Category: taxes

Medicare for All: The real stumbling block

Imagine that everyone in America — you, your family, your friends and neighbors — everyone,  could receive health care from doctors, hospitals, rehab facilities, extended care facilities, and all pharmaceuticals and equipment, and never have to worry about cost.

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A choice?

Imagine you being forced to choose between your financial devastation vs. sickness or death for your loved ones.

Then, imagine the federal government paying all your health-related bills, leaving you free from worry.

The rich in America already live in such a glorious world, but for most of us, current and future health affordability is an ongoing concern.

Yet, many non-rich Americans oppose even the concept of Medicare for All. Why?

1. It’s unsustainable. Debt fear mongers have been promulgating that myth for at least 80 years.In 1940, when the federal debt was $40 Billion, the fear-mongers were calling it a “ticking time bomb.

“Every year afterward, they have pounded the same lies into our brains: “The federal government will go broke. It’s “unsustainable.” Your children’s taxes will have to go up.”

Today, the debt is $20 Trillion, and the government has not gone broke, and indeed cannot go broke, and taxes have not risen.

2. It’s socialism. Actually it isn’t. It’s progressivism. Socialism is government ownership and control, not merely government support.

The federal government supports many things: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, poverty aids, education, etc. Shall we eliminate them?

Additionally, we do allow many forms of real socialism: The military, roads, bridges and dams, public libraries, NASA, the VA, etc. Shall we eliminate those, too?

3. It will cause inflation or hyperinflation. Although in the past 80 years, federal debt has risen an astounding 50,000%, inflation has averaged close to the Fed’s 2.5% target.

The reason is that the Fed has tools it needs to prevent and cure inflations, among which is: Control over interest rates.

Raising rates increases demand for the dollar, making it more valuable, so fewer dollars are needed to buy goods and services.

While federal “debt” (blue, i.e. deposits into T-security accounts) increased massively, inflation (red) increased modestly.

4. We don’t have enough resources. What this really means is: “If the poor start using doctors, hospitals, et al, then there won’t be enough doctors and hospitals for me.”

These objectors believe that a viable health-care system relies on the poor not being able to afford health-care — that “limited” resources should be reserved for the wealthier among us. This is America?

A nation’s resources grow with the money available to  pay for them. Funded by a government’s unlimited ability to pay, resources are unlimited.

5. It will take money and jobs from the health insurance industry. Right, just as public transportation takes money and jobs from taxi drivers.

Some jobs will be added in the federal sector. But in any event, the notion that the poor should do without healthcare so that the insurance industry can keep its jobs is ridiculous. It’s an example of misplaced priorities.

The above are fake reasons, used to conceal the real reason, which is described in the following, brief, “THE WEEK Magazine” (2/22/19) article:

Despite all the attention tech gets, the biggest five insurance and health benefits companies have greater revenues than the FAANGS – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.

The top five health insurers and benefit managers expect &787 billion in revenue for 2019, compared with $784 billion for the FAANGS.

Pharmacy benefit manager CVS, the biggest of the health-care group, expects revenues of $246 billion.

In short, the insurance companies, that massively bribe politicians with campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later, don’t want the federal government to offer you better, more comprehensive, no deductible insurance at no cost.

OpenSecrets.org reveals:

One-third of Senate Democrats have cosponsored the Medicare for All Act, which Sanders introduced in September.

Democrats who haven’t cosponsored the bill received 146 percent more money on average from health insurance companies between 2011 and 2016 than those who have ($147,186 to $59,789)

If you’ve been told lies #1 thru #5, there is a good chance the source either is ignorant of economic reality or has been bribed by the health insurance industry.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the richer and the poorer.

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.

Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually. 

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Financial frauds who give exactly the same advice to every client, no matter what the situation.

The debt hawks are to economics as the creationists are to biology. Those, who do not understand Monetary Sovereignty, do not understand economics. If you understand the following, simple statement, you are ahead of most economists, politicians and media writers in America: Our government, being Monetarily Sovereign, has the unlimited ability to create the dollars to pay its bills.
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We all are aware of the euro nations’ financial problems, especially the problems of the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. We have discussed the fact that because these nations, in surrendering their Monetary Sovereignty, surrendered their control over their money supply. They are unable to create the money necessary to support their economies.

I predicted in a 1995 speech at the UMKC, “Because of the Euro, no euro nation can control its own money supply. The Euro is the worst economic idea since the recession-era, Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The economies of European nations are doomed by the euro.” However, not all European nations surrendered their Monetary Sovereignty. Among the nations choosing to remain Monetarily Sovereign are Poland, Romania, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Here are some sample news items:

Bloomberg; 5/25/11: “Poland’s economic-growth forecast was raised to 3.9 percent from 3 percent at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

5/27/11: According to Capital Economics, a British research group, Romania’s economy will grow by 3% this year compared to a previous forecast of 1%, followed in 2012 by a 2.5% advance. The recovery will be fueled by private consumption, but also by the resumption of investments. Also the research group states that Romania has the second best potential for economic development in the region, along with Bulgaria, Poland and Russia.

OCDE:1/2/11 – Sweden is expected to continue to recover strongly from the recession as high saving, low interest rates and an improving jobs market encourage consumers to step up spending, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Survey of the country.

Bloomberg: 5/26/11: The mainland (Norway) economy will expand 3.3 percent this year and 4 percent in 2012, after growing 2.2 percent in 2010, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said yesterday.

The Monetarily Sovereign nations are doing better than the monetarily non-sovereign nations. No surprise there for those of you who have been reading this blog. The key, of course, is for a Monetarily Sovereign nation to realize it’s Monetarily Sovereign. Not all do.

