Posted on 02/28/2009 9:12:16 AM PST by FocusNexus
Similarly, on healthcare, Obama has decided to put cost control above expanding coverage...
There's also a shift in investment priorities in the healthcare proposal. The fastest-growing part of the federal budget is spending for Medicare, a program that provides healthcare for the elderly. It is paid for by payroll taxes from people still in the workforce.
In essence, Medicare amounts to a resource shift from younger workers to older retirees. And the population of older retirees is rapidly growing relative to the workforce.
"The more we spend on the elderly, the less we can spend on other things, including education," Williams said. "We're doing an awful lot to support consumption in retirement, and that draws resources away from other uses."
Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, says Obama's plan amounts to an unfair redistribution of the tax burden. He said that the top 20% of taxpayers now pay 80% of all taxes collected by the government. And 40% of households pay no income tax.
Under Obama's plan, he said, the top 20% of tax filers would pay 90% of all taxes, and the number of families who owe no tax would climb to near 50%.
"President Obama is offering a free lunch to a lot of Americans on the backs of 5% of the taxpayers. That can be called class warfare," Riedl said. "I think a lot of Americans believe that even the rich should not face tax rates that add up to about 50%."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"There's also a shift in investment priorities in the healthcare proposal. The fastest-growing part of the federal budget is spending for Medicare, a program that provides healthcare for the elderly. It is paid for by payroll taxes from people still in the workforce.
In essence, Medicare amounts to a resource shift from younger workers to older retirees. And the population of older retirees is rapidly growing relative to the workforce.
"The more we spend on the elderly, the less we can spend on other things, including education," Williams said. "We're doing an awful lot to support consumption in retirement, and that draws resources away from other uses."
I hope you all know what that means -- "it is UNFAIR to spend money on the older folks, they should just go off and die and not use up the resources, that should be spent on those still on the workforce".
Hey LATimes, it’s class warfare, Duhh.
>> Under Obama’s plan... the number of families who owe no tax would climb to near 50%.
Goodbye, economy. Hello, President for Life Obama.
Don't worry. those young people should be happy to give up 80% of their income to fund health care for seniors. They all voted for Obama.
I don’t believe that the LA Times is anti-Obama. They aren’t criticizing him as such, they’re just pointing out that there’s a difficulty here.
I think what this is saying is, yes, we need to spend billions more for health care. And that nice, generous Obama wants to take care of everybody. But now people are telling him that he can’t really afford to take care of all those useless eaters and older people (who, incidentally, paid social security and medicare taxes all their lives).
So, we need to make some difficult choices here, and let them all die. Or maybe even hurry the process a bit.
It’s the good cop/bad cop technique. Obama is using others to break the bad news. He’d really LIKE to do everything, but maybe he’ll just have to make some hard choices, as this kind reporter is pointing out.
I think it’s saying the opposite. The old people who voted for Obama because they’re afraid of the Democrats’ perpetual lie that Republicans will mess with their meidcare (my grandparents are some of them) are going to be having buyers’remorse when that funding goes instead to public education and other welfare programs.
It drives me nuts that the left decry the $8,000 per person on health care number without giving the full story.
In this country, we have more people who live later into life. I’m not saying the average life span is higher, but that we have more people per capita who live longer.
Also, they don’t take into consideration the number of premature babies that survive and require enormous amounts of care at great cost.
It is the very young and the very old who have the greatest health care needs. The left in this country have a plan to cut those costs. Increased abortions and euthanasia.
If the taxing was being done for fairness, everybody would pay the same amount.
To educate illegal aliens' children.....
That's when the real tax revolts will get much stronger. See my tag line.
Under Obama's plan, he said, the top 20% of tax filers would pay 90% of all taxes, and the number of families who owe no tax would climb to near 50%.
This nation was pushed to independence by taxation without representation. It will be destroyed by by the same thing. Actually, what we're headed for is more "representation without taxation," but that's even more evil.
Can’t be said loudly and strongly enough.
And what will happen when the top 5, 10 or 20% gets tired of supporting the entire nation and MOVE?
The richer they are, the easier it is for them to change residence, take their businesses to other country and so on.
We are headed to become a third world country at this rate.
I reckon Class Warfare gave rise to Communism and the cousin it hates - Fascism. It stacked up quite the body count in the 20th century.
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