Here's how your take-home pay could change if Trump's new tax plan is passed
Hmm....I keep wanting to believe that a plain 10% "flat Tax" would be the best way to do this, since the looters ARE going to loot, no matter what. All of this "talk" keeps adding up to just making the smoke a different color and making the mirrors more polished. It still is a game where you have to try to "out loot the looters" using all their weird gambits and tricks. There is still way too much money to be taken by keeping the current system, and all the "donations" it causes to be made, to political campaigns.
Strike N-O-W.
The I-R-S is the fourth branch of government and, arguably, is the most powerful and most totalitarian. It rules by pure fear. It can take your wealth, your freedom, and even your life. It is the perfect tool of statists and collectivists to slap around and manipulate a population.
I recall a book written about I-R-S abuses back in the late '70s or early '80s by a congressman (George Hanson comes to mind) where abuses up to that time are written about. By now, I figure volumes could be added.
Edit add: Found the book on Amazon... "To Harass Our People: The IRS and Government Abuse of Power" by Congressman George Hanson
Ayn Rand wrote her characters to illustrate her philosophy. It is the philosophy that made that possible which must be understood and applied in reality.
If you haven't yet read Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto you would enjoy her explanations in her philosophy of fiction and other art.
Thus, social choice becomes no REAL choice at all.
Ayn Rand advocated spreading the right philosophical ideas, since it is ideas that drives the course of a nation. She never supported a strike or any other means of encouraging or causing a collapse, which she recognized as futile and self-destructive.
If the populace doesn't understand the proper principles for what to do in a system that still has some momentum from its founding, it won't learn them in the chaos and desperation of a collapse, no way to educate them, and nothing left to hold back a full statist crackdown abandoning entirely what is still left of Constitutional limitations on government in order to "deal with the emergency". The majority who understand the least of political philosophy are the first to go along with it.
Ayn Rand in fact did not advocate stiking and trying to collapse the country, let alone the frenzied illegal tax resistance movement, and clearly explained why and what is required to reestablish the country.
But, she did understand that IF people continue to embrace statism, the only way left to combat it is what the heroes and heroines of the story did- namely withdraw assistance to the society.
Obviously the writing of AS failed the initial purpose, which she even acknowledged. Statism is more prevalent now than since the book was written- all over the world. There is some reaction to the pursuit of liberal ideas that was obvious in the last election with the rise of popularity of Trump, but I suspect that is short lived and 2018 will bring in democratically run congress. Trump will be able to stand in the way of grossly statist ideas, but even he is no Galt by any means.
Note even his approach to Obamacare- REPEAL and REPLACE was his mantra, not just REPEAL which is what should have been done. REPLACE means another government program which promise even more freebies for the unwashed as the expense of productive people.
Voting for Trump was desperation by people who don't like what is happening but don't know what is right and/or had no where else to turn. He is the anti-intellectual 'man on the white horse' Ayn Rand warned about.
I voted for Trump as a means of slowing down socialism in practical terms with his veto power, NOT for the consistency of his philosophical views. I wouldnt say that he is anti-intellectual by any means, but what you hear from him was designed to get popular support from enough people to actually elect him. He has done a lot of free market reforms so far, but only by executive order. Those will all be reversed by the next socialist president probably in 2020.
Probably the closest to that today in the political arena would be Ron Paul. other so called conservatives are very inconsistent at best, and downright conflicted at worst- even the libertarian candidate had that problem.
A John Galt would NEVER EVER be elected in this environment, so all we can hope for is some slowdown in the eventual takeover of socialism- UNLESS somehow the populace can be educated over perhaps a generation to think about things for once.
She said she wrote Atlas Shrugged to illustrate in fiction how human survival depends on the mind by showing what happens when it is withdrawn. That was the purpose of the strike in the fictional plot, not to advocate collapse and wait for people to somehow catch on. She knew that better people would naturally withdraw from punishment, but never advocated trying to cause collapse by a strike or anything else. She also said that it was far too soon to try to elect an Objectivist to national political office and rejected the anti-philosophical and anarchist libertarians, along with religious conservatives (which includes Ron Paul with his anti-abortion policies).
Donald Trump is anti-intellectual and anti-philosophical. One can listen to him for about ten minutes and see that he is a blow hard salesman Pragmatist with no thought of principles, let alone the rights of the individual. "Intellectual" does not mean plotting how to win an election.
One can consider why AR wrote AS. As it turns out it was NOT fiction really. Look at Venezuela to see how much it was NOT fiction. Her biggest point was that Galt withdrew to specifically stop the motor of the socialist world, and actively recruited productive people to just leave and go to the gulch UNTIL the world was tired of socialism unsupportd by productive people and would listen to reason.
People are attracted to socialism because they want goodies that will be supplied by others- if that is what you mean by wrong ethical premises. I would agree with that.
Her biggest hero GALT was indeed waiting for the populace to accept rational ideas. In the meantime he was actively trying to bring down .
the socialist system (what about Ragnar...)
Galt, her biggest hero, was indeed trying to cause a collapse by a strike. That was the point of the whole book
Some of them lived in the Valley full time, and near the end they all did because the outer world on the verge of collapse had become too dangerous.
Whether in the Valley or privately and secretly in the outer world, all of them continued working to full productivity. None of them had a nihilistic 'dropout' mentality and none of them relished the collapse. They were all serious in their thoughts and purposeful actions; none of them ran around publicly spouting dramatic revolutionary slogans as emotional agitators.
Ayn Rand's purpose in putting the strike in the plot was to show how society depends on the minds of the best individuals by showing what happens when the mind is deliberately withdrawn, followed by the artificially accelerated collapse in the story.
Ayn Rand's purpose in putting the Valley in the plot was to show how the best people relate to each other when they can do so in normal circumstances, i.e., not struggling against the looters.
The purpose was not to show people who didn't understand suddenly knowing what to do and creating an ideal society when the social system collapsed, and it was not to advocate striking as a way to reform a nation. In the story, the leaders were on the verge of returning to the world after the collapse to form a proper government and to produce unmolested; it was presumed that their enemies had all destroyed themselves or otherwise were no longer a threat.
"While people today could also do such a strike.. I would say the vast majority are dependent on some forms of support (power, water, food), making engagement with the economy necessary."
I don't fully understand the mechanics of a strike, but I don't see why it matters if it's one person knowing how to make subsistence levels of power, water, and food for herself, or if it's three people specializing in those and trading freely, i.e. an "economy".
