Okay I'm having a Bernie argument

I'll use it!

we'll wait for a response and go from there!

Thanks Donkees!

I agree. The US should stop corporate welfare and reduce our military presence world wide. 54% of the govt. revenue pie goes to the US military! That is ludicrous.
Like ·The second largest chunk of the govt. revenue pie goes to paying the interest only on our national debt.

I watched the video Paul, and replied. Thought you might like to know that BS's [reported] household income in 2014 was just over $200K. More than 20% of that income came from SS payments to him and his wife. That puts BS near the top 5% of US household wage earners. Far from an average Joe, but "poor" compared to the Clinton's wealth.


so this is now 2 different conversations on 2 different pages..............Donkees?

to use our donations wisely and pays his campaign bills swiftly.

Enable the Feds to negotiate drug prices (like the VETS do), Repeal loopholes that enable Corps. to pay a lower % of their income in taxes than the avg. American does, and sometimes NONE AT ALL. and change the laws that enable Corps. to move their operations overseas, and even have their relocation expense deducted from their tax liability. If those things apply to YOU, then your sure not the average American.

By telling him to Google socialism. Because nothing that he mentioned is socialism.

Then you could point out that lots of countries have a higher standard of living and better education and Healthcare... So whatever we're doing is failing...

yeah this one.

&nohtml5=False

would he rather pay $6,000 a year to the government in taxes for health care, or $10,000 in premiums to a private health insurance company? He probably knows some older people on Medicare who have a point of view on whether it's more of a hassle to deal with the government, or with a private health insurance company, when it comes to getting a procedure looked after.

http://feelthebern.org/

Medicare for all, repairing our infrastructure and tuition free public Universities will be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes which will bring back BILLIONS of tax dollars to this country and Wall St. Will be taxed of speculations....bringing in BILLIONS more.

Your friend will save THOUSANDS of dollars per year on Medicine, Healthcare and Not having insurance premiums anymore! No copays, no out of pocket expenses. He gets sick, he goes to the doctor/hospital and it's covered - by ALL OF US.

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

just imagine what we could do with that money if we returned to having a peacetime defense department like there used to be between wars that were actually necessary.

Also spending some of that money on healthcare, infrastructure repair, etc. would create jobs. Employed people pay taxes. Educated people make more money and pay more taxes.

Getting benefits such as healthcare reduces the overall cost of medical care because it catches things early when they are more treatable. Also it puts people in doctors' offices instead of expensive emergency rooms.

The richest 1% in the US own more than the bottom 90%. I'm sure they could afford an increase in taxes.

The kind of programs Bernie advocates work perfectly well in the Scandinavian countries.

Just imagine living in a country where people don't have to live in fear that if they lose their job they may become homeless, and not be able to afford food for their kids.

who think we can't pay for social programs, or that it would be unconscionable to tax the wealthiest any more, is that they simply haven't a clue how huge the gap is between ever the upper 10% and and the rest of us, particularly the lower 50%. And that as you move up in that upper 10%, the gaps in wealth and income get larger and larger.

Plus, of course, it's true that if you live in a very high cost-of-living place like NYC or Los Angeles or San Francisco, the cost of housing in such places means the rest of your salary doesn't go as far as it would in Dubuque or Hattiesburg. But that cost-of-living difference often makes people in the expensive cities feel put upon, and those in a low cost of living place think they're idiots for living where they do. Neither attitude gets to the heart of the problem, which is whether or not higher income people should pay more in taxes.

I happen to think they should.

I also think corporations shouldn't ever get away with paying no taxes. Nor should they be able to move jobs out of this country without some sort of repercussions.

If we're going to have a minimum wage, maybe there should be a maximum wage, or at least limits on how great a multiple of the lowest worker in the company a CEO should make. And no loopholes. Nothing that ultimately enriches him, such as stock options or a company car, should be excluded from that calculation.

Of course, I'm also genuinely horrified that cities let themselves be held hostage by major sports teams and grant them major tax concessions even if the local schools are badly funded or the roads are deteriorating.

Free Higher Education - This is payed for via a 0.5% wall street tax. Bonds would be taxed at 0.1% and derivitives at 0.005%. What this means is that each time a stock is traded on wall street there would be a 0.5% tax on it. So for every $100 of stocks traded there would be a 50 cent tax applied. For comparison, this is a fraction of the percent of state sales taxes which can range anywhere from 2% to 9% of sales cost. The wall street tax would raise around $83 billion annually which would pay for free higher education for all. Most industrialized countries in the world already have this tax. The wall street tax also has the benefit of discouraging high frequency trading that creates volatility on the stock market.





Universal single payer health care - This plan would be payed for by a list of changes. First there would be a new payroll tax of 8.4% (6.2% by employer, 2.2% by employee). You can compare this to the Social Security payroll tax which is 12.4% (6.2% by employer, 6.2% by employee) or the Medicare payroll tax which is 2.9% (1.45% by employer, 1.45% by employee). An additional 8.4% might sound like a lot at first, but you have to consider this would be offset by neither the employer nor employee having to pay for medical insurance anymore. This would raise $840 billion per year.

There would also be a change in the top marginal tax brackets to pay for this. This will have no effect on anyone making less than $250k per year. Money made over $250k will gradually shift to higher tax brackets. $250k bracket goes from 33% to 37%. All the way up to >$10M bracket goes from 39.6% to 52%. While raising the top marginal tax rate to 52% on the highest earners may sound high, you have to compare this to the past where the top marginal rate under FDR was 92%! (and the wealthy did just fine then). This would raise $110 billion per year.

The next thing used to pay for it is taxing capital gains at the same rate as income. Capital gains is how the wealthy makes a lot of their money. It is currently taxed much lower than regular income, which means the wealthy pays much less on their income than we do. Taxing capital gains at the same rate as income would raise $92 billion per year.

There are a few other adjustments that add up to about $50 billion per year that don't affect anyone but the rich (hard deductions limit on income over $250k, 0.3% estate tax on inheritance over $3.5 million).

All in all, the single payer system would cost us at least $310 billion less per year than the current health care system we have in place. And that's just right now. Every year the cost of health care is dramatically rising. Single payer would level it off (in 5 years, we could be saving $500 billion a year or more).

In exchange for saving money we get universal health care (meaning no more worrying about health costs or going bankrupt). universal medicine coverage, vision coverage, hearing coverage, oral coverage, eliminate deductibles and dramatically reduce co-pays. Every single citizen in the US would be 100% covered for all health conditions from the day we're born to the day we die.

Don't say it can't be done. We're the only industrialized country in the world that doesn't offer universal health coverage. And we currently pay more for not offering universal health coverage than every industrialized nation.

I'm saving this for future argument! Very well presented!

Social Security was put in place with escape clauses that limited who paid. Probably the most popular federal program in history, paid for by you and me, because the banksters and financiers would have never let it happen if the cost was on them.

And now that there is a pile of money collected, the banksters and financiers want to privatize it so that they can 'manage' it and take a third of the action

you gave me a lot of ammunition.

He's quiet for now. I think we got some gears turning.

This is how we do it, one repub at a time, and on their facebook pages their right wing buddies will see it too.

Bernie is a Democratic Socialist...and that is indeed different than a Socialist.

http://www.dsausa.org

Your friend can have a choice. Does he want a President / government that supports 99% of Americans or a Corporatist one that will side with corporations and the 1% (and they sure as heck don't give a crap about us, other than to hold us down and take as much from us as they can). There doesn't seem to be any mid road position anymore...the greedy want it all.

Then there are the others...Fascist/Racist/Bigot or a radicalized religious type that will be happy to step on us.