Elizabeth Warren tries some math on Medicare for All…
…and the results are not good:
Elizabeth Warren has come up with a plan to pay for her “Medicare For All” proposal, which has a price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars. Part of the plan is a “wealth tax,” which means taxing unrealized capital gains at ordinary income rates. Combined with other elements of her plan, this implies that unrealized capital gains will be taxed at more than 50%. …
I’ll tell you this, though: lawyers are a core constituency of the Democratic Party, and nearly every lawyer in the U.S. (along with many others, of course) tolerates paying 50% marginal tax rates on his or her income only because a chunk of that income is sheltered in 401(k)s. The 401(k) and the house are where the vast majority of high income earners accumulate wealth. Warren’s proposal essentially destroys the ability to build wealth via retirement savings. This may be OK with those who are already rich, like Elizabeth Warren, but it will be anathema to younger people who are trying to become wealthy.
That applies to a lot of people, but let’s stay with lawyers for now, the group I know best. Assessing a “wealth tax” that invades previously tax-free 401(k)s at a 50%+ rate will destroy Warren’s support in what has been, in recent years, a core Democratic Party constituency. “Wall Street,” i.e. the financial industry, has already warned that if Warren is the Democrats’ nominee, it will not support her. That in itself is seismic; no industry has ever supported a politician to the extent that Wall Street supported Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the loss of support from America’s lawyers might be even more deadly to the Democratic Party.
Economist Jonathan Gruber famously attributed the passage of Obamacare to “the stupidity of the American voter.” The MIT professor’s assessment of the electorate’s collective intelligence is clearly shared by Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren if she expects us to take her “Medicare for All” funding plan seriously. She wants us to believe that she can expand a program already verging on bankruptcy — Medicare for the elderly will go broke in 2026 according to the most recent Trustees report — to cover every American without raising middle-class taxes…
You are by now anxious to know where the extra $20.5 trillion is going to come from. Warren’s answer to that question may cause your BS detector to go off. Her plan repeatedly claims that this stupendous amount of money includes “not one penny in middle-class tax increases.” There will, of course, be taxes on the Left’s designated villains, including “the financial sector, large corporations and the top 1 percent of individuals.” There will be additional taxes paid by “ultra-millionaires and billionaires,” as well as an additional employer tax the plan styles a “new Employer Medicare Contribution.” It goes without saying, of course, that there will be a substantial cut in what she calls the “military slush fund.”
Part of the $20.5 trillion will allegedly come from “savings.” The savings scheme that will get your attention involves the loss of your employer health insurance. It’s going away whether you like it or not. How will that save money? “As the experts I asked to evaluate my plan noted, private insurers had administrative costs of 12% of premiums collected in 2017, while Medicare kept its administrative costs down to 2.3%.” This is fiction. Medicare’s overhead costs aren’t lower. They are just hidden in the budgets of other agencies such as the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and HHS. The Warren plan also double-counts certain savings, as Charles Blahous of the Manhattan Institute writes:
These proposals are always complex, and evaluating them takes a level of tax and financial knowledge most people lack (I certainly lack it). Warren relies on this, and on the fact that she can easily locate some experts to parrot the pro-Warren line. But some things are clear and reflect what used to be known as “common sense” because it used to be quite common: health care is expensive, there is no free lunch, and there is a finite amount of money you can squeeze from the very wealthy.
[ADDENDUM: I have previously discussed the problem of valuing unrealized gains here.]
According to National Review, the egregious Gruber received nearly six million dollars in taxpayer-funded healthcare-consulting fees several years ago leading up to the disastrous roll-out of Obamacare. Furthermore, the Obama administration squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on the badly-designed website.
Democrats don’t do reality economics anymore. I am so old I can remember when they were able to consider the results of policy. When I was in the medical association some of the best ideas about health care came from California Democrats. That was, of course, many years ago. Unions ran their own health plans, often times. They knew exactly the costs and benefits.
Elizabeth Warren could feed a picnic gathering of many thousands if properly cleaned, spitted, roasted and portioned out; provided the many thousands all brought their own potato salad, baked beans and coleslaw.
Warren will not be the Dem 2020 nominee.
I now call her Thin Lizzie.
LeClerc, let’s not be too hasty about who will be nominated. These are Democrats we’re talking about.
And as to Warren’s plan, of course banks and large corporations don’t employ middle-class people. No, sirree.
As to the high costs of healthcare in America compared to the socialist schemes in places like the UK, I happily declare that we in America are worth it.
A tax on assets would have to be apportioned among the states to pass constitutional muster.. or it would if we had an appellate judiciary with integrity.
The proposals are ‘complex’ because if they were simple, people would understand, in a rough sort of way, what it would cost them. And Lizzie is determined they not understand that.