My fantasy is such a community already exists. It's in a free-trade zone, maybe somewhere like Sao Paulo or maybe in the Caribbean. It started as a way to get startup founders and scientists together and avoid the major countries' immigration rules. The investors set up an incuabor in a free-trade zone. They found they could get exemption from most local taxes and laws in exchange for the investment. At first it was just shifts of kids going through an accelerator program. But some of them stayed and have families there, providing all the normal support services of a small city. We haven't heard about it yet because nothing obviously exciting has happened yet. But something non-obvious and exciting is happening. There are 20 thousand people there from all around the world going through the incubator program, getting married there, sometimes having successful exits and investing in new ventures there. We haven't heard about it, though, because the exciting part is the intangible feeling there that anything is possible and you're free to try something and keep the profits if it works.
That's an absurd fantasy. We would have heard about it. I like the notion though. Maybe something like that will happen.
In addition, and more fundamental, the 18th century had something to count on that we don't: the philosophy of the Enlightenment emphasizing reason and individualism. Statism is taking over this country because it is progressively being voted into power as a consequence of the pragmatism, altruism and collectivism preached by intellectuals for a century.
If government can't be reformed by a tiny minority unable to win elections while they are still allowed, what makes you think that a tiny minority can prevail in a physical revolt against this government? Are you constantly dramatically promoting 'revolt' because you will intend to do it yourself or are you just trying to prod someone else into doing something stupid, sticking his neck out and getting it chopped off?
Atlas Shrugged obviously is fiction. It's a novel. Ayn Rand stated explicitly why she wrote it the way she did; it was not to promote a 'strike' as a way to reform the country and she never advocated 'waiting' for people to understand what is right by letting them watch failure and collapse.
The reason she said she wrote Atlas Shrugged was to portray in fiction her concept of the ideal man. She said she chose the plot based on a strike to show how human survival depends on the mind by showing what happens when the mind is withdrawn. She used the fictional device of a strike with an artificially accelerated collapse to illustrate her philosophical point within the time frame of the plot.
She wrote and lectured for decades about her philosophy of reason and individualism required to reverse the statist trend, but her first full statement of her philosophy and what happens without it was Atlas Shrugged. She knew she was radically challenging the premises of thousands of years of philosophy and that it takes a lot explanation. She never advocated "waiting" for people to understand by seeing failure and neither did Atlas Shrugged, which emphasized a new philosophy that must be actively pursued. Even in the plot, the strikers were on the verge of returning in the role of leaders only because their enemies had destroyed themselves and were no longer a threat -- they never did catch on to the proper goals and methods of thinking.
People don't support socialism just because they "want goodies supplied by others" like any ordinary thief; socialism is regarded as a moral ideal, and that is what gives it its motivating force emotionally and intellectually, serving as the perceived justification across society in a way that just being a thief wanting someone else's assets never could. Socialists have an anti-individualist philosophical view of man based on a moral premise of altruistic duty to live for others as the basis of ethics as such, and which consequently is the basis for collectivism in politics as mutual looting. Every altruistic act has a recipient Altruism accepted as the good provides a moral force for mass looting beyond what an ordinary thief could conceive.
The morality of altruism is in turn based on acceptance of faith, the opposite of reason. Breaking people from emotionally clinging to altruism as the good is not an easy task; it requires understanding what ethics is based on and its purpose in human life, and requires understanding what reason is and how it operates. Psychological hedonists like the fringe anarchists don't understand any of it either.
Fully statist societies like Venezuela, the USSR, etc., collapse from their own weight; it doesn't have to be accelerated. The collapse comes sooner when they are not helped to survive the way we sent food to Russia despite the 'cold war', but the irrational cannot survive. Nor does watching one collapse after another tell anyone what is right, and the altruists emotionally clinging to their notion of the good will continue to try one variety of collectivism after another in the name of Pragmatism for the same ends.
This country is not Venezuela or the USSR. It is still a mixture of freedom and controls and will not improve by accelerating failure in ignorance of philosophical principles. That does not work and is not a short cut to the spread of better ideas as Ayn Rand explicitly advocated. The point of Atlas Shrugged was the philosophy Ayn Rand advocated, not to advocate a collapse while waiting for people to somehow reverse their fundamental premises as they watch a progression of failures. Ayn Rand already did the intellectual work and in thousands of years of bad philosophy it did not come easily.
AS may have been a work of fiction, but it can easily be an accurate blueprint for the end game of socialism. The typical response of a freedom loving person is to do what Dagny or Hank did- try to keep going in spite of the intrusion of socialism. BUT, AS promoted her hero as John Galt, who took a different tack. He actively tried to accelerate the end game of collectivism by simply withdrawing the efforts of the producers from the socialists. She showed John Galt convincing producer after producer to join him and abandon the socialist society. I say she was encouraging producers today to do the same thing IF the march towards socialism cannot be stopped any other way.
This country is wealthier than Venezuela so the USA will last longer before it collapses, but the end game is the same. It will take maybe 50 years no matter what we do really. We can slow it down temporarily by getting Trump types into government, or we can speed it up by electing the Obama types. I think it takes several generations to really get people to change their philosophy.
We are getting to the point that ideas which do not support liberalism arent going to be allowed- look at what happened at Berkeley and other colleges
Even AR said that when we are muzzled, its time to admit ideas wont work and only a collapse of the society is left.
Rote, repetitive description of part of the plot, out of context and in contradiction with what Ayn Rand herself said about it, is not an argument to try to bring down the country. Ayn Rand did not advocate that in any context. She said that in principle the total loss of freedom of speech justifies a revolution, not that it would be effective without regard to the dominant beliefs.
There are a lot of essential differences between this country and Venezuela other than gross wealth. When asked what someone living in a real dictatorship should do Ayn Rand answered (Ford Hall Forum 1970) "there is nothing to do but try to get out" and "if the whole world became a dictatorship, then all one could do is form a conspiracy -- which would probably be discovered in five minutes -- and die that way rather than commit suicide. That would be one's only choice." Obviously that is not a solution to reforming the country as a last resort or anything else. It is not something that should be relished, let alone dramatically advocated in a country that isn't even a dictatorship.
That is a very good point, although the wrinkle is that socialism, in a pure form, has never worked or been seen (that I can say) in a modern society. I think the closest thing is the more "primitive" ones such as tribes, where all work together and share together, like the tribes of reindeer herders in Russia do today. It seems the less politics you have, the more equitable the society, possibly because each individual is part of their own success and the group flows with that success.
As mccannon01 notes, jail is a possibility, and I guess even a probability.
So what it takes is a LOT of courage, of guts, and a willingness to adapt some of that activism the left-collectivists use: Let them arrest us, in droves, in HUGE numbers. FILL their jails.
If our tax protest works, they'll hafta lay off some of the jailers, and hafta close some of the jails, and won't have enough armed thugs to haul all of us away.
I started to say it worked for Gandhi, but it's not quite the same thing.
However, it did work for the earlier Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s, especially in Southwest Georgia.
Huelga! Strike!
