Interesting Fact #1: 400 American citizens hold more combined wealth (cash, stock and property) than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.
Interesting Fact #2: Thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, those 400 wealthiest Americans now have an unprecedented amount of influence over our nation’s electoral politics.
Democracy? More like plutocracy.
Join our “Move To Amend” initiative, with referendums in over 350 cities and states nationwide. Since the SCOTUS Citizen’s United decision, most thinking people realize that America is being taken over by the WORLD’s rich, who can now influence elections and buy politicians anonymously through Corporate PACs. Our group is in Eau Claire, WI: Chippewa Valley Move To Amend. Search on Facebook. or email cvmta@movetoamend.org. Check out the national website for info on national locations and on setting up your own non-partisan site: movetoamend.org. It’s a truly unifying issue, except for the world government dominated politicians and richest 0.01%.
I’ll be baaaaaak…
Or put it this way… 155 million voters vs. 400 voters. Why are you so eager to believe the mass of voters are so susceptible to more campaign ads? For years the mass media have had “an unprecedented amount of influence over our nation’s electoral politics” — do you also have complaints there? You decry the Citizens United ruling. Sometimes rulings on constitutional basis have consequences you don’t like. You’ll find that out again when we’re all paying new taxes (Zach included) in a couple of years under the new health care law.
I don’t believe Citizens United is constitutional…but the Supreme Court has declared it so…hence the Move to Amend organizations.
As for the supposed ACA taxes…the current slogan: I am not asking the government for free healthcare. I am asking my government to spend my taxes on my health.
Free speech is constitutional.
You are asking the government to spend your taxes on other people’s health care. What about Zach and the 40% excise tax he’s going to have to pay just because his union got him a nice plan. Forget whether it’s fair or not, how does it even make sense?
Furthermore, you wouldn’t need government to spend taxes on your health if government got out of the health care business. Should government also be spending your taxes on your food and your heat and clothing? Let’s just put them in charge of every basic need. One problem with that: there aren’t going to be enough workers to support all the elderly and freeloaders. Where’s the money going to come from? Oh I forgot, tax the rich.
Government is great at knocking you down and breaking your leg and then handing you a crutch and then convincing you that you wouldn’t be able to walk if not for the government.
forgot my brains, you wrote this: “You are asking the government to spend your taxes on other people’s health care.”
You’re confusing insurance with government. No one pays for their own health care. Everyone pays into an insurance pool. Then you draw it out when you need it. Do you want to outlaw ALL insurance? That’s the point of an insurance pool. What about vehicle insurance? Good drivers pay for bad drivers. What about homeowner’s insurance? What about renter’s insurance? What about crop insurance? What about LIFE insurance?
Among the many problems with Obamacare, it was written by the health insurance oligopoly. It forces Americans to pay for LOUSY coverage.
If you were a capitalist or a conservative, you would support Medicare for all. Eliminate the massive waste that the health insurance oligopoly is. Their administrative costs routinely run north of 15% and they provide ZERO value to patients. Medicare’s administrative costs are under 5%. Once you get “single-payer,” it frees up the hospitals, physicians, nurses, allied health professionals, Big Pharma, and medical device makers (the folks who actually provide patient care) to COMPETE. That reduces costs and improves quality.
Yes free speech in Constitutional…money is not free speech and corporations are not people.
And I expect government to use my taxes to provide other people’s roads and water and garbage pickup and schools (now that my children are adults), etc. So yes along with my healthcare, I expect the government to pay for others as well…since I am already paying for the uninsured through my taxes and premiums already. I am sure you’ve guessed by now that I will support a universal single payer system.
If corporations aren’t people, they shouldn’t be paying taxes then either.
The difference in government paying for roads, water, defense, garbage, etc. is that those are across the board services that can’t be managed on an individual basis (each person cannot pave his own road or purify/deliver water to his house). You didn’t answer my question about other basic individual needs: do you want a universal single payer system for food, clothing, shelter and heat as well? If not, why not? It sure would relieve a lot of burdens wouldn’t it. I wouldn’t have to decide what food I eat or what clothes I wear or even how or where I live. What a utopia! And it’s all FREEEEEEEEEEE!
ForgotYourScreenName:
Just thought I’d give you a nudge. I’m still waiting for your response to my questions so I can address yours regarding single payer systems for the provision of basic needs like food, clothing, shelter, and heat. I just want to be sure we’re addressing the same things – and we are both approaching the question from the same angle. Perhaps in answering my questions you might even convince me that your approach is the more sound.
Maybe narrowing a little bit will help for scrutiny? So, if you’d please detail for me how the system you prefer has historically lowered overall costs, expanded access, and increased efficiency? How has the system you prefer addressed necessity and quality? What measures of accountability are in place to assure that basic human needs are adequately met? What are the driving values underlying the system you prefer? Who benefits or profits most from the system you prefer and how do you measure that? In your system is there a mechanism for ensuring career opportunities or employment opportunities for American workers?
Since you believe that a streamlined, single payer system for providing basic human needs is not preferable, you must have an excellent understanding of how each of the industries in question operate. Please share your knowledge so we all may benefit from your wisdom. I patiently await your response.
Unforgettable-Screen-Name:
I’m eager to learn from your perspective. Would you please detail the opposite of the utopia you outline? How it works, how it functions, and why it works and functions as it does? What makes your alternative superior or preferable to the utopian red herring you denounce? Meanwhile, I have to ponder on it a bit, but I’ll take up your red herring regarding a universal single payer system for food, clothing, shelter, and heat. It is an interesting question and one which history speaks to in abundance.