Why the British economy is in very deep trouble, Financial Times, Posted by Neil Hume on May 26, 2011

Here’s something for the Chancellor and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to chew on: a warning from Dr Tim Morgan, the global head of research at Tullett Prebon, that the deficit reduction plan won’t work and the UK is headed for a debt disaster.

Morgan says sectors that account for nearly 60 per cent of UK economic output are critically dependent on debt (public or private) and set to contract rather than expand. This will render economic growth implausible and means the burden of public and private debt will prove too heavy for the nation to carry:

Over the past decade, the British economy has been critically dependent on private borrowing and public spending. Now that these drivers have disappeared – private borrowing has evaporated, and the era of massive public spending expansion is over – the outlook for growth is exceptionally bleak.

Sectors which depend upon either private borrowing or public spending now account for at least 58% of economic output. These sectors are now set to contract rather than expand, which renders aggregate economic growth implausible. And, without growth, there may be no way of avoiding a debt disaster.

The UK, wisely avoided surrendering its Monetary Sovereignty, then forgot why it did so. It thinks, “the era of massive public spending is over.” Why? It has no idea. It believes it’s monetarily non-sovereign.

This puts the UK in the same position as the U.S., whose politicians, media and old-time economists do not understand the implications of Monetary Sovereignty. Read any article or listen to any politician, and you will not be able to tell whether the subject is a Monetarily Sovereign nation or a monetarily non-sovereign nation. They say exactly the same things about both.

What would you think about an investment advisor who gives exactly the same advice to a wealthy, married old man with no children, as he gives to an impoverished single, young woman supporting five children? If someone says exactly the same things, makes exactly the same predictions, and offers exactly the same advice regarding two diametrically opposite monetary situations, that person is a fraud.

I have just described the debt-hawk media, politicians and old-time economists.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com


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No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. It’s been 40 years since the U.S. became Monetary Sovereign, , and neither Congress, nor the President, nor the Fed, nor the vast majority of economists and economics bloggers, nor the preponderance of the media, nor the most famous educational institutions, nor the Nobel committee, nor the International Monetary Fund have yet acquired even the slightest notion of what that means.

Remember that the next time you’re tempted to ask a dopey teenager, “What were you thinking?” He’s liable to respond, “Pretty much what your generation was thinking when it screwed up my future.”

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY

–Punish bank executives for being too rich

An alternative to popular faith

         Here is the key sentence from an article by Jackie Calmes, Published: January 11, 2010 in the The New York Times:
        “With popular anger building as big banks show profits and pay sizable bonuses while unemployment remains high, the Obama administration has come under pressure at home and abroad to support a financial transactions tax on institutions and to heavily tax their executive compensation.”
        What an amazing sentence.
         First, consider the popular anger that “big banks show profits . . .” Would the citizenry prefer bank losses caused by bad bank management? What’s the approved size for profits?
         Second, consider the “sizable bonuses.” Banks are businesses. What should they do with profits aside from pay employees and shareholders? Are other businesses held to that standard?
         Third, consider “unemployment remains high.” What is the relationship here? Should banks hire millions of people, to get the employment rate down? Or, should banks engage in less than optimal business strategies, like lending to bad risks, to get the profits down?
         Fourth, consider the “financial transactions tax on institutions.” Get real. Any tax on a business is passed along to its customers. Ultimately, you and I will pay that tax.
         Fifth, consider “heavily tax their executive compensation.” A special tax created just for bank executives? What about a special tax just for Walmart executives? What about a special tax just for executives who live in New York, preferably Long Island?
         Nothing could better demonstrate the financial ignorance of the Obama administration. Or if it’s not ignorance, then it’s worse: pure pandering to populist, class-warfare motives. Oh, it temporarily might make you feel good to “get those rich jerks,” until you realize (if ever) that you are the one getting the shaft.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

–Does your money belong to the government?

An alternative to popular faith

The November 23, 2009 New Yorker contained an article by James Surowiecki, titled “The Debt Economy.” He claims what he calls “tax breaks,” adversely skew the economy and cause people not to “make decisions based on economic fundamentals (but) on tax considerations.”

He gives the example of corporate interest payments vs. dividends. The former are tax deductible “tax breaks”; the later are not, which provides a “debt bias” (his words) to the economy.

Mr. Surowiecki disparages “tax breaks” as being “unnecessary” and having “nonexistent social benefits.” His solution: Eliminate tax breaks.

Consider health insurance. The government encourages companies to provide it by allowing payments to be tax deductible for the companies, and not taxable to the employees – i.e., using before-tax dollars. In contrast, people who purchase their own health insurance must use after-tax dollars. In Mr. Surowiecki’s world, the economy would benefit from eliminating the “tax break” by taxing employees’ health benefits.

This solution suggests taxes are the norm, and tax breaks are departures from that norm. That is, all the money you earn belongs to the government, and only an aberration or “break,” allows you to keep some of it.

I disagree. It is taxes, not “tax breaks,” that skew our economy, forcing decisions away from economic fundamentals. Eliminate taxes and the economy would be steered by the economic fundamentals Mr. Surowiecki craves. All taxes depart from these economic fundamentals. There are no innocuous taxes. They all make a difference. So the very act of imposing a tax, any tax, will skew the economy.

Further, there are no “fair” taxes. You can read a one-page article on this subject at: http://rodgermitchell.com/FairTaxes.html

Tax breaks are less harmful than taxes, not only because taxes skew the economy, but because all taxes remove money from the economy, thereby reducing economic growth.

Taxes are not the norm. Your money does not belong to the government. When deciding whether to tax debt or to “untax” non-debt, the economy would benefit from the later.

*Faith is belief without evidence. Science is belief from evidence.