Welcome, and I hope you pull no punches in your remarks. Read a little of Matt Taibi's The Great Derrangement and you'll know what I mean by that. Also, reach out to others like Naomi Klein and such with views differing from the "market mavens" on the "hill" and elsewhere. Globalization may be unstoppable but it could at least offer more social justice than the "freedom to choose" your own form of poverty or employment as the market's solution to every g.d. thing.
The U.S. Public Debt went from roughly $1 Trillion in FY 1981 to about $15 Trillion today in FY 2009.
The top marginal tax rate was cut from 70% to 50% in 1981 and then to 28% in 1986. It was raised to 31% in 1990...and then to 39.6% in 1992. It was gratuitously cut yet once again in 2001 back to the present 35%.
Dan Rostenkowski (D) was the democrat chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee during the Reagan cuts of 1981 & 1986 (70% down to 28%)...and also during the Bush (the father) increase in 1990 (to 31%)...as well as the Clinton increase in 1992 (to 39.6%). William Marshall Thomas (R) was the House Ways & Means Committee chairman in 2001, when the Bush/Cheney White House cut the 8-year Clinton rate back to 35%. Charles Rangel (D) is presently the House Ways & Means Committee Chairman...and he was present during every tax cut for the wealthy and tax increase for the Middle Class since the Reagan years.
I believe that the top rate must be returned to at least 70% (above $350,000 in taxable income), i.e., where it was in FY 1981 (it was 91% prior to 1964).
I believe that the bottom marginal rate must be a flat rate of 10% (below $350,000 in taxable income)...it was 11% in FY 1981...was raised to 15% in 1986---and a 10% rate was added to the 15% rate in 2001.
The ratio of top to bottom marginal rates was 7:1 in 1913 when The Revenue Act of 1913 was signed into law as a result of the ratification of the XVIth Amendment in 1913 (the Constitutional Amendment having been introduced by a republican president and a republican-controlled congress in 1909 to replace import tariffs and strike a deal with the $Billionaires of the early 20th Century).
I believe that two rates above and below $350,000 (i.e., 70% & 10% or a ratio of 7:1) would accomplish several important positive fiscal/financial outcomes:
1. Middle Class small businesses would multiply---leading to accelerated economic & jobs growth and reduced unemployment INSIDE the United States for Middle Class Americans. After all, 70% of the U.S. economic base is small businesses (i.e., taxable incomes below $350,000) INSIDE the United States---and NOT OUTSIDE the U.S. where corporations & banks hang out and hire their employees (and where corporations & banks AVOID paying U.S. income taxes)...e.g., China, Jamaica, the Philippines, India, Mexico, Central America et al.
2. Multiplication of Middle Class small businesses would result in an expanded income tax base at the 10% level (something that Reagan/Bush-the-son "trickle-down" promised but never delivered...neither in the 1980's nor in the 2000's).
3. The combination of 1 & 2, above---plus the 70% top marginal rate above $350,000---would wipe out the annual federal budget deficit...which is getting totally out of hand!
4. The combination of 1, 2 & 3, above, COULD result in Middle Class small business health care cooperatives---thus cancelling out the massive health care DIVERSION that is presently sweeping through Congress, the White House (and so called town hall meetings) like wildfire!
In other words, the greatest issue facing America today is NOT health care...but rather the UNDERTAXED privileged class (35%) and the OVERTAXED Middle Class (up to 35%).
QUESTION: What do you think, Mary? Am I right, wrong...or somewhere in between?
Wendell,
Once again, you raise some really strong points that America needs to listen to. Your words speak volumes. Having been an insurance insider myself for many years, sitting on many boards, and WAY too many Kool-Aid meetings, I echo your sentiments. If we shout loud enough maybe, just maybe, someone will listen. Seems at the moment that a public option has a majority of supporters in the USA, but the fear tactics raised by opposition are casting a large and growing shadow upon it.
We can not afford to kill reform like we did in the 90's. The entire economy is at stake. The public option is the ONLY thing that has made any sense since in decades. For goodness sake America - it's time to end the BUCA cartel!!!
"nonprofit co-operatives don’t stand a snowball’s chance of competing with those big companies and making a whit of a difference in the lives of the 75 million Americans who either have no insurance or have such marginal insurance they might as well have no insurance."
"Almost all metropolitan areas in the country—and states that are more rural than urban— are now dominated by just two or three insurers. It is impossible for even one of the other large insurers to break into a market dominated by its competitors."
"If CIGNA can’t overcome the huge barriers to entering that market, a nonprofit co-op wouldn’t have a chance."
"To be sure, health insurers take every opportunity to badmouth co-ops, saying they are a backdoor to socialized medicine. Their criticism is disingenuous. Secretly, they would love to have a bill that creates co-ops that won’t work instead of a single-payer or public option that has proven successful in other western countries."
before we get buried that deep in tax revenue debt - FIX 3 THINGS FIRST!
---> 1 - Medicaid
---> 2 - Medicare
---> 3 - Veteran's Medical Care (I am not a vet - it is not my self gain agenda)
You people keep wanting to let government do everything ... WHY???
Look at the housing help for the low income
got them loans to buy their dream that pushed their limits so tight that when fuel fluctuation hit
they had no room to stretch the dollar ...
NOW ... they lost their dream for a home AND
can not qualify to live in a NICE apartment which REQUIRES a credit check!
What do you want them to do?
Use Section 8 housing?
NOT ONLY IS IT normally in a crime infested area BUT in some places there is a SEVERAL YEAR WAITING LIST to get into the program to Help POOR PEOPLE!!
...... and WHY must we trust THIS program with THAT TRACK RECORD??
..... and if it is so great ....
......................... why WON'T the Presidents family be covered on it?
aren't we just as American as his family is?
OK --- now we are making some sense!! Thank you. Medicare and Medicaid have
worked well so far and a sliding scale relevant to income, circumstances etc. is a good idea. Has anybody been denied care?? Not in our area that I know of-- the local hospital runs the clinic and good physicians are available.
Let's get back to basics --- the practice of medicine is supposed to be a service ----
and the problems started when the practice of medicine became a business!!
Pages