The stimulus bill includes a tax break for the 1%

Foxi4 · Mar 30, 2020

notimp said:
Honestly - I didnt differenciate between the two. Made for a simpler argument.

Payroll taxes (at least in my country) as the name implies are taken from people that are employed, income tax from people that are self-employed. Apart from that - no difference as far as my argument is concerned.

What you are now shouting against is progressive income tax.

Which is the only thing that counteracts a systems error that can be described as 'money draws in more money' - meaning the advantage of high income people while investing is cumulative. ('The rich are getting richer, without taking on risk').

If you now are against that as well - you kind of don't understand what the underlying problem of our times is..

You dont pay income tax on earnings saved towards retirement, because that would be akin to 'double taxation'. The government would take Income away to (mainly) provide for your retirement, while you are already providing for your retirement, so the state acknowledges that and doesnt force you to pay income tax - on the part you are already saving towards retirement. Only specific vehicles are accredited (namely ones where you are not at risk, loosing all (/significant) amounts of that money (speculation)).

I don't advocate for 'everyone to be a winner', just for the losers to be able to live without resorting to 'fights' over food, shelter or water. In rich societies. Again - I dont have to use an individual argument, structurally it makes more sense, if you prevent cities from becoming derelict, if lets say 30% of the workforce drop out of work (and in your world most others would choose to leave). It allows for a quicker 'upstart' when someone manages to do something in that region that brings it on a growth path again.

I'd also argue for free medical treatment for your poor - also because of structural issues. See pandemic. (If in part of your town, smallpox is still a thing, ...)

You are just a little shmuk, that hide behind word definitions at this point, ones he doesnt even understand, that doesnt want to take on responsibility for anyone but yourself and are whining, that the world doesnt work according to your ideology (which is outdated by several hundreds of years) - because look at all the money youd be missing. You use words like 'terrible' for base systems of todays society - you have no idea how you'd tackle any of the issues arising, if you take them out. You havent even thought about it -

yet you feel entitled as hell.

You must work in middle management?

Do you live in a gated community by any chance?

That's a nope and nope on that, although with some luck perhaps one day I will. As far as double taxation is concerned, you're already taxed once on your income and once at the point of sale - with VAT around the world and a Sales tax in the USA. If any of the current Democrat tax policy gets enacted within the next decade, you'd also be taxed on your savings via the Wealth tax, so that makes it triple. That ship has long since sailed, which is precisely why I'm against the current system - taxing a citizen multiple times on the same dollar is unfair by definition. You can't say with a straight face that it's perfectly fine to tax people on the income they make and then merrily tax the same income again if they try to spend it or save it. I'd also appreciate it if you kept it civil - you don't have to agree with me and it's okay to have a difference of opinion, but leave the epithets at the door. Now, if we're done here, we can get back to the stimulus package, if you will.

notimp · Mar 30, 2020

You didnt take the bait.

(namecalling)

I live in a gated community. Its a historic object. It was gated as by the ideology of the time.

People that run it now, open the gates every day for tourists, and whoever wants to access the compounds.

I always thought that was a neat thing.

Foxi4 · Mar 30, 2020

notimp said:
You didnt take the bait. (namecalling)

I live in a gated community. Its a historic object. It was gated as by the ideology of the time. People that run it now, open the gates every day for tourists, and whoever wants to access the compounds.

I always thought that was a neat thing.

That does seem nice - it's important to keep history alive...

...LIKE THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES CITIZENS FIGHTING AGAINST UNFAIR TAXATION! THROW THAT TEA IN THE SEA, NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION, NO STEP ON SNEK, REEE!

Keep on keeping on, times are tough right now, I don't think name-calling is productive. What I do think is that when discussing tax policy you have to make a choice - taxing based on income or taxing based on individual transactions - you shouldn't do both. In my opinion transactions make more sense as the government is directly involved in them and they distribute fairly well - the more you consume, the more you pay in taxes, which is fair. This doesn't just include going to the store to buy a stereo, it includes all spending. A value added tax is significantly more fair than an income tax - you're not charging people on their economic output, you're charging them on participating in the economic system established by the government via their government-issue legal tender. As far as payroll tax is concerned, it exists as a separate entity to the income tax in the U.S. (FICA), so I treat it separately, even though I don't like it too. A whole different discussion with different ramifications, but we'll leave it at that so as to not further derail.

