[Kosh]

And they've been paying for your bull**** hippie good time banana rock-and-roll programs for longer than that.  The top 5% pays on the order of 95% of the tax burden in this country already, and you wanna milk them for more?  If you push much more, they're gonna leave and take their toys with them.  Because as you've pointed out over and over, they have the means to do so.  Then who are you going to milk for the money to run your "good intentions"?

Yep and when you get seriously ill and end up in the emergency, guess who pays for that? Taxpayers. Hospitals don't turn away people with no ability to pay from the ER because there is a law against it.

And you know what, if a public option/socialization/whatever the hell they are doing is going to bring down the cost of healthcare so the middle class can once again actually AFFORD to pay their medical bills, then so be it. To be fair, what grand proposals have the Republican party come up with to make healthcare affordable?

If you push much more, they're gonna leave and take their toys with them.

To where? How do you know they don't already have most of their "toys" hidden away in offshore bank accounts?

[iamzack]

if they actually paid the taxes they're supposed to pay, we'd have lower tax rates and be running less of a deficit.  Unfortunately in the American business climate, playing by the rules is a disadvantage, and you'll be outcompeted by the people who break every rule they can get away with. 

[Mika]

* Glances through the thread in amazement *

I'd like to remind thread participants of one thing that does not go away: not treating fatal diseases causes patients to become disease vectors in some illnesses. Which may allow evolution of even more resistant forms.

[MP-Ryan]

And they've been paying for your bull**** hippie good time banana rock-and-roll programs for longer than that.  The top 5% pays on the order of 95% of the tax burden in this country already, and you wanna milk them for more?  If you push much more, they're gonna leave and take their toys with them.  Because as you've pointed out over and over, they have the means to do so.  Then who are you going to milk for the money to run your "good intentions"?

The top 2% controls 80% of the wealth of the United States.  They aren't leaving anytime soon.

The United States also has one of the lowest corporate tax burdens in the world.

[iamzack]

hey, Liberator!

[Bobboau]

I'd like to remind thread participants of one thing that does not go away: not treating fatal diseases causes patients to become disease vectors in some illnesses. Which may allow evolution of even more resistant forms.

actually treating them causes the resistant strains, if no one was treated there would be nothing for them to become resistant to.

[bobbtmann]

I'd like to remind thread participants of one thing that does not go away: not treating fatal diseases causes patients to become disease vectors in some illnesses. Which may allow evolution of even more resistant forms.

actually treating them causes the resistant strains, if no one was treated there would be nothing for them to become resistant to.

Which means that to have no antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, we have to do away with antibiotics altogether.

Or maybe that's the beauty of private health care. Since only a few wealthy people can afford it, there's less chance of a resistant strain developing. We poor people would die untreated, of course, but its for a good cause. Can't have members of Forbe's List dying. That's bad form.

[Bobboau]

I wasn't making any suggestions, I was just correcting his flawed understanding of evolution.

his point about disease carriers remains valid.

[Liberator]

I have the ultimate solution for health care and the Government can pay for it!

Nanobots.

Develop a series of nanobots that float serenely in our bloodstreams until an infection hits and then they move to eliminate it.  Simoultaneously, they implement continuous microscopic repairs to our organs, circulatory systems and genetic structure, making everyone functionally immortal.  And they would be available to anyone for the low low cost of your soul, your firstborn and right arm.

This facetious attempt at comedy has been brought to you by my boredom and lack of wit!

[General Battuta]

That would actually be a great system and hopefully it will some day happen.

Of course, in our current system, it's likely to be a corporate therapy developed by a biotech start-up, available only to the ultra-wealthy at first - thus allowing them to not only control most of the nation's wealth, but to live forever.

[MP-Ryan]

That would actually be a great system and hopefully it will some day happen.

Of course, in our current system, it's likely to be a corporate therapy developed by a biotech start-up, available only to the ultra-wealthy at first - thus allowing them to not only control most of the nation's wealth, but to live forever.

Tleilaxu, anyone? =)

A cookie to the first person that gets the reference WITHOUT looking it up.

[General Battuta]

Oh, come on, that's easy.

Spoiler:

though they were really silly in the prequels

[SpardaSon21]

And they've been paying for your bull**** hippie good time banana rock-and-roll programs for longer than that.  The top 5% pays on the order of 95% of the tax burden in this country already, and you wanna milk them for more?  If you push much more, they're gonna leave and take their toys with them.  Because as you've pointed out over and over, they have the means to do so.  Then who are you going to milk for the money to run your "good intentions"?

The top 2% controls 80% of the wealth of the United States.  They aren't leaving anytime soon.

The United States also has one of the lowest corporate tax burdens in the world.

Funny, Wikipedia has the U.S. maximum corporate tax rate at 39% federal with state corporate tax rates as high as 12%.  UK's maximum is 28%, Sweden's is a flat percentage set at 26.3%, Ireland is at 12.5%, and it says China's is at 25%, but that lacks a citation.  Even Venezuela and Bolivia have lower corporate tax rates with the maximums at 34% and 25% respectively.

Source.

On that list only Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Saudi Arabia, and Syria have higher maximum corporate tax rates than the United States.

Oh, and GB, only a foolish biotech company would sell immortality to a very small market.  I'm sure they could make more money by having a large volume of customers, especially if said immortality requires some upkeep every few years or you start aging.

[General Battuta]

It'd probably end up that way eventually, but not for quite a while, assuming that the therapy had to be individually tailored and relied on a lot of visits to the doctor.

[SpardaSon21]

Well, it all depends on how much money can be made off it, especially once the patent runs out, and it would be a lot.  Henry Ford managed to make a killing selling a product everyone at that time thought was an exclusive province of the wealthy.

[General Battuta]

Completely different situation, though. If the supply is bottlenecked, either by production factors or by the need for highly trained specialists and technicians to attend to each to each patient, then the price will skyrocket.

[MP-Ryan]

Funny, Wikipedia has the U.S. maximum corporate tax rate at 39% federal with state corporate tax rates as high as 12%.  UK's maximum is 28%, Sweden's is a flat percentage set at 26.3%, Ireland is at 12.5%, and it says China's is at 25%, but that lacks a citation.  Even Venezuela and Bolivia have lower corporate tax rates with the maximums at 34% and 25% respectively.

Source.

On that list only Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Saudi Arabia, and Syria have higher maximum corporate tax rates than the United States.

Tax burdens and tax rates are two separate phenomena.  The corporate tax rate in the US is one of the highest; the corporate tax burden is one of the lowest.

[SpardaSon21]

So you're saying that U.S. corporations are making so much money that they make more money than the corporations in the rest of the world even after the higher tax rates are taken into account?  And do you want to raise tax rates to compensate for this "shortcoming"?

[Scotty]

I thought she meant that the corporate sector pays a smaller percentage of the total tax income collected by the government than other countries.

[General Battuta]

No and no. Tax burden is something different.

This may not actually be very helpful, but this is a Wikipedia article on the topic.

In short, the corporate taxes are actually passed on to workers and consumers, rather than being paid by the corporation and stopping there.