I sure hope you aren’t a financial planner, because anyone who recommends the kinds of risky investments that can yield 8% over that time is an idiot. You have to shift into conservative investments years before you will need to take the money out, which will reduce the yield. And if you forget about the Bush crash you can get a high yield. The '20s were great also if you ignore 1929.
Remember in 2005 when your type was saying privatizing Social Security was a good deal because the market went up over any 10 year period? How would have that worked out?
BTW, one thing not considered in our friend’s calculation is how much private health insurance would cost at age 65, let alone age 90. Are we going to force insurance companies to take old people? To not drop coverage when they get sick? If we do, who makes up the loss in profit? Will insurance costs for younger people soar?
And what about those people who wouldn’t be investing 3% of their incomes at 8% (though you have to be pretty naive and unaware of the law of supply and demand in the labor market if you think people would get the additional 1.45%) People don’t save enough for retirement now. What if they are about to lose their house? I also notice that inflation is not taken into account at all. That would knock 2% off the return, perhaps.
They don’t deserve health care because they decided to skip college and go party. It’s mighty unfair for those lazy poor people to be able to avoid suffering, like respectable hard working rich people do, eh?
Remember, he has nothing against poor people at all. Just current administration and most democrats.
Ok, how about a compromise. Since not everybody could afford to have their own savings account to replace medicare, how about with those people in mind we set up a kind of communal chest where we all kick in a few bucks at the same time and, all together, it will pay for the poor as well as the rich.
Except, it wouldn’t be fair to ask everybody to kick in to that chest, would it? So lets make it only people who are employed should have to do that.
Except, people who are employed make wildly different amounts of money, so what would be a fair amount for everybody to contribute? Maybe it should be a percentage, so it’s fair for everyone.
But who would run this medical plan? It would be important that it be as cost-efficient as possible, so we probably wouldn’t want a for-profit venture being in charge of it since some of that money would end up being used as profit instead of for healthcare. It’d need to be a big, impartial group that wasn’t out to make a profit.
But they’d need a large infrastructure to collect this money for the chest, and administer a health coverage plan for every elderly citizen. Where are we going to find a big infrastructure or group of people who have a system established to collect a proportional amount of money from everybody, and can administer such a thing without needing to consider profit?
Don’t muddy the waters. I’m talking about paying for healthcare for old folks, and unless I’m mistaken, everybody’s medicare contribution is the same percentage.
Most people, not being professional investors would have been scammed out of most of their money or otherwise lost it, meaning either we’d have to create the Social Security system all over again ( thus paying twice ) or let the old starve. I’m sure the Republicans would have gone for the latter.
No, if that had happened people would have been so pleased with their returns during the real estate bubble that Bush would have been elected for a third term and we’d never have had this recession, because fiscal conservatism has proven to etcetc
I suppose you were in a coma when retirements invested so wisely in the stock market disappeared. Hows you 401k doing? Did your investment portfolio just climb and climb the last few years?