Pipe dream? Obamacare

[swchandler]

reinerehlers,

First off, let me admit that numbers, and what can be done with them, is not my strong suit, not by a long shot. So when reviewing your first link about Canadian taxes, I kind of get lost in the difference between marginal and average tax obligations. Add to that, the idea of adding one dollar to a figure like $50K would blow everything out of proportion, I don't have a clue about how the Canadian income tax system works. Perhaps if I had a lifetime of paying Canadian taxes I would readily understand, but on the surface, seems to me that your tax system is attempting to disincentivize folks from making more income. That just doesn't make any sense to me.

Here in the US each tax bracket is a very narrow field or range, so going over from one bracket to another is really chump change in the big picture. It's hardly a disincentive to anyone wanting to grow their income. However, as income grows, your tax obligation obviously increases proportionally. So if one person made $50K and another made $60K, the latter would pay a higher tax, but that person would also take home more income after taxes as well. As you climb the income ladder, you always come out ahead.

Back in the early 90s, I had a friend that told me that he paid nearly triple in federal income taxes what I made in total gross income, and that was after taking all of the myriad of deductions available to him. While I found it amazing how big his tax liability was, I knew that his after tax income was still huge given his lifestyle. I thought to myself, I would gladly pay his taxes given his after tax income. In reality, I was probably working longer hours than he did, so it wasn't that he was working harder than me.

Regarding your highlighted situation where folks in Ontario will need to pay for the closing of a powerplant, one needs to know more about the history of what happened to better understand the gist of the supposed outcome. Also, the story seems to be steeped in politics too, and as we all know, there is always more than one side to the story when politics come into play. But, if contracts where signed and worked progressed, a cancellation of the project will have financial costs and obligations.

[nw30]

I almost don't ever do this, but I'm willing to stick out my neck this time,,,, the mandate will be delayed.
Ouch, sorry Barry, gonna have to suck this up buttercup.

Bummer, because you don't get a second chance at making a first impression.

I will bump this if I really need to, when it happens.

[DanWeiss]

Reiner, there is a difference between a rate of return on effort and the gross amount of return. Frankly, it's axiomatic to a progressive tax structure and why my post tried to set them apart explicitly, whereas so many others freely substitute one for the other in an attempt to criticize "taxing the job creators."

You don't deserve to be lumped into that crowd, I think, yet the whole idea of elevating a diminishing rate of return as a reason not to work seems childishly misinformed for two very basic reasons.

The tax rates in the US are capped at 39%. Even ignoring deductions that tend to come in greater volume as one's earnings increase, one gets to a point where every dollar earned is taxed at the same rate no matter how many more of those dollars you earn.

Second, even short of that cap and despite a rate of return that decreases for a while additional gross compensation (above the line) does generally mean additional "profit" (below the line).

Therefore, my tax law professor's withering reply to my classmate rings true. If you don't want to pay taxes, please don't work or enter into property ownership. That's anyone's right. Those who care to participate in our economic system are free to take real benefit and actually create wealth, but that does not grant such a person all the benefit since such benefit would never have existed outside of the system that allows the benefit to exist in the first place.

[keycocker]

The whole idea of income taxes and the lower and middle class paying for government is quite new in civilization. At one time the government was paid for by the rich. They built the roads so they could take goods to market.They wrote the laws to protect their assets, not to keep the poor from being robbed.
The army was paid by the lord who held it.
This was true in Cuba before the Castro revolution. The common man was paid nearly nothing and the rich were the government and paid its expenses.
It is still true in the rural third world.
Some locals referred to me as a "Patron" because we cleaned the streets and paid to fix some of the holes.
We built the big park and the High School.
Sometimes we arrested people and held them for the uniforms. once a familiar cop suggested I grab the guy with my crew and search his house without a warrant since the cop couldnt do that but he said I could get away with things like that.
The Government did nada so we became at times part of the defacto government because we paid for it

[pueno]

[KGB-NP]

Courtesy of Jack Johnson, song "Wasting Time"

And I don't pretend to know what you know
No no
Now please don't pretend to know what's on my mind
If we already knew everything that everybody knows
We would have nothing to learn tonight
And we would have nothing to show tonight
Oh but everybody thinks
That everybody knows
About everybody else
But Nobody knows
Anything about themselves
Cause they're all worried about everybody else

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebpTPmRiCHA

[nw30]

Maybe this was the grand scheme all along, force all the private health Ins. Co's out of business, so that the public would be clamoring for a single payer plan run by the government.
One problem, the public has to have an unshaken trust of the government, so far the roll out of Obamacare has all but eliminated that.
Good luck with their scheme, if that's what it was supposed to be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Health insurance cancellation notices soar above Obamacare enrollment rates
4:16 PM 10/24/2013

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who purchase their own health insurance have received cancellation notices since August because the plans do not meet Obamacare’s requirements.

The number of cancellation notices greatly exceed the number of Obamacare enrollees.

Insurance carrier Florida Blue sent out 300,000 cancellation notices, or 80 percent of the entire state’s individual coverage policies, Kaiser Health News reports. California’s Kaiser Permanente canceled 160,000 plans — half of its insurance plans in the state — while Blue Shield of California sent 119,000 notices in mid-September alone.

Two major insurance carriers in Pennsylvania, Insurance Highmark in Pittsburgh and Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia plan to cancel 20 percent and 45 percent of their total plans, respectively.

Nearly 800,000 New Jersey residents’ health-care plans will not longer exist in 2014, forcing insurers to create new ones for individuals and small business owners that hew to the Obamacare’s new regulations, The New Jersey Star Ledger found in early October.

“I don’t feel like I need to change, but I have to,” Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, told Kaiser Health News. Learned now needs to scramble to find a plan to coverage his teenage daughter, whose health problems have required several surgeries.

More Americans have lost their individual health coverage in Florida and California than have gotten past the login screen on HealthCare.gov, according to The Washington Post, which reports that 476,000 applications have “been started,” but not completed. HealthCare.gov’s dysfunctional website has helped enrollment grind to almost a complete halt.

But it’s difficult to determine exactly how lopsided the rates of cancellations versus the rates of enrollment are — the Obama administration jealously guards the official enrollment numbers, refusing to release them to even the law’s loyal Democratic supporters.

“It’s screwed up,” New York Rep. Charlie Rangel said of the White House’s secretive maneuvers.

Several states have released Obamacare enrollment data, however, revealing extremely low rates. South Dakota reported that only 23 people enrolled in the exchanges, a mere 0.0000276 percent of that state’s population. North Dakota enrolled only 20 residents.

Alaska, meanwhile, comes in at seven total enrollees, or 0.000957 percent of Alaskans.

Sources inside the Department of Health and Human Services told The Daily Mail that only 6,200 Americans signed up for coverage the day HealthCare.gov launched, while only 51,000 applied in the first week.

During his campaign to pitch the law to voters back in 2009, President Barack Obama vowed that Obamacare would merely lower costs for Americans with health insurance while providing coverage to the uninsured.

“[N]o matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period,” Obama said to an audience at the annual conference of the American Medical Association. “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

“Again, [the Affordable Care Act] is for people who aren’t happy with their current plan. If you like what you’re getting, keep it. Nobody is forcing you to shift,” he later added.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/24/health-insurance-cancellation-notices-soar-above-obamacare-enrollment-rates/#ixzz2igUKV6Sb

[pueno]

[MalibuGuru]

Mainstream media is getting real....finally


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGxRMUtalrY

[swchandler]

Bard, you seem to be offering a private video that requires a log in.