Taking $540 billion out of the private sector and turning it over to the government? That’s not a wealth tax. It’s a tax on all of us. It may hit the wealthy more directly than it hits the rest of us, but that’s small comfort.
WSJ item:
House Health Bill Relies on Wealth Tax
House Democrats plan to pay for their health-care legislation with a big tax increase on wealthy households, aiming to raise $540 billion over the next decade.
NYT headline: “President Pushes Health Plan as an Economic Boon“
Sure. And if I tore my house down and sold the lumber and other materials, that would be a good way for me to earn some extra income. Really, this stuff is worth money. There are some old oak 4x4s, for example, that woodworkers would love to have.
I didn’t know a national politician could be capable of writing something this good. Bob Dole had a sharp wit, and also did heroic work in saving our country from nationalized health care in the 90s. But this guy might be able to top Dole on both counts. And he’s from my home state, too.
I’ll probably find some things about Thaddeus G. McCotter that I don’t like, but for now I am just enjoying the fact that an elected politician can do this.
Oh, and he has also re-motivated me to learn Russian well enough to read Dostoevsky in the original. I’ve been spending a few minutes each evening reading some Tolstoi — in a bilingual edition because I need the help of the translation much of the time. In other words, I have a long ways to go. But after reading McCotter I don’t know if I can wait for that before reading more about the Grand Inquisitor.
Well, yes, I imagine he is. In the same category:
“Obama appears open to some health insurance mandates” (LA Times headline)
Fox news headline: “Sotomayor’s Gun Control Positions Could Prompt Conservative Backlash.”
Backlash? Backlash?? I think the word the writer is groping for is “opposition.”
In the same article:
Such a line of attack could prove more effective than efforts to define Sotomayor as pro-abortion, efforts that essentially grasp at straws. Sotomayor’s record on that hot-button issue reveals instances in which she has ruled against an abortion rights group and in favor of anti-abortion protesters, making her hard to pigeonhole.
Grasp at straws?
Fox seems to have hired an idiom-challenged reporter to write these things.
But that last sentence is a fascinating one. It suggests that perhaps Soutomayor wasn’t basing her ruling on the identify of the group before her, but was basing it on the law, let the chips fall where they will.
Will the Obama administration be willing to overlook an indiscretion like that?
There’s that word again. Comprehensive. No wonder I woke up in the middle of the night and haven’t got back to sleep. It’s a word to strike cold terror into the stoutest of hearts.
Obama is talking about comprehensive health care reform as if “comprehensive” is a goal compatible with a free people and democratic government:
The problems in our health care system didn’t emerge over night, we’ve debated what to do about them for decades, but too often efforts at comprehensive reform have fallen apart due to special-interest lobbying and petty politics and the failure of all sides to come together.
And in case anybody thinks he just says words without knowing what he means, he added those sinister words about “the failure of all sides to come together.” Yes, he said “all.”
So much for human rights and diversity.
I presume it has happened in the movies if not in real life: The parents scrimp and save to send the kid to college. They work extra jobs on weekends and evenings so he can get through the pre-med program. Then, instead of making them proud, he drops out and rejects their ways by becoming a flower child.
Or it could happen in both the movies and in real life. Christopher McCandless graduated from college but rejected his parents’ materialistic ways. He gave the rest of his educational savings ($25K) to Oxfam and became a nomad, communing with nature and giving his parents no clue as to where he had gone. He wandered from California to South Dakota to Alaska, where he died of starvation and had the movie “Into the Wild” made from his story.
Some parents will be angry at an ungrateful child like that. Some will be manipulative and controlling. Some will handle it with loving resignation.
But what if the parent is Uncle Sam? In that case there will be no loving resignation. There WILL be anger and manipulation. The parent will NOT relinquish control, because the parent has the tax system and prison system on his side.
This type of parenthood is made clear from a letter in today’s WSJ, about doctors who are opting out of the system of government health care by refusing to take any Medicare patients. Henry A. Kolesnik from Tulsa, Oklahoma wrote:
I think it is a doctor’s right to opt out from Medicare by turning away patients, provided that he can prove that his education and training was not received at any insititution that was funded or subsized by taxpayer dollars.
Robert Kugel of Burlingame, California explains how it will be done:
If more physicians become like Marc Siegel and opt out of government insurance plans, look for state and federal governments to impose “opt-out fees” on the grounds that “it’s only fair.” Doctors will be charged a tax on their services (and pass it on to patients). The tax probably will start out at a modest level and then ratchet up to 100% or more, with the increases defended as a better alternative to rationing health care “for those that aren’t wealthy enough to pay the tax.” Such a tax will allow governments to deny that they are coercing doctors to stay in the system, while accomplishing that very goal.
And when Uncle Sam is the parent, he can also point out how kind he was to make it possible for the children to go to college in the first place — something the parents could never have done if he hadn’t taken their money to make it possible.
I continue be amazed at people who have so little sense of self-preservation as not to understand the implications of bank bailouts and manufacturing bailouts for health-care bailouts. But it was heartening to see in today’s WSJ that at least one person besides myself does understand. It was Bruce Anderson, a letter writer:
As a staunch conservative, I say hooray for President Obama and his plan to pick up GM’s warranty obligations. When people get a taste of standing in a post office-quality line to argue with a government clerk over whether their dead transmission was caused by wear and tear and, thus, is not covered by Mr. GoodGovernmentWrench, then they might get an inkling of what government-run health care is going to look like. Better to learn this lesson fighting over brake pads than over a kidney.
I see that President Obama has decided to impose regime change on General Motors. He is overthrowing the government of GM and is going to replace it, with, well, who knows?
I hope he is better at picking people to head a giant multinational corporation than he is at picking people to run the Treasury Department. Like maybe he’ll be able to find somebody who can at least do TurboTax.
Unless he proves to be very good at running an auto company, I presume this move will cool the ardor of people for a bailout of our health care system. (It’s the concept usually referred to as universal health care.) Our President seems to take the position that providing money means he gets to call the shots. Actually, most people who provide money in any context will take that position, but he’s considerably less subtle about it than most. Will he insist on regime change in unhealthy households. Will he pick replacement spouses where needed? Will he insist on picking the fetuses that are allowed to come off the production line?
I presume he’s not going to be a completely hands-on executive at GM, and that he will let others call the day-to-day shots except in cases where there is some political advantage to be had by intervening directly. But how is he going to decide who gets to make these day-to-day decisions. Aside from TurboTax skills, what will he look for in a job applicant? Is he likely to allow a critic of the administration to run the company? Will loyalty to the administration be a factor?
There are the same dangers as when the United States helped overthrow the governments of Vietnam, or Iran, or any other country. The guys he puts in place are then his responsibility. If he allows a tinhorn dictator to come to power, that person becomes Obama’s tinhorn dictator.
And what are the other auto companies going to do now that one of their main competitors is now the United States government? Where do they go to find a government that will ensure that they all play by the same rules, now that Obama administration has a vested interest in the success of its protege?
[Now posted at the Conservative community on LiveJournal, too.]
While looking for something else on the White House web site, I found the following:
On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes — government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules.
Part of that is true. I’ve heard many people propose higher taxes for government-run health care. But I’ve never, ever heard anyone, not even the laissez-faire libertarians, suggest that we allow insurance companies to operate without rules. Maybe someone, somewhere, in a dorm room littered with pizza and beer bottles, has come up with that idea. But it’s simply not true that this is one of the extremes that are offered to the American people.
Health insurance is already highly regulated. That doesn’t mean improvements couldn’t be made in the regulatory system. But it’s hard to have a good national discussion about this when the discussion leader starts off with nonsense.