The fox isnt going to vote for a reduction in the population of the henhouse.
Inflation of the prices eventually causes the unstainability of this approach, but in recent history the inclusion of the cheap chinese goods has cut back on the price increases that would normally be experienced.
Price inflation has also been systematically understated by the "china effect" of replacing USA made goods that would be expensive with china-made goods that are cheaper and just offering them instead of american goods in our marketplace.
improvement. Economic activity will improve to the point where it would have been without the tax and that’s good. And the government plays these games to make things appear better for political purposes and then puts taxes back in when economic activity recovers. It’s a game they play and I thing we would all be better off if the government didn’t print money or tax at all
If it were possible to start up and defend a galts gulch, I would check out moving there and would encourage others of like mind to
do the same. I agree that It would not cause the statist USA to change into a free society but it would accelerate the decline of the USA into a Venezuela type state as it’s wealth declined.
It’s very disturbing that we all willingly support statism in the pursuit of our own lives.
I can remember back in the day when there was NO withholding of money from paychecks. I am sure we will never go back to that now, but it was preferable to the current system for us citizens.
First, where is Cyprus? Cyprus is located in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece and South of Turkey. It’s one of those sleepy countries that frankly isn’t large enough for most of the investing world to care about. According to the CIA Factbook, the country has a population of 1.1 million - about as many people as the state of Rhode Island. The country is 77% Greek, 18% Turkish and 5% other ethnicities with a median age of 35.
Its land mass is about 7,800 square miles - roughly the size of New Jersey. This doesn’t sound like a country that would become the subject of international headlines, but there’s a lot more to the story.
It’s Greece All over Again
Until 2009, Cyprus had turned its economy around. After a deficit of 6.3% in 2003, it implemented a series of austerity measures that gave it a surplus of 1.2% in 2008. When the recession hit, Cyprus fell back on hard times because of its large exposure to Greek debt. In 2012, the country contracted by 2.3%.
The country was downgraded numerous times in 2012 with agencies like Fitch giving it a BB- rating and warning of further downgrades. This drove Cyprus’ borrowing costs higher.
A Closer Look at the Banks
According to CNBC, the Cypriot banking sector is about eight times the size of the economy with almost $19 billion, or one-third of all deposits, coming from Russian sources. Dmitry Rybolovlev, the largest Russian investor, has almost a 10% stake in the Bank of Cyprus equaling $8 billion to $10 billion.
The Canadian Press reports that the Russian elite use Cypriot banks to avoid political uncertainty and corruption in Russia. In addition, money earned through illegal means is often funneled to Cyprus because of its policy of turning a blind eye. Russia estimates that $49 billion was illegally wired to foreign accounts last year - 2.5% of Russia’s GDP.
There’s concern that if Cyprus imposes capital controls, Russian banks could face losses equal to 2% of the country’s GDP because Russian banks have loaned Cyprus-based companies of Russian origin $40 billion. Although Russian officials may show outward discontent for the practice, their actions prove that it’s as Russian as the cosmonaut.
What’s the Story on the Bailout?
Cyprus was systemically damaged due to its exposure to Greece. It, like Greece and so many other countries, was forced to ask the European Union for a bailout but this time the EU didn’t reluctantly say yes, as it repeatedly did with Greece.
Instead, the EU said, “If we’re going to help you, you can first help yourself.” That was the beginning of a controversial and unprecedented move to force everybody with money deposited in a Cypriot bank to pay for the bailout.
Imagine if you woke up Sunday morning to an email from your bank saying, “As a result of an agreement with government officials, 6.75% of your bank account will be withdrawn before the beginning of the business day.” You would reconsider keeping your money in any bank. That’s the fear going forward. How safe is a person’s money in any bank around the world if this precedent is set?
Read more: The Cyprus Crisis 101 | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/articles...
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This is the age of the swamp., whether we recognize it or not. Use government powers to grant me or my business special favors but don’t admit publicly WHY. The most honest are regular people who will admit to wanting special tax breaks so they can keep more of what they make. I get that. I wish liberals and businesses were as honest about why they support laws
It’s unlikely we can reverse the trend to socialism until people become more receptive to personal freedom and tiny government by the current government and economic collapsing Its a long process, maybe 100 years of slow decline and education. AS didn’t wake people up as Rand hoped because the producers were still propping up the current system. Every dollar we make and spend just prolongs the existence of our socialist country at this point. Dang my and Hank were just wrong to keep trying to make things work while the philosophy of the country was against them. That was the message if the biok
The answer to that is not to try to wreck the economy and that is not what Ayn Rand advocated. If the current system collapses it will bring an "end" all right, after which it will be worse. The tension in the plot between Dagny and the strikers was put there by Ayn Rand for the purpose of the book; it has nothing to do with the fact collapse is not a solution and does not in logic support trying to do it. The strike and the return of the strikers unopposed were fiction.
In the artificially accelerated fictional plot, John Galt talked to the best and most moral key producers individually as they were suddenly and dramatically clobbered. The worst of the looters disappeared as no threat. Even Hank Rearden's tribunal cowered and surrendered to a speech. A small minority withdrew their minds and the whole country collapsed. It was romantic fiction with extremes in abstract form. The fictional plot is not the way this world works and not a basis for arguing for a strike.
Venezuela has collapsed. The people still support Madura. The majority still believe in socialism and support Madurai as their leader The movers and shakers have moved and shake elsewhere. But I think there is an increasing minority about to rise up against socialism and are more receptive to changing their views. Maybe a Galt will cone along. I disagree that this is not the world works. People do what they have do to survive even if they don’t have philosophical roots for it Galt could appear in SF and just get booed
Why do u think Galt waited until the collapse to start preaching to the masses? As long as they are being bought off by the leftists with goodies provided by the producers, things stay as they sre
Galt only gave one public speech in the novel. It doesn't make any difference what he did in a fictional plot. It's not a reason to collapse the country. Ayn Rand was very clear about what she thought was needed and why. You should read that instead of projecting fiction.
Every tax I pay enables collectivism in this environment. I don’t feel good about that at all. That’s why Galt withdrew from supporting collectivism and convinced others to do the same. Every tax today that productive people pay seems to be used to further enslave and control us more. It’s pretty obvious and not fiction at all
It was a novel and in today’s world I think that the timelines would be extended substantially and make such actions less effective. The decline in the USA will proceed more slowly than portrayed in AS partly because our society is richer to start with and because not all of the people here are 100% philosophically bankrupt.
I don’t withdraw my productive efforts currently exactly for the reason you mention/- I want to enjoy my life while I am here
That said, I agree with the premise in AS that supporting collectivism only prolongs it The first thing to do is withdraw to a freer place (Atlantis) and support it’s growth and defend it. One could argue that galt was really acting in his own interest by offering the productive people a better alternative to the collectivist world- not simply encouraging the demise of the collectivist states.
