Easy. Just off the top of my head, yes, the basic necessities for life – potable water, enough food to not be hungry, sufficient health insurance to not have to only rely on the very expensive (to the rest of us) emergency care, and shelter, with heating/cooling, a mailbox, a land line with voicemail, enough room for a bed and a desk (more room for a family), and maybe a fridge. This means that you could survive no matter what, be well rested, and not be homeless so you can receive mail, phone calls, and not have these very basic things stand in the way of you getting a job. Then, if you are capable and want to live better, you could look for work or learn a trade (from a community college or something). Basic income style, except cashless.
I can’t be productive if I don’t get enough sleep, so dorm-style bunk beds are below standard IMO. Shared bathrooms, kitchens, and office equipment should be fine (with a reasonable people to facilities ratios probably already on the books in building codes).
Trans fats were banned, right? I wouldn’t go as far as to stop McD because it’s not all that bad, but I wouldn’t be against shutting down Taco Bell. That shithole shouldn’t exist. Otherwise just regulate ingredients and maybe collect enough taxes to pay for the healthcare costs of related diseases.
All of these things are still bad in large quantities
Not making money – collecting Poor Choice tax from the consumer instead of income taxes from everyone, to be spend on related healthcare.
People need to stop generalizing owning an iphone as a symbol of wealth. Just because someone has an iphone doesn’t mean they’re doing a-ok.
7 year old iphone 4’s are not exactly status symbols.
You can get an iphone SE new for ~$125 nowadays.
If you want to generalize about anyone owning an iphone as not being poor then maybe you should be specific to the latest greatest overpriced model and say explicitly the newest model by name i.e. iphone X.
I said that at least 75% of my friends donate. What do you think is strange about knowing that?
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I thought it was strange, because the topic of donating money never comes up in my conversations with friends. But it seems you don’t actually know how much or what your friends donate, only that they donate. I would guess that 100% of my friends donate their old clothes. But knowing this is pretty meaningless, because most old clothes end up in the landfill or in pallets shipped to places like Haiti, where a little is used and the rest goes to their landfill.
Not sure why the UK and VA are used as examples…those are nationalized systems…where the govt owns the facilities and employs the Drs, etc…
That has never been a seriously proposed idea in the US.
Single payer would basically be eliminating the age requirement for Medicare…it wouldn’t have anything to do with the providers (directly).
I don’t personally see that being a workable solution in the US. The best we could do would be something like the Swiss system…which is a more stable form of the ACA.
If your government plan has a mandate to be “affordable” the main way they do that is by cutting costs on the healthcare side, i.e. only paying 85% of U&C or whatever. Essentially, the government is setting the wages of the doctors that you will be able to use, and if they cut it too much, you’ll end up with very few and / or less good doctors, leading to the poor care and long wait times (and illegal secret waiting lists to meet performance bonuses, etc) like we have seen at the VA and/or NHS.
There are already doctors who won’t take new Medicare patients, about 1/4 to 1/3, either because of the decreasing reimbursements or the increasing documentation burdens.
Where did I say that I knew how much they donated? Actually, I’d find it strange if I knew how much they donated, unless I was their accountant, or possibly minister. I do know that they donate time, money, food, and goods. Yes, I suspect that some of them donate old clothes that are in good condition, but that was not what I was talking about in my earlier post.
Should I find it strange that you guess what percentage of your friends donate old clothes?
And good for them, except
I don’t understand the point of this comment, other than to discourage people from donating old clothes. Other than another tax, do you have a better alternative?
Almost everything is bad in large quantities. How are you going to make me, eating 12 eggs a day, have a poor choice tax, while Joe, who eats 1 egg a day avoid that tax?
Yes, and the state lottery money is supposed to be spent solely on education, the gasoline tax is supposed to be spent solely on roads, etc, and the social security taxes are supposed to solely fund social security. Do you believe that is how those taxes are used?
When you say single payer, who is that single payer? I presumed the feds, or maybe an NGO. Regardless, if there is only one payer, doesn’t that mean that doctors, although not on the payroll, are effectively employees? If not how are they going to get paid?
