Getting back to the OP’s question. IMHO neither Joe nor the guys like him have done any complicated economic analysis or realistically believe they are going to strike it rich any time soon. They resent rich people being taxed because they see them selves as a member of the same group of Americans that the rich belong to vs. “the other.” The other changes as needed, but in most instances it means persons of color. I’d wager if you ask Joe why his wages are stagnant or why there is one mega-plumbing company that won’t hire him instead of dozens of small ones, some of whom would hire him - he’d say it’s because the government is taking the money of hard working tax earners and giving it to the dread “them.” Cheats and lazy people who just want to live on the dole.
It’s the reason the right is using the spectre of giving health care to illegal aliens as a reason not to pass reform.
Der Trihs, given the contentiousness of UHC, wouldn’t/shouldn’t you then be concerned about the same type of administration taking over and doing the same thing? How to protect against such a travesty? Build in protections too strongly, and you get the “see, creeping socialism! see, they want you to be dependent! see, they’re creating a bureaucratic monster!” and so on.
I believe that this is part of the debate that’s getting drowned out. There is a legitimate concern that Palin could be president (oops, sorry about that, should have warned!) and pull a FEMA on the agency. There is legitimacy to the notion that what makes capitalism such a great economic system is that it gets prices right (or more right than any other system) such that there are inherent protections against incompetence or bureaucratic malignence.
Why does everyone assume that all estates are subject to the estate tax? I’m not sure of the exact number, but I think you only have to pay taxes on an estate that’s bigger than 2-3 million dollars, and nothing if it was bequeathed to a surviving spouse. So the idea of a surviving child being unable to pay the taxes on the modest family home is ludicrous. More likely, the home would have been sold prior to death so the decedent could go into a long-term-care facility under a Medicare spend-down.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28418678/the_death_tax_scam The super rich are pouring millions into a campaign to eliminate inheritance taxes. They are the top rung of the fabulously wealthy. They will save a ton of money. They are paying their politcal workers to get the job done. The senators and congressmen work for them and often fight against the good of the people will offer bills to keep them even richer. we are such idiots.
I think this is a reasonable assumption. I, like many conservatives and moderates, tend to view ourselves as belonging the the group of people where through hard work, education, discipline and sensible decision making we are able to advance ourselves in society. We don’t believe we are going to “strike it rich”, we believe it is a gradual process.
Why is taking more from the super rich part of the “good of the people”? Is it just an issue of taxing them more because they have more to tax? Is it about not creating a permenant aristocracy of inhereted wealth? What ultimately is the motivation here?
I just wanted to pop in and say thanks to all who have posted in this thread. I have gotten a lot of new information and feel that I better understand a certain viewpoint now. My own ignorance has been eroded a bit.
athelas, I especially wanted to point out what you wrote as thought-provoking to me (even though I didn’t understand all of it). If you were a teacher, I’d like to take your class so I could ask lots of questions and prolly argue with you.
The problem with that argument is that that is the sort of people and sort of organization we already have running our health care. And at least we can vote out a government that does something like that
As has been said before; arguments like this only work if you assume that America is uniquely evil or incompetent. Other countries have UHC and it’s superior to what we have now.
Only in some, not all circumstances. With health care capitalism is pretty much indistinguishable from extortion. “Pay or die”. Or outright mugging; “Pay AND die”. They can and do literally demand all you have, and provide rotten service or none at all in return.
I resent rich people being heavily taxed. It’s their money. They earned it. What right do I have to take it? Besides, their money ultimately goes toward helping the middle and lower class. When a rich person buys a mansion, for example, lots of plumbers and framers must be hired. And rich people invest their money, which helps all of us. Their money is much better left in their hands vs. the government.
So why do so many people what to sock it to the rich? I don’t think it has anything to do with wanting the government to increase its revenues. Many people would still want to heavily tax rich people even if it meant no extra revenue to the government. (And this could be the case depending on where we are on the Laffer curve.) They want to heavily tax the risk because they’re envious of the rich. It is their way of “sticking it to the man.”
Where in the fuck do people like you get this from? Does your grocer “extort” money from you for your groceries? Does your you automobile dealer “extort” money from you for your car? Does your apartment complex or mortgage company “extort” money from you for your home?
I already know the answer – you want big daddy government (i.e., the rest of us) to supply these things for you so you can go coast through your McJob and not have to worry about working hard enough to provide for yourself.
If you feel you’re being overcharged for food or a car, you can go buy elsewhere, or use your own labor to procure nourishment and transportation (e.g. grow a garden, walk to work). Most people don’t have that option where health care is concerned.
If only we all had your gift for reading motivations in people you don’t know and have never met! Think how that might simplify things! Did you apply this same perceptivity when GeeDubya lied through his teeth about Iraq? Is this gift exclusive to people of your political persuasion? I wonder, because I often hear such crisp certainty from tighty rightys, who tell me exactly what I think and why I think so!
Why, I bet you can tell what I’m thinking right now, and you might very well be right!
In response to Drain_Bead I’d like to point out that you were advocating a communistic level of redistribution of wealth and that’s what I was responding to. In response to you, your point is irrelevant because if no cash is left to you then how does the estate pay the tax? What if you are left a $ 5,000,000 home and nothing else? What then?
I fail to see how the ultra-rich ‘earned’ their money. By being born to the right parents? By being able to throw a baseball better than most? By knowing how to trade bonds more savvily than other people? By ripping off other people’s non-patented technologies and being first to market? By paying an engineer a salary to invent something and then earning all of the profits from its sales?
A communistic approach would be to seize your ass and your assets, and send one of them straight to the wall. This too radical by half for us of the more or less sensible left. We’re more along the lines of a bit here, a bit there. Not proposing that the rich be thrown to lions to be rent asunder, but to be nibbled to death by ducks.
It is often pointed out that the money of the rich is useful, it provides capital for all those vigorous entrepreneurs out there. Well, if such is the case, then it is the money of the rich that is useful, the rich themselves are superfluous.