Xzi · Mar 30, 2020

Foxi4 said:
I agree - the government could create a better healthcare system than it has today. Step 1 would be to roll back its interference in it, but we've had that conversation before, so we can leave it at that.

Private healthcare insurance is a big part of what got us into this mess in the first place. The cause of the problem cannot also be the solution, and the free market cannot simultaneously heal people while also leaving them to die. The profit motive has no place in this conversation, and neither do the middlemen just looking to get their cut for doing nothing.

Foxi4 · Mar 31, 2020

Xzi said:
Private healthcare insurance is a big part of what got us into this mess in the first place. The cause of the problem cannot also be the solution, and the free market cannot simultaneously heal people while also leaving them to die. The profit motive has no place in this conversation, and neither do the middlemen just looking to get their cut for doing nothing.

I'll have to disagree - there's certainly a lot of problems with the healthcare system as it is implemented right now, but the fact that it's private isn't one of them. One of the biggest problems is the employer-funded healthcare coverage which destroys any form of legitimate competition in the insurance market, but as I said earlier, that has less to do with the current package and more to do with the cavalcade of mistakes made over the years by prioritising universality at the cost of quality and affordability. By pushing the cost of healthcare onto the employers for large swathes of the population the government left the lower income people hanging and enabled the insurance companies to inflate premiums while simultaneously reducing coverage. Insurance is no longer a choice - it's a legal obligation. You don't have to improve a product that your customers *have* to purchase to operate as a business. There's no incentive to keep costs affordable and actually fight for customers in the marketplace, and since the payers are overwhelmingly wealthy, the little guys have to pay big fish prices as well. As for middlemen getting paid for nothing, assigning healthcare to an army of government pencil pushers seems counter-intuitive to me. If you want your hospital to be ran like the DMV, go nuts - I lived under two universal healthcare systems and frankly, they both sucked.

Xzi · Mar 31, 2020

Foxi4 said:
mistakes made over the years by prioritising universality at the cost of quality and affordability

When has that ever been the priority in the US? Romneycare/Obamacare do hardly anything to ensure that everyone is covered, they only ensure that wealthy people with preexisting conditions will be covered.

Foxi4 said:
By pushing the cost of healthcare onto the employers for large swathes of the population the government left the lower income people hanging and enabled the insurance companies to inflate premiums while simultaneously reducing coverage.

Which seems like another good argument in favor of tax-funded universal healthcare. It opens up collective bargaining power for employees, and takes most of the burden off small businesses.

Foxi4 said:
There's no incentive to keep costs affordable and actually fight for customers in the marketplace

Of course there isn't, there's no reason for private healthcare insurance companies to exist in the first place. It's probably the easiest industry to automate into extinction right now if we bothered to put a little effort in.

Foxi4 said:
As for middlemen getting paid for nothing, assigning healthcare to an army of government pencil pushers seems counter-intuitive to me. If you want your hospital to be ran like the DMV, go nuts - I lived under two universal healthcare systems and frankly, they both sucked.

I'm not suggesting the government seize direct control over hospitals. I have no issue with the hospitals themselves remaining private entities as long as they follow regulations and keep prices reasonable. However, it's also because of the profit motive that they're used to operating efficiently with minimal staff - like a McDonald's - and because of that, efficiency is now turning into extreme scarcity. We're going to have to rethink the way we do a lot of things now, especially disaster response preparedness, and the "free market" needs to wake up and realize that prioritizing short-term profits above all else means losing so much more in the long term; both lives and money.

Foxi4 · Mar 31, 2020

Xzi said:
When has that ever been the priority in the US? Romneycare/Obamacare do hardly anything to ensure that everyone is covered, they only ensure that wealthy people with preexisting conditions will be covered.

Which seems like another good argument in favor of tax-funded universal healthcare. It opens up collective bargaining power for employees, and takes most of the burden off small businesses.