Showing that in fiction required artificially accelerating the process, and she had to illustrate how the best individuals interact with each other in better circumstances, which required the fictional device of the valley. The novel, as all her novels, was written in the form of romantic literature focusing on an illustrating abstract essentials.
She understood that the dominant ideas of a nation determine its direction, and that changing the direction requires changing the ideas. At the end of the novel the heroes were about to return as leaders, but the novel did not continue on to illustrate how to change the ideas. She had made her intended point.
She did not advocate withdrawing from society to reform it or escaping to a utopia, which are not possible. She knew that new ideas must by discovered, learned, and understood, and that this occurs through education, not from watching a collapse. It took centuries after Aristotle before the proper principles for a philosophy of reason were formulated by Ayn Rand, with a base provided by Aristotle and the rise of the industrial revolution and modern science. They did not appear out of nowhere in response to disaster.
She wrote and spoke extensively about what is required to live in this society and what is required to defend and sustain the American sense of life, which she saw deteriorating before the onslaught of the explicit contrary ideas of the intellectuals. She advocated the necessity of spreading the proper philosophic principles of reason and individualism, living with integrity so as to not support collectivism existentially or intellectually in a society with a mixture of freedom and controls. She never advocated dropping out as a rational response, and denounced the occasional schemes for creating a utopian escape or a new political party without the required philosophic base.
To advocate copying the fictional plot in Atlas Shrugged as if it were a political blueprint misses the point of the novel, what is required to live a non-fictional life here in reality, and what is required to change the direction of the country to fulfill the promise of man's potential in accordance with her philosophy.
After she arrived in this country, she had always wanted to prevent the US from following what she had seen in Russia and in Europe because upon arriving here she found the same collectivist ideas being promoted and gradually implemented. But her primary goal was to portray her idea of the ideal man and what is proper for man, a goal for fiction she had formed while still in Russia, and AS remained a statement of what should be and the ideas required for it, not just a warning of the negative, let alone a call to 'strike' against it as a means to correct it.
When AS was finished and she saw the difficulties of getting it published for its ideas, and saw its hostile treatment by almost all intellectuals in the reviews, she was discouraged. She had expected that intelligent people would immediately recognize what she was saying and embrace it. Instead she encountered the swill in The New York Times, and Whittaker Chambers in William Buckley's National Review.
After she saw the hostile reaction she decided to start lecturing and writing on non-fiction to explain her philosophy more explicitly. As part of that she observed, as in her 1964 Ford Hall Forum lecture "Is Atlas Shrugging?" https://estore.aynrand.org/p/11/is-at..., how productive people were cutting back in response to punishment and explained the solution; she never advocated a 'strike' as a means of reform.
When she decided to write a novel with a plot-theme based on showing the importance of the mind in human survival by showing in the plot what happens when it is withdrawn, the logic of her philosophy had to predict also what was happening in reality. But she didn't start out to write a warning.
In "Is Atlas Shrugging?" she said that her purpose was “not to boast nor to leave you with the impression that I possess some mystical gift of prophecy, but to demonstrate the exact opposite: that that gift is not mystical. . . .history is not an unintelligible chaos ruled by chance and whim—historical trends can be predicted, and changed.
“There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man's rational faculty—the power of ideas. If you know a man's convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course.”
“Atlas Shrugged is not,” she said, “a prophecy of our unavoidable destruction, but a manifesto of our power to avoid it, if we choose to change our course.” The power to avoid it is the power of the rational mind armed with the right ideas, not an a-philosophical 'strike' expected to correct the course of the nation without regard for the ideas required.
wrote the novel, but I do remember she was very upset and disappointed that it was pretty much ignored. I have seen in my own life the folly of Dagny taggart and hank
Rearden and the truth of orren Boyle comment about tearden’s success will enable them to bring him down. The fact of this all is that collectivism demotivates human beings. I was a successful innovator in medical device manufacturing, but got out of the business when the medical device regulations came in 1976. I did a “dagny” thing for a few years until the fda required premarket approval from them before I could make any medical device not substantially similar to one that was in commercial production in 1976. That was essentially the end of small company innovation
By 1991. I was able to sell the companies I had started and was done with medical devices. Now I make off road lighting, still free of regulations.
Every dollar I make and am forced to give to the statists only makes them stronger and allows them to steal from me even more. The “strike “ element of John galt lives in us all and is the underlying reason statist civilizations fail
Is AR thought AS would awaken some people, she was right. But she misjudged the attraction of collectivism. I don’t understand it, but it amazes me that the abject failure of it in the world is just passed over and the obvious solution rejected.
This is why I think that a simple refusal to support statism in any way might be the only way to stop it. What’s happening now is not an organized strike , but an unorganized reduction in the desire to work under the regulations and taxation
"Ford Hall" was an annual celebration that drew fans from across the country and sometimes foreign countries. The auditorium was packed, usually with an overflow crowd listening from outside the auditorium. The lectures were followed by questions from the audience lining up in the aisles to try to find out more on all kinds of topics. Some were also followed by a book-signing and further questions, with a long line of fans stretching out across the room and out into the lobby, eager to meet her. That was followed by informal gatherings in Boston and Cambridge as friends got together for further celebration and discussion.
Who among us has not encountered at some point punishment from government policy that caused us to stop doing something? Who with any kind of self esteem would not revolt? But that is all it is, not a "strike" intended or expected to itself change some policy, let alone the direction of the country. (J Brenner on this forum encountered the same kind of punishment for medical devices in the same field as you, most recently because of the Obamacare tax.)
Ayn Rand did not misjudge the attraction of collectivism or its cause: the intellectuals constantly preaching altruism and collectivism then using them as justification for public pronouncements and government policy.
You must not support or condone it, but that doesn't mean to "strike" and try to collapse the economy; and it won't change without replacing the ideas with reason and individualism. Quit yourself and no one will notice, let alone change policy because of it. The most that happens when it occurs on a large scale is that people start to notice a shortage of competence and quality that they used to take for granted. Those who understand why quietly remark, "Atlas is shrugging"; the rest have no idea and keep following the same path.
Thanks
But the way it really works is that the government increases other taxes or creates more inflation to compensate. In practical terms the mortgage interest deduction preferentially helps banks, home builders, and cities while encouraging regular people to pay in essence about 2-3 Times the cost of the house in interest to the banks
The mortgage deduction doesn't make people pay two to three times the cost of their home in interest. Compound interest accumulates to that level over decades whether or not the interest payments are taxed. Interest is the cost of the time value of money. People borrow to buy a home because they don't want to pay rent and wait to buy until near retirement to buy home.
