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ding, much easier than yesterdays

No, no, drwho, I wasn't mocking anyone's spelling or typos; qui9te the contrary. I meant that there were NO spelling errors. And, the arguments were rational, I might have added. (Another of the salubrious effects of doing Sudoku, no doubt) My only prior experience with political discourse on the internet has been with the comments following news stories where things are, ah...quite different.

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really easy

Diane said "Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but not many. (4) A flat tax sounds good, but as tuco points out, $6,250 is much more significant to someone earning $50,000 than $125,000 is to someone earning $1M."

Here is where the system breaks. As soon as you create exceptions and exemptions the system fails to work. You want a zhit ton of money for give away programs? The ONLY way that will happen is if the system for GETTING MONEY has a completely non-discriminatory assessment strategy. When you introduce exemptions/exceptions, eventually you return to exactly what you have today, the folks with 10,000,000 pay LESS THAN I DO, and I paid about 40k last year. It does not work

Phil: liberals are so easily confused. I never said that poor people should not get medical care or should be allowed to die in the streets. I said it is not the government's concern.

It is the concern of individual beneficence. Beneficence is reaching into your own pocket to meet the needs of the unfortunate. Government assistance is not beneficent or even moral. It is stealing.

What folks who want exempts have not done is look at the GROSS REV FROM TAXES numbers AFTER a flat tax...the revenue available FOR GIVEAWAY programs GOES UP. If it went up today, there would be no debate. It does not. Exemptions allow for exactly what they are designed to do: allow upper income earners to EXEMPT FROM PAYING TAXES. The argument about percentages is exactly what keeps the system broken. It's irrefutable right? 6k on 50k is a higher percent, it's more of a burden. The problem is because the 500,000k guy with a good tax accountant and good financial structuring of his assets, he pays about 20k in taxes, if he has a bad accountant!!

'liberals are so easily confused' ouch

The percentage argument is irrelevant when it is placed in the context of the system being broken. That is to say, a flat tax would fund the give aways and if that increase in funds available is not enough, and the numbers are pretty large on tax rev increase, then the giveaways need to be revisitied. Also, with more money available for the entire system of giveaways the individual burden (ie: monthly health costs) is reduced so the flat tax on the 50k earner nets him MORE disposable income because his overall tax bill GOES DOWN.

I would address some of the earlier points but the chat log does not show me every response...

Flat tax: Don't forget most flat tax proposals have a generous personal exemption. For instance, someone making $50K might only be taxed on the last $15k.

As for the rich paying less under the current laws, how is it that the top 10% of wage earners in the US payed 68% of all income taxes while earning 45% of all income. The bottom 50% of income earners paid 3% of taxes while earning 12% of all income in 2011.

http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/\ntop10-percent-income-earners

I said earlier a 30-36k base line is the only non-paying segment of indiv income earners......And I don't like labels. A person is either a rational thinking human being with the capacity to evaluate objectively or you are not...lib'ral, conservative...those are just biases...Either someone can think and see all of the issues or not. If they choose a bias in the point of view, then that is an agenda, and they are automatically irrelevant to the discussion of solutions. IMO.

Liberal or conservative are labels to summarize a person's biases. And of course everyone has biases. You could not think and evaluate things with out biases (A.K.A a world view).

All perception begins with a world view. You have a mental model of the world. Without that you would be incapable of taking in new data and evaluating it.

One hopes as we take in new data that we modify our world view to accommodate the new data and not the other way around.

I disagree. If the end game is to find a solution and the understanding is any system will NOT be perfect (ie: every constit group will have some give ups for the whole to enjoy a better system) then the biases can be factored out and the best solution can designed.

some folks are gonna have to go without some level of care, and they are going to die, it's the way life works...it is impossible to design a totally encompassing system...so what are the essentials? yearly physicals, some level of emergency care even if they have to wait 3 hours and bleed to death, that is the cost...the other side is to fund it, everyone pays in...the 50k guy and the 5mil guy both contribute to the system at a fixed rate...

I don't know about "world view" either...what I know is the system today is broken. And, the reasons are what I have pointed out yesterday and today. Fix those and the country will benefit. Take money OUT of politics which is easily done and design a tax code which can be administered in 10 seconds by anyone who earns $1 or more.

World view starts with things as simple as the difference between left and right, up and down. These concepts are essential to your ability to see, or more precisely, your ability to make sense of what you see.

The same is true in all other areas of knowledge.

I guess. I was addressing politics, taxes and public policy about safety nets.

Digondda: Ouch ... I resent being characterized as not caring about the less fortunate, thus the mild correction.

But maybe not as mild as I intended. If so, my apologies.

lk911: no matter what you are talking about, you begin with certain assumptions. Mathematicians call them axioms. The axioms are assumed to be true and accepted without proof.

Apology accepted on behalf of clear headed liberals everywhere :-D

Your world view is much like axioms in math. You cannot prove that everything you know is correct. You just take it by faith.

Politics and social governance in America is broken. That was where we started. Are we debating that?

or for your "world view" is it something other than 'broken'?

We have wandered off into epistemology.

All of us... ? :)

Yes I agree that things are broken. My argument is that in large part the system is broken because we have abandoned the founding principles of the US.

I wasn't the one objecting to labels. Labels are just words and without words we couldn't have this discussion.