NameToForget:
Before I answer your question, it may be useful for you to understand the angle with which I approach your red herring: I care about other people. I have a great affection and concern for other people. One might say I love people. The suffering of other people induces great pain in my soul. While I accept that suffering is part of life, preventable suffering is not acceptable. Suffering caused by inorganic dog-eat-dog avarice is not acceptable.
So before I embark on “utopia,” let’s first look at some FACTS:
Since the 2008 global financial meltdown initiated by the unregulated financial industry, the US treasury (that means U.S. tax dollars) has forked over 14 trillion dollars to banks foreign and domestic. You might recognize that figure if you are paying attention to (and comprehend) matters of debt and deficit. Since then profits and bonuses within the financial industry have skyrocketed – to levels higher than before the meltdown.
Pay close attention to this next part. It’s really important.
2008:
Value of the of the Global Derivatives Market: 1.14 quadrillion
In case you are wondering: one thousand trillion=1 quadrillion.
In case you are wondering: 1 quadrillion is the world economy x 12.
The sales tax on buying global derivatives? $0.00.
Sales tax rate for buying anything in Wisconsin? 5%.
2008-2010:
For every dollar of combined profits during this interval for just General Electric, Dow Chemicals, Boeing, Verizon, and Wells Fargo, take a guess at how much the American public received in taxes? Just take a guess. Answer: One cent.
2011:
US corporate profits totaled 1.97 trillion dollars.
US corporate tax burden? Corporations paid 9% of that in federal taxes and 2% in state taxes for a combined 11%. The poorest 20% of Americans paid a combined 17.4% in taxes in 2011.
Since 1980, in other words the period spanning the Conservative-Libertarian revolution, this is how trickle-down economics has worked in the real world:
For every dollar the .1% or the “greatest” among us have earned, they’ve added three more dollars. By contrast, 90% of the “least” among us have earned one cent.
In other words, trickle-down economics hasn’t worked. Those who support trickle-down economics, I call Tricklers, you may notice me using the term later – I’ll define it now so you know to whom it refers. Tricklers refer to the trickster propagandist proponents of trickle-down economics and the foolish masses who absorb that propaganda due to hardened attitudes which prevent the kind of flexible thought that might allow for actual synthesis.
The United Nations estimates that if we, as a planet, had some kind of utopian desire to say eradicate starvation – so that every person on the planet, this beautiful globe, has enough to eat – so as to not starve to death, the total cost amounts to $30 billion per year. Not a lot. Because in real world terms it only takes about $100 year to feed a single human being.
925 million people in the world have an insufficient amount of food. Not quite starving, but not enough for a humane level of existence. At $100 per every half-filled belly that’s $92 billion to fill the empty half, enough to reach humane proportions.
Perhaps, forgotmyscreename, with all all that rugged individualism you exert, perhaps you could make one of your ground-shaking decisions for yourself – maybe fill those 925 million half-empty bellies? You or you and your family maybe? Maybe your family could help all those families that comprise the suffering of the half-starved? No? All your individual decisions hasn’t netted you enough to feed 925 million people? I guess you needn’t concern yourself. There is one American family who has netted enough. The Wal-Mart heirs. The Wal-Mart heirs have netted 92 billion. The Wal-Mart heirs have enough to feed the half-starved “least” among us in the world – the whole world – the whole planet – you know – the planet earth.
My oh my, but they must have made better decisions than you did. Maybe they don’t eat things like broccoli. I wonder, if any of those decisions the Wal-Mart heirs made… I wonder if any of those decisions ever had any impact on you. Or on the range of decisions you are now able to make. No, you make your own decisions and that’s the one and only thing that determines your own success or failure in America… or around the globe.
I guess you see my point. While you piss and moan insulated within your petty little, tiny little universe, because of course, the world revolves around you; while you plaintively grouse about the big, bad government that makes your choices for you – choices like what you eat – take broccoli for an example – the world that is revolving around you is moaning over the choices the government makes like – not what you eat, but whether or not you eat. And the government is not making those choices on its own. But, while you are whimpering about your individual sovereignty in terms that do not even remotely relate to the founding principles of our government, your gripes are not even at the discussion table among the “greatest” among us who discuss the things that matter for you and for everyone else.
But, then again, what happens with other people doesn’t really have any connection to you does it? What’s happening with those starving people and those insufficiently-fed people isn’t at all connected to you or your beliefs about government, isn’t that so? You’re not one of those people and you work hard and make your own rugged way in this world so you will never become one of those starving or insufficiently-fed people; I’m correct in that assumption aren’t I? Because you control and you are adamant at controlling as many decisions and choices about your own life as you possibly can. And as long as you have the “freedom” to do so, you will never become one of those starving or insufficiently-fed people because nothing whatsoever transects the issues that separate you and your imminently important decisions about broccoli or any other brassica-type food stuffs and the decision of whether you eat enough or you eat at all.
Who’s the Utopian who desperately wishes that the Constitution and the founding fathers actually designed the government to not regulate, tax, and spend? Who’s the Utopian who believes that the founding fathers didn’t specifically establish with precision (and now distorted and destroyed by Tricklers) the preeminence of the public sector and the public good? Who’s the Utopian who believes that predatory capitalism evolved out of an emerging American democracy when in truth it evolved out of emerging British imperialism? Who’s the Utopian who believes piddling little decisions amount to freedom in a world where foreign corporations, foreign investors, and one great American family have more clout with the government than you do because your vital and visceral nugatory decisions have no bearing on much of anything at all?
I’m still thinking about your single-payer red herring. More on that later.