One major reason that there are so many complicated rules for deductions, depreciations, etc. is that different kinds of personal and business situations are hit differently and to different degrees by the high taxes. Of course people clamor for deductions. What else can they do when there is no hope of lowering taxes and government spending? It is the other side of the pressure group warfare of the welfare state: pressure group self defense. It is not an excuse to denounce mortgages as "slavery" and banking as a sinister force. Simply repeating over and over that the deductions people want are really a banking conspiracy is unconvincing.
Trump is oblivious to all of this and thinks people want "simplification" by eliminating their deductions. He's too stupid to realize that if we were willing to pay even higher taxes for "simplification" we could already do that by ignoring all the paper work and "simply" paying more taxes than we have to. Or perhaps he thinks we are too stupid to realize it.
An unfortunate side effect of tax reductions is that as people earn more, government collects more in total revenue than before the tax reduction. Republicans like that and claim it is the justification of the tax reductions; never mentioning that it is our money and the goal of tax cuts is so we keep it, not give more to them. Then they squeeze the taxes up again over time until there is another backlash as they strive to maximize the take and the controls.
I would argue that the 2007 financial meltdown was caused by banks ( certainly not every last one) following and taking advantage of government rules. To a very substantial degree the industry operated as if they were owned by the government under socialism.
I would argue number two is really socialism in disguise where the government lets us think we are free and gets us to invest our money while the government tells us what to do with it. Of course the lobbyists for the regulated try to influence the regulators to let the regulated make more profits than they would under capitalism. ( the nature of the swamp)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financi...
This might seem a bit harsh, but I think you are overlooking the basic evil in taxation. It’s theft being done either by a king, a dictator, or by mob rule as in a democracy.
The mortgage interest deduction is supported by anyone who would otherwise pay higher taxes, just like any deduction or any lower rate. As long as rates are high that battle will continue for obvious reasons that are not inadvertent. Defending lower taxes is not a "swamp" with mysterious "implicit alignments of swamp interests" somehow acting like a conspiracy of evil bankers that otherwise can't be found.
As home values goes up the cities spend more and therefore need to take in more. My tax bill always goes up
I want lower taxes and more deductions so I don’t have to pay so much. So I would argue for the mortgage deduction. I would argue that the whole mortgage payment should be deductible while we are at it. Banks would like because it will increase the number of loans they can write. Cities would like the mortgage deduction because they can spend more when they realize what their permissible total theft will be
I am tired of being told one thing but the real reasons are hidden. I would suggest that I you might be overlooking what’s ready going on relative to government today
In some cases like California the property tax spending was limited through a maze of rules, so the state policies effectively circumvented it with massive increases in state subsidies to the cities and towns, resulting in higher state taxes and more state control over local affairs. This is the typical result everywhere when property taxes are limited by whatever means.
If only a particular tax is limited, or only property valuations or mil rates are limited, there will always be another tax to keep the total spending and taxes up.
https://taxfoundation.org/history-mor...
Another tidbit:
n the United States, there are additional tax incentives for home ownership. For example, taxpayers are allowed an exclusion of up to $250,000 ($500,000 for a married couple filing jointly) of capital gains on the sale of real property if the owner used it as primary residence for two of the five years before the date of sale. Economists have demonstrated that high-cost high-income areas receive most of the tax benefit. For example, San Francisco, California receives $26,385 per home while El Paso, Texas receives $2,153 per home, a 1,225% difference.[25] The five highest income metros receive 87% of tax inflows, with over half going into California alone.[26]
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_mo...
And it doesn't make any difference that 'high income areas' benefit most from not having to pay more taxes because they have more money; that objection is a resentful populist-Marxist argument. The capital gains exclusion for selling a primary residence to move to another one makes it possible to retain your assets in home ownership whatever your income and whatever the price of the home you buy. And even that exclusion is limited, biting more people as inflation overcomes the limit. Why should anyone have to pay a tax for selling his own home? That would be wrong even if most of the 'gains' were not artificial due to inflation.
The real estate crash was caused by government pressure to issue loans to people not qualified, and the loans and their standards were approved by Federal regulators. It was pushed by welfare statists, primarily Democrats. Bush tried to curtail but gave up too easily when blocked. It was not caused by private banking, which was forced to go along, and was not caused by the tax deduction for home mortgage payments. Private banks that resisted the scheme and kept the best distance they could were not harmed by the crash.
Still too much funding for the swamp, but this is better in the whole.
With the Republicans falling all over themselves to parrot Marxist rhetoric and abandon any principled arguments for lowering taxes as they progressively cave in to Susan Collins and the Democrats, it doesn't look now like there will soon be any major changes in taxation levels at all. If they get something passed it will be at the expense of more compromises with the progressives.
The current deduction system favors both looters and moochers in high tax states, many of whom say that they are not paying enough in taxes. They are right. They are not paying their "fair share". It is time that they felt the full burden of their actions.
Removing deductions that encourage certain behaviors is a step in the right direction toward removing distortions in the economy.
Ah, but people in high tax states like CA or NY can do something. They can move to another state, as many already have.
No, it is not moral to use taxes to force people to move. Whether or not it is practical for someone to move he should not be punished with double taxes for not moving.
Hey!...you rhymed!!!...good job.
If we wanted that kind of "simplification" we could do it now: don't bother to itemize expenses and taxes and simply pay more to the government. Surviving, let alone profiting, is much harder than such easy losses. It would be much "simpler" to stop thinking and working to protect your assets.
If government really wanted to eliminate the outrageous burden of its artificial, time consuming complexities it would "simply" get off our backs. Instead we get another shell game in the name of watching the shiny object while the tax system is made more progressive and more people are taken off the tax rolls completely because they already don't itemize and the standard deduction goes up. It's planned to do that behind all the PR rhetoric.
Even Trump recognized the principle of no double taxation with "income" taxes on taxes -- before he contradicted himself and invoked it himself. His original PR list for the latest round stated no double taxes explicitly to justify getting rid of the ghoulish death tax, then the next item in the list revoked deductions for state and local taxes. The item after that insured that the "popular" mortgage deduction would not be touched.
He's so used to emotional thinking in units of micro tweets, with the attention span that goes with it, that he can't put out a list of a few items without contradicting himself.
The "popular" mortgage deduction is only an excuse to transfer production from those who work to those only steal- the bankers who used their influence (pull) to get the government protected authority to create money for their own benefit.
The income tax has the political support of the bankers, and its purpose is to secure payment to bankers of the government's debt due to profligate spending (partially to buy votes) - and to enslave the productive people.
It was not a coincidence that the federal reserve act and the income tax were both created in 1913.
Limits on property taxes almost always fail to control the spending because they find ways to manipulate the formulas within the law and/or get the money from other sources like the state (which is what happened at the beginning of the property tax revolt in CA with "proposition 13").
