Look hard
Posted on 03/24/2010 12:41:45 AM PDT by Cincinna
For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.
Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.
Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.
Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would “mark a new season in America.” He added, “We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”
The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society — the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.
E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Absurdity Alert!
You owe more because the withholding was reduced in 2009. Be sure to take your Making Work Credit; should be $400.
You repress the fact that the only reason you even have a job is that a billionaire from a country with real income inequality injected millions into your failing enterprise.
How do I know this wasn’t plagiarized?
I’d like to redistribute some of the work that I’ve done, and do, to those who have done much less. I’d like to drag their a** out of bed early in the morning, and keep them working until late at night, even on the weekends, so that everything can be even. It’s only fair.
I am going to guess that there is no record of his being “married”.
As long as we’re on the topic, what about ‘regional’ wealth inequality? It’s not fair that people in New York and other large city democrat strongholds make more money on average than those living in rural Oklahoma etc. Let’s redistribute the money made in the cities to the rural south, and other lower wage areas.
Also, what about the inequality across different ‘professions’? Why should an actor or actress in Hollywood make and have more money than a plumber from Iowa? Let’s fix that too. It’s only fair.
bump
This is well beyond wealth redistribution: they are redistributing your health. And in schools they are redistributing your education. Next they will redistribute your family.
Why Isnt Obama or his staff on Obamacare? Why just the Unwashed Masses,Sounds Like inequality to me
The little green slips of paper are debt instruments, and, through frugality and clever exchanges CAN be turned into wealth, but they are not wealth in themselves.
Obama and his friends are redistributing income, not wealth.
If they were redistributing wealth, then Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Sean Penn , Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Jobs wouldn't be on board anymore.
By redistributing income, the Democrats are actually protecting their nouveaux riches friends from competition from below.
Look hard
When government decides who is allowed to make what income, it is government that we have to go to for a raise...we are subjected to their will, not our own in determining our financial well being.
It will be very important to work in an underground economy. It has been estimated that the underground economy in the Soviet Union was about as large as the government approved economy.
Bartering is the most basic way to trade but not all that efficient, cash makes conducting transactions a lot easier. That means less credit card purchases and more cash purchases that are below the radar screen of the official economy.
You can buy gold and silver in transaction handy sizes. 1/10 of an ounce for instance. These items can be handy if the governments currency takes a nose dive.
Grow your own food, throw away hobbies that you pay to do, get hobbies that can earn you value.
And most importantly, RESIST...active resistance to disrupt the democrats, their unions, their offices, their media.
So said Andy Stern. Its not just a slogan any more.
The common Democrat is okay with this. Rich people are supposed to be rich so it does not stir as much envy as a middle class person getting ahead. Envy is strongest towards people who have similar backgrounds. It's not the old rich keeping down the new rich as much as it is the old middle class keeping down the new rich.
The internet with stronger encryption and anonymous relay servers could be used to create a virtual economy that would be untaxable and untraceable by the socialists. Start-up software and engineering companies could flourish without being held down by government taxes and restrictions. The internet game Second Life almost started a real economy with virtual gambling businesses, but governments around the world soon forced them to quit or be destroyed.
Everyone shall be in equal poverty says dear leader.
I would be interested in learning more about this...are you a techy?
Thanks so much Chet.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
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