Tax cuts are old and outdated -Swedish finance minister.

[Release]

What an odd claim.

I am not saying the US govt pays nothing toward healthcare under things like medicare it pays a lot. However, you don't think the health insurance companies in the USA are run for profit? Or that the customer gets a worse deal because economies of scale aren't employed in the purchasing of drugs?

[Spectral]

I am not saying the US govt pays nothing toward healthcare under things like medicare it pays a lot. However, you don't think the health insurance companies in the USA are run for profit? Or that the customer gets a worse deal because economies of scale aren't employed in the purchasing of drugs?

I'm saying that it's very odd to claim that profit motive limits competition and bloats cost in markets. It's possible that I misread you though.

[PosPosPos]

What does the social infrastructure have anything to do with the safety of amassing said pay, in said context?

By virtue of keeping you alive? I mean, if you aren't alive, I fail to see how your high pay is of any use

Do you imagine that New York is roadless, without trains, without police?

If people like you had your way, then yes.

The only relevance is the taxing rules - I could work remotely, but if i still tax according to the Swedish standard, i get kicked in the stomache due to not being middleclass.

Yeah, the class that benefits most from societal stability is complaining about having to give back the most, proportionally. Party of self-responsibility indeed.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm saying that it's very odd to claim that profit motive limits competition and bloats cost in markets. It's possible that I misread you though.

How is it odd? You conspire with your would-be competitors, and have a backroom deal never to lower prices below a certain threshold, so all parties except the poor sods without money to purchase life-saving medicine win rather than have a price war.

[Deleted]

By virtue of keeping you alive? I mean, if you aren't alive, I fail to see how your high pay is of any use

If people like you had your way, then yes.

Yeah, the class that benefits most from societal stability is complaining about having to give back the most, proportionally. Party of self-responsibility indeed.

Do you live under the delusion of that Sweden has great infrastructure, due to high taxes?

Have you ever set foot, in Sweden?

Note: I am not including the average people. They are accounted for as being there in their status quo - They do not get along on the train of "Very Succesful", because they are busy being "Average" ; You don't seem to grasp this.

Also, being very succesful also includes being able to re-allocate yourself away from the unstable sections ; The poor are relegated to poor neighbourhoods etc.
It's like you failed at the very basics of grasping that Money is privlege.

[Deleted]

Nearly every country has lower taxes.

Pretty much every country. Most first world nations are basically pretty nice places where the primary differences are resultant from human capital, geographic, and cultural differences rather than government policy.

I am not. Regardless of the nation, I'm always highly skeptical that the only solution to any given government deficit is extracting more money from the populace. I'm especially skeptical of this in countries that already have unusually high tax rates.

Probably because you are displaying severe problems of understanding the basic principals of taxes.

[alexw]

I'm saying that it's very odd to claim that profit motive limits competition and bloats cost in markets. It's possible that I misread you though.

If a market is one in which true competition can and does function then the profit motive works. If it doesn't, then all the profit motive does is bloat costs.

[Release]

I'm saying that it's very odd to claim that profit motive limits competition and bloats cost in markets. It's possible that I misread you though.

Health and profit should be exclusive. The healthcare system of a nation should be run entirely for the benefit of the populace as far as that is able to be done.

From an economic point of view wouldn't profit motive only work if there was sufficient entry into the sector? As far as I can see you have four or five big insurance companies in the USA who are all relatively happy with their slice of the pie profit wise so won't compete to drive costs down only compete slightly in how much they raise them?

[Spectral]

If a market is one in which true competition can and does function then the profit motive works. If it doesn't, then all the profit motive does is bloat costs.

While granting that there are inherent limitations to competition in certain chunks of the medical sector, it seems like the real complaint here should be the lack of competition between insurance companies rather than the existence of insurance companies. People's obsession with profit as the driver of American healthcare costs says more about their political preferences than it does about reality; here's one quick list of a dozen factors off the top of my head that drive costs in the United States.

I'd happily add lack of competition in markets resultant from ridiculously complex regulation and unnecessary barriers to entry.

- - - Updated - - -

Health and profit should be exclusive.

That's really silly moralizing. All sorts of brilliant innovation is done by people that want to make a buck off of it.

From an economic point of view wouldn't profit motive only work if there was sufficient entry into the sector? As far as I can see you have four or five big insurance companies in the USA who are all relatively happy with their slice of the pie profit wise so won't compete to drive costs down only compete slightly in how much they raise them?

There are many more insurance companies than that, but yes, your core point here is correct. I agree that barriers to entry in the market should be reduced.