While I agree that it is probably not a workable solution in the US, I’m afraid that it may be rammed through anyway - remember Obamacare’s passage.
If Kaiser were the only payer in the whole country it would be. However they are not the single payer for the country. Also, I believe that a lot of their doctors are real, payroll employees.
Your statement that over 75% of your friends donate to charity was in response to the following assertion I made:[quote=“scripta, post:152, topic:1661”]
Based on this and one of your previous posts about charities I think you firmly believe that people would actually donate more money to charities if they had more money. I firmly believe that you are wrong – there may be a few people who will donate a little, but it won’t have nearly the same impact as what a government could do through mandatory taxes.
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I am only trying to state that your response to my assertion is illogical – just because 75% of your friends donate something to charities, does not mean that people would actually donate more money to charities if they had more money. And there’s no reason to believe that even if charitable contributions increased with income taxes decreasing, that they would be as effective.
When I say or see someone say iPhone I mostly mean/interpret it as a >$600 phone. Not specifically an iPhone designed by Apple in Cupertino California. (I happen to be the proud owner of just such a phone but this being FD I didn’t pay a single cent, infact Verizon paid me $1000 and gave me the iPhone for free ).
In general if you’re able to afford to drop $600 or $40/m on something when a product with similar functionality can be had for <$100 it’s likely that either you have a lot of money or we shouldn’t be encouraging your bad financial decisions.
Also FTR until I got married, while I was living in my parents house I did donate 20% of my income to charity specifically bec I felt that others could use the money more than I. Now with 1000x more expenses (rent+food) we cut that back to 10%+ but I’m hoping to bring it back up to at least 20% soon. Now for my friends: I was surprised to learn that some didn’t donate at all…I think I shamed them into donating something but who really knows.
Oy! Do I feel like an idiot. Reading the paragraph that you quoted, I misinterpreted your comments to mean that you don’t think most people donate and that they would not donate more if they had more. While I still disagree, I don’t know of any studies, nor do I have anecdotal evidence to indicate that people donate more or less if they have more disposable income. Logic tells me it’s more, but I can’t prove it.
My response was senseless. To directly answer your assertion - To me, it just stands to reason that if people donate to charity as part of their annual budget, and their budget increases, they will donate more. If my answer still doesn’t make sense, I am still completely misunderstanding your comments. Please be blunt and tell me that right away.
Sure, I get that. However, let’s say someone donates 20% of their after-tax income. A 10% reduction in their federal income tax liability (say from 18% effective tax rate to 8% effective tax rate) would only result in a 2% increase in their donations budget (20% of 10%). If their donations are based on a percentage of pre-tax income, then the donations won’t change at all. The only person who would donate their exact tax savings is a person that has a fixed budget for their personal expenses and savings, and everything above that goes to charity. I think you’ll agree that there aren’t many people who budget or donate this way.
Accepting all of your scenarios, I agree that your math is correct. I also agree with your last statement. I do not accept those scenarios, though.
Yes, I will accept that some people won’t increase their donations by more than you’ve outlined.
I will also accept that some people will never donate anything.
I do not accept that most people are like that, or at least not for most of their life.
Do you really think that most people will increase their donations in at least the amount they might be saving on income taxes if the two are completely unrelated (meaning the tax cut is given to everyone, but donations are a choice)?
Not necessarily but I really do think the money will be more productively spent to help the needy, even though there’s less of it. I imagine a donation of $500 to a private charity will do more good for those specific individuals in need than paying $2,000 in taxes. How much of that $2k is left to help the specific needy individuals by the time all of the bureaucrats get paid and waste resources?
Also, the government will distribute money in ways that is politically expediant, not in ways that are necessarily most beneficial to the people in need. It’s politically expedient to say “here’s $300 a month for food, but whatever you want” but it might be more effective to say “here’s a voucher to the local farmer’s market to obtain food to make 90 healthy meals per month” and it might be cheaper, too!
