Ocasio-Cortez Wants to Spend $40T on Progressive Programs. Free Health Care for All?

[Mai72]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/16/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-40-trillion-cnntv/index.html

Damn, that is a lot of money. IMO, you just can't keep taxing the sh*t out of businesses. They'll pack up and leave. The same with the wealthy. I seriously doubt that they'll take it sitting down.

But asked again where that $40 trillion would come from, aside from her proposed increase in taxes on the wealthy and corporate taxes, which she has said would raise $2 trillion over the next 10 years, Ocasio-Cortez said the taxpayer-funded programs would free people up to increase economic activity in other areas, adding that the Medicare for all program is part of "a broader agenda."

 

[UglyCasanova]

Nah man, business owners are a never ending fountain of funds. I completely trust the government to redistribute their wealth and they’ll be no consequences other than the rich just can’t buy that tenth vehicle.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Anytime someone says the words "Free X" or "Free Y" I already know they are retarded

In fact of all things, they are attempting to deceive the public.

Mai72 - congrats, you have this rare thing amongst progressives called common sense. Businesses aren't stupid.

EDIT: Also - I forget the stat - but previously it was shown that you could tax the top 1% at ~90% - and it still wouldn't be anywhere near the cost of what they are asking.

 

[Indus]

They'll pack up and leave to where?

Communist China which just put Fan Bing Bing in prison for evading taxes?
Russia?
Europe with a 55-70% tax?

For the last 40 years the top 1% has gotten away with increasing their wealth a 1000% while the rest of us have been living with low wages.

Higher Education for all so we don't hand out H1B's and Medicare for all make sense.. a lot more sense than some infrastructure bill.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

They'll pack up and leave to where?

Communist China which just put Fan Bing Bing in prison for evading taxes?
Russia?
Europe with a 55-70% tax?

For the last 40 years the top 1% has gotten away with increasing their wealth a 1000% while the rest of us have been living with low wages.

Higher Education for all so we don't hand out H1B's and Medicare for all make sense.. a lot more sense than some infrastructure bill.

Dear fucking god just take a business or tax 101 class. TRY, just TRY to pull your head out of your ass and understand some basics.

You sound like a Russian bot with your typical occupy wallstreet slogan statements of "The top 1% has gotten away with... x"

 

[ecogen]

Dear fucking god just take a business or tax 101 class. TRY, just TRY to pull your head out of your ass and understand some basics.

You sound like a Russian bot with your typical occupy wallstreet slogan statements of "The top 1% has gotten away with... x"

The arrogance that you show even after being exposed time after time for posting stupid shit is astounding.

Shush.

 

[UglyCasanova]

They'll pack up and leave to where?

Communist China which just put Fan Bing Bing in prison for evading taxes?
Russia?
Europe with a 55-70% tax?

For the last 40 years the top 1% has gotten away with increasing their wealth a 1000% while the rest of us have been living with low wages.

Higher Education for all so we don't hand out H1B's and Medicare for all make sense.. a lot more sense than some infrastructure bill.

China becomes a lot more attractive for businesses. They are rapidly becoming the dominate power in the world, this would certainly add to it.

 

[Jaskalas]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/16/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-40-trillion-cnntv/index.html

Damn, that is a lot of money. IMO, you just can't keep taxing the sh*t out of businesses. They'll pack up and leave. The same with the wealthy. I seriously doubt that they'll take it sitting down.

Over 10 years? Yeah, that BS.
The United States budget, TODAY, is $40 trillion over 10 years. Yeah, it's just unimaginable if we realigned it do some good.

PS, I know we'd increase taxes and spending. That's kind of the point. But don't pretend these numbers are new, large, or scary.

PPS, United States personal income is $155 trillion over 10 years.

 

[sactoking]

I've always found these figures to be grossly misleading. They say Medicare for all would cost 32 trillion. That's fine, but we don't need to come up with 32 trillion in NEW revenue. Over the 10 years under the projection MFA is 3.2 trillion per year. In 2016 the US spent about 3.3 trillion on health care (17.8% of 18.57 trillion GDP). Scrapping one system pays for the other.