- - - Updated - - -

Probably because you are displaying severe problems of understanding the basic principals of taxes.

Can you elaborate on which principle I've failed to grok?

- - - Updated - - -

How is it odd? You conspire with your would-be competitors, and have a backroom deal never to lower prices below a certain threshold, so all parties except the poor sods without money to purchase life-saving medicine win rather than have a price war.

This complaint is about collusion and anti-trust violations, not about profit motive.

[igualitarist]

The government already gets 50% of what you earn, wants even more and swedes still like it ? No wonder why the stockholm syndrome has this name

If a swede works, let's say, 300 days per year, then half of this (150 days) is given to the government through coercion. So basically you are a slave of the government, congratulations !!

[Release]

Why is it silly moralizing?

We have things like national parks on the back of morals. The NHS is a result of that sort of moralizing. I am not for a moment saying it's perfect or that nobody makes a buck off the NHS they probably shouldn't but the core idea and principle that the health of the people is not up for sale was the reward for the lower classes fighting WW2.

[Spectral]

Why is it silly moralizing?

We have things like national parks on the back of morals. The NHS is a result of that sort of moralizing. I am not for a moment saying it's perfect or that nobody makes a buck off the NHS they probably shouldn't but the core idea and principle that the health of the people is not up for sale was the reward for the lower classes fighting WW2.

This is really just rhetoric though - trillions of dollars are spent on healthcare every year. Insisting that somehow that not enrich people or that it's cool as long as none of it's called "profit" is not at all pragmatic. More to the point, providing strong profit motive for innovation and R+D results in more innovation and R+D, even if someone gets to sound more morally virtuous by saying, "no one should get rich off of cancer - no one!".

- - - Updated - - -

The government already gets 50% of what you want, wants even more and swedes still like it ? No wonder why the stockholm syndrome has this name

If a swede works, let's say, 300 days per year, then half of this (150 days) is given to the government through coercion. So basically you are a slave of the government, congratulations !!

Comparing free people in wealthy, modern, first-world countries nations to "slaves" is really fucking stupid and I wish people would stop. Whether this is claims that people are "slaves" to governments or corporations is equally absurd. People that can use amazingly powerful devices in their pockets to post anti-government rhetoric that beams around the world are not slaves.

[Release]

This is really just rhetoric though - trillions of dollars are spent on healthcare every year. Insisting that somehow that not enrich people or that it's cool as long as none of it's called "profit" is not at all pragmatic. More to the point, providing strong profit motive for innovation and R+D results in more innovation and R+D, even if someone gets to sound more morally virtuous by saying, "no one should get rich off of cancer - no one!".

- - - Updated - - -


Comparing free people in wealthy, modern, first-world countries nations to "slaves" is really fucking stupid and I wish people would stop. Whether this is claims that people are "slaves" to governments or corporations is equally absurd. People that can use amazingly powerful devices in their pockets to post anti-government rhetoric that beams around the world are not slaves.

Innovation and R and D in what area? Part of the taxation for the NHS goes toward research. The NHS also buys drugs from pharmaceutical companies which is more than sufficient impetus to develop more drugs.

It can actually work both ways too in the profit landscape of healthcare if a company develops a new drug that significantly improves or even cures an illness but they are also selling a drug which merely manages that condition long term I wonder if that cure will ever make it to market? Possibly but who knows?

[Spectral]

Innovation and R and D in what area? Part of the taxation for the NHS goes toward research. The NHS also buys drugs from pharmaceutical companies which is more than sufficient impetus to develop more drugs.

British R+D spending is utterly trivial relative to what's spent in the US. The NHS is barely worth considering when it comes to research on a world scale. You seem to be agreeing with me that profit motive is a good thing here though - buying drugs makes someone wealthy and that's a good thing.

It can actually work both ways too in the profit landscape of healthcare if a company develops a new drug that significantly improves or even cures an illness but they are also selling a drug which merely manages that condition long term I wonder if that cure will ever make it to market? Possibly but who knows?

That's the working conspiracy that people always cook up. It ignores a ton of realities about the synergy between public and private research though, among other things.

For a sense of scale on total R+D spending (not just medical), US R+D spending vastly exceeds the entire EU. For biomedical research, Americans are wringing their hands that their research spending dropped to only 45% of total world spending.

[igualitarist]

Comparing free people in wealthy, modern, first-world countries nations to "slaves" is really fucking stupid and I wish people would stop. Whether this is claims that people are "slaves" to governments or corporations is equally absurd. People that can use amazingly powerful devices in their pockets to post anti-government rhetoric that beams around the world are not slaves.

