I agree it has a massive spending problem. Corruption exacerbates it. I don't really need to point out specifics because they're pretty much common knowledge at this point. You yourself even posted that America should have UHC. That's a huge one. And my view on UHC is that we should have that and attempt to eliminate much of everything else. I already stated I'm out of my depth here, but I have insight. I feel as if UHC and SS should be what the country strives for and come up with a robust system that makes sense...

UHC doesn't exist purely bc of corruption. Obamacare has been undermined for its entire existence, and it actually worked. It was a joke of an upgrade over the old system, but it worked, and could've been orders of magnitude more effective had Congress worked to improve it all this time rather than undermine it. That was borne out of corruption and it matters.

Spending on the military is way too high. We have an lol number of intelligence agencies, a stockpile of ammo that can basically destroy the world, and we're only really getting away with all this bc we have two giant oceans buffering us. War ruins economies. All the wars get fought offshore...

Infrastructure is crumbling everywhere. We do nothing. And we suck at it too lol

I actually started a thread in politics about revamping the welfare state. To do things right, more taxes probably need to get paid, but it's possible that isn't the case. My idea was just basically just repeal everything short of UHC and SS (possibly privatize SS) and consider UBI, but only enough to fulfill basic needs or just short of it to force/incentivize work/productivity

Corporate welfare is another major piece of evidence of corruption. It dwarfs the welfare state that is typically talked about, and while there may be some reasonable logic for corporate welfare, there is, without equivocation, too much of it. The permanence of it is corrupt.

The progressive tax system needs an overhaul. It has way too many loopholes, ancient incentives that don't serve a purpose anymore, and I actually think almost everyone doesn't pay the right amount in general. That's an oversimplification, but I just think a lot needs to be recalibrated and doing things that make sense would alleviate burdens and actually help problems in other issues that exist today.

It's run a deficit and grown the debt unbridled...It's right there in my post. Since at least Reagan.

Are you guys thinking of something different? Am I missing specific things here? My point was we just straight up ignore balancing the budget and it is out of control...There will be a price to be paid at some point, no? I don't really know about this stuff but we are not going to get away with this forever. It's arguably a national security threat...

You either live on a different planet, or you were a beneficiary of it. Obamacare is a massively inefficient transfer of wealth that hurt many more people than it helped. Middle class wage earners saw out-of-pocket expenses go up 10-fold or more with ridiculous deductibles and copays, to pay for people who had a little less but nowhere near poverty level. And now the subsidized class has better insurance than those who are paying for both of them now.

At any rate, it will die soon now that parts of it have been determined to be unconstitutional, and the market will balance itself again.

Wanting all health care to be run by a government you think suffers from massive corruption seems like a dubious position.

Lost in this conversation is the fact that people literally die and go bankrupt every year while this doesn't actually get meaningful overhaul

My point about Obamacare was that we got a watered down version of it and the entire time it has existed it was undermined. It never worked as intended, nor did the Republicans ever even attempt to improve it. Make it more efficient, more cost effective...And even then, its effects were still an improvement, because the previous system was worse.

Like I said, it's all a joke anyway, but you are painting a picture that ignores quite a few things. That you call it a transfer of wealth and that it hurt more than it helped is demonstrably false. It helped millions of people and literally saved lives. I agree, however, people paid higher taxes and other people got shitty options and were losers in the deal, and I never agreed with any of that, but part of the problem within that is the very nature of how it got passed and written and the fact that it became law, but was opposed primarily by the Republicans in every possible way you could imagine. Conveniently ignoring those facts don't mean that didn't happen

There is literally no way around it. We don't have UHC and it's a travesty we don't. I brought up Obamacare, which is obv not UHC, just a million regulations dumped on the industry, to point out that gov't undermines things out of sheer greed and corruption that could've worked far more effectively and efficiently had they taken the reverse attitude

It's pretty blatant. They can completely repeal Obamacare now (and they should imo) but they won't. Because they can't. They have no plan. And the right thing to do is untenable. It is a travesty...

Another roadblock is coverage being tethered to employment. Seems that is now a big problem and contributes to an inefficient labor market. Hurts the economy when a person cannot move as fluidly as possible to the most desired job or become self employed/take risks

Sure, but we run a massive deficit, growing debt, and again, the wealth of the wealthiest is concentrating.

That is a good thing as far as the goal of capitalism.

It is a bad thing if the money just stays in the hands of the wealthy. More can and should be done.

