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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (15839)	3/31/2010 6:26:52 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

RE taxes, I came upon this piece today and found it interesting. Taxes per Person from Greg Mankiw by Greg Mankiw 32 people liked this Some pundits, reflecting on the looming U.S. budget deficits, claim that Americans are vastly undertaxed compared with other major nations. I was wondering, to what extent is that true? The most common metric for answering this question is taxes as a percentage of GDP. However, high tax rates tend to depress GDP. Looking at taxes as a percentage of GDP may mislead us into thinking we can increase tax revenue more than we actually can. For some purposes, a better statistic may be taxes per person, which we can compute using this piece of advanced mathematics: Taxes/GDP x GDP/Person = Taxes/Person Here are the results for some of the largest developed nations: France .461 x 33,744 = 15,556 Germany .406 x 34,219 = 13,893 UK .390 x 35,165 = 13,714 US .282 x 46,443 = 13,097 Canada .334 x 38,290 = 12,789 Italy .426 x 29,290 = 12,478 Spain .373 x 29,527 = 11,014 Japan .274 x 32,817 = 8,992 The bottom line: The United States is indeed a low-tax country as judged by taxes as a percentage of GDP, but as judged by taxes per person, the United States is in the middle of the pack. gregmankiw.blogspot.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (15839)	3/31/2010 6:31:31 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I have disagreed here with the GOP posters here who oppose rationing. I'm against rationing in the sense of direct explicit government controls over what can be had or what can be spent, not in the far more general economic sense of having some factor control the allocation of scarce goods. In that sense being against rationing doesn't make a lot of sense, by definition any scarce good is rationed in one form or another be it by price, queue, custom, government rationing programs, etc. You can't avoid rationing in that sense except for non-scarce goods (which might include things like air and non-potable water)

To: Lane3 who wrote (15839)	3/31/2010 6:37:04 PM
From: Alighieri	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

But what was being challenged was the Obamacare framework and what was wished was an alternate framework in which costs were controlled by structural changes and the market so Obamacare rationing and regulatory cost controls would be thankfully obviated. Really? What alternate framework? Insurance competition across state lines and tort reform? Talk about inert meaningless window dressing.. If it was earnest, then it will be interesting to see how it is either reconciled or double-talked going forward. It was dirty politics...pure and simple. When the plan called for best of breed care panels, they became death panels. We have what we have, and have not what we should, because of conservative opposition...mostly on the GOP side, but not exclusively. Al