Of course there isn't, there's no reason for private healthcare insurance companies to exist in the first place. It's probably the easiest industry to automate into extinction right now if we bothered to put a little effort in.

I'm not suggesting the government seize direct control over hospitals. I have no issue with the hospitals themselves remaining private entities as long as they follow regulations and keep prices reasonable. However, it's also because of the profit motive that they're used to operating efficiently with minimal staff - like a McDonald's - and because of that, efficiency is now turning into extreme scarcity. We're going to have to rethink the way we do a lot of things now, especially disaster response preparedness, and the "free market" needs to wake up and realize that prioritizing short-term profits above all else means losing so much more in the long term; both lives and money.

McDonald's is somehow able to churn out a $1 burger, meanwhile the government is having a hard time churning out a sandwich for a school lunch. As soon as that somehow magically reverses, which hasn't been achieved anywhere in the world, I'll give you your "affordability and efficiency" point. Until then, you're talking nonsense.

Xzi · Mar 31, 2020

Foxi4 said:
McDonald's is somehow able to churn out a $1 burger, meanwhile the government is having a hard time churning out a sandwich for a school lunch. As soon as that somehow magically reverses, which hasn't been achieved anywhere in the world, I'll give you your "affordability and efficiency" point. Until then, you're talking nonsense.

Most schools around the nation are giving out free breakfasts and lunches for low-income families right now. If the government can eat the cost of so many corporate welfare handouts over the years, that's nothing in comparison. And it goes without saying, but operating a hospital is not the same thing as operating a fast food restaurant. It's just as easy to cause a fast food restaurant's efficiency to crash, by ordering 1,000 cheeseburgers or something, but obviously that's still nowhere near as urgent as having 1,000 dying corona patients queued up. In this hypothetical, the fast food worker is actually far more prepared since a single grill can churn out all those burgers, but 100 beds and 50 ventilators is not enough for 1,000 patients no matter how you slice it. People have already started dying as a result of the profit motive's ruthless need for efficiency, with many more deaths to come.

Foxi4 · Mar 31, 2020

Xzi said:
Most schools around the nation are giving out free breakfasts and lunches for low-income families right now. If the government can eat the cost of so many corporate welfare handouts over the years, that's nothing in comparison. And it goes without saying, but operating a hospital is not the same thing as operating a fast food restaurant. It's just as easy to cause a fast food restaurant's efficiency to crash, by ordering 1,000 cheeseburgers or something, but obviously that's still nowhere near as urgent as having 1,000 dying corona patients queued up. In this hypothetical, the fast food worker is actually far more prepared since a single grill can churn out all those burgers, but 100 beds and 50 ventilators is not enough for 1,000 patients no matter how you slice it. People have already started dying as a result of the profit motive's ruthless need for efficiency, with many more deaths to come.

Again, that's nonsense. Many countries with universal healthcare are in the exact same situation, if not worse - Italy is a much smaller country with a smaller population and the sheer amount of deaths is unprecedented. Their healthcare system is ranked 2nd best in the world by the WHO - to me it looks like it's not nearly as good as you'd imagine. It suffers from the exact same problems as any other public healthcare system - it's drowning in inefficiency and it's affected by rationing. This is not a "profit motive" problem, this is a "pandemic" problem.

My point about the sandwiches was that a government-issue school lunch "costs" $3.81 out of which $1.88 is subsidised, and that's *all* loss. McDonald's is in the same industry, the industry of providing food, and it manages to get a profit out of selling a product that is less than 1/3rd the price, which should give you some pause.

Of course you're welcome to have a different opinion, even if all the evidence at hand points to it being wrong.

Xzi · Mar 31, 2020

Foxi4 said:
Many countries with universal healthcare are in the exact same situation, if not worse - Italy is a much smaller country with a smaller population and the sheer amount of deaths is unprecedented. Their healthcare system is ranked 2nd best in the world by the WHO - to me it looks like it's not nearly as good as you'd imagine. It suffers from the exact same problems as any other public healthcare system - it's drowning in inefficiency and it's affected by rationing. This is not a "profit motive" problem, this is a "pandemic" problem.