This is a mature economy. With exorbitant wealth and vast discretionary money, basically dumped into consumerism. There is plenty of money to go around and yet our infrastructure is crumbling and we don't have a 100% insurance coverage rate. Economy not mature enough.

And by the way, investment in infrastructure and UHC is an investment in people. It can be argued that the economy will be better off long term the moment it puts a full weight of effort into both...

Sure, I agree with a lot of this, but some of these corps don't pay **** in taxes. Didn't GE pay nothing one year? Two? Always? AAPL keeps cash on hand overseas that will never repatriate, no?

Trillion cap AMZN wasn't even paying state taxes for a while there, no?

Let's be real. Lots of rich people hide their assets and income and everyone knows it. Businesses don't all headquarter in America for tax purposes and of course labor is orders of magnitude cheaper offshore. The tax code should be rewritten, with discussion w all these people, so as to convince entities and individuals to not only stop concealing everything, but repatriate money that will never come back otherwise.

I wouldn't even stop there. Every city in America has cash businesses that don't report ****. Pays people under the table. Even on 22 poker players lol @ reporting winnings. It's so bad that actually cracking down on the former would devastate the city economies...But something needs to be done because even tho they are not exorbitantly wealthy they are gaming the system too, and that hurts everyone not exorbitantly wealthy (yes it hurts them too)

Are you a Trump supporter? Didn't think you were. He's already repatriated $1 trillion doing exactly this.

It's a complete fantasy to think that this can be stopped/controlled. Or that it even matters when in reality it's the behavior of the poor (incentivized by government redistribution) that is causing costs to balloon. One thing that's common with left wing thinking is to see massive flaws and unfairness in systems that are actually working very well - as well as possible given that all systems are flawed - and thinking that you can fix by sweeping overhauls and forcing it to be "fair". It's a classic delusion that ruined multiple countries and made things a lot worse.

If you want a fair tax that's not easily cheated, the only fair tax is a consumption tax. You pay a percentage of what you consume. What could be fairer? If you don't use up many resources you don't pay much tax. If you use up a lot of resources you pay a lot of tax. You can't cheat it easily as is applied at POS as you spend your money. But it will mean the rich pay far less and the poor pay more, which is unaccepted to those who think the hardworking rich are the problem.

I think some of it is to do with the current virtue signalling epidemic. The ones that scream the loudest about how unfair society is to the "poor", are usually the tightest least charitable people on the planet. Like Bernie Sanders, who I think paid the least tax, and donated the least to good causes.

Do you understand the difference between income tax, VAT, and sales tax?

A consumption tax is by definition regressive and generally hurts low income people more than higher income people.

I think you merely repeated my last sentence.

As for terminology, I think it's progressive, not regressive, to require the poor to pay their fair share.

This is basic stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax

LOL. There's more than one definition of "progressive."

"Progressive tax" has a settled meaning in fiscal policy.

Personally I think increasing land value tax (above a threshold) would be better than creating/increasing a VAT. It incentivizes productive activity, or put another way discourages passively holding land for purely investment purposes without using it productively. It also helps to address inequality.

Joke went over your head.

Europe has a 20% VAT and the poor are doing fine. Land value taxes as an appreciable percentage of tax revenue aren't really a thing, only minor "rates" type situations by local/state government. They've been abolished in many places. They just don't work well.

Singapore (the economic miracle) has relatively high property taxes (higher for non owner occupied properties), which represent 9% of total tax revenue. The Singaporean tax system reflects relatively low rates of corporate tax, income tax, and VAT (7%), and a relatively high land tax.

Seems to be working nicely.

The highest example worldwide is a mere 9% of tax revenue. On an incredibly small island with massive land demand because it's the trading and financial hub of southeast Asia. Have you been to Singapore? $30 million is the going price for the equivalent of a US suburban house.

You've made my case for me. That's twice in a row you've basically repeated what I've said without realizing it. Great minds?

My point was that increasing land tax > increasing VAT. I would rather see lower rates of corporate and income tax, and higher rates of land tax.

You do not need astronomically high property prices for it to work but even if you assume that is necessary such conditions exist in many major cities/financial hubs.

And this is a good thing. Now let's get the other $2 trillion we missed out on and somehow funnel the subsequent tax revenue to UHC/infrastructure instead of growing CEO packages, politician pay, lobbyists that distort the markets/economy/legislature, etc...