 

[KMFJD]

How dare she attack the job creators

 

[Jhhnn]

I've always found these figures to be grossly misleading. They say Medicare for all would cost 32 trillion. That's fine, but we don't need to come up with 32 trillion in NEW revenue. Over the 10 years under the projection MFA is 3.2 trillion per year. In 2016 the US spent about 3.3 trillion on health care (17.8% of 18.57 trillion GDP). Scrapping one system pays for the other.

Well, yeh, but there's not nearly as much profit in it. You're cutting out the investor class. Can't have that.

 

[K1052]

I've always found these figures to be grossly misleading. They say Medicare for all would cost 32 trillion. That's fine, but we don't need to come up with 32 trillion in NEW revenue. Over the 10 years under the projection MFA is 3.2 trillion per year. In 2016 the US spent about 3.3 trillion on health care (17.8% of 18.57 trillion GDP). Scrapping one system pays for the other.

Best post in this thread.

 

[Bitek]

Over 10 years? Yeah, that BS.
The United States budget, TODAY, is $40 trillion over 10 years. Yeah, it's just unimaginable if we realigned it do some good.

PS, I know we'd increase taxes and spending. That's kind of the point. But don't pretend these numbers are new, large, or scary.

The US GDP would be roughly $200T over that time point, so we're discussing 20% of GDP.

The US currently spends 18% of GDP on healthcare, world's highest, and #2 France spends ~12%.

So if I'm following the proposal, for a modest 2% increase in spending and conversion to Euro style HC system, we'd have enough to fund free college programs, job guarantees and the other items.

So a modest change in overall expenditures, but big changes to systems and hopefully overall value.

That doesn't sound so scary, unless you fear change.

 

[Jaskalas]

That doesn't sound so scary, unless you fear change.

Forget change, people cannot do math. $40 trillion is being thrown around as a laughably impossible number. I mean, they don't imagine that our budget / nation is that large in the first place. It's meant to get people to either mock it, or fear it.

 

[Indus]

China becomes a lot more attractive for businesses. They are rapidly becoming the dominate power in the world, this would certainly add to it.

Except you forget China doesn't have a buy and trash culture, nor are they able to buy the latest iphone en masse. Chinese people know how to save money and work hard.

That makes them attractive for manufacturing but not for export.

 

[Bitek]

Forget change, people cannot do math. $40 trillion is being thrown around as a laughably impossible number. I mean, they don't imagine that our budget / nation is that large in the first place.

And Dems don't do well on sales pitches for big govt programs, and she'll need a hell of a good one to overhaul big %'s of the economy, with lots of vested interests making money in the old, inefficient system.

I'll have to watch the video, but that question should be a softball compared to what she'll face later.

 

[greatnoob]

Dear fucking god just take a business or tax 101 class. TRY, just TRY to pull your head out of your ass and understand some basics.

You sound like a Russian bot with your typical occupy wallstreet slogan statements of "The top 1% has gotten away with... x"

Cite your peer reviewed sources for the claim made and let me decipher the economic and statistical jargon that would clearly fly over your hollow head. Until then, how about you sit down, shut the fuck up and not talk about something you clearly have no clue about.

 

[K1052]

And Dems don't do well on sales pitches for big govt programs, and she'll need a hell of a good one to overhaul big %'s of the economy, with lots of vested interests making money in the old, inefficient system.

I'll have to watch the video, but that question should be a softball compared to what she'll face later.

Step one is to not overcomplicate the idea when selling. Piggy back on something popular that people at least somewhat can wrap their heads around:

The vast majority of Americans, 70 percent, now support Medicare-for-all, otherwise known as single-payer health care, according to a new Reuters survey. That includes 85 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of Republicans. Only 20 percent of Americans say they outright oppose the idea.

"Medicare is a very popular program, so the idea of expanding it to everyone is popular as well," Larry Levitt, senior vice president for health reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation, tells CNBC Make It. "The advantage of Medicare-for-all, which is much closer to how the rest of the world provides health care to their residents, is that you can achieve universal coverage at a lower cost."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/mos...edicare-for-all-and-free-college-tuition.html

 

[woolfe9998]

Anytime someone says the words "Free X" or "Free Y" I already know they are retarded

In fact of all things, they are attempting to deceive the public.

