BernieCare: The Really Expensive Free Alternative

“Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s healthcare plan has set off a fierce debate among economists about whether his numbers add up.”

“The question of how much Sanders’s proposals would cost has set off a “war of the wonks,” with liberal economists on the front lines.

Sanders’s plan already has essentially no chance of passing Congress, given that Republicans are expected to control at least one chamber in 2017, but there are questions about the policy as well as the politics.

The main challenge to Sanders’s math comes from Kenneth Thorpe, a well-respected health economist at Emory University who advised Vermont on its efforts to create a state-level single-payer system.

Thorpe says Sanders’s plan would cost about $1 trillion per year more than Sanders says it would: $2.5 trillion per year versus $1.38 trillion per year. The resulting funding shortfall would mean that Sanders would have to hike taxes even more to pay for his plan, he says.

Thorpe also argues that Sanders’s proposed 8.4 percent in extra payroll and income taxes would instead have to rise to a 20 percent combined extra tax.

Sanders argues that middle class families would save thousands of dollars under his proposal because they would no longer have to pay health insurance premiums. But the higher taxes envisioned under Thorpe’s analysis would flip the script for many people: He found that 71 percent of workers and their families currently with private insurance would end up paying more, not less, under Sanders’s plan.”

“ Much of the dispute among the experts, and the $1 trillion difference in cost estimates, centers on how much savings would be achieved from switching to a single-payer healthcare system.”

“ Companies that currently pay high health costs for their workers would see huge savings by no longer having to pay for healthcare, but smaller companies that don’t offer much coverage would now be hit with a new tax, said Henry Aaron, a health expert at the Brookings Institution.

“You are going to be spreading across the American industrial landscape huge amounts of income redistribution,” Aaron said.

Friedman contests this skepticism, saying other advanced countries with single-payer systems are able to provide good care at much lower costs.” - Debate rages over the cost of Bernie's government, the hill.com, 02/18/2016

Link to the entire article appears below:

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/269786-debate-rages-over-the-cost-of-bernies-government


Note: Regardless of the “expert” discussions/arguments above, there is only one single-payer system in the world and that is Canada. Multiple single-payer systems, which implicitly exist as an argument point above, do not in fact exist. For more information see link below associated with the post entitled ACA/Obamacare: How Universal is “Single Payer” Healthcare? Not Very!

　
http://thelastembassy.blogspot.com/2016/01/acaobamacare-how-universal-is-single.html


　

　

　


　

The Texas Schoolhouse Test: A to F

Millionaires Promoting More Tax on Themselves? -Or- Millionaires Promoting More Tax on Other Millionaires? -Or- Just Plain Old Hypocrisy? - The Daily Caller

Chuck Woolery - Let's Tax The Amish

Private Capital Formation and The Great Recession

Within a private enterprise system, private capital formation is a major driver of long term well paying private sector jobs. During the Great Depression private capital formation was anemic. Currently, during the Great Recession, private capital formation is anemic.

Private capital formation during the 1930’s was lifeless due to rising taxes, the specter of even more taxes [which did in fact occur], government deficit spending causing a crowding out effect of private investment,  the vilification of the investor class, and over regulation.

History repeats itself? Same song just a different beat?

'With the jobless rate stubbornly stuck above 9 percent for the last 28 months, the United States is experiencing a “jobless recovery” that is much worse than those following the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions. What’s the main reason that job creation has stalled and prevented a full economic recovery? The ongoing economic weakness and lack of job creation can be traced directly to a lack of private business investment, and the critical “investment-employment-economic growth” connection has been getting some attention lately.

For example, Robert Higgs wrote recently that “The economy remains moribund not because consumption spending has failed to recover and not because government spending has failed to increase, but because the true driver of economic growth—private investment—remains deeply depressed.” In a recent New York Times editorial, Greg Mankiw emphasized that “The subpar recovery has coincided with a historically weak investment recovery.” ' - Dr. Mark Perry, The ‘Jobless Recovery’ Is Really an ‘Investment-less Recovery’, Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, 10/03/2011

Link to the entire article appears below:

http://blog.american.com/2011/10/the-jobless-recovery-is-really-an-investment-less-recovery/

Upon Further Review: Buffett Tax Math

"As anyone with at least a passing familiarity with tax-policy analysis would know, Buffett was leaving out a critical piece of information. The very reason that dividends and capital gains bear a lower tax rate than wage income is that, unlike wages, they are not deductible from corporate income taxes.

That is, if you receive income from owning or selling corporate stock, that income has already been taxed at the corporate level. The same is not true for wages. So unless you make dividends and capital gains deductible to some entity – either the corporation or the shareholder – investment income is double-taxed.

Under the current system, which levies a lower personal tax rate on investment income but not a zero rate as tax neutrality would require, most of Buffett’s income is taxed at a higher effective tax rate than his secretary’s wages. He may not be writing a personal check for all those taxes, but he bears their cost in the form of lower returns". (1)

HT: B. Kavanaugh

(1) Carolina Journal, 09/21/2011  http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/index.html

Obama: Rich must pay fair share. What is fair?

"All I'm saying is that those who have done well, including me, should pay their fair share in taxes," Obama said in a speech that effectively staked out the ground on which the 2012 presidential election will likely be fought. (1)

Anytime you hear the term fair coming from a politico your antennae need to go up to full extension. Fair is one of those political terms that mean what the particular politico wants it to mean in a particular context. Maybe a better way to frame the term fair is that it has no meaning at all other than that meaning given by the user at a particular moment. How so?

Webster defines fair as: free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair decision; a fair judge. That is a very noble definition. However, when fair is actually used, put into action as it where, is fair used free from bias?

