Politicians never cease to amaze me. They are wrong on seemingly every issue.
Everyone knows that college tuitions are out of control, but good luck finding a politician that has the slightest clue why. In fact, Congress is going to start hauling university presidents before them and demand to know why tuition hikes are “outpacing inflation”.
But this is like giving a dog a bone and then indicting him for eating it.
We, the public, should haul Congress before us and hold them accountable for the stratospheric college costs.
College is expensive simply because of federal grant money and most importantly, government subsidized student loans. If you subsidize something, the price will eventually go up.
EVERY SINGLE TIME.
The geeks at Harvard are whining about having to answer to the hand that feeds them.
The College’s tuition and fees will increase by 4.75 percent next year. But Harvard also recently expanded its financial aid program so that families making under $60,000 a year won’t face any required contribution.
Notice how they try to justify the excessive inflation by hiding behind Harvard's version of the poor (families making under $60,000 a year - not likely a significant population). In other words, we are only ramping up the bill on the dreaded rich just like the
Ignorant and spineless politicians lack the guts to ever propose “cutting student loans”. They lack the guts to cut just about anything but education is probably second to “cutting Social Security” benefits - at least in terms of the fear factor.
Consider for a moment the rank hypocrisy and misdirection of Congress hauling oil executives before a committee and grilling them about the cost of gasoline?
Congress won’t let them drill in ANWAR, in the Gulf Coast (although Mexico can), or off the coast of California. They have the gall to restrict drilling and yet complain about the cost of oil and our reliance on imported oil.
The oil companies should haul members of Congress before them and GRILL THEM!!!
Sadly, this resonates with the economically illiterate part of the citizenry.
Massachusetts this week gleefully announced “universal health coverage” or at least a mandate for it.
If all goes as planned, poor people will be offered free or heavily subsidized coverage; those who can afford insurance but refuse to get it will face increasing tax penalties until they obtain coverage; and those already insured will see a modest drop in their premiums.
The measure does not call for new taxes but would require businesses that do not offer insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee.
The cost was put at $316 million in the first year, and more than a $1 billion by the third year, with much of that money coming from federal reimbursements and existing state spending, officials said.
The state's poorest — single adults making $9,500 or less a year — will have access to health coverage with no premiums or deductibles.
Those living at up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $48,000 for a family of three, will be able to get health coverage on a sliding scale, also with no deductibles.
Those living at up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $48,000 for a family of three, will be able to get health coverage on a sliding scale, also with no deductibles.
The plan hinges in part on two key sections: the $295-per-employee business assessment and a so-called "individual mandate," requiring every citizen who can afford it to obtain health insurance or face increasing tax penalties.
One goal of the bill is to protect $385 million pledged by the federal government over each of the next two years if the state can show it is on a path to reducing its number of uninsured.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has threatened to withhold the money if the state does not have a plan up and running by July 1.
The House approved the bill on a 154-2 vote. The Senate endorsed it 37-0.
When they say that poor people will be "offered free or heavily subsidized coverage" I am not sure what they are talking about. The sacred poor already get free healthcare and there is a growing line of bankrupt hospitals to prove this.
Again, alway be wary about those championing the poor.
This is really just an excuse to attack businesses that don't offer health insurance because by some natural law, politicians (and other econo-illiterates) simply have to blame someone else for high healthcare costs.
Read this line again.
The measure does not call for new taxes but would require businesses that do not offer insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee.
That is pure Commi-Speak.
A $295 fee per employee IS A TAX.
This is what politicians do. They scapegoat every issue. Healthcare is expensive so who can we blame? How about Wal-Mart and businesses that don't offer health insurance?
This is pure misdirection. The pols are responsible for high healthcare costs.
Consider the richness of this inanity. You have something (healthcare) that is prohibitively expensive and the demented politicians prescribe that everyone has to run out and buy it.
...requiring every citizen who can afford it to obtain health insurance or face increasing tax penalties.
How the heck is that supposed to lower the cost of healthcare? All it is going to do is throw more dumb money into our inefficient healthcare system. The only thing that will drive costs lower would be the complete opposite - more people opting out of health insurance. Hospitals, doctors, HMOs, and other healthcare providers would be forced to streamline, innovate, and essentially lower their prices.
It would be like the government complaining about the cost of apples and then mandating that everyone eat three a day.
The only way this convoluted logic can hold is by the ridiculous theory that rich uninsured working people are somehow driving up everyone else's health costs.
My regular blog readers know how I despise demand component warfare but if any one group is burdening another, it is the uninsured poor who raise everyone's costs (and taxes). But I don't blame them for anything. I blame the politicians who have over-regulated, over-subsidized, basically neutered the free market's ability to lower healthcare costs for everyone. Essentially, the only growth they have fostered is that of the uninsured demographic. And now these same culprits want to wipe away the reality of that statistic by fiat.
The pols spent decades propagating the notion of health coverage as an entitlement all the while their economic illiteracy kept making it tougher to deliver. Until they (or the public) realize their own supreme complicity, people should expect continued rising costs and more misguided finger pointing.
