A nobel economist just stated on the Charlie Rose show (tivo'd from last night) that the entire tax-cut benefit to the economy was from the lower-income cuts not in the original bill, but pushed for by Dems. The idea is that upper tax bracket folks are well-off which means by defninition they don't need to spend the marginal increase.
Depends on where lower-income "bar" is. I think it's a fair statment that lower-income persons pay very little in personal income tax. [Don't look at marginal rates but what the actual tax rate is.] But I would agree that it's a consumer driven economy and in that sense, if you're going to give tax breaks it will stimulate the economy more by distributing the tax break over a larger group of people [who spend] than giving it to a smaller percentage of people that won't be spending.
Where I disagree is that our tax rates are a bargain, but only because I'm convinced gov't is 2X too large, could be providing better social-net benefits at 1/2 the price with a privatized medical system under the Swiss model, and would make the US safer with conscription and 1/2 the budget.
Precision without accuracy. Neither you or I [or anyone else] has any idea what the correct size of the federal government should be. I would expect that there are a number of health care systems that would be great improvement over what the US currently practices. Every industrialized country has a national health care system with the exception of the US and you'll find that on the average the per capita expenditure on health care is lower in those countries than it is in the US.
There is an aspect of health care systems within those countries that is overlooked. For example, England has a national health care system that is publicly funded and it has a private health care system that complements it. I don't particularly see anything wrong with that model.
To some extent, the US has a mixed health care system. We have Medicare, Medicaid, and private health care insurance....there are just 43 million people that are completely left out of any health care coverage.
Right as rain ... but concealed from any GOP discussion, since it puts the lie to their real agenda, which is to centralize power, loot the treasury, and blame the results on anyone not in on the game.
And they seem to be quite successful at it. I just learned that under the medicare prescription program, the elderly don't get benefits until 1996, but the drug companies get some payed before that....what a deal.
jttmab |
