(04-14-2010 01:39 AM)At Ease Wrote: (04-13-2010 05:01 PM)Hambone10 Wrote: You're directly guilty of it. If you don't like being involved in it, don't do it. I don't call it "sides", because he's MY president, too... regardless of party... but rather than admit what the truth is, and that is that a minority of the country provides more than 95% of the funding for the country... you want to argue about the fact that 95% isn't "all".
Yeah.. Hambone, you're all over the place. At no point did I question that a minority of the country provides most the funding. At no point did I attempt to invalidate the article's general point about the unf'nsustainable nature of our national budgeting. Surely you're not so lazy here as to argue against strawmen of your own design.
The only thing I've contested lie in my posts above. When you pay into SS/FICA/Medicare taxes, and federal excise taxes like those on gasoline, you're paying into our 'federal imperial government'. And given the regressive nature of those taxes, they hardly go unfelt by lower/middle classes. It's therefore disingenuous to either state that these people don't pay in to the federal system, or have some skin in how it operates.
How exactly am I all over the place? I'd say the same about you. My complaint with your statement is that you consider what amounts to forced savings as an equivalent somehow to income tax. I don't see asking someone to pay $10,000 into SSI when they expect to get a multiple of that out a "tax". You are free to disagree... but it's not the same as getting nothing... and not the same as having your taxes go to fund the military. Despite the fact that SSI, Medicaire and FICA is "invested" in the debt of the US, which covers everything, there is an account with your name on it, AND medicaid, expecting to deliver benefits to you specifically. I am unaware that when I pay income taxes, that some of that money goes into an account for me to be given to me later. I never said they had no skin in the entire financing system of the US government... I simply said (or at least meant) that they had no skin in most of these major programs/reforms. Their only (or at least their vastly primary) interest lies on the benefit side of the equation. A gas tax or a cigarette tax or whatever is certainly regressive, but it is meant to discourage consumption or pay for something directly related to its use... like roads or cance research. I don't agree with them, but we're being given more, not less of them
More to the point... In a bill that expands medicaid by up to $1 trillion dollars, we aren't really making an adjustment to the mechanism set up to fund it... OF COURSE 49% of the population is in favor of a massive expansion in medicaid... BECAUSE THEY AREN"T HAVING TO PAY FOR IT. I fail to recognize a straw man here. Just because I don't say John Smith of 222 Happy Street doesn't pay taxes doesn't mean I'm creating a fictional situation, and you know it. Accuse me of being lazy about that? Hardly.
As Rebel points out... there are a number of people with no income tax liability who recieve "benefits' far in excess of their contributions to FICA/SS/Medicaid. Since you don't like generalizations, how much do the unemployed "pay" into this system? Do you deny that there are people reaping benifits who have never themselves paid into it? Single unemployed teenage moms who are actually encouraged to move out of their family home and on their own because their benefits increase?
Using Healthcare as the question, to avoid your accusation... and generalizing for expedience, not being "lazy"...
Any family making less than $88,000/yr will get free or at least subsidized healthcare. There is a decent chunk of that group who will pay nothing more than they are already paying and yet get more. Where do you think they generally stand on the proposal? How do you think they'd feel about having to pay $25/month or even $5/month to get something worth $500/month?? How about a $5 copay?? Many would see the value and do it, but not all. For some, they'd rather have the $25.
The point I'm making is... when something is free, why would you EVER vote against it? When something costs you a little money, you will consider whether or not it is necessary... even if the benefit FAR outweighs the cost to you.
I could be wrong, but I am unaware of any adjustment to the medicaid rate for ALL payors to pay for an expansion of medicaid... which makes NO sense to me... I'm betting that if congress had proposed that the medicaid rate go up by a slight percentage, augmented by a tax increase on the rich including uncapping it, that there would be at least SOME people... and perhaps a large number of people currently in support of it who wouldn't be. While you may or may not support something like that for healthcare, there are similar examples throughout our system.
One of the things I try and teach my son is that NOTHING is free. Basic fiscal responsibility. That there is a cost to coming to dad and asking for $100, or $10 or a concert ticket or whatever. NEVER is that cost in any way equal to the value... but NOTHING is free. He has to wash my car... to do laundry... SOMETHING. He asks for what he needs, and what he wants. The bigger the ask, the bigger the "cost" and the bigger the subsidy... I.E, If he wants $20 for the movies, he has to wash my car. Perhaps a $10 subsidy. If he wants a new Mac, he has to pay the first $100... a $900 subsidy. Some might argue that I'm getting a tax break on the Mac... 10% instead of 50%... but that isn't really how you would personally look at that situation, is it?? Only politicians think like this.
If instead I told him that taking this $20 or $1000 out of my pocket reduces my retirement income in the future, which may mean that I'll have to will him less money when I die, do you think that would change his habits?
We cry and moan that our kids need to be learning how to manage credit and balance a checkbook in high school, but we don't expect the same of our politicians, and we don't encourage it through our tax system.
I think we should.