The UK system is not doing very well, but that is more down to greed and a government whose priorities are not about trying to even things up, instead enabling the greed.

I guess then I am not really discussing the evolution of democracy from it's origins to the present. For me, life is a bit to short for that conversation.

Digondda: Governments that even things up are unjust governments! People are not equal in abilities and don't get the same outcomes. Equality only applies to the way the law treats us. No favorites.

Example - in the UK individuals pay 20% tax on earnings. Ignoring that the 20% is a bigger proportional burden on lower earners than higher earners just because they may not be left with enough money to live after tax. However, corporations do not pay 20% tax. They get to use tax loopholes, or are able to negotiate their own tax rates with the UK government. Google have recently paid a £130 million tax bill but their UK earnings over the period were over £4.6 billion, so if all things were equal their tax bill should have been £920 million, or one third of the UK's welfare costs....

What I mean by evening things up is making everybody - individuals and organisations - pay the same levels of tax.

What the tax is spent on is a different conversation. And that's where party politics comes in....

OK. I like the flat tax idea. That is a good way to even things up.

Spending is indeed the rub. I object to government spending on health care, because that gives government control of my health care. You do see where that leads, don't you?

Difficulty score 25. No green.

HK: I grew up in the Chicago area too. I remember Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Tony Esposito. And don't forget Keith Magnuson!

Now I live in Minnesota where we have 9 month of hockey and 3 months of bad ice.

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We are moving to a situation where multinational companies have more wealth and power than individual governments - we may actually already be there - but if all governments start working together to harmonise tax rates and close loopholes, then maybe the corporations will have to pay tax in all the countries thye perate in. Which would be fair.

I very much appreciate government spending on health care and do not believe that gives the government control of my health care. I do not have to take up the health care on offer, and if I do not like the options on offer, I can still pay privately for an option I prefer. But, if I have a stroke tomorrow, I know I can call an ambulance and have great treatment for as long as is required, without having to worry about how the treatment is paid for. I think that's fantastic.

Norwegians, Danes & Swedes pay the highest tax rates in the world, an ave 50% cumulative, and yet majority of citizens are happy with their govt. Benefits include free schooling for all citizens elementary thru post-doctoral, free lunch for students, 480 day joint parental leave, pension after 61, free healthcare for minors.

The problem we have in the US is the deficit spending none of which has gone toward infrastucture or social programs. The monies collected from soc security, an indexed annuity was spent on waging preemptive wars we had no business being in and no say about it. Now they're calling soc security a burden on the welfare system.

My thought on taxes...it should be the same rate for everyone. If the tax rate is 20, people earning 20,000 will pay 4,000 and people earning 100,000 will pay 20,000. The burden is the same for everyone because everyone pays 1/5. The incentive to apply yourself in education would be greater if your standard of living depended on your education. What is happening now creates a situation where people who work harder or longer hours or have abilities and skills to promote business feel like they are not getting ahead and why not just work less and get more for nothing. At least that is how it looks from my perspective in the U.S.

When you get health insurance through an insurance company, that insurance company has control over your health care. The insurance company, motivated by profit, can refuse to cover certain treatments. If your means are limited, you are at their mercy.

At least Obamacare put in a few restrictions, such as not refusing to cover someone who had a pre-existing condition.

When my husband changed jobs while I happened to be pregnant, the subsequent delivery and hospitalization was not covered by his new insurance because the pregnancy was a "pre-existing condition!"

Thankfully. our health care is provided through the state rather than insurance companies. Although our current government is doing their best to privatise it in England by selling things off to private companies. I had cancer ten years ago, and had treatments lasting 6 months, and 8 months off work. All my treatment was free of charge, and my full salary was paid for 6 months, then half salary was paid for the other 2 months. I was in an online group with some US ladies getting treatments for the same cancer and if they were constantly trying to persuade their insurance companies to pay for the various treatments, and were having to work through the treatments because they would have no income if they didn't. I was able, through our welfare state (into which I had paid for 29 years) to rest during the treatments and focus on getting well. I have no idea how people work for the first week after each chemotherapy treatment, or while having daily radiation treatments. Added to the free treatment, if I had chosen to, I could have also have had reconstructive surgery free of charge. Plus, all my ongoing medication was free of charge. Our 'national health' safety net is amazing. We were the first country in the world to have one, and many other countries have followed suit over the years - many of them now have more comprehensive and better systems than we do. I have never understood why the USA didn't set up a state health system for all US citizens.

Getting health insurance through one's employment (as in the US) seems like a very haphazard system. The quality and cost of coverage varies by the employer, and some offer no coverage at all. And of course, that leaves out-of work people out in the cold. Universal coverage would make so much more sense. If it were a government program, then the employers who are now subsidizing health care for their workers would save a lot of money. If they passed that on to the employees, the employees could bear a higher tax burden, or, alternatively, the employers could pay higher taxes to support universal health care. Possibly a mixture of both. The point is, the net outflow from one's pocket need not increase. If we could get the insurance companies out of the mix, so much the better!

The problem in this country (and probably many others) is that money has way too much influence in politics. And the insurance companies have a lot of money and hence a lot of influence on public policy.

drwho - I was in mad love with Keith Magnuson, would never forget him, RIP. The entire line-up was outstanding - Stapleton, White, Nesterenko . . . had to stop somewhere :)

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