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Since I'm actually a social and economic populist I'm not sure this applies to me but I'll give it a shot.

It was the conservative notion that deficits don't matter, no democratic leader ever said or thought that (to my knowledge). I say democrat because I assume we are working with the republican/democrat dichotomy and not actual appropriate political labels. Anyway, Ron Paul would be an example of a Republican who always thought deficits mattered, ableit he was independent for a while. On the other hand it's well documented that Republican leaders said deficits didn't matter

Most recently it was Dick Cheney who said deficits didn't matter: http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dick_Cheney_Budget_+_Economy.htm


Now that we have the historical context in play I will answer your question. Would I increase the deficit, that officially your party's leaders said was insignificant, to bring REAL unemployment down to 6% and provide effective universal health care? Does the pope defend pedophiles? Considering these are measure of a healthy economy and a useful government I will take the leap of faith and assume the economy is recovered and in boom again. If that is indeed the case then my opinion is the deficit will quickly begin decrease and ultimately result in a surplus over the course of a few years. That being said, I don't think we should just spend money on things we can't afford, so in order for this to be worthwhile we would also have to restructure the medicard/medicare system and increase the highest marginal tax rate. Keep in mind we pay the highest Per Capita for our health care system in the world and we reap the 37th best system. France pays the 4th most Per Capita and they can get doctors to their house about as fast as pizza -- 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO%27s_ranking_of_health_care_systems

What I am saying basically is that we don't even really need to increase the deficit to implement universal health care. Cutting out the middle man (insurance companies) would in of itself pay for the entire restructuring so the odds are that we would actually decrease the deficit over a longer term if we went to universalize health care. It's really impossible to have affordable health care for everyone if you have a business in between patients and practitioners skimming off the tops, which is why every other country in the western world lets the government handle health care. Did you ever see Repo Men? The whole movie was an allegory for the health care industry, basically given the choice between living longer (and keeping your family happy) or keeping all your savings people 99 times out of 100 decide to live. Regardless of their creed, race or religion. The health care cartel (drug companies, insurance companies, and health institutions) realize this and while it may seems almost too cruel it goes on every day. Insurance companies literally hire the best doctors so that these doctors can find way esoteric means of denying coverage. It's quite unfortunate that in this day and age doctors are deciding who lives or dies (or who goes broke or who doesn't) based on maximizing profits. By the way insurance companies don't do this to stay afoat, they have what are essentially "death panels" despite record profits every year. Health insurance companies are among the most profitable in this nation, second only to oil and gas companies (who by the way get ridiculous welfare handed out to them every year, but that's another issue).

Now if the question was: would you increase the deficit, reduce unemployment to 6% and provide universal health care while bloating the deficit without any short term means of reducing it? Then I would have to answer no. Because it doesn't help anyone if we enact all kinds of extra spending if we just have to cut and hike taxes anyway immediately after.

Also what is with your aversion to raising taxes on the richest 1% anyway? You don't even pay the highest marginal tax rate what the fuck do you care if it rises 3%? How much is 3% of $1,000,000? $30,000. Man that millionaire really needs that extra 30 grand so he can buy the Mrs. another pearl necklace, or maybe he needs it to wipe his ass with? If you have something against being excessive and lavish with your spending why don't you have anything against the rich? Oh is it because you think they earned their salary, which is approximately 20 times more than yours? Yes I am sure they are 20 times smarter than you or they work 20 times as hard or somewhere in between. No my friend, being rich has nothing to do with that. As Warren Buffet said "the first million is always the hardest." The reason being is that when you make money you not only increase your purchasing power - you also increase your ability to make more money. That is to say the benefit of an increased income is two fold, not only can you buy more things but you can also make more money in the future. And after a certain point making money with your money requires minimal effort on your part. As the old adage goes "its takes money to make money." This is all true and factual, if you wish I can pull up more wikipedia articles but I hope you'll just take me for my word so far. The notion that it gets easier to make money the money you have is also the basis of the graduated-bracket tax system. People 100 years ago didn't just make that up, all of what I'm telling you has been known for well over a century.

So the reason the rich pay more taxes isn't because society feels they should punish the rich for "earning" more purchase power (currency) it's because it's the only we (society) can curb their ability accrue wealth exponentially. If we didn't have a graduated-bracket tax system then all of the wealth would slowly trickle up to the rich... which is actually in fact what happens whenever you decrease the differentiation between brackets (i.e. lowering the highest marginal tax rate). If you want proof of this I can show you about 100 graphs of third world countries where this is true but hopefully this graph of the UNITED STATES average income will do.

Top 1% to bottom 80%
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~lkenwor/inequalitygraph.pdf
Top 5% to other percentiles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg

As you can see, despite an almost 3 fold increase in GDP over the last 30 years the vast majority of the increases in income have been dissipated over the super wealthy and it almost directly coincides with this:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213

The change of the highest marginal tax rate over time.

You can clearly see the increase (of the top 1%) curbed after Clinton's tax hike and then you can see it once again rise after the Bush tax cuts, and how it varies accordingly to the health of the economy.


TL;DR it's common knowledge lowering taxes for the super wealthy causes wealth to trickle up not down. This isn't something you can "interpret" it's actually factual, studies prove it and the evidence is glaring. There is no evidence on wikipedia or otherwise that says the opposite. This is not up for contention. I don't mean to be caustic or condescending but it's just hard to explain why I think what I think when it feels like it's common knowledge. You get irked.

Ultimately enacting populist policies like increasing the tax rates on the super wealthy will make the lives of you and me more easy. And if you're the boss and all your employees are happy and productive then you're going to be happy too. It seems like a no-brainer but unfortunately the very wealthy spend an exorbitant amount of money trying to not only maintain their purchasing power but also their power to increase their income

I just wrote this real fast in between classes so I hope it reads okay.

Stillllllllll Trollllllllliiiiiinnnggg!!!!

you only get to NEW PAGE when your comment is at the bottom.

I think it would be OK for a child to work for wages if he gets to keep the fruits of his labor. In practice, in conformity with the common law, the father would take the wages and stay home and the family in effect would be supported by the child's wages.

Slippery slope skrum.......however, your comment should spark quite the debate and it will add at least 20 comments to this thread.

Bravo!

Inherent failures of capitalism are usually associated with asymmetric information (example, the maker of a product knows more about what is in the product than the buyer) or high transactions costs (example: multisource or multivictim pollution). Government can help by taking the side of whoever has less information or the higher bargaining costs.
But government has information problems too and the decisions it makes are only as good as the quality of information it receives. There is such a thing as failure of government.

An extra note: government should take the side of the party with ***less*** information. But in the case of health care, Obama and the Dems have taken the side of the party with more information. Namely, people with pre-existing conditions know more about their health than the insurance company does. Obama and Co. have taken away from insurance companies the right not to be taken for a ride by people who file insurance claims for something they know or should have known arises from a pre-existing condition.

this is quite the mod-pga here

if thrax shows his boobs, jurgs will make it a 3way.

I write an irrefutable argument for ending the bush tax cuts on the highest marginal tax rate and I just get non-sequiturs