How long to pay off debt?

[digitlnoize]

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Oh dear, hear we go again...

The point is, if you have health insurance in hte US, you already pay for the teritary/end of life treatment for all of those conditions now. That's why health insurance is not affordable: the later you treat a disease, the more expensive it is.

Using universal healthcare to pay for other people's preventative care (smoking cesation, pap smears, exercise programs, etc). Now THAT'S cheaper

Absolutely 100% agree. Let's pay for smoking prevention, but not treatment. That comes out of your own pocket. I, for one, am sick and tired of footing that bill. Same goes for people that injure themselves street racing their motorcycles, or driving drunk, or doing any of the other myriad of ways people like to be stupid. Perhaps people would pay more attention to the consequences of their actions if they knew that they had to pay for the repercussions.

If you're going to be that stupid, you should have to pay the price. These people are endangering themselves and others, including me.

"But Yossarian, they're trying to kill everyone!"
"What difference does that make!"

 

[Cosmonaut]

Well, one good point to clarify here is that a person who makes $500,000/yr doesn't pay the high tax bracket rate for the entire 500k. Rather, that person would pay 35% (2009) on anything over the 372k, and they would pay the corresponding tax rate on money made in each of the lower brackets. So the effective rate is like 30% for 500k.

I guess it doesn't wildly change what people have roughly estimated with all the local and state taxes added on top, but for the mere mortals who might be looking to make in the 180k ballpark, a 24.75% effective tax rate is much better than the 33% bracket they are actually in.

 

[schrute]

Well, you can't claim you are a democrat and then say you don't want to support the masses.

Which is why I'm not a democrat (or a card-carrying republican for that matter).

The fact you are OK with the government taking 70% of your income for altruistic goals that are not achievable is disturbing.

You could "donate" 99% of your income, as could every top income earner in this country, and things still would not improve because such 'philanthropy' would still be predicated on the notion that government actually has control over such abstract notions as success, happiness and fairness.

Even if there was a dollar amount (as a function of tax revenue) beyond which we could somehow guarantee that all US citizens would have health care, food & shelter, education, etc..., the ability to defend this 'achievement' as anything other than Socialism completely disintegrates.

Which begs the question, at what point does capitalism end and socialism begin? And the more we allow the Federal government to answer that question, the looser our grip becomes on notions of liberty, freedom and the founding principles of America.