Here’s a New York Times headline: “Higher [Health Insurance] Premiums Cited by G.O.P. Hit Just 3% of America”:
Readers who dig into the full article will learn that
- health insurance costs are going up (in a country with essentially flat per-capita GDP)
- therefore a larger percentage of the GDP is devoted to spending on health care
- tax dollars are so heavily used to subsidize health insurance purchases that not too many individuals directly see the higher bills
So American society is paying more for health insurance, but the fact is being hidden from American individuals.
Circling back to the headline: “… Hit Just 3% of America”. Of course, the only way that this can be literally true, according to the linked-to article disclosing higher costs and spending, is if only 3% of Americans pay tax. I find it interesting that the editors (and maybe the readers? there is no comments link so it is tough to tell) accept this kind of reasoning about tax dollars and government spending.
Find three differences:
http://gazeta-pravda.ru/
Google informs us that pravda means the truth.
For many Americans their employer plays a bigger role in hiding true health care costs than government spending.
3% of affected individuals seems blatantly false even if not accounting for increased taxation for ‘Affordable’ ‘care’ . My experiences are in state with overall lower insurance costs and lower insurance costs growth rate then NY, MA and CA but it appears that economic effect on middle class is very hard indeed. Wikipedia defines ‘upper middle class’ as income in high 5 figures and above $100,000 and states it is 15% of US population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States Everyone in this income bracket is harshly affected.
#2, even for W-2 employed ‘married upper-middle classers’ and ‘single middle classers’ employee-paid part of health care insurance costs has been steadily increasing in $$$ amounts every renewal year of ‘Affordable’ ‘care’. Not to mention that employer health care cost is part of total employee compensation package.
The withholding system very much encourages people who get W-2 income to never think about the money they pay in federal taxes as ever being theirs to begin with.
As a side note, this may be a big reason why business owners (who have to make quarterly tax payments to the Treasury, as opposed to getting a yearly refund check from the Treasury) skew conservative.
Don’t you know that if the government pays for something then it’s “free”? Congress doesn’t even bother raising taxes anymore, they just print up the money.
The present system is entirely based on the raising taxes and prices, the government is not bothering up for these taxes anymore.
@Jack
Isn’t it obvious that printing money in the Zimbabwean way (the Feds do not actually do that but let’s assume, arguendo, they do) is fully equivalent to extra taxation ?
As in emitting 25% more money is the same as taxing you extra 20% ?
@Ivan:
Are you trying to fight a sarcastic remark?
@M
Not really, just pointing out that the remark is less sarcastic due to the last sentence not making sense: “Congress doesn’t even bother raising taxes anymore, they just raise taxes” after the substitution.
Boringly, nowadays, sarcasm is treated as tension between semantics(in the strict linguistic understanding of the word) and pragmatics (you can google for distinction if sufficiently motivated). The sentence I referred to is self-contradictory at the level below its semantics i.e. at the syntax level, thus detracting from the intended sarcasm.
Opinions do differ on the subject, though.
What they have done lately is borrow borrow borrow from the Fed, innit?
@Tom
Could you clarify ?
Where is Neal to explain away on this one? We need more liberal input here.
Btw – it seems not only the media is good at twisting priorities, state governments and politicians are getting better at it as well:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445596/californias-ineffective-government-progressive-ideals-conflict-reality
“Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg used to offer all sorts of cosmic advice on the evils of smoking and the dangers of fatty foods and sugary soft drinks. Bloomberg also frequently pontificated on abortion and global warming, earning him a progressive audience that transcended the boroughs of New York. But in the near-record December 2010 blizzard, Bloomberg proved utterly incompetent in the elemental tasks for which he was elected: ensuring that New Yorkers were not trapped in their homes by snowdrifts in their streets that went unplowed for days. ”
“The Bloomberg syndrome is a characteristic of contemporary government officials. When they are unwilling or unable to address pre-modern problems in their jurisdictions — crime, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transportation — they compensate by posing as philosopher kings who cheaply lecture on existential challenges over which they have no control.”
“Schwarzenegger’s successor, Jerry Brown, warned of climate change and permanent drought and did not authorize the construction of a single reservoir. Now, California is experiencing near-record rain and snowfall. Had the state simply completed its half-century-old water master plan, dozens of new reservoirs would now be storing the runoff, ensuring that the state could be drought-proof for years. Instead, more than 20 million acre-feet of precious water have already been released to the sea. There is nowhere to put it, given that California has not built a major reservoir in nearly 40 years.”