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Discussion of public health and health care policy, from a public health perspective. The U.S. spends more on medical services than any other country, but we get less for it. Major reasons include lack of universal access, unequal treatment, and underinvestment in public health and social welfare. We will critically examine the economics, politics and sociology of health and illness in the U.S. and the world.
9 comments:
I have had this conversation with my uber-liberal socialist brother-in-law several times.
I have agreed that I would be willing to raise taxes IF the increases could be earmarked to be applied to the overall debt.
All I got were crickets.
So, it's not that additional taxes are out of the question. It's accountability.
It seems the article compares the projections to earlier projections to arrive at their conclusions. And it's not enough taxation. We need more! The reality is, federal receipts are at record levels now.
This comparison doesn't break it down as to which tax they're comparing. Personal income? Corporate? How do they measure up? Another issue is the tax systems in the European nations are different. US Tax system is very progressive. Almost half of US citizens pay no federal income tax.
And interesting chart, but essentially useless.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/
There's a great chart half way down the page showing the skyrocketing record receipts starting about the first quarter of 2021 adjusted for inflation.
Hope this helps
I think this needs to be an X-Y graph to have cogency.
Mo, I'm afraid I don't understand your comment. The metric is percentage of GDP.
As for the other comments, of course total federal revenue increases over time, with growth in GDP and population, and inflation. (The chart you are looking at is not adjusted for inflation, btw.) If revenue were to remain constant in nominal dollars, it would obviously be decreasing in reality. The reason for the increase following 2021 is obviously that the country emerged from the severe economic effects of the pandemic and employment skyrocketed. More people were working and paying taxes. Notice the dip just before that point.
The comparison in the chart in my post is all tax revenues, which should be clear. I'm glad you actually read the CAP article but you obviously didn't read it carefully. What it says, which is simple, clear and true, is that the U.S. has been steadily cutting taxes since the Reagan administration. If we hadn't done that, at actual levels of spending, we wouldn't have a deficit. And as for progressivity, most OECD countries have far more progressive tax systems than we do.
I don't see why 100% of any tax increases would have to be earmarked for debt reduction. There's a perfectly respectable discussion to be had about many important spending priorities as well. Just asserting that any tax increases have to be used for debt reduction is not an argument.
One way to look at taxes is to try to determine how much this country has contributed to a person's success. For example, how much would Elon Musk be worth today if he had stayed in South Africa?
He is clearly a very bright guy, and he happens to be perfectly suited to the current level of technology, so I'm sure he'd be doing very well in S.A. But $200 billion?! It's hard to imagine him being worth much more than a tenth of that amount. Exactly the same guy; the only difference is the country he is in. So, how much of that wealth was due to the efforts of Elon Musk, and how much was due to his environment? It appears that a huge portion of his wealth comes not from what he did but from where he did it.
I've been thinking recently about how timing and ecosystem affect an individual's success. If Bach had been born 30 years earlier his compositions would not have been considered out of date. If Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace had been born 100 years later they'd have been viewed as among the foundational creators of computers and programming.
Many people are unsuccessful because of an impedance mismatch between their abilities and their life situation. We help ourselves when we help others approach their potential. And, if it happens to produce wealth for some, that they return some of their good fortune to the infrastructure that made it possible.
Well, a simpler way to put it is that a lot of it is just dumb luck.
@ Chucky
I do see your point. I think that it would be mitigated by the internet in that Musk could accomplish a lot of it if he were in South Africa.
I would also say the US has benefited greatly by having Musk here. Not just that he pays billions in income tax every year, but the jobs he has created and the efficiency created by his technologies is immeasurable.
True...
But where you are affects your luck. This country seems to be a pretty good place to get lucky. There is no thing as a self-made billionaire, or multi-millionaire for that matter. Otherwise they'd be pretty evenly distributed around the globe. In many ways a country provides the infrastructure that allows those lucky few to get very rich. It's only fair that it gets back a substantial cut from those lucky enough to be able to use it to their own advantage.
This implies that a graduated income tax makes perfect sense. Suppose it was possible to run an experiment where it was possible to clone Elon Musk, and let one copy repeat the life trajectory of "our" Elon, but keep the other one in S.A. Wouldn't the difference between their net worths' be due to their environments and not to who they were as individuals?
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