Sanders will increase total fedreal taxes with 25 % to pay for his health plan and free college.

[DFW]

86. Two things

Most of us here in Europe attribute better longevity mainly to diet. We see American tourists here by the boatload, and at least half of them are so obese, wearing shorts to accentuate it, to boot, it hurts to look at them. And where do they go to eat? McDonald's, ordering heaps of fries, downing them with Coke. Even the best health care in the world won't save you if you insist on committing slow dietary suicide. A few dozen million people like that, and of course our statistical average longevity goes down. You won't see anywhere near so many obese Europeans, and nor do so many of them have such awful dietary habits. So of course their longevity here looks better as a statistic.

Second, "freedom" is always relative to what you know and what you perceive. A couple of decades ago I persuaded a Marxist German friend of mine to visit me in the USA. One day, we flew from Boston, where I was living at the time, down to northern Virginia, where I was born and originally grew up. We stayed at my parents' house, although they were traveling at the time. Curious, my German friend asked where I had my residence registered with the police. I had no idea what he was talking about, and asked what he meant. He asked me again if my police residence registration was in Virginia or in Massachusetts. I still had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him to explain. In Germany, it turns out, you have to register your residence with the authorities ("polizeiliche Anmeldung" ). When you move to a town, you have to tell the police that you are moving there. When you leave, you have to tell them you're leaving and where you're moving to. Then you have to register again when you get to your new town. I asked if he was talking about the old East Germany, and he said no, West Germany, now all of Germany. I said we had no such thing. He asked what was the procedure for moving, then? I said you just pack your stuff and move. Tell the post office if you want your mail forwarded, but that was it. He was just floored. He was so positive we had some strict Soviet-style control over who lived where and when. He said, wow, that is freedom. I said no, it's more like your system is a lack of it.

When I moved my permanent residence to Germany, I had to go through this too. The procedure was handled by an office in the town hall, plus registering as a "resident foreigner," though once I proved I was not going to ask for welfare, had a steady job that was in the USA, and already spoke fluent German, they gave me my "green" card (it's not green here) in 2 months. After all, they got to cash in 50% of my income for doing nothing and give me zero in return. What could be a better deal for them? But I did ask what was with the police residence registry, and they explained it was so they could keep track of potential criminals. Ah! I get it--in Germany you think every citizen is a potential criminal, so you keep a close eye on everyone. In the States, I explained, the State assumes that you are probably not a criminal, and so we had no such system. Of course, with the internet, all that is sort of passé, but the mentality that set it up in the first place has not gone anywhere.

As for your income, your civil status and your place of residence both play a big part in whether you are comfortable or not. If you live somewhere in rural Vermont or North Dakota, or Iowa, or some similar place, and are single, then a salary like $45,000 is probably adequate to live on. However, if you live in Manhattan and are married and have two children, a gross salary of $75000 will leave you scrambling and penny-pinching to make ends meet. One can't go picking numbers out of a hat and pointing fingers without asking for the full picture. There are certainly parts of the USA where a gross salary of $110,000 is no life of luxury for a family, especially with school-age or college-age children. If they live in Manhattan, that will leave them, after federal, state and City tax, somewhere around a net of $65,000 to live on, or about $16,250 per person per year. From this comes rent, food, tuition, clothing, public transportation, etc etc etc, and all that at NY prices, with the 8.25% (or whatever it is now) sales tax on most things. Someone in that situation will definitely not be taking the family to Hawaii for two weeks or buying a new Mercedes to run up the Hudson Valley on weekends.

I know a little about this, as I have a daughter who lives and works in Manhattan. She makes nowhere near six figures, and after all the local taxes, she has enough to live on, but her trips home or to visit her sister or even to take a vacation are all subsidized by the rest of us, because she can't afford them on her own.

I find it a dangerous thing to point fingers at someone whose personal circumstances we don't know and tell them they have too much money. If you think differently, then you are correct, we can't see eye to eye on this.