5 ms·

Industry doesn't need a "helping hand". It needs a free hand and a level playing field. If government wants to offer a helping hand, how about helping to addres

Industry doesn't need a "helping hand". It needs a free hand and a level playing field. If government wants to offer a helping hand, how about helping to address the rampant industrial espionage on the part of our trading partners.

Frondo 10y ago
Agreed. Businesses don't. People do. Level the playing field for businesses, access to education, health care, and universal basic income for people.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year. Current tax collection collects about 1.5 trillion. If you tax millionaires at 100% you'd see maybe another trillion. Cut defense by 100% and you'd save 600 billion. With the high taxes required in order to implement your ideas I don't think businesses would grow and its possible a great many would fail.
  - IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago
    But in an economy one side's costs are people's income. It's an economy, not a household. Money circulates and performs work when it does, like water. What kinds of mills should it drive? A good health care system seems to me like a good candidate, since it fulfills the most basic needs of humans after food, warmth and shelter. Also, you assume "all other things remaining equal", which is unlikely.
  - gnaritas 10y ago
    > Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year. Isn't that assuming current costs for care don't change? Seems a bad assumption since medicare for all would cost less than health insurance for all and be a much more efficient and thus less overhead process while simplifying the system across the board for doctors and hospitals greatly reducing the costs to them by virtually eliminating the huge hassle that is medical billing these days.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      Indeed it did. Study is here: http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-payer-health-care-plan-effect-national-health-expenditures-and-federal-and-private-spending http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay...
  - rgbrenner 10y ago
    2017 US tax revenue: 3.6 trillion http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an...
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      My mistake I was only counting funds that can be spent in a discretionary manner. If you wish to abolish social security and other programs like it you can certainly get more. The study is here[0], even accounting for Sanders proposed major tax increases on the wealthy and middle class he still fails to fund it by over 50 percent, and private expenditures would continue to climb. Then you have to consider the costs of "free" education and the multitude of other increased social programs. Sorry it's a fairy tale, him and people like him are lying to get your vote. [0]http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-payer-health-care-plan-effect-national-health-expenditures-and-federal-and-private-spending http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay...
      - rgbrenner 10y ago
        I think you're reading more into my post than I intended. I'm just saying current federal tax revenue is 3.6T.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - akiselev 10y ago
    > Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year. In 2016, Medicare cost a total of $588 billion [1], covering over 55 million people [2]. The vast majority of those people are over the age of 65 and on average, over 50% of a person's lifetime healthcare costs will be paid after the age of 65 [3]. It would cost over $3 trillion to have Medicare for all if every person alive in the United States was over 65 years old, which is obviously wrong. The real cost would be closer to $1.5 trillion if the US just paid private insurance companies to cover everybody. > Current tax collection collects about 1.5 trillion. No, 2016 tax collections for just the Federal government were $3.3 trillion [1]. The combined total of federal, state, and local is estimated to be at least twice that. > If you tax millionaires at 100% you'd see maybe another trillion. A 15-35% tax rate on millionaires yields at least $500 billion a year in income tax revenue [4]. Increasing capital gains taxes to 100% alone would net almost $2 trillion a year. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/graphic/52408-budgetoverall.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-... [2] https://blog.medicare.gov/2015/07/27/medicare-and-medicaid-50-year-anniversary/ https://blog.medicare.gov/2015/07/27/medicare-and-medicaid-5... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/ [4] https://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-Rates-and-Tax-Shares https://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-...