We are being told here that the political purpose of the Federal income tax deduction for mortgage interest is to raise the market value of homes for the purpose of increasing property taxes. Aside from that being an unfounded conspiracy theory blaming "cities", it fundamentally misunderstands the relation between property and property taxes and the cause of the taxes.
I do point out, though, that as much as everyone individually fell for the lure, it did nonetheless reflect philosophical premises. The assumptions are, that property can only be land (real estate; everything else like machines and patents, books and copyrights being "unreal"). The deeper premise is that land is the source of wealth. For all of our self-selected capitalist American virtues, we still inherited a lot of unquestioned assumptions from Europe of the Middle Ages. So, everyone wanted to own a home with a lawn to mow.
Look at Obamacare. It was an aligning of the interests of insurance companie to be able to raise rates with the govt kicking in a percentage, hospitals wanting more paying customers, and freeloaders wanting free medical care that got it passed. The average consumer and taxpayer was completely left out of this and suffers as a result. There will be no repeal of Obamacare, as we have seen, and only the resumption of the plan for medicare (paid for by the government of course) for everyone.
I model tax deductions as shifting the demand curve upward, causing the market to find a new equilibrium point with slightly higher quantity demanded/supplied and slightly higher price. How much the quantity demanded and price change is a function of the elasticity of demand.
It is a looters tax as you have stated so well. ;^)
10% is usually a no brainer in terms of cutting back on waste. 20% is a stretch for most expenses, but possible.
The first thing to do is only buy things that will LAST a long time, and buy spare parts for those things before they dont make them anymore.
Secondly, would be to specifically cut down on the need for driving around.
Third would be careful procuring of food, so as not to buy too much that will spoil before you eat it.
As we get older, it gets harder to do physical things for ourselves, but our needs (exc for medical) tend to go down also.
As to medical, given how much we have paid into taxes over the years, taking as much free medical care now that its government medical care doesnt seem like such a bad idea
I personally believe in pay all taxes I'm legally required to pay, even if I don't agree with them, and I similarly take all benefits that I'm legally entitled to, even if I don't agree with them.
My neighborhood has been deemed historic, even though it's nothing special. As a result I get a tax credit for basic repairs like a new roof or furnace under the idea it's "restoring an historic home". It doesn't make much sense to me, but no way am I forgoing a tax credit on principle.
My only concern about free gov't medical care is quality. If it's Medicare, I think I'd find out if I can get the payments applied to high-end provider that I pay the rest for. I would be concerned they wouldn't tell me about some option because Medicare doesn't pay for it. If the program is there and I'm eligible, I'll milk it for all I'm legally entitled to and that I want.
As the whole system becomes more controlled with more bureaucracy, government subsidies, and rationing, and as Medicare reaches a crisis of bankruptcy, it will become worse.
Obamacare was never intended or expected even by its proponents to work; it was an attempt by Democrats to impose as much control as they could while they had control over Congress as a big step towards full socialized medicine, entrenching as many new precedents as they could, and knowing that it would be politically impossible to get rid of it. They expected it to result in such a mess that people would be begging for more comprehensive government control to solve the crisis as insurance companies are blamed for the problems. Clinton was expected to be there to put it over the top.
When Obama left office he said that he expected Republicans to change the names and twiddle with it but not repeal it -- which is what the Republicans are now doing (with less than even he expected) to help the Democrats' goal of complete government control. The Republicans unanimously voted against it, campaigned against it for seven years, and even won Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts in the public outrage against Obamacare. Now they won't touch it.
Socialism, and socialized medicine in particular, is much deeper and more insidious than just "free stuff" with no thought of controls. The hold collectivist and altruist premises, and have been trying to impose it through unprincipled Pragmatism starting with the welfare statism; they are not just ignorant people trying to grab something for free with no idea of the consequences. The Republicans are less ideological, but see the trend and think they can "manage" it better as socialism inevitably progressively grows.
Mayo is refusing new patients (which means patients who have not seen that particular specialty within the last three years) with Medicare whether or not they have supplemental (gap) policies.
They are experimenting with what is called concierge family doctor plans, which cost $6000 upfront per year, and most likely allow you to get seen by a specialty when referred by their concierge doctor. Its a back door approach which works for a while longer until the government figures a way to stop it to force medicare level of care for everyone. Its very disturbing.
Once 65, there are no private insurance plans that I can get other than medicare. I will look at the link you mentioned, but I really doubt there are other than the supplemental plans that pay the 20% medicare doesnt pay, plus the 15% the medical providers can charge over that.
Pharmacy prices are lower in countries like Canada because of government price controls there, as well as the black markets with counterfeit and stolen drugs. The pharmacy companies survive it the best they can, but it adds to their costs, making it impossible to sell for lower prices in this country.
But money you spend on interest to borrow is something you want to spend your own income on. Unlike state and local taxes there is no particular reason to subtract it from income as if you didn't get the income to spend as you want. It is a deduction for income taxes based on arbitrary political motives, partly appealing to populist resentment of "interest" as if it were not a price, partly because politicians are trying to manipulate home ownership, and partly because it is entrenched as a 'popular' deduction.
There is no reason not to eliminate the mortgage deduction in favor of lower rates -- but not abruptly because people made plans based on it, and ending it only for new mortgages would create an additional unjust cost for moving, forcing people to stay where they are by penalizing them for moving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5eHd...
There were no surpluses during Reagan's administration, or any other administration for a very long time. Revenues from taxes increased under Reagan and spending and the debt increased more.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesgla...
The overall increases get even more skewed if you measure them by percentage of debt to each President, Obama added 8 Trillion to the debt, and it surprisingly drops little over the last 5. FDR had the largest percentage increase going from 23 Billion left by Hoover, to 250 billion, but 210 billion was spent on WW2. Yet FDR's percentage was a whopping 1,046%. Overall, no president has ever NOT increased the debt. The rate is accelerating as they keep spending more on whatever the hell they want. I hate to see what Trump comes out at.
https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by...
The health system isn't "out of control", it is being controlled by government bureaucracy out of control, driving up costs of development, consumer prices and more. Companies have to earn back their development and bureaucracy-imposed costs while they can because government artificially limits patent rights and because other products are being developed over time competing with it in different ways. They also have a right to profit from their own property. Despite that, drug companies routinely provide expensive products at reduced cost to those who can't afford it. Unfortunately that too drives up the costs for others..
As Circ pointed out there are many different products and methods constantly evolving over time to treat the same disease with different approaches and possible side effects. It is your responsibility to compare them and choose what you think is best for you in the face of different tradeoffs, including cost. Advanced medicine is a complex field that cannot provide magical utopian solutions.