Oh, and let's not forget high gasoline prices, runaway college tuitions, etc.
With Big Media running this vast conspiracy to keep the public poor and stupid, capitalism (or what's left of it) is the only check on these politicians. Actually in Massachusetts it more precisely described as transportation as people keep fleeing this state that ranks 46th in tax/fee friendliness.
I just googled "massachusetts losing population" and found some nuggets.
The powers-at-be go into full blown spin mode when confronted with the fact that the state has lost population for two years in a row.
From that same link:
...a spokesman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino yesterday dismissed the latest census data.
"The numbers are merely estimates,” said spokesman Seth Gitell. “They fly in the face of what Mayor Menino sees every day when he’s out in the neighborhoods.”
And typical of the Boston Globe and other Big Government - High Tax apologists.
Massachusetts will never be a low-cost state.
There's plenty more spin. Bostonian elitists actually decry that these population numbers are simply "estimates" that undercount their college students and immigrants. I am sure they mean illegals, like no other state has them. Give me a break. It is certainly one thing to argue against more complicated statistics, but here they are arguing with counting.
"I disagree with your statistics" is a transparent and deflective debating tactic favored by Morons everywhere.
I have some more sobering news for the pols. You may be able to impose your Commi healthcare mandate on today's residents and businesses...
... but you can't force them to stay in your state.
In fact, hordes of productive businesses and people have already left.
4 comments:
As to your quote in which you say, "alway be wary about those championing the poor," I say alway be wary about those championing the rich.
Can you provide an example?
I'm not sure if you mean provide an example of a policy that does or the ill effects of doing so.
Somebody who champions the rich with their policies is probably looking to gain something from the rich. Those who champion the poor have little or nothing to gain (at least financially speaking). That is why one should be weary of them, and by "them", I'm thinking specifically of the Republicans.
One can easily see the greed of corporate executives that, even in times of high profit, don't create new jobs, they just increase their perks and salaries. Why should we provide them with more ways to pay less taxes than poor people? I'm not Christian, but that's not what Jesus would do. Economically speaking, 20 people making $50,000 will help the economy much more than a situation in which 20 people are without a job and an executive makes an extra million.
Atul, you did not provide an example, just conspiracy theory rife with economic falsity.
First you assert that everything is about money, those that “champion the rich” supposedly have money to gain whereas poverty advocates are bereft of all financial motives. Do you know how big the poverty industry is? Are you not aware how Jesse Jackson became a multi-millionaire? Or how Ted Kennedy and his ilk have for decades exploited the poor for their own political gain? It would be neat and simple if possible to dichotomize politics and ideology into rich and poor advocates, but the facts won’t allow it. I will, however, present you with counter-arguments.
Did you know that the average donation to the Republican Party is $50?
Did you know that the Democrats, “party of the poor”, won’t provide that datum?
Did you know that the Republican Congress, and President Bush have spent more money on the “poor” than Clinton, both on an absolute and a percentage of the budget basis?
Atul, I guess you are trying to equate “rich” advocates with corporate executives, inveighing against their pay, perks, and lack of job creation. Did you know that most top income bracket earners are self-employed small business owners? Just because Big Media yammers all day about Enron CEOs, etc. that doesn’t make them fairly representative of the dreaded “rich”.
I can only infer that you think the “rich” should justly pay much more in taxes than the “poor”. But your misplaced compassion is not supported by reality. When the rich pay high taxes, they end up paying a smaller percentage of overall taxes. Therefore a tax raise on the rich only shifts a greater burden on the poor.
From a prior post:
I have given many examples in the past of how self-styled do-good socialists actually hurt the poor, their alleged constituency. Consider one of their favorite shibboleths that the "rich don't pay their fair share of taxes".
It's routinely the basis for fighting any lowering of stimulative income taxes. Here is where there logic implodes:
"Back in the good old days (from her point of view) when Jimmy Carter was president and the top statutory tax rate was 70 percent (versus 35 percent today), the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid only 19.7 percent of all federal income taxes. In other words, although their marginal tax rate has fallen by 50 percent, their tax share has almost doubled."
And more empirical evidence from the Brits.
"...where the top income tax rate is 40 percent. But according to British tax data, the top 1 percent of taxpayers there pay just 21 percent of income taxes. The top 5 percent pay 40 percent, and the top 10 percent pay 52 percent. The bottom 50 percent pay 11 percent of all income taxes. In other words, wealthy British pay higher rates... but pay less of the overall tax burden.
That is right, when income brackets are more "progressive", the miserly rich actually have paid a SMALLER share of income tax.
Again, if they want the rich to pay more in taxes, they should be clamoring for a flatter income tax, but somehow they can't work this economic reality into their Class Warfare Manifesto even though it would further their "cause".
Taxing the rich isn’t about what is fair or best for the poor, it’s just reckless business bashing and socialism.
Believing in conspiracy theories and agitprop just doesn't make it so.
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