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      >No, 2016 tax collections for just the Federal government were $3.3 trillion [1]. The combined total of federal, state, and local is estimated to be at least twice that. I was unclear. The 2016 budget had 1.1 trillion in discretionary spending and 2.4 trillion in mandatory spending.[1] If you stopped paying the national debt, skipped out on our UN and NATO obligations, and ended social security as well as many other social programs then you have the number you quoted. Still in 2016 we borrowed over 500 billion as we can't afford to meet our current obligations as is. State and local governments are cash strapped for the most part. For many existing taxes don't even cover their current expenditures. You can't simply divert all of those funds to healthcare, massive cuts to services would have to be included. >Increasing capital gains taxes to 100% alone would net almost $2 trillion a year. An increase of even half that would turn the United States into a third world nation overnight as huge amounts of capital flees our unreasonable tax system. As for the rest of it the economists and policy analysts at the Urban Institute disagree with your assessment: http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-payer-health-care-plan-effect-national-health-expenditures-and-federal-and-private-spending http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay... [1]http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/119/2016 http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/119/2016
  - intrasight 10y ago
    >Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year This is accurate I think. Canada spends $230 billion per year and has 1/10th the population. $6,299 per Canadian in 2016. BUT. You get to SUBTRACT our current healthcare spending $3 trillion - $3.35 trillion = $750 billion saved. That would have us closer to Canadian spend per person.
tobltobs 10y ago
> how about helping to address the rampant industrial espionage on the part of our trading partners. That sounds like a Trump Tweet. Are there any facts supporting the theory that the US is more of a victim than everybody else?
- Fej 10y ago
  It's widely known that as products are manufactured in China, the manufacturers copy the schematics and make the same product more cheaply as a generic. Sometimes they straight-up steal the molds. Sometimes they blatantly ape other manufacturers (see older Xiaomi phones - obviously rip-offs of iPhone software look & feel - for that reason, they kept them in the Chinese market, since Apple would sue anywhere else). Is the US more of a victim than any other country? Well, insofar as US businesses manufacture more in China by volume than anyone else, yes. Although not on a case-by-case basis - a Canadian company is just as much a victim as any American one.
  - gnaritas 10y ago
    Patents are a protection racket that prevent progress; if they can make a generic version cheaper, good, that's how it should be. If people prefer the genuine thing, they'll buy it. Patent holders aren't the victims, they're the mob crying about being prevented from using their monopoly to keep prices high.
    - krapht 10y ago
      Here's a study you might be interested in reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/05/do-patents-help-or-hinder-innovation/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/05/do-patents-help-or-hi...
      - gnaritas 10y ago
        Seems to agree with me, however, I don't need a study to know that legally preventing people from copying other people, prevents all of those other people from making progress. Patents make copying into theft, but copying is not theft. The reason we have patents is not to grant patent holders a monopoly, it's to ensure society doesn't lose knowledge that might otherwise be locked up in trade secrets; granting patent holders a limited monopoly is not the goal, it is the means by which the goal is achieved, making secrets public knowledge. The system has however gotten out of hand and patents are now collected and used as legal weapons against competitors to prevent competition. Software patents in particular, should not exist, and are rarely enforced because virtually everyone violates software patents on a daily basis as the patent office is too ignorant to know what should and should not be patent-able.
debacle 10y ago
You also have regulatory arbitrage, which is getting better, but is still massive.
IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago
> Industry doesn't need a "helping hand". Like Silicon Valley for example, the example how private enterprise and capital created one of the greatest centers of innovation on the planet! Well.. except, it wasn't actually private enterprise that laid the foundations but unlimited spending of government during WWII on R&D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo As well as many other industries that got a big boos from the R&D done during that period, and during the cold war afterwards, like the space race. But sure, rich people would surely have done all of that? Except that those who finance businesses and R&D isn't so much for ventures into the uncertain and unknown, they much prefer to have calculable risks.

