Mark Krikorian tells me to relax, that if Obama becomes president, he wouldn't be able to do for liberalism what Reagan did for conservatism, because he's so haplessly liberal he'd screw up at every turn. A friend of mine seems to agree, but fears that given the gravity and urgency of the economic crisis facing the country, it would be a disaster. He says it would be like electing Jimmy Carter not in 1976, but in 1980.
Now that's a thought to keep one up all night.
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In my post I was pointing out how most other taxes (state and local sales, income and property taxes) are flat or regressive and I was looking for a study that tried to take those other taxes into account to see if in fact the overall tax burden is progressive.
Oops, missed the part about state & local burdens. See Figure 3 in this study:
www.taxfoundation.org/files/wp1.pdf
Taking the data from Tables 3 (# of households per quintile) and 4 (Household Market Income per quintile), along with Figure 1, we arrive at per-quintile rates (lowest to highest) of 12.3, 15.6, 17.4, 18.6, & 21.1 for federal, and 19.3, 12.4, 10.9, 10.3, & 9.0 for state & local.
If we take government transfers into account (as we probably should, if we're interested in figuring out how much someone pays, on net, to the government), the picture changes considerably. See Figure 3 of the aforementioned study, which gives per-quintile rates of 5.0, 12.9, 17.4, 20.2, & 24.3 for federal, and 7.9, 10.3, 10.9, 11.2, & 10.3 for state & local.
Matt
I guess that makes sense. But if all the conservatives support(ed) him, does that make conservatism some kind of ideological Santa Claus? Something everyone dreams about, but knows is just not a part of reality?
It's more like communism, honestly. It's something that you'll have people look in the fact and assert that it would work if tried correctly, yet, somehow, it never has been.
sigaliris
The way [indigent care] works now, for the most part, they add the costs to their operating expenses and it raises the rate of payment they charge to the insurance companies of those patients who do have insurance. Thus providing one of the drivers for increasing insurance rates that make insurance less affordable and cause more people to be uninsured.
You left out the other people harmed: People like me, who cannot get health insurance but actually do pay our bills. Our costs are going up even faster than insurance, because insurance can force the prices down by threatening to send patients elsewhere. (In fact, I'd like to see some evidence that the rising costs of insurance is mostly due to the rising cost of medical care, as opposed to just insurance companies being greedy.)
I, personally, was charged roughly $14,000 for outpatient surgery. And about $6000 of that was the doctors' bill. (They had some sort of union thing where they billed separate.) Which means the hospital charged me $8000 to use a sterile operating room for an hour, a nurse or two for the same hour, and a tiny recovery room for four or five. I didn't even get a meal.
Here's the thing that always gets me: Conservatives like to talk about how much taxes the top X% pay. I've seen it at least twice today.
That is possibly the stupidest way to measure 'how much the rich pay', ever. It's basically a 'lie of statistics'.
If there are 100 people making a million dollars a year, and taxed at 10%, and there are a thousand other people making ten thousand a year and taxed at 10%...the top 100 people are paying a total of ten million in taxes, and the others are paying a total of ten million, which means: The top 9% pay 50% of the taxes! How unfair!
Or, for an even more absurd example: If I make a quintillion dollars a year, and get taxed at .1%, and everyone else in the country makes ten thousand a year and gets taxed at 99.9%, I'm still providing almost all the income tax revenue. Obviously, the Republicans would say I need a tax cut, instead, of, oh, taxing everyone at .2% instead.
What percentage of their income do the 'top 5%' pay? That's what I want to know. The fact they pay a 'huge amount' of tax revenue is irrelevant if they are getting a huge amount of income...even a non-progressive tax would work like that.
Yes, DavidTC, you're right. That is another problem of our current health care arrangements. The price that you, as an individual payer, are charged, is not the same price that the insurance company pays per capita for its clients. You're in the same position as an independent bookstore that has to pay far more of the list price than the big chains, who negotiate deep discounts. The difference is, the independent bookstore owner can go into another line of work. But you have no options. You can pay the price or stay sick. It's one of the most egregiously unfair features of the system.
Erin:
I actually think Bnet's David Kuo and his ex-boss John DiIulio are on the right track with this -- trying to find the best of both approaches.
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