April is the Cruelest Month

[catherine]

My understanding was that Medicare will be a much harder fix than Social Security.

Yeah, thanks to the profit-motive.

Did you see 60 minutes last night? I hate to bite the hand that feeds me, but well before I saw 60 minutes I saw first hand how everyone with their hands in the action has an incentive to keep the price of drugs high--except the people who need them.. and they're the ones who are paying for them--through their taxes and through high out-of-pocket copays, coinsurances, and deductibles.

[Alan]

but that is why I could never be a conservative. Assuming everyone that needs help is a leech and has made poor choices is evil.

You're putting words in my mouth that I haven't said. Many people fail to adequately plan for their own needs because they have been promised safety nets that over the course of time become unsustainable. That doesn't make them leeches, I'd prefer to think they're just gullible. And to frame this discussion as an either/or, either we care for everyone's needs or everyone suffers is disingenuous. There is a middle ground where appropriate reforms can ensure that the truly needy are assisted without placing the programs available to them in jeopardy. That's the sort of solution Paul Ryan has always envisioned while taking undue heat from the opposition.

[ApatheticNoMore]

You're putting words in my mouth that I haven't said. Many people fail to adequately plan for their own needs because they have been promised safety nets that over the course of time become unsustainable.

noone thinks like that, like real people don't think like that ok. They do realize what an incredible strain it is to plan in a world that makes very little sense. That has always seemed very near insane. I have always all my life been trying to plan for worst case scenarios, but I still suck at it. The things I do to avoid worst case scenarios sometimes land me in them! That other kind of Oedipus complex where you try to avoid a bad fate and run right into it anyway. Basically over a lifetime it's all: we plan, goddess laughs!

Again and again and again, long past the point where you have learned humility, where you have tried to learn from your mistakes (the thing is the amount of mistakes in the world is infinite so if we don't make the same ones, we make new ones), where ..

And the people goddess may not laugh at seems to have very little to do with such perfect use of the intelligence to foresee the future perfectly, half the time it comes down to a bunch of crap like their parents gave them a lot of help in life or something. Often it's luck. I've been lucky at times too, sometimes even the most destitute have had their day in the sun once (even if only when they were kids), but it can't always be held on to even despite trying.

[Alan]

noone thinks like that, like real people don't think like that ok.

Two of my four brothers, my brother in law, my wife's aunt and all her children (just to name a few of my extended family) think that way. But to be fair, I never considered the possibility they may not be real people. that would actually explain a lot.

[Teacher Terry]

WE would have the $ to pay for our needed programs if we were not giving huge tax breaks to the rich. I knew the second they passed it that then they would be crying that we can't afford to help seniors so let them starve or die because they can't afford their medications. No one can afford to self-pay their medical bills except for the very wealthy. My DIL just had a million dollar brain surgery that without insurance she would have died. They would not even see her until she could prove she had insurance.

[Alan]

WE would have the $ to pay for our needed programs if we were not giving huge tax breaks to the rich.

So this has only been a problem since January? I could have sworn it was much longer.

[Teacher Terry]

The government keeps robbing SS to pay for other things and has done this for years.

[Alan]

The government keeps robbing SS to pay for other things and has done this for years.

I believe they're now operating off the interest their surplus generates in Treasury Bills, the problem is that they'll soon need more and will need to sell of the notes. Taxing those with more money than you won't help that problem.

[LDAHL]

WE would have the $ to pay for our needed programs if we were not giving huge tax breaks to the rich.

I hear that a lot, but is it really true? Are there truly enough of the rich available to provide us with all our “needed programs”?

Even the vaunted welfare states of Europe need to tax the small fry at a pretty good clip to make it work.

[Alan]

Even the vaunted welfare states of Europe need to tax the small fry at a pretty good clip to make it work.

I understand that Finland has elected not to proceed with their pilot Universal Income scheme, something about not being able to afford it even with their average personal tax rate of just over 50%, which makes me wonder if the former would not be necessary without the latter.