Would I vote for Trump? No. Do I support him? No. Do I think every single thing he's done in office has been bad like a kneejerk liberal? No. Can we dispense with the characterization of me being left wing only and thinking corruption is everything (your words)? I'm not really any description, but left leaning libertarian might be the closest, and I don't think corruption is "everything". I think it's quite a bit more significant than you probably think, and as I've said before, I don't disagree with you on everything and unlike other posters who can't read your posts without getting an aneurysm, I understand that there is truth in much of what you say.

Having a proper, efficient, effective, and more robust welfare state is exactly what I believe is needed to improve the lives and the productivity of whomever you characterize as poor. We do not have that now imo. We have several broken systems that actually work to the detriment of the poor imo. The cost of it has to get worse before it gets better to break the chain. The idea is that if you have X lazy ****s who do nothing because they have no future, with better policy, you will have less than X lazy ****s in the next generation. As such, you will have more productive citizens and less burden on the state, because you will have less than X lazy ****s. Higher tax receipts and lower burden = less spending, more revenue, more capital investment. It takes time, but that's my thinking.

I don't really like how Bernie/Obama et al always say "get the rich to pay their fair share" as it is really just a selling point to get votes and support. That is the political game and the end goal is really to have a better functioning welfare state and tax code. The poor aren't not productive solely because they're lazy/incompetent in a vacuum. We created that critical mass. Unless you're cool with eugenics or just letting people continue to die on the streets pointlessly, senselessly, and arguably to a larger cost to the state than otherwise need be, there has to be something done to make them more productive and less burdensome. There are plenty of things that can change and improve and everyone knows what those things are. There just simply isn't the political will, nor the interest of the self indulgent to do anything meaningful about it.

The word "fair" isn't the right word. What I want is a properly functioning tax code that is also morally acceptable. I'm not trying to go authoritarian left or right here, I'm just saying the status quo doesn't seem to be the right balance to me, and much can be changed for the better.

Within that sphere of thought are many ideas that aren't all solely partisan one way or the other...

Yes. My point was that AMZN has paid less taxes than it should have, as has many large corporations, in various jursidictions and in general. Everyone suffers as a result.

Yeah that's a problem. I know. I'm just calling things like I see them. Obviously it'd be nice to vote out the corruption and vote in policymakers who introduce better policy.

I think gov't run healthcare is a necessary evil and I also think if there's any place in the world that can form a system superior to all others it's America. We have the money. We have the brainpower (insert joke here), innovative ability, and resources at our disposal. It just hasn't all come together yet and there are a lot of roadblocks and impasses still to deal with.

Maybe 50 Romneycares is better? I don't know...

Not everything has to be lassez faire principled. Again, we should be interested in preserving the engine of the powerful locomotive that is this economy, but the tracks need to be stable too. It derails far too often and people literally get tossed out the window, go needlessly bankrupt, or die. Fix the windows, fix the track, stabilize, balance. The ride can be much safer/smoother/even faster eventually

The wealthy don’t have much money. The bulk of their wealth is in the form of ownership of capital goods which we ascribe a monetary value to based on their replacement cost. In other words the wealthy aren’t sitting atop mountains of consumer goods the poor could directly benefit from but rather the means of producing those consumer goods. So at the end of the day these wealth redistribution schemes are analogous to knocking down a wealthy person’s factory and giving the bricks to the poor. Sure the recipients of those bricks will be better off but the rest of the economy has lost a factory, the jobs associated with it along with the ancillary business/ jobs that factory generated. In my mind, that (consuming capital goods i.e. eating the golden goose) is hardly an optimal solution to the societal conditions we’re interested in improving.

Maybe that unicorn wealthy person with no money could just sell or finance that factory and give the money instead of tearing it down and giving bricks. Just a thought. Maybe they study up or hire a financial planner or whatever so they know before buying that last factory that's too big for their current yearly budget and keep some aside to pay their obligation to society instead. Stupid lazy wealthies.

Where do you suppose the money to buy/finance that factory will come from? Maybe from other unicorns selling their capital goods? And then where will that money come from….

This post boils down to stating the obvious, that it is most productive to have resources in the hands of the best stewards of capital.

I have already stated that this is a good thing for the end goal of capitalism.

What you are quoting out of context (and subsequently responding to) is my point that the drawback to wealth concentrating into the hands of the few, a feature of capitalism, is not sustainable in a vacuum unless you are cool with eugenics and/or ending up in another French Revolution.