Elizabeth Warren tries some meth on Medicare for All. Crystal clarity achieved.
I also lack the deep knowledge to fully explain Warren’s disaster of a plan, but I think it was Mollie Hemingway who explained it recently in a way that most of we deplorables can understand. If we took all of the money from every bank in the country and then tripled that amount, then we’d have enough to pay for Warren’s plan.
and there is a finite amount of money you can squeeze from the very wealthy.
Interest and dividend income per capita is currently about $9,400 per annum in the populace at large. People living in households with > $20,000 in interest and dividend income per capita sum to < 10% of the population and skew elderly.
If we took all of the money from every bank in the country and then tripled that amount, then we’d have enough to pay for Warren’s plan.
Personal income in this country currently sums to $18.7 tn per year, of which perhaps $15.5 tn can be located by tax collectors. Currently, gross output in the ‘health care and social assistance’ sector is $2.5 tn, of which about $500 bn consists of out-of-pocket charges. So, a comprehensive insurance plan would require an assessment of 13% on discoverable personal income (= 2/15.5) for starters, and that’s assuming you have cost control mechanisms in place. (High deductibles, &c).
“not one penny in middle-class tax increases.”
Agree. It will take hundreds of thousands of pennies in middle-class tax increases to fund this.
There ain’t enough money to make it work? The numbers don’t add up? So what??
Of course the numbers look bad. That’s by design. The white man makes the numbers say whatever he wants. It’s *racism*, pure and simple.
Math is white supremacy, didn’t you know that?
“Mathematics Itself Operates As Whiteness”: University of Illinois Professor Triggers Controversy In Calling For Professors To Recognize Math As Privilege
https://www.google.com/amp/s/jonathanturley.org/2017/10/26/mathematics-itself-operates-as-whiteness-university-of-illinois-professor-triggers-controversy-in-calling-for-professors-to-recognize-math-as-privilege/amp/
Don’t let whitey fool you with official-looking facts and figures that say we can’t afford *justice*.
We as non-white people deserve our heart’s desire; and when we, as people of color, set our minds to it we can do *anything*.
HEY HEY
HO HO
WHITE SUPREMACY’S
GOT TO GO
Just how do you place a $$ amount on something that is “unrealized”? Someone explain it to me. Sounds like a lot of slight of hand hocus pocus.
LYNN HARGROVE:
I previously discussed that problem at some length here.
When they say crazy shit, I validate it.
You ever do judo, wrestling, any kind of grappling?
There’s more than one way to trip up an attacking opponent.
One way… the conventional way… to meet his attack is to stand your ground, to be a rock that he cannot move.
The other way is to *go with* the maneuver. He pushes you back, you move back… and pull him into you.
He moves you but it’s waaaaay more than he was anticipating.
He ends up with his head and shoulders in front of his hips so he loses his balance and falls on his face.
If Warren becomes the Democratic candidate, then the very existence of this ‘plan’ could get her elected. Let me explain…
Should it look like Warren has a good chance of winning the presidency, a lot of high-income and high-net-worth people are likely to sell their stocks and other assets, in order to get out front of a capital gains tax increase. This would cause a downturn in the markets, with likely malign effects on the economy as a whole.
Which would at least partially disable one of Trump’s major arguments for his reelection.
So, a perceived 60% chance of a Warren win (for example) could lead to her actually winning.
She doesn’t do reality.
Warren knows her ‘plan` is a non-starter. Smoke and mirrors E2.
And that’s just the money needed for Medicare For All. Don’t forget the other promises: Reparations, free college, and the biggest hit of all, the Green New Deal.
People who actually believe her are going to be disappointed.
This is such nonsense. Most people could be convinced with a couple of very simple suppositions: liberals claim that the profit motive has made the health insurance industry a heartless entity that exists to deny customer claims in order to increase profits. Yet, we are expected to believe that this same, profit obsessed organization employs redundant administrators that the federal government will eliminate from its non-profit model. Who is being naive?
The notion of taxing unrealized capital gains is utterly absurd; the kind of thing AOC would propose. It is sobering to realize that E. Warren was instrumental in creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Maybe “Kafkaesque ” is more appropriate.
The current CFPB Director, Kathleen Kraninger*, believes that the Bureau is unconstitutionally structured, because unlike other federal agencies, it has a single director who can only be removed “for cause.”
DOJ has filed a brief with the Supreme Court adopting her position, and the Court will hear the case this term. Seila Law v. CFPB
* Elizabeth Warren strongly opposed Ms Kraninger’s appointment.
Why do so many of the above, take EW’s words at face value when she is lying? She is a vile, hypocrite, but that does not mean she is is stupid. She knows her policies are utter BS, and knows her base is clueless. Dangerous.
