Tag Archives: taxes

A Thought on Medicare for All

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University of Massachusetts-Amherst Economics Professor and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute, Robert Pollin, had a thought on this.

Of course, so do I.

Pollin opened his tract with this:

All Americans would be able to get care from their chosen providers without having to pay premiums, deductibles or copayments.

No, we’ve already seen the lie in this. We experienced the broken, falsely presented promise with the sales job on Obamacare and the oft-repeated lie that if we liked our doctor, we could keep him and the associated lie of lower premiums.

Roughly 30 million people, 9% of the US population, are uninsured. Another 26%, 86 million people, are underinsured…

With millions of those Americans thrown off insurance plans they preferred because Obamacare made them illegal. This “economist” carefully elided that small fact.

We propose that all businesses that currently purchase health insurance for their employees be mandated to pay 92% of what they now spend into Medicare for All—saving 8% of their health-care expenditures.

Thereby throwing even more people off the plans they prefer.

This person also ignores another salient fact: the complete failure that is an existing single-payer plan, the VA.

And one more: even now, folks with surgical needs or prompt-but-expensive care needs or any other non-cookie cutter needs in other nations’ “free for all” health programs come here for those needs’ satisfaction rather than bear the interminable delays in getting that care in their nations’ programs.

Pied-à-Terre Tax

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New York City wants one, and The Wall Street Journal, among a host of other folks, think it’s a terrible idea.

The idea is what the politicians are calling a pied-à-terre tax—which is French for “give me your money, fat cat.”

I’m not sure I agree with the WSJ.  I see the pied-à-terre tax as a vast boon to New Yorkers, and to others.

a Journal analysis this week suggested it could crash New York’s luxury property market.

There actually are strong upsides to this tax. Fewer of New York’s rich folks will be hurt by the SALT cap on Federal income tax deductions as they leave this high and higher tax State for better States.

To the extent the WSJ‘s analysis is accurate, the luxury property market’s crash will have cascade effects that will make all housing property cheaper—and more affordable—for middle- and lower-class folks in New York at large as well as in New York City.  And that will have its own knock-on effect: even fewer people impacted by the SALT cap.

I’m having trouble seeing the downside to NYC’s pied-à-terre tax.

Control

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants the Federal government to pay a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries.

What a terrible idea.

The Federal government paying a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries means Federal government control of our public schools. Those schools are in enough trouble; we don’t need the Feds getting in the way, also.

Aside from that, this is just another Progressive-Democratic Party attempt to grab our money, this time to deny it to our heirs.  Again.

Apart from both of those, this is another example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contributing to the erosion of our families, illustrated by this claim of Harris’:

Our country’s success is a product of the two groups who raise our children: parents and teachers. We are not paying our teachers their value[.]

Teachers help raise our children? No, that’s the exclusive province of parents; schools are not ex loco parentis child care centers, and teachers must stop being babysitters and do the only thing they’re hired to do: teach.

Explorations

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Illinois is verging on bankruptcy, and Progressive-Democratic Governor JB Pritzker and his henchmen running this Progressive-Democrat-run State want a State constitutional amendment to raise taxes preferentially on the rich—a progressive tax.

Illinois faces a $3.2 billion budget deficit next fiscal year, unfunded pension liabilities estimated from $133 billion to $250 billion, and the worst credit rating of any US state. It has roughly $8 billion in bills outstanding.

They insist that the good citizens of Illinois—and especially the not-so-good rich ones—should pay for this failure to perform, rather than that failure be made good through reallocation of currently collected revenues.  The technical term for that is “spending cuts.”

Here’s Deputy Governor Dan Hynes (D):

You have wide acceptance that Illinois needs new revenue.  If the voters disagree with us in 2020, then we’ll have to explore other revenues.

The first statement is a dubious claim, at best.  The second shows how economically illiterate is Hynes and his Progressive-Democratic Party. He—and they—can’t even conceive of the other side of that coin: that what Illinois needs is less spending.  That what they should be exploring is spending cuts.

A Governor Misrepresents

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New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo (D), has provided another example of the dishonesty of Progressive-Democrats as he continues to whine about his State’s excessive State and local taxes no longer being deductible above a high maximum on Federal income tax forms.

He said Trump intentionally targeted states whose populations oppose him by a majority.

And

You pay your state income tax, they then tax your state income tax payment. First time ever.

No, the first is misleading.  The SALT cap was aimed at capping Federal tax deductions generally in order to level tax requirements, at least a little, across all income levels.  That only a few States have SALT set so high that their rich residents routinely exceed the $10,000 threshold is an outcome of those few States having such excessively high taxes; it has nothing to do with where the deductibility limit is set.

The second is an outright lie.  Only New York, et al., are taxing their citizens’ State income; the Feds are simply not allowing wealthiest to deduct all of their State and local taxes from their Federal income tax bill.  Not allowing a deduction is not the same as taxing.

On the other hand, if there is double taxation; it’s the States applying the second income tax on the same income.  It’s their choice to come in behind the Feds’ income tax and apply a second—their own—income tax to that same income.

The States as double-taxers is demonstrated in two ways. One is the seven States that don’t have—don’t need and don’t want—an income tax on their citizens’ income, with an eighth State kicking its State income tax to the curb as of 2021, and the two that only tax dividends and interest payments.

The other is the number of States whose income tax requirements require submission of the Federal income tax data (not income data) as the basis for the States’ application of their own income tax.

And a double-taxation mitigating factor: most of those States that do apply their second income tax to the Feds’ income tax don’t have their SALT set so high that the payments aren’t fully deductible from the Federal income tax.  Only a few States have their SALT set usuriously high—and that’s the deliberate choice of the men of those States’ governments.