Concern for improving human life, including those still living in primitive conditions, is certainly valid. In critical situations you can help others when it appears they are worthy of your efforts and it is not a sacrifice to you. Drug companies provide advanced medicine at reduced or no cost to those who cannot afford it, which is partially in accordance with that principle, but also corrupted by altruism.
But the way to improve the conditions of humanity everywhere is to further advance civilization, encouraging and rewarding those with the best minds to produce while protecting the rights of the individual, which requires doing so as a matter of principle, not subject to ignoring it for Pragmatist expedience. That takes spreading the ideas of reason, logic, science, individualism and protection of the rights of the individual (which is something that Bill Gates and his foundations operating in Africa, for example, are not doing as they pour money into medical care that is temporary).
Ayn Rand's ethics based on reason and the freedom and choice to use it as the fundamental requirement of human life makes it unnecessary for anyone to live in a permanent moral dilemma.
As for the computers, yes the technology that developed so spectacularly in freedom because bureaucrats didn't understand what was happening to know to control it is now being hijacked for "1984" -- NSA et al, the Equifax symptom of Big Data, monitoring of financial transactions for intrusive "reporting requirement", etc. etc is all exploding. Most people don't realize how pervasive and intense it already is. Snowden gave them a big clue, but few understood or looked at the document dumps enough to realize what they are doing and how inherently insecure the internet is. They don't realize the pressure from Washington to ban cryptographic protection and the significance of that.
"when you get to medical, it gets very, very weird. "
I think you're saying that drug companies sometimes invent the only cure that can save a life, and then they can charge whatever people with that disease can and will pay to stay alive. I think this is actually a rare case. In the case of the epi-pen, the drug itself is very cheap, but they have a patent on the quick-and-easy device to administer the drug. That's important because the drug is life-saving and a few seconds drawing the drug into a syringe matter. Even in this case, it's wrong for customers to see themselves as helpless. What other solutions can they think of to have the drug and syringe at the ready? Are there any other treatments that could be used as a stopgap while prepping a syringe?
Usually (not always) there were good treatments 20+ years ago that are available in generic. Maybe the latest drug is once-a-day dosing, can be taken without regard to meals, and causes less side effects. Customers who have the money and want to spend it on that can do it, while value customers might try the older twice-a-day one that must be taken with meals. Maybe they won't even develop the side effects. Or maybe they'll have a bad reaction to the old drug and decide it's worth it for the new drug.
I just don't accept that pharmaceutical companies have their customers totally over a barrel. I'm sure they see their products as vital and people should spare no expense to buy them, but their customers need to shop critically.
The costs of the producer are not just the cost of making a pill. They are trying to earn back the costs of years of research and development, which includes attempts to develop other products that did not succeed, and artificial costs imposed by bureaucracy. They are artificially limited in how much time they have to do it because the patents are artificially time limited and other potentially competing products may appear. For advanced drugs useful for rarer diseases there is also a much smaller market.
The market does not cease to function under government interference, it is distorted from what it otherwise would have been. That includes costs, availability, and demand of and for the product and competing products. But the laws of economics don't stop functioning just because there is government interference resulting in a mixture of freedom and controls. Even in extreme cases black markets arise.
Price controls in Canada don't tell you anything about an "intrinsic" value or costs, only that the company can afford to sell something because it is still marginally adding to profits either by itself or in combination with some required combination of products. You don't know what the price of something would be in the US without price controls in Canada. It may but not necessarily be lower. You don't what the price of anything would be with less government controls, only that everyone would generally be better off under freer conditions affecting everything.
So your price per pill becomes how much it costs to market and produce plus that pill's share of development. Once you've established a price that will break even or profit in the U.S. market, you can sell pills in foreign or special markets without allocating development costs to them and increase your net profit. You only have to pay the development costs once no matter how many pills you sell.
Since the development cost is very high, this often means it is profitable to sell the pills at much less overseas as long as you can maintain the U.S. pricing structure to cover development.
The role of development costs has already been discussed. There is no development cost per pill. The cost of development is already spent when the pills begin to be sold. That cost must be paid for by the total sales, not price per pill. "Price controls in Canada don't tell you anything about an 'intrinsic' value or costs, only that the company can afford to sell something [under the price controls] because it is still marginally adding to profits..." That is in addition to the business in the US. There is no uniform price per pill that must be charged. Allocating prior costs on average is only a statistical average.
In any case, in doing the math you have to estimate how many pills you are going to be able to sell, calculate the cost of production, marketing and administration, add in the development cost and divide to get a minimum price per pill. Sell them for less than that and you lose money, more and you make a profit -- of course you have to guess that number correctly. if you guess high you could still lose money.
Once you've taken care of that with your primary market your subsidiary market can still be profitably serviced without factoring in R&D since you've covered that cost. They may not be able to pay the U.S. price but they can still be profitably serviced because increasing the volume beyond the original calculation changes the economics.
Statistical averages have already been discussed. They do not mean that every pill has to cover the average. Marginal profits on sales outside the US are just that, marginal. They do not have to cover the development costs. If similar price controls are imposed by our own government the we lose all of it. This all been discussed previously.
If the company cannot make a profit after all costs, including the enormous development costs, it will not produce them and no one will get them at all. That is the "exorbitant price" we pay for what is not produced as a result of government controls.
By chance I was just looking into this scenario last weekend because for the first time in my life I won't have a health insurance contract. Our premiums increased to $1250/mo for a $13k deductible. We're doing some health sharing program that goes by the horrible name "Brother's Keeper". When you dig into the details, though, it's more in line with my views than our PPACA-compliant plans have been. It does not not cover prescription drugs at all, so we are accepting the risk of a rare $100k prescription drug scenario.
People who hate PPACA for political reasons should definitely look into these plans. I agree with a lot of the theory behind PPACA, but I'm not paying $15k a year for a plan designed around hand-holding who I would have to fight if I ever wanted to make a claim. If you hate PPACA, something like "Brother's Keeper" is a good option if you can get past their collectivist language.
Your comment that, I should love it or hate it and approach it on a name-calling level, is a wholly political take on it. I am an actual citizen not involved in policy or talking heads yelling at one another on TV.
I called it a mixed bag from the outset. I agree with eliminating underwriting, the mandate, and with subsidies for the poor. I disagree with the minimum standards of insurance and encouraging insurance-company managed "health plans" and discouraging old-fashioned insurance products. (Let's start another thread if you want to get into the merits of those things and why I don't think PPACA is "fair share" collectivism.)
The whole idea rests on the mandate. If there's no underwriting and people can just buy "insurance" when they're sick, the prices will rise to incredible levels. The politicians have been threatening to dick with it without a coherent plan, and that increases risk, i.e. increases premiums. I seriously think politicians are actually operating on the name-calling level. It's not just for the rubes' benefit. It appears they're actually making decisions that way. It's getting to the point where I wish they get some nerds together to draft legislation and then slap a preface onto it making fun of one another's names so they can get people to pay attention.
