MyGauntlet

I’ve been trying to explain this to people for many many years now:

A Radical Re-Imagining Of The Tax System

Russell Roberts, Forbes, 1-23-09

The payroll tax [Social inSecurity & Medicare] a regressive tax that falls harshly on the poor. And it is deceptive, an unacceptable characteristic of a tax in a democracy.

Half of the payroll tax appears to be paid by employers. In fact, studies of the payroll tax show that the employer merely lowers worker compensation in response to the tax burden. So workers pay virtually the entire 15%.

Worse, the payroll tax gives the illusion that taxes are “contributions” toward future social security payments. In fact, the payroll tax is used to finance current recipients of Social Security and Medicare along with other government spending such as the war on Iraq and welfare for wealth farmers.

This fools workers into thinking such programs are cheaper than they actually are. This artificially encourages the demand for such programs.

Does this clarify it a bit? Sometimes all it takes is a different person’s words to understandingly explain.

For Single-Payer Healthcare – Yahoo! News:According to a study by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, switching to a single-payer system would: 1. Create 2,613,495 million new permanent good-paying jobs (slightly exceeding the number of jobs lost in 2008) — and jobs that are not easily shipped overseas 2. Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues 3. Add $100 billion in employee compensation 4. Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues

This just totally confuses me… how some thing like this gets put out and how people actually fall for it. This is supposed to save money, but create 2.5 million jobs? And what about all the people that worked for the insurance  companies. How many of those jobs would be lost?

Boost the economy by $317 dollars? Only if it takes over $317 billion dollars out of the private economy (after all, it’ll take a few … ok, probably a lot, of bureaucrats to run such a program with their expenses and the support staff to cover them, and the the regulators to make sure it’s all done according to the rules and then the political staff to decide what the current year’s rules will be, and all the lobbyists trying to get their piece of the pie to be larger, and …)

Add $100 billion in employee compensation? Once again, paid for by whom? The evil nasty greedy corporations, CEO, business people, and other assorted demons? If their costs go up the same (or worse) in a different part of the business, there wouldn’t be any money left to pay anyone more. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Corporate executives have a legal fiduciary duty to maximize the value of the company and it’s bottom line. Smaller businesses try to live on what’s left over after all the costs are paid out. A lot of them are already on the brink. Yep, those employees will make more … right up until they get fired or the business fails.

Infuse public budgets with <plug your own number in>. New tax revenues? That means someone, or a lot of someones, will be paying more in taxes. Where does that money get cut? Let’s say it’s some rich jerk. He’s not making as much so he decides not to build that new house after all. The construction workers don’t get work, the suppliers don’t sell the construction material, there’s no new house for maintenance workers to maintain, the money that they aren’t making means they don’t get to buy their kids that birthday present, they can’t afford the new car this year, they can’t even afford the fast food dinner once a week any more. You see the money “spent” by the government but you don’t see the other things that money would have been spent on if it hadn’t been taken by the government in the first place.

There’s an essay that was published in 1850 which still lays it out in very understandable terms this whole process. It was written by Frederic Bastiat and titled That Which is Seen And That Which is Not Seen Well worth the read.