Frondo 10y ago

Agreed. Businesses don't. People do. Level the playing field for businesses, access to education, health care, and universal basic income for people.

cmdrfred 10y ago
Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year. Current tax collection collects about 1.5 trillion. If you tax millionaires at 100% you'd see maybe another trillion. Cut defense by 100% and you'd save 600 billion. With the high taxes required in order to implement your ideas I don't think businesses would grow and its possible a great many would fail.
- IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago
  But in an economy one side's costs are people's income. It's an economy, not a household. Money circulates and performs work when it does, like water. What kinds of mills should it drive? A good health care system seems to me like a good candidate, since it fulfills the most basic needs of humans after food, warmth and shelter. Also, you assume "all other things remaining equal", which is unlikely.
- gnaritas 10y ago
  > Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year. Isn't that assuming current costs for care don't change? Seems a bad assumption since medicare for all would cost less than health insurance for all and be a much more efficient and thus less overhead process while simplifying the system across the board for doctors and hospitals greatly reducing the costs to them by virtually eliminating the huge hassle that is medical billing these days.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Indeed it did. Study is here: http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-payer-health-care-plan-effect-national-health-expenditures-and-federal-and-private-spending http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay...
- rgbrenner 10y ago
  2017 US tax revenue: 3.6 trillion http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-and-outlay-summary http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an...
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    My mistake I was only counting funds that can be spent in a discretionary manner. If you wish to abolish social security and other programs like it you can certainly get more. The study is here[0], even accounting for Sanders proposed major tax increases on the wealthy and middle class he still fails to fund it by over 50 percent, and private expenditures would continue to climb. Then you have to consider the costs of "free" education and the multitude of other increased social programs. Sorry it's a fairy tale, him and people like him are lying to get your vote. [0]http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-payer-health-care-plan-effect-national-health-expenditures-and-federal-and-private-spending http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay...
    - rgbrenner 10y ago
      I think you're reading more into my post than I intended. I'm just saying current federal tax revenue is 3.6T.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- akiselev 10y ago
  > Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year. In 2016, Medicare cost a total of $588 billion [1], covering over 55 million people [2]. The vast majority of those people are over the age of 65 and on average, over 50% of a person's lifetime healthcare costs will be paid after the age of 65 [3]. It would cost over $3 trillion to have Medicare for all if every person alive in the United States was over 65 years old, which is obviously wrong. The real cost would be closer to $1.5 trillion if the US just paid private insurance companies to cover everybody. > Current tax collection collects about 1.5 trillion. No, 2016 tax collections for just the Federal government were $3.3 trillion [1]. The combined total of federal, state, and local is estimated to be at least twice that. > If you tax millionaires at 100% you'd see maybe another trillion. A 15-35% tax rate on millionaires yields at least $500 billion a year in income tax revenue [4]. Increasing capital gains taxes to 100% alone would net almost $2 trillion a year. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/graphic/52408-budgetoverall.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-... [2] https://blog.medicare.gov/2015/07/27/medicare-and-medicaid-50-year-anniversary/ https://blog.medicare.gov/2015/07/27/medicare-and-medicaid-5... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/ [4] https://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-Rates-and-Tax-Shares https://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-...
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    >No, 2016 tax collections for just the Federal government were $3.3 trillion [1]. The combined total of federal, state, and local is estimated to be at least twice that. I was unclear. The 2016 budget had 1.1 trillion in discretionary spending and 2.4 trillion in mandatory spending.[1] If you stopped paying the national debt, skipped out on our UN and NATO obligations, and ended social security as well as many other social programs then you have the number you quoted. Still in 2016 we borrowed over 500 billion as we can't afford to meet our current obligations as is. State and local governments are cash strapped for the most part. For many existing taxes don't even cover their current expenditures. You can't simply divert all of those funds to healthcare, massive cuts to services would have to be included. >Increasing capital gains taxes to 100% alone would net almost $2 trillion a year. An increase of even half that would turn the United States into a third world nation overnight as huge amounts of capital flees our unreasonable tax system. As for the rest of it the economists and policy analysts at the Urban Institute disagree with your assessment: http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-payer-health-care-plan-effect-national-health-expenditures-and-federal-and-private-spending http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay... [1]http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/119/2016 http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/119/2016
- intrasight 10y ago
  >Medicare for all would cost 2.5 - 3 trillion a year This is accurate I think. Canada spends $230 billion per year and has 1/10th the population. $6,299 per Canadian in 2016. BUT. You get to SUBTRACT our current healthcare spending $3 trillion - $3.35 trillion = $750 billion saved. That would have us closer to Canadian spend per person.

tobltobs 10y ago

> how about helping to address the rampant industrial espionage on the part of our trading partners. That sounds like a Trump Tweet. Are there any facts supporting the theory that the US is more of a victim than everybody else?

Fej 10y ago
It's widely known that as products are manufactured in China, the manufacturers copy the schematics and make the same product more cheaply as a generic. Sometimes they straight-up steal the molds. Sometimes they blatantly ape other manufacturers (see older Xiaomi phones - obviously rip-offs of iPhone software look & feel - for that reason, they kept them in the Chinese market, since Apple would sue anywhere else). Is the US more of a victim than any other country? Well, insofar as US businesses manufacture more in China by volume than anyone else, yes. Although not on a case-by-case basis - a Canadian company is just as much a victim as any American one.
- gnaritas 10y ago
  Patents are a protection racket that prevent progress; if they can make a generic version cheaper, good, that's how it should be. If people prefer the genuine thing, they'll buy it. Patent holders aren't the victims, they're the mob crying about being prevented from using their monopoly to keep prices high.
  - krapht 10y ago
    Here's a study you might be interested in reading: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/05/do-patents-help-or-hinder-innovation/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/05/do-patents-help-or-hi...
    - gnaritas 10y ago
      Seems to agree with me, however, I don't need a study to know that legally preventing people from copying other people, prevents all of those other people from making progress. Patents make copying into theft, but copying is not theft. The reason we have patents is not to grant patent holders a monopoly, it's to ensure society doesn't lose knowledge that might otherwise be locked up in trade secrets; granting patent holders a limited monopoly is not the goal, it is the means by which the goal is achieved, making secrets public knowledge. The system has however gotten out of hand and patents are now collected and used as legal weapons against competitors to prevent competition. Software patents in particular, should not exist, and are rarely enforced because virtually everyone violates software patents on a daily basis as the patent office is too ignorant to know what should and should not be patent-able.

debacle 10y ago

You also have regulatory arbitrage, which is getting better, but is still massive.

IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago

> Industry doesn't need a "helping hand". Like Silicon Valley for example, the example how private enterprise and capital created one of the greatest centers of innovation on the planet! Well.. except, it wasn't actually private enterprise that laid the foundations but unlimited spending of government during WWII on R&D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo As well as many other industries that got a big boos from the R&D done during that period, and during the cold war afterwards, like the space race. But sure, rich people would surely have done all of that? Except that those who finance businesses and R&D isn't so much for ventures into the uncertain and unknown, they much prefer to have calculable risks.