I won't pay for the risk that politicians dick with the law such that only sick people buy insurance, which ultimately means responsible people who bought insurance and now have a serious illness will go broke or be bailed out by the gov't. What a disgrace. I think my senators, Baldwin and Johnson, see through the politics and don't want to be a part of this. Johnson had a great article in the NYT about it. Johnson said, "Patients neither know nor care what things cost. We have virtually eliminated the power of consumer-driven, free-market discipline from one-sixth of our economy."
It's a sixth of our economy, and I think discourse will stay at the name-calling level, and they will not be able to fix it. It makes me feel like I'm in the Roman Empire at a time after it had become an Empire, but they still called it a republic.
One of the many not unintended results is that government seizing responsibility to pay for the "poor" and direct health care policies, is controlling what everyone must do, cannot do, and most pay for anyway.
Everything limited. By the facts of reality the controls bring with them the responsibility to pay for it and decide what will not be paid for what individuals could otherwise choose. A mandate to "participate" cannot include open-ended utopian desires for no 'side effects' of collectivism and statism.
The "mandate" mentality is a grotesque false alternative to a supposed 'market' in which no one will buy insurance until he needs to be paid at a constantly accumulating net drain on the insurance companies. That is not what insurance is. No insurance company would do that without a government mandate such as the Obamacare 'pre-existing condition' exemption scam; it contradicts the very concepts of insurance and voluntary trade.
None of these refutations are 'name calling'. Nickursis referring to Pelosi as felonious is an understatement of the mentality of the collectivized medicine thugs in Congress, not an excuse to evade everything else that is said. Names are for identification; the felonious thugs in Congress and their supporters don't want to be identified as what they are. The brute force of government control of our health care and therefore our lives is their statist, anti-individualist essence.
I reject almost every claim you make above except for this one. I agree PPACA contradicts the very concept of insurance, the very concept of spreading the financial risk of unforeseen perils.
Insurance is not "spreading financial risk for unforeseen perils". We know what the potential perils are and buy insurance of certain kinds to protect against our own risk by paying the insurance company to assume it, not to "spread risk". Insurance companies write policies to cover specific categories of loss based on statistical assessments of the risks. If they do it properly they profit after the average premiums and payouts and investments on the assets they accumulate. The insured benefit because the regular costs for the insurance premiums are worth it versus being confronted with impossibly enormous costs in the rare event that it occurs.
No one does it to "spread risks" without regard to trading value for value and his own interests, and no one buys insurance to cover losses he knows or believes he would not otherwise have to pay for. Government 'health care' controlling what doctors and patients can do, what we have to be "insured" for for the benefit of others, and ordering what we cannot do while forcibly redistributing our assets to pay for it all is obscene collectivist statism, not insurance.
Nor is insurance a way for everyone to get someone else to pay for normal maintenance and expected costs, which is impossible for health, home ownership, cars or anything else. Yet that is the switch that has been pulled by government health control trying to sell socialized medicine in the name of the equivalent "someone else pays" consolidated into a "single payer" political scheme it dishonestly calls "insurance". The peddling collectivism in the name of "insurance" is a dangerous fraud.
Oh, I missed that and might still need it spelled out even more simply for me to fully get it.
"the Big Pharma attempts to get everyone on their expensive drug trips"
They're attempting to sell their product, and consumers should attempt to get maximum value. That's normal and healthy. Saying "Big Pharma" makes it sound like their customers are victims. All market participant need to try not to be victims.
"my employer gives me a HDHP with a 3700 family deductible"
I don't think you're wrong at all to state it like this, but I personally would avoid the word "give" because it's actually a trade. If they stopped buying those things and/or were late on payroll, you'd rightly be out of there. If you stopped making them money, they'd rightly end the arrangement. You work for company known in the electronics world to pay well for the best people.
"Your people turned it into a GOVERNMENT nightmare"
If you mean me personally, I have never worked in gov't or been involved beyond knowing my representatives and their staff and occasionally lobbying them.
"bros in the hood"
This has nothing whatsoever to do with bros in the hood and your resentment. I obviously don't want corruption, waste, and gov't control of healthcare. I think the way we insured against unexpected medical expenses prior to PPACA were vestiges of WWII-era price controls. That's why companies more commonly buy health plans than houses, groceries, or education for their employees. HMOs, PPACA, employeer-purchased healthcare, and in the broader economy credit cards, all separate people from the reality of doing work for one another in mutual trades. This leads to trying to find tricks to get something for nothing.
That's my broad take on it. If you have specific questions I'll start a new thread. That may help, but we may be at a fundamental difference in that I think the world today is amazingly free and prosperous. I see the racism, people shamelessly milking the gov't, companies (e.g. pharmaceutical companies) overstating their expensive products' benefits, microphones and tracking everywhere, but I don't get the resentment. It seems like we've solved 90% of humankind's problems, and some people are very upset about the remaining 10%. I also absolutely do not think humankind's problems are caused by a group of evil people. So if your starting point is resenting people, outrage at the human problems that haven't been solved, and trying out who's responsible, I can't answer because I reject the premises. I think if someone tells you life's a box of shits, and I'll tell you who's to blame, you should immediately see through the manipulation.
I would definitely start a thread, though, about broad principles or nuts and bolts of insurance. Thanks for following me jumping between the tress and the forest in this msg.
I will do it if you have an idea what the question/topic should be. When I ask myself what's the central big picture issue here, I think it's not using cash. Cash, even if it's gold coins, is already an abstraction of value. It's not viscerally obvious that that gold coin is worth a day's worth of work, a laptop, or whatever. If we trade numbers on a screen, it's even more abstract.
I think many of the issues we're talking about would improve if we only had cash. Customer would walk in with coins. The owners took some of them to pay vendors, and handed people their pay in coins, and kept the rest if there were any left. Then people, in this bizarre fantasy, would walk over to the FICA desk and hand over a big chunk of them, and then hand over more to the Social Security desk. They could optionally hand some to the health insurance company, all the while watching their takehome pile get smaller. If they get sick, they pay the doctor's office, which keeps coins and pays the same as all employers. You could file a claim and get some of the coins back from the insurance company. Yet get the idea.
This is obviously not practical, but I think many problems would go away if there were an obvious visual way to track the flow of value. It would be viscerally obvious that those coins represent a day of work, and you can give one to someone who spends all day installing a furnace, and you have no choice but to give some to the gov't. It's not just the typical scenario of having insurance paid by an employer, and then you swipe one card for insurance and another card for credit card, which eventually gets paid by ACH from a bank account, where your direct deposit goes. That system allows people to forget that money is the means by which people relate to one another on a free basis.
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