Shelgeyr wrote:
Rorinthas wrote:
How do we afford it? How do we pay for it? Healthcare for everyone sounds like a great and compassionate idea. I just don't see how to make it work legally and equitably.
In some European nations, taxes amount to somewhere between 40-55% of each citizen's wages. It's steep, but they've been managing to make it work for them for quite some time now. I imagine never having to face doctor's bills helps.
That runs into the problem of "legally and equitably". Obviously it's legal in European nations but making it legal here would come into conflict with a general aversion to such high tax rates. Part of that problem here is willingness to make "the rich" (usually, anyone making more than a marginally greater amount of money than the speaker) pay "their fair share" (an undefined but arbitrarily high portion of their holdings and income that is based on the idea that they're paying their fair share when there are no more social ills).
That leads into the "equitable" problem - the so-called "fair share" usually isn't; primarily because we always hear about this "fair share" that "the rich" supposedly aren't paying - but myseteriously it's never said what would be a fair share, or how it's even known they aren't already paying it. "Equitable" is not defined as "anyone can get whatever health care they need, regardless of cost in any other area".
Then, there is the problem that we cannot afford to rape our military power because we don't have an ally with a large population, large economy, and large land area to rely upon like these nations do. Whining about how we supposedly don't need the defense establishment we have is shortsighted - we need to make changes to it, sure, but aside from strategic defense of the nation itself, we rely on foriegn trade, energy, and raw materials. If anyone else gains the ability to strangle us in any of those areas, there goes the economy (i.e. moreso than it already is) and the tax income that this healthcare would rely on, not to mention other areas of life.
We could save money in that regard by increasing efficiency in defense and eliminating long-term interventionism as a policy in favor of short-term destruction of threats, but that carries some political costs that the public and our politicians are likely not to want to bear.
Even if we ignored this problem, and cut military and security expendiatures to pay for healthcare or any other social good, and no one took advantage of this, it still would not work. Eventually, we would simply run out of military to cut, but we would doubtless still be hearing calls for more money because social do-gooders are never satisfied. There is always another wrong to be righted.
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