The government gets 50% of the shit you earn, and they can do this because of its coercive force, legitimated by law (corporations don't have this prerrogative, so it's pretty different). It basically means another entity is getting half of your work, and you have no choice because this entity will use the law to force you to give them a massive amount of your income.

It involves appropriation of a huge amount of your work, by another entity, through coercive means. Yeah, that's not slavery, i was exaggerating just to give the picture of how oppresive and ridiculous this system is.

In the past, even a 20% tax burden was enough to make people riot... lol.
Now we accept the government taking half of our shit.

If you work 8 hours/day, then 4 hours is given to politicians and bureaucrats for free, so this exploitative system can be sustained.

[Masark]

Does it concern you at all that no one seems to be able to agree on what a typical fiscal multiplier is?

Stimulus spending to create demand is a fine idea if there's something tolerably useful to spend it on, but the idea of just throwing money at random projects has not been borne out to be definitively sound policy; multipliers appear close enough one that we should focus pretty heavily on whether the money's going to actually useful things rather than just declaring that we should spend more in recessions.

To summarize : "Stimulus spending should be preferentially spent on doing useful things if at all possible".

I'm not sure who disagrees with that.

[Spectral]

To summarize : "Stimulus spending should be preferentially spent on doing useful things if at all possible".

I'm not sure who disagrees with that.

Krugman, for one. His position is literally that we'd be better off spending money on things that are completely useless than not spending the money at all.

To be clear, your summary is not quite what I've said - I'm saying that it's not just that it should preferentially be spent on useful things, but that if you can't find anything useful to spend it on, multiplier effects are insufficiently clear to justify spending. In other words, you'd better have a clear indication that you're buying something useful before I allocate funds.

[Release]

I agree it can have a place as it does drive development and innovation. What am I getting at is simply that net that if your poor you shouldn't be paying thousands of dollars for an operation and getting into huge amounts of crippling debt or your insurance company trying to screw you over. You can have a single payer nationalized system and still have good RAD but it's working more for the individual than the CEO of the insurance company. Profit motive is fine as long as you give everyone the basic right to healthcare.

It is probably a little conspiracy esq and your right the testing of drugs etc would need hundreds of patients, testing and collaboration but when Volkswagen can cook up emissions tests and oil companies actively patent synthetic oil compounds to keep drilling my faith dwindles to what shouldn't be possible.

[Spectral]

I agree it can have a place as it does drive development and innovation. What am I getting at is simply that net that if your poor you shouldn't be paying thousands of dollars for an operation and getting into huge amounts of crippling debt or your insurance company trying to screw you over. You can have a single payer nationalized system and still have good RAD but it's working more for the individual than the CEO of the insurance company. Profit motive is fine as long as you give everyone the basic right to healthcare.

I agree completely. I've long been in favor of a socialized, freely available public system in the United States.

[Release]

The government gets 50% of the shit you earn, and they can do this because of its coercive force, legitimated by law (corporations don't have this prerrogative, so it's pretty different). It basically means another entity is getting half of your work, and you have no choice because this entity will use the law to force you to give them a massive amount of your income.

It involves appropriation of a huge amount of your work, by another entity, through coercive means. Yeah, that's not slavery, i was exaggerating just to give the picture of how oppresive and ridiculous this system is.

In the past, even a 20% tax burden was enough to make people riot... lol.
Now we accept the government taking half of our shit.

If you work 8 hours/day, then 4 hours is given to politicians and bureaucrats for free, so this exploitative system can be sustained.

You are not paying 50% into the ether you realise this? You are paying for things that you use as a citizen such Roads, Police, Environmental Protection, Health if the tax is that high. The list goes on.

Not all your money is well spent and not all of it should be used the way it is but that's just basic human incompetence and corruption rather than the fundamental problems of tax.

[Spectral]

Not all your money is well spent and not all of it should be used the way it is but that's just basic human incompetence and corruption rather than the fundamental problems of tax.

Frankly, I can't even understand the perspective of people that are super bent out of shape about this. OK, there's some waste and some things I'm not super happy about, that's valid. How does that go to being super angry about paying X% in taxes? Why would Y% be cool, but X% is just totally and obviously outrageous? I'm a lot more likely to look at the world around me and think, "am I getting my money's worth"? Well, the obvious answer is that yeah, modern life is fucking awesome and I wouldn't be in a position to earn what I do without having had access to great school and the massive tech sector that exists in no small part because of government investment and institutional stability.

Put another way, I like society and I'm fine with paying for one.