Why do so many of the above, take EW’s words at face value when she is lying? She is a vile, hypocrite, but that does not mean she is is stupid. She knows her policies are utter BS, and knows her base is clueless. Dangerous.
Warren, Buttigieg, Sanders = left fantasy candidates.
Only the doddering one has a chance (although he may not win Ohio – errrrr, I mean Iowa !
“…And Lizzie is determined they not understand that.”
Indeed, but hers is an old act, as demonstrated by this blast from the past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adrdmmh7bMo
(Such blatant, patronizing paternalism—maternalism?—would appear to be hard-coded into huge swaths of the Democratic Party.)
But wait!
Warren may well be onto something here since, as is well known, math (especially when it comes to Medicare, no doubt) is racist!!:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/math-racist-university-illinois-professor/
https://www.hoover.org/research/seattle-schools-propose-teach-math-education-racist-will-california-be-far-behindseattle
Ergo, she can—clearly—invent whatever mathematics she wishes to…since to voice any objection to it would be (well, you get the idea…).
the justice democrats have her back..
Above thanks to Moonbattery…
Warren thinks she will give 12 million amnesty (executive order and riots if negated?), and they will then enter the tax rolls to pay for our health care…. yeah, some socialist demagogue will just point out that she wants slaves to pay for the privileged…
Her plan repeatedly claims that this stupendous amount of money includes “not one penny in middle-class tax increases.”
Sure it won’t. Fees, attachments, allocations, contributions, duties, expenses, fines, levies, tariffs, assessments, customs, obligations, tithes, dues, imposts, tolls, tributes, giveaways, impositions…
But read her withered lips: No New “Taxes”.
Comment from a CFA:
https://mobile.twitter.com/MaxJacobsEdison/status/1191385840905281537
A scan of this morning’s news showed that both the NYTimes and WaPoo editorials hammered Warren over her Medicare for All plan. I was shocked, simply shocked.
But Neo explained it all for me. Law firms are the large and rock solid funding base for Dems.
It is rather shocking that the unconstitutionality of a wealth tax isn’t getting that much attention. It’s almost as though the constitution has slipped from being the supreme law to ignorable law.
It is rather shocking that the unconstitutionality of a wealth tax isn’t getting that much attention. It’s almost as though the constitution has slipped from being the supreme law to ignorable law.
The tax would have to be apportioned among the states to pass constitutional muster. I don’t think a direct tax so apportioned has ever been attempted.
perhaps warren gets her ideas from the UK?
Do note that according to current ideological underpinnings…
white males are all born racist and sexist…
this has been a public service announcement
Your deer is a lovely horse..
this allows them to know who is truly on their side the same way
if people knew the history of communism, and books like “the dream that would not die” you would know that after the birth in Russia… the whole of it became super enamoured of the chinese… which is where you get the idea favoring homosexuality (eunichs who ran things) and these “shows of loyalty”
described dozens of times… but doesnt seem anyone puts things together
preferring to forget the lesson that makes sense out of the nonsensical
at some point, making sense of it is not worth doing…
Jack Ryan series is an interesting propaganda piece
see? the nationalist is defeated by the communist woman and all are happy
Artfldgr on November 5, 2019 at 2:26 pm said:
Jack Ryan series is an interesting propaganda piece
This season is centered on Venezuela, where a far right-wing nationalist is in power, and he is to blame for the horrible poverty currently plaguing the country.
* * *
Unmoored from reality and taking the entire TV viewer base with them over the falls.
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2019/11/05/the-leftright-divide-is-about-reality-itself-n2555899
“Everybody gets the doctors and the treatments they need, when they need them.” – Elizabeth Warren as quoted in the Spectator article.
Sounds…kind of familiar, somehow.
https://spectator.org/elizabeth-warrens-health-care-chimera/
David Foster on November 4, 2019 at 5:59 pm said:
If Warren becomes the Democratic candidate, then the very existence of this ‘plan’ could get her elected.
* * *
Hmmm.
But if she doesn’t frighten the “high-income and high-net-worth people” then they won’t turn against the Democrats (as recently threatened by some) and she will also be elected.
Sure sounds like a lose-lose deal – let’s hope the Dems go with someone else.
Too many college indoctrinated graduates, with and without big debt, are terrible on math. Many even proud of being bad.
But as long as anybody is rich, it’s not too hard to believe that there is more tax revenue available to the gov’t if they just choose to “tax the rich”.
A post-Christian society has little reason to avoid punitive taxation, even if the revenue by the gov’t is less than expected.
The idea that the middle classes won’t pay for it is a laughable lie — but most Dems will just laugh it off.