President Obama to start Class Warfare Monday over Health Insurance
By bobmnu
@bobmnu (8157)
United States
June 15, 2009 1:56am CST
According to the news today President Obama will deliver a major speech about Health Insurance and plans to pay for it by taxing the Wealthy to help the working man. He is also talking about taxing the benefits your receive from your employer.
If he increases the tax on the wealthy they can not do like several "Wealthy" people have done in New York City and move out, but what they can do is cut back. This was done in the 60's and 70's when the effective tax rate on people making over a million dollars was something like 60% - 80% tax rate on all income over 1 million dollars. If you made 1.5 million you paid about 30% on the first million of income and you paid 80% on the 0.5 million so you tax bill was $700,000 dollars. The feeling was why work if I am not going to get the money. What happened was a sales man would get close to the million dollars and would stop selling till next year. A factory owner watched the profits of the company and as it got close to a million dollars he would shut down or cut back workers to reduce his income. The tax revenue dropped so the government lowered the tax rates forcing everyone to pay more. This was also the time when a person could deduct the losses from a busienss. Several companies were created for the express purpose of "losing you money". For example a Person would buy a ranch out west and hire someone to run it. The ranch would break even and the company would build a hunting lodge on the ranch and the investors in the company could travel out there to inspect their property and go hunting or skiing and it was tax deductible (reducing their income) in effect the government was making you pay for their vacation. When President Reagan took office he reduced the top tax bracket and then reduced all the the brackets. He also removed this type of deduction so that the incentive was to make money with your investments. Now for example the top effective tax rate was 38% so a person making 1.5 million paid $490,000 in taxes so tax revenue went up. In most cases the people did not slow down production but increased it and people were employed and more jobs were created. He also changed the business car deduction to a mileage rate rather than a cost of operating the car. There was no difference in deduction between a Cadillac or Cavalier. Reagan is often accused of creating more millionaires during his administration than any other president - This was based on people pay taxes on more that a million dollars which meant more money for the government.
What President Obama is telling us is if you work hard and make money the government will take it away and give it to some one who does not want to work. He is preaching Hate Politics. Wealthy is bad and poor is good.
2 people like this
7 responses
@venshida (4836)
• United States
15 Jun 09
Taxing the rich which has become really popular lately does not make sense. In the economy we have today, the rich are not making the same amount of money that they did before. You are right the rich stop investing when that happens, and some do leave. I read recently that Maryland instituted an additional tax on the rich, and this year there treasury collected one third less because the rich folks move. The government need to cut spending. I do think there should be some kind of health care, but something where we can go out purchase it on our own such as we do for car insurance now.
1 person likes this
@bobmnu (8157)
• United States
15 Jun 09
New York state lost over a billion in tax revenue when Wall Street was pressured to deny bonuses to the workers. New York City lost 3/4 Billion at the same time. Mayor Bloomberg stated that there are about 10,000 people support most of the budget for NYC and they are starting to leave. Taxing the rich works great.
@Destiny007 (5805)
• United States
15 Jun 09
That is how communism works. You steal from the successful to support the lazy.
1 person likes this
@ParaTed2k (22940)
• Sheboygan, Wisconsin
16 Jun 09
Of course he will use class warfare, hate and bigotry are the only ideas he's every had in his whole empty head.
@clrumfelt (5597)
• Tennessee Ridge, Tennessee
15 Jun 09
Obama definitely has a socialist government in mind and is trying to tax the millionaires out of existence and put everyone on the same income level of dependence on the government for what they have. The campaign theme of "spread the wealth" is becoming a reality unless enough of the millionaire Congresspeople realize they will eventually be voted out and forced to live in the same world as everyone else.
@katran (585)
• United States
15 Jun 09
I am tired of people not doing research on other health care options and I am tired of people not listening when I try to tell them the facts, so I am just going to say this: Obama plans to cut the health care budget by over 900 billion dollars over the next 10 years. His tax increases might be needed for his other retarded policies, but health care is not one of them.
Also, if you think it is only "poor" people who need help with health care in this country, you must never have been sick, because I don't consider myself poor by any stretch of the imagination, yet I could not afford more than one night in the hospital if I ever got sick. Even if I never go to the hospital, our current health care budget in this country amounts to about $6000 per person. If health care reform was implemented, your tax dollars would actually be going only to help the poorest of the poor and the unemployed. Right now, your tax dollars are going to anyone who can cheat our current broken health care system by going to a publically funded hospital or walking in to any emergency room in the country since emergency rooms cannot deny care on the basis to pay. If I have to choose between my money going to lazy cheaters or people with a legitimate need, I choose people with a legitimate need.
@bobmnu (8157)
• United States
16 Jun 09
Government run Medicare is going broke and they pay less than the going rate so everyone else has to pay more to make up the difference. I have talked to Dr and they tell me that in some cases Medicare pays less then the cost of of the procedure with out the Dr Bill. Then a Dr waits 6 to 12 months to get paid while he has to pay his help now or get the federal government down on him.
Hawaii and Massachusetts tires a similar plan where the state offered an option to people who did not have Health Insurance. Both plans ended up costing mush more and the state dropped them.
@GraySpirit (103)
• United States
16 Jun 09
Not to bash Democrats or Republicans, but this is symptomatic of a political system that is unable to make the right decisions. Things have grown so political in Washington that I believe our leaders no longer lead, but seek the path of minimum damage to their political aspirations.
The cause for out of control medical care costs in the US has little to do with who we should tax or not. That to me, is a clever ploy designed to divert our attention away from the real problems.
Real problems are things like the need to control a litigation crazed profession. Doctors have to pay obscene amounts of dollars for insurance. Real problems are things like health care wages skyrocketing because the system perpetuates shortages in medical care workers to keep their wages up. Real problems are professions that act more like trade unions interested in maintaining professional exclusivity and high wages. Real problems are the out of control high costs for a doctor or nurse to get educated.
If America had the will to look at what's driving costs up, it would be a lot easier to broaden the base of health care because it would be affordable.
But sadly ... I don't think too many have the will to go up against the doctors, against the pharmacy companies, etc. etc. etc. So, tax the rich. Tax the sinners. Because those are the easy solutions that feel good, but in the end, tend to distort our economy and solve nothing except to position one candidate or another to get re-elected.
@coolcoder (2018)
• United States
15 Jun 09
It seems to me that Obama's looking at himself as being some sort of Robin Hood, only in this case, he's doing everyone a disservice by robbing the rich to give to the poor. He thrives on class warfare, he was brought up on it. He listened to Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, and he was a "community organizer" (which pretty much translates to "community agitator").
In five months, this man has pretty much proved himself to be an abject failure at governing. No one seems to notice, though, and that's going to come back to haunt us eventually.
