2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: If you want Single Payer, are you willing to impose a national sales tax to pay for it? [View all]avebury
(10,953 posts)I live in Oklahoma which is trying very hard to become the state with the highest state sales tax rate. It is currently 8.375% and they want to vote to increase it to 9.375 this November. Out budget is in the crapper. Republicans want to give all the tax breaks to the oil industry and wealthy. Education is a sacred cow that doesn't make the best use of education dollars so they want to increase the sales tax rate for education. Of course David Boren, President of University of Oklahoma, wants a slice of that pie. This at a time when sales tax revenue in Oklahoma City is down a lot resulting in budget issues for the City of OKC. Assessing a sales tax for a single payer single health care system will negatively impact most those who can't afford it, the poor.
I grew up in Maine, a state that has a lot smaller sales tax rate then Oklahoma. A lot of people go to New Hampshire for their big ticket spending because NH does not have a sales tax.
I have already really started cutting back on my spending and will do so even more if the sales tax vote passes this fall. I am on a fixed income and cannot afford for my taxes to go up.
It is long past time that corporations that pay little to no income tax step up and stop being welfare hogs. Why should lower income level people be forced to pay more and more when there are corporations and the uber wealthy who pay little to no taxes.