Also, it isn't just about where the assets are and what they're doing. What we are really interested in allocating is utility.

So while a left wing nut job might sound like a left wing nut job when they openly drag on a rich person with a 2nd yacht or 3rd vacation house, they ultimately have a valid point whether they're ignorant or not.

The rich person doesn't need a 2nd yacht. 3rd home they don't even use most of the year. You know who could use that money? The people who are dying every year for going uninsured or underinsured, or going bankrupt through no fault of their own. Even if you were to funnel your argument to the narrow hallway of "it will kill jobs" or some other technically true nonsense, it ignores the fact that if you literally can't stay healthy, then you literally can't work and stay productive. If you have student loan debt, then you can't invest. You spend your most productive years paying someone else instead of beginning the journey to self actualization. If you desperately need the health insurance you have from your employer, then you're stuck in a job that isn't optimal for you personally and the economy.

I'm under no illusions here. You take away capital from the stewards and you lose productivity. You might kill jobs and all that entails. But that doesn't just make the value evaporate. It goes somewhere, and while I still don't even take it back to the moral component of this equation, there is that and the fact that not everything has to be rooted in lassez faire philosophy. Not gonna pretend I have all the answers and it's obviously a giant, complex math equation w lots of moving parts, but what we have now is definitely not functioning optimally.

How on Earth do you know what people need? Let's take your logic and turn it on its head. You know what poor don't need (and destroys their wealth, financial security and health?) Cigarettes. They're poison for both wealth and health (and cost other poor people money). Why aren't you for banning cigarettes for the poor? They hurt he poor far more than that second yacht does. For example:

If you cared about the poor rather that posturing, you'd be pushing that instead of 2nd yacht repo. That's because your mind is sick with envy, not morality. If you were moral, and really cared about the poor, you'd focus on what can help them most - and yacht repo isn't it.

Also, what is the threshold on yacht ownership? Is one yacht ok if it's really big (it's only one, right?) Why have yachts at all? That's just inequality at work. Who needs a yacht? Let's ban yachts. I don't agree that the "2nd yacht" is the offensive bit - I think the first yacht is the offensive one. For that matter, why does anyone need a house worth more than around $200K? That's more than enough to live comfortably. Anything else is offensive to those that don't have that. Let's ban all houses worth over $200K, and spread that wealth around.

And why limit your compassion to the American poor? Compared to the global poor, the American poor are rich. Why should they have cellphones when children in Africa lack food. Are you racist or something that you want to take yachts but not cellphones (for food for poor Africans?) Or do you not want to give up your smartphone? No one needs a smartphone. It's a luxury. Your personal wealth-disgust threshold is yachts but not cellphones, which is pretty damn arbitrary. Or perhaps convenient: my guess is you have a cellphone but not a yacht.
This is just some fantasy land stuff. $1.3 trillion is spent on medicare to stop people who can't pay for it, "dying" for lack of money.
Again, fantasy land stuff. There are very few people who go bankrupt who don't spend or risk beyond your means. And for those that do, bankruptcy is a protection given to them by the rich so they can keep living without servitude. Got done over with $100K in medical care you can't afford? You go bankrupt and get to keep your house and a living income rather than becoming an indentured laborer or in prison. It's extraordinarily generous.

As for the fantasy of the poor revolting, that's absurd too. We live in an age of TV, fast food, labor saving appliances, cheap entertainment, drugs, and low work hours. The revolutions you speak of happened with people earning around a $1/day, working 12 hour work days 6 days a week. The poor today are extremely rich and comfortable in comparison. Idleness (caused by welfare) and grievance (caused by left wing ideas of blaming the rich) are far more toxic and dangerous to the social fabric than the wealth gap.

chessmate

What was that about pigeons and chessboards?

You literally cut off "in comparison" mid sentence to dishonestly make your point, which is what people do when their political position amounts of little more than the base human emotions of envy and hatred, and no facts support you.

John21's point is that collectively, the rich consume very little compared to the masses, so any meaningful transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor involves the reallocation of functional capital to low-end consumption, effectively harming the economy and ultimately the poor.

My point is that the poor are far better off, comparatively very rich, compared to those who revolted in the past, so Teflon's claim that the poor are close to revolt unless we give them more free stuff is farcical.

Envy and hatred are disgusting emotions. Heal yourself before trying to fix the world.