Italy's problem was their late response to the whole thing. Which is yet another problem on top of scarcity that we're also having in a number of states. Florida, Texas, and others are just now starting to close down non-essential businesses, with no stay at home order issued. I can damn near guarantee that America is going to be hit harder than Italy overall, even when accounting for the difference in population.

Foxi4 said:
My point about the sandwiches was that a government-issue school lunch "costs" $3.81 out of which $1.88 is subsidised, and that's *all* loss. McDonald's is in the same industry, the industry of providing food, and it manages to get a profit out of selling a product that is less than 1/3rd the price, which should give you some pause.

School lunches also contain multiple items and have some real nutritional value to them. A McDouble is just anus meat, and the price has still gone up compared to what it used to be.

Foxi4 said:
Of course you're welcome to have a different opinion, even if all the evidence at hand points to it being wrong.

Hospitals are now begging corporations and billionaires to save the lives of their patients, and they have no obligation to respond. Things can't get much more dystopian than this without the entire nation collapsing.

nero99 · Apr 1, 2020

ChibiMofo said:
You may have heard that the super rich don't get anything in this $1.2T stimulus bill. If so, you heard wrong. Trump and each of his family members will get far more than $1,200 from this. Now you know why the Republicans in Congress were so eager to get the 800 page bill passed quickly and claimed that the Democrats were dragging their feet. Vote for people who will repeal this handouts and make billionaires pay their fair share.

seems you live in Canada. This doesn't concern or involve you one bit if you live over there.

Foxi4 · Apr 1, 2020

Xzi said:
Italy's problem was their late response to the whole thing. Which is yet another problem on top of scarcity that we're also having in a number of states. Florida, Texas, and others are just now starting to close down non-essential businesses, with no stay at home order issued. I can damn near guarantee that America is going to be hit harder than Italy overall, even when accounting for the difference in population.

Italy is suffering from late response to the virus, like... The rest of the world, since China lied and people died. You can't simultaneously give Italy a pass because they responded to the problem late while condemning the United States for also responding to it late.

School lunches also contain multiple items and have some real nutritional value to them. A McDouble is just anus meat, and the price has still gone up compared to what it used to be.

[CITATION NEEDED], sir. You're talking about the same school lunches that pushed pizza as a vegetable/fruit portion since it contains tomato sauce. You have no ground to stand on.

Hospitals are now begging corporations and billionaires to save the lives of their patients, and they have no obligation to respond. Things can't get much more dystopian than this without the entire nation collapsing.

It's pretty bad. It's equally bad where hospitals are publically funded. That's what makes this a pandemic and not "just a flu, bro". China had to quarantine millions of people, they were putting them in isolation rooms with no doorknobs, of course this is hard to handle. Most countries affected by the virus instituted lockdowns for this exact reason. Yeah, hospitals are stretched thin - d'uh, that's the reason why we're all staying home - to spread the infections out a little.

Xzi · Apr 1, 2020

Foxi4 said:
Italy is suffering from late response to the virus, like... The rest of the world, since China lied and people died. You can't simultaneously give Italy a pass because they responded to the problem late while condemning the United States for also responding to it late.

I'm not, I'm saying it's a different issue that is compounding Italy's problems as well as our own. People are dying from scarcity of healthcare workers/supplies in Italy, but in America they're dying from that AND a lack of healthcare insurance.

Foxi4 said:
[CITATION NEEDED], sir. You're talking about the same school lunches that pushed pizza as a vegetable/fruit portion since it contains tomato sauce. You have no ground to stand on.

Well, I haven't looked into the topic closely in the last few years, so I don't have any idea how badly Trump/DeVos have fucked it all up, but the Obama administration did require fairly nutritious lunches.

Foxi4 said:
eah, hospitals are stretched thin - d'uh, that's the reason why we're all staying home - to spread the infections out a little.

The point I'm trying to get at is that there's no reason our healthcare system should have been stretched this thin. Trump axed a $1 billion pandemic response and preparedness program in the first year of his administration. So we saved $1 billion and now we're going to lose several trillion. The unchecked greed of American capitalism is incompatible with both common sense, and the freedoms we claim to hold so dear.

