@magnifier661 and I differ politically. Regardless of that, I wholly respect his fire and the fact that he researches topics and is an informed voter. I wish 100% of voting age citizens would do HALF of Mags' research. Best of all, after Trump and Carson go down in flames we have his commitment to vote for Bernie!
This has been an interesting thread to read lol. Somewhere sometime someone in this thread was interested in how policies will get paid for. Here is one idea. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/bernie-sanders-takes-it-t_b_7438808.html
See your rhetoric? Just because they vote Dem doesn't mean "Democrats have them voting".... Republicans are out and proud of saying they don't want everyone to vote.
Dviss 1 brought up a valid much overlooked point in a prior post. I would like to take a moment to expand on his comment about the high cost of medical care for our wounded veterans. I have a long time good friend that was wounded during the Vietnam War. He lives on the coast, but stays at my home when he has a doctor appointment at the nearby VA hospital. He has an appointment almost every month. I have received monthly reports over many years about his ongoing treatments. His wounds were serious enough to result in receiving 100% permanent and total disability benefits for the remainder of his life. He does not work and contribute to the system. He receives a monthly check to live on, which is about $3,000 (only my guess from comments he has made, I never asked how much). Just within the last year, in addition to his monthly doctor visits for tests, he spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from a serious operation. He had a second minor operation and hospital stay of 4 days last month, which was related to the first operation. Not sure how much 18 days in a hospital cost, with a major operation and medicine? But my guess is well over $100,000. I would guess the cost of his war wound in the past year to be at least $150,000, but probably closer to a ¼ $million. Now multiply that by 40+, the number of years he has been on 100% disability. Now visit your local VA hospital and multiply that number by the many hundreds of wounded veterans the hospital takes care of. Now multiply that number by the 153 VA hospitals, 773 outpatient centers, and 260 Vet Centers (counseling) in the US. I am not saying the high cost to care for them is not justified; our wounded veterans deserve the best treatment available. My point is, the reason many of them were wounded was not justified. Too many of them were wounded due to the bad decisions made by misguided politicians with faulty agendas.
More news in the how do we pay for it area. The USA currently (2013 data) pays more per ca pita on health care than countries with socialized health care. http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0006_health-care-oecd
me to, gotta read more before I fully support it though. One thing I dont like is that it doesn't do much to address the current price gouging and out of control financial aid system which contributes, but there are some other ideas also that could work in parallel with this one to help that.
Yes, but there are others, like my dad, that was wounded in Vietnam and his injuries made him 100% disabled (100% vision loss in his right eye, Loss of right leg, Loss of most his teeth, shrapnel wounds throughout his body). He received the monthly "aid" you mentioned, but choose to still work and build new businesses. He paid his taxes and earned a lot of money, which paid back into the system.
I definitely agree that the hedge fund guys shouldn't get benefit of capital gains without keeping it for 18 months. I think that is totally unfair hedge fund managers can defer taxation for their daily trades to qualify in the 20% capital gains tax. That's some serious bullshit because they are making daily fees, but they don't accept them until the capital gain limit.
You are making a valid point that has several sticky issues involved. I would rather not discuss those issues because they are unrelated to the topic. However, I do have a related question that links into other parts of this discussion. Has there ever been a study by the VA or anyone else on the number of veterans that are eligible for 100% disability benefits, but have had productive working careers? My reason to ask is, to see if the number of 100% disability veterans with careers has changed over the years due to the increase or decrease in tax rates? A change in numbers maybe a way to prove that the higher the tax rate, the less incentive there is to work and just live off of social programs. (Actually, my friend did work full time for two decades after war, but has not worked the last two decades because his quality of life was better if he did not work)
I believe the income from the government is "non-taxed," so what ever extra he makes would put him to that specific qualifying tax bracket. I wish my dad did the same as your friend because the last 20 years of his life was cancer, diabetes, open heart surgery and high levels of stress.
Shocking the pictures exist, eh? I watch a lot of c-span and saw W around black people and he seems to like them and they seem to like him.
For as much hate W gets, I genuinely think he is a good man at heart. Now, was he a good president? Ehhhhhh, no not so much.
What's been proposed before has only been a .25 of 1%. Yes a fourth of a percent. http://p2pfoundation.net/Securities_Turnover_Excise_Tax For us, this Securities Turnover Excise Tax (STET) was a revenue source. For example, if we were to instate a .25 percent STET (tax) on everystock, swap, derivative, or other trade today, it would produce – in its firstyear – around $150 billion in revenue. Wall Street would be generatingthe money to fund its own bailout. (For comparison, as best I candetermine, the UK’s STET is .25 percent, and Taiwan just dropped theirs from.60 to .30 percent.)
WTF does that mean? That he was good a pandering? GTFO. We don't and haven't liked him. Trust. Are you gonna take a selfie with the President? Hell yeah. Bush or not.
"Condaleeza Rice?? Sounds like a Mexican dish. We should send her to Mexico and maybe the Mexicans will eat her. White Power!" - Dave Chappelle
I'll be the people of New Orleans think differently. You know when he took 5 days to get there? When he did his flyby and landed in Mobile, AL. You know, the land of the oil fields?