Mai72 - congrats, you have this rare thing amongst progressives called common sense. Businesses aren't stupid.

EDIT: Also - I forget the stat - but previously it was shown that you could tax the top 1% at ~90% - and it still wouldn't be anywhere near the cost of what they are asking.

Businesses who currently pay for employee health insurance wouldn't have to pay for it anymore. If instead they paid the government the same amount in taxation, that would cover the cost for each of their employees, and then some, as Medicare is cheaper than private insurance. In reality, you'd have to work the tax differently, but the idea is the same. MFA replaces the current expenditures on healthcare.

You act as if the cost of the program is just a straight up cost with no savings anywhere else, as if it just adds 32 trillion to the cost of healthcare in the US with no changes anywhere else. Like Sacktoking said above, MFA shifts around who is paying for something.

 

[deathBOB]

Just decoupling health insurance from employment would be a huge win for labor mobility. Maybe we would see wages really increase then.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Businesses who currently pay for employee health insurance wouldn't have to pay for it anymore. If instead they paid the government the same amount in taxation, that would cover the cost for each of their employees, and then some, as Medicare is cheaper than private insurance. In reality, you'd have to work the tax differently, but the idea is the same. MFA replaces the current expenditures on healthcare.

You act as if the cost of the program is just a straight up cost with no savings anywhere else. Like Sacktoking said above, MFA shifts around who is paying for something.

Based on my research, I'm not aware of any country (Canada being an example) that doesn't have a massive "2nd Coverage" market - because the bare coverage is comparitaively dog shit with insane wait times.

Feel free to correct me if wrong there - i can't speak behalf on a country I haven't lived in. The basic message was that if you're in the middle to upper class (basically anyone on AT), just about everyone had 2nd coverage.

So to the point of budget replacing other coverages, how do you defend that against everyone needing 2nd coverage?

 

[brycejones]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/16/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-40-trillion-cnntv/index.html

Damn, that is a lot of money. IMO, you just can't keep taxing the sh*t out of businesses. They'll pack up and leave. The same with the wealthy. I seriously doubt that they'll take it sitting down.

Nah man, business owners are a never ending fountain of funds. I completely trust the government to redistribute their wealth and they’ll be no consequences other than the rich just can’t buy that tenth vehicle.

Anytime someone says the words "Free X" or "Free Y" I already know they are retarded

In fact of all things, they are attempting to deceive the public.

Mai72 - congrats, you have this rare thing amongst progressives called common sense. Businesses aren't stupid.

EDIT: Also - I forget the stat - but previously it was shown that you could tax the top 1% at ~90% - and it still wouldn't be anywhere near the cost of what they are asking.

Yet again "conservatives" arguing from positions of ignorance. Do you knuckleheads have any idea how much we already spend on health care? You're acting like we are talking about taking on massive new spending that isn't already accounted for in the economy.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Guys, why do I have to say it. Mexico is going to pay for it and like it.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Nah man, business owners are a never ending fountain of funds. I completely trust the government to redistribute their wealth and they’ll be no consequences other than the rich just can’t buy that tenth vehicle.

Yea, it is a lot of money, but what do you think the cost of annual health insurance premiums is for the country, not to mention the money spent for college education. I spend about 7,000 dollars per year for health insurance premiums, plus a couple of thousand in deductibles, so I could easily spend 10k per year on health insurance plus another 10k to reach the catastrophic limit if we have even a relatively minor surgical procedure or hospital stay.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Yet again "conservatives" arguing from positions of ignorance. Do you knuckleheads have any idea how much we already spend on health care? You're acting like we are talking about taking on massive new spending that isn't already accounted for in the economy.

Name any country that has taken on something that is typically taken by a capitalist business and show me where they have done an overall more efficient job than for profit capitalistic competing companies.

Do you understand shit like the fact that for profit companies do things like... pick up your trash and take care of it? It's because if the government tried to do it themselves they would fail. Epically.

Venezuela is the picture perfect example as a successful oil corporation is taken control of by the government. What happens next? Oh boy stay tuned, you will never guess!