Maybe a better definition of “fair” is: what you are doing and what the other guy is not doing -or- fair is where you go to get your pig judged.

Notes:

(1) Obama: Rich must pay fair share of deficit cuts, Agence France-Presse, 09/19/2011, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/19/obama-rich-must-pay-fair-share-of-deficit-cuts/

Buffett Tax Translation

'Obama added, "I’m proposing real cuts to spending. These would be among the biggest cuts in our history ... This plan eliminates tax loopholes that primarily go to the largest corporations."

"We can’t afford these special lower rates for the wealthy — rates, by the way, that were meant to be temporary." ' (1)

Observation: the tax code is a political creation or an economic creation? The loop holes and tax rates are a political creation or an economic creation? 

In Action: does economic man, faced with politico man's tax code, act rationally to reduce tax to the maximum extent? 


Translation: the ultimate "creator" [politicos] want to merely recreate in their own [new, newest] self image. Its not about economics, its all about politics.

Notes:

(1)
http://themoderatevoice.com/122763/obama-on-proposed-1-5-trillion-in-new-taxes-this-is-not-class-warfare-its-math/

The 2013 Tax Cliff

What is meant by the 2013 “tax cliff” being formed by the Obama Administration? (1) (2) In 2013 you would have the following recipe for a tax cliff:

(1) Bush era reduced tax rates expire,

(2) temporary tax holiday regarding payroll tax expire,

(3) proposed increase in marginal tax rates proposed in the so called “Obama Jobs Plan” come into effect,

(4) the laundry list of tax increases associated with ObamaCare come into effect.

Notes:

(1) http://www.naturalnews.com/news_000615_Heading_towards_2013_tax_cliff.html

(2) http://online.wsjWSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Paul Ryan on Pro-Growth Tax Reform

Obama’s Folly: Why Taxing the Rich Is No Solution - Journal of the American Enterprise Institute‏

"Unfortunately, the choices faced by America are not that simple. An economic strategy founded on raising taxes on the rich is based on two false premises. The first is that tax increases on the rich are a solution to current budget deficits. The second is the argument often put forward that there is “no evidence” that tax increases on the rich hurt the economy."

"If you look carefully, President Obama has never explicitly stated that taxing the rich will bring in much revenue. Instead, the president has made sure to give voters the impression that the Republican refusal to tax the rich is the main cause of the deficit and thus the main obstacle to solving the fiscal crisis."

"But how much revenue are we really talking about? According to the New York Times, the president’s plan to abolish the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 is expected to bring in merely $0.7 trillion over the next decade, or about 0.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product per year. As a comparison, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the deficit over the same period is going to be $13 trillion, more than 6 percent of GDP per year.

The rich in America obviously have lots of money, but there are simply not enough of them to fund the president´s preferred level of spending. For all the attention it has received, President Obama’s “taxing the rich” policy can best be described as symbolic in nature, a rounding error compared to the deficits in the president’s budget. Obama centers his speeches around tax hikes on the rich to lead voters into believing that hard choices on the economy can be avoided simply by taxing the rich at a higher rate."

"Although the proposed tax increases will barely make a dent in the deficit, raising the top tax rates is likely to harm economic output. Many are convinced that tax increases have little or no damaging impact on the economy. We hear over and over again that notions of damaging effects from higher taxes are merely based on “trickle down” theory, which has been proven false.

This is not true. There exists robust empirical evidence that taxes impede economic activity. In conventional economics, only the magnitude of the negative impact of taxes on economic output is debated, not the existence of such an effect."

Below is a link to the entire article:

http://www.american.com/archive/2011/august/obamasfollytaxingtherich

The "State" Represents itself as the Shirking Partner in the form of Tax

‘A tax levied on corporate profit reduces the care and effort owners put into its operation, since part of the return that would have been received by owners will go to the state. Defacto, private owners of the corporation are saddled with a shirking partner, the state, which takes part of the revenue and provides none of the effort to improve the firm’s return. Consequently the greater is the corporate tax rate, the greater the incentive for corporate owners and management to pursue the “quiet life”.’ - Harold Demsetz’s, From Economic Man to Economic System, Chapter 10, pages 141 -159, The Public Corporation: Its Ownership and Control.
 
In essence, the state represents itself as the shirking partner in the form of tax. Since firms are merely a collection of households, both the firm and accompanying households are saddled with shirking partner which takes part of the revenue and provides none of the effort.
 
Its worth considering Demsetz's proposition before one deliberates what the shirking partner does with the revenue taken. That is, decouple the two propositions of state through tax acting as a shirking partner -from- what the shirking partner ultimately does with the revenue taken.
 
Tax certainly is a disincentive. However, "disincentive" is rather abstract until you place the face upon disincentive as the shirking partner. That the disincentive in fact is the shirking partner providing zero effort yet taking revenue. If one was saddled with a shirking partner other than state, would one continue with such a partner?
 
The second item is what does the shirking partner, that provided zero effort yet took revenue, do with such revenue? What if the shirking partner took the revenue and created more disincentives in the form of regulation (another form of tax). Not necessary regulation associated with the minimal state, rather regulation associated with the ever expanding state. What if the shirking partner paid its subordinates high wages? What if the shirking partner took the revenue and enriched itself and its subordinates in the form of benefit plans and retirement plans? What if the shirking partner redistributed the revenue to those that suffer no tax (no shirking partner)?
 
Its no wonder James and Jane Goodfellow have such a low opinion of "state". What opinion other than a negative opinion could one possibly have regarding a shirking partner providing no effort yet taking revenue, then taking such revenue to create more tax, enrich itself, and redistribute "efforts"?