Foxi4 · Apr 1, 2020

Xzi said:
I'm not, I'm saying it's a different issue that is compounding Italy's problems as well as our own. People are dying from scarcity of healthcare workers/supplies in Italy, but in America they're dying from that AND a lack of healthcare insurance.

Well, I haven't looked into the topic closely in the last few years, so I don't have any idea how badly Trump/DeVos have fucked it all up, but the Obama administration did require fairly nutritious lunches.

The point I'm trying to get at is that there's no reason our healthcare system should have been stretched this thin. Trump axed a $1 billion pandemic response and preparedness program in the first year of his administration. So we saved $1 billion and now we're going to lose several trillion. The unchecked greed of American capitalism is incompatible with both common sense, and the freedoms we claim to hold so dear.

So what you're saying is that if the $1 billion program wasn't scrapped the U.S. wouldn't have to "lose" $2 trillion even though the actual cost is in fact $2 trillion since, in your mind, $1 billion 3 years ago equals $2 trillion now, for reasons. I understand now, I can see why left-wing governments always seem to have trouble with money.

As for the pizza example, it dates back to 2011 - I don't think Trump was president at that time, I think it was somebody else, but I can't quite recall... Hmm... Ah, yes, Obama.

We'll leave this at a difference of opinion. What you completely neglect to account for is the fact that you're not encompassing the totality of the situation. In Italy literally everyone is dying, rich or poor, because they're unable to adequately address the situation. In the U.S. there's more infected, but less casualties, which tells me that the standard of care must necessarily be higher. Of course the hospitals aren't overrun quite as much as in Italy just yet, the population is much higher, so the overall density is lower and the situation could very well deteriorate as you say.

I will agree that people die for different reasons, this much is true and regrettable, but you failed to convince me that some citizens should be penalised on the behalf of others. One thing we both agree on is that the current insurance system is garbage and must be dismantled, but we arrived at that conclusion following very different trains of thought. That probably means the conclusion is good, so there's that.

g00s3y · Apr 1, 2020

Fuck trump and his supporters.

That is all, please carry on.

Xzi · Apr 1, 2020

Foxi4 said:
So what you're saying is that if the $1 billion program wasn't scrapped the U.S. wouldn't have to "lose" $2 trillion even though the actual cost is in fact $2 trillion since, in your mind, $1 billion 3 years ago equals $2 trillion now, for reasons. I understand now, I can see why left-wing governments always seem to have trouble with money.

Oh, the cost of this is going to be far more than $2 trillion in the long term. And while that program may not have prevented all of this spending, it definitely would've cut it down significantly. Like I said, a bit of common sense in the short-term saves money in the long run. Instead of being ahead of the infections curve, we're stuck playing catch up, and that leads to a whole lot of unnecessary panic spending.

Foxi4 said:
As for the pizza example, it dates back to 2011 - I don't think Trump was president at that time, I think it was somebody else, but I can't quite recall... Hmm... Ah, yes, Obama.

Sounds like they were giving an example of what was wrong with school lunches before fixing them.

Foxi4 said:
In the U.S. there's more infected, but less casualties, which tells me that the standard of care must necessarily be higher.

Well ya just jinxed it.

Really though we're still at least two months behind Italy, hospitals are just now starting to reach the breaking point in the US. So we'll have to wait and see.

Foxi4 · Apr 1, 2020

Xzi said:
Oh, the cost of this is going to be far more than $2 trillion in the long term. And while that program may not have prevented all of this spending, it definitely would've cut it down significantly. Like I said, a bit of common sense in the short-term saves money in the long run. Instead of being ahead of the infections curve, we're stuck playing catch up, and that leads to a whole lot of unnecessary panic spending.

Sounds like they were giving an example of what was wrong with school lunches before fixing them.

Well ya just jinxed it.

Really though we're still at least two months behind Italy, hospitals are just now starting to reach the breaking point in the US. So we'll have to wait and see.

That's fair. I disagree that it would've prevented a significant portion of the spending, it would've prevented a billion's worth of spending, the situation is pretty unprecedented and couldn't be predicted. Other than that, I am happy to report that I had one of my five a day today, I do like pepperoni pizza with stuffed crust. Stay safe.

The stimulus bill includes a tax break for the 1%

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