Fixing America In 500 Words Or
Less
Chapter 35
WHO IS REALLY
SCAMMING WHO?
Lifting the Health Care
Veil
Claims by politicians that raising taxes on the wealthy will cause job losses and hurt small business are completely
untrue. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, when upper-income tax brackets reached as high as 91%, the
majority of working and middle-class American families enjoyed a quality lifestyle on a single wage-earner
income. Almost nobody lacked health care and homelessness was virtually unheard of.
Anyone who has owned a small business knows that the entire "Joe the Plumber" charade is just one great big
lie. Few plumbers or owners of small privately-held companies in America earn a net taxable income over $250,000
per year. Most of them are much smarter than that, re-investing excess profits to grow their business and
otherwise, to avoid paying taxes.
The higher people are taxed on excess income, whether or not they own a business, the more incentive they have to
invest that income back into what will grow the economy and increase jobs. Raising taxes on net taxable income
above $250,000, as President Obama proposed, would serve to increase jobs and stimulate the economy, the exact opposite
of what bought-and-paid-for politicians and right-wing media hacks pretend is true.
If Medicare was expanded into a single-payer universal system, health care could be paid for by taxing everyone the
same percentage rate above the poverty level. This would greatly stimulate the economy by removing a huge financial
burden off employers. It would eliminate employee wage taxes for Medicare and Medicaid and the significant
cost of employer-provided health coverage.
Because income up to the poverty level would be exempt, it would cost the poor almost nothing to have quality health
care. And, it would cost the working and middle-classes considerably less than they pay now, when lower costs for
goods and services are factored in, along with the elimination of the mega-bite of at least 25 cents that insurance and
other unnecessary industry components take from every health care dollar.
There is no rational argument when weighing the current U.S. patchwork health care fiasco against the universal health
systems of France, Germany, Japan and Sweden. Average income citizens in these nations receive much better care
and, the cost to insure everyone is 10% or less of their GNP. The cost to Americans is a staggering 15% of GNP
and, this much greater cost still leaves almost half with inadequate care and one out of six Americans with no health
care at all.
When taxes are lowered on the wealthy, as they have consistently been from Ronald Reagan forward, everybody eventually
loses, including the wealthy. The poor, working and middle classes reach a point where they can no longer afford
to purchase goods and services. This is clearly seen today, in blocks of houses sitting empty, banks and mortgage
companies failing, auto dealerships and major stores closing down and many areas with double-digit unemployment.
Is “Joe the Plumber” just a scam? Is the entire Demo/Publican 2-party system just a scam? Who is really
scamming who? You decide.
NOTES:
1. Link here for documentation, statistics and more health care infromation.
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