2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Sanders supporters, do you still support him if he asks you to help pay for his policy platform? [View all]The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,674 posts)The way I figure is, these things have to be paid for one way or another. To get health insurance, for example, you pay premiums to a private insurance company. If we had single payer insurance we'd pay taxes to the government (as for Medicare). Although the ACA has improved some things, private insurance is still extremely expensive for many people. For example, a relative of mine pays premiums of about $800 per month for himself and his wife, and there is a deductible of $10,000 apiece. So he'd be out of pocket about $30,000 before the insurance company pays a single dime. Unless the two of them incur more than $20,000 in medical expenses in a year, the premiums they pay are pure profit for the insurance company. A lot of that money goes to pay the exorbitant salaries of CEOs and other executives, and to satisfy the demands of investors. The administrative costs of private insurance run about 20%. In contrast, the administrative costs of Medicare are more like 4%, and there are no greedy CEOs demanding enormous salaries. Since we're going to pay for health insurance anyhow, would you rather pay for it through taxes, or would you rather write a check to a rich CEO?
As for free college paid by small taxes on financial transactions: I'm fine with that, too. Right now many students graduate with crushing student loan debt to the point where they can't buy houses or cars or start families. This situation is getting worse and worse, and threatens to create another financial disaster like the crash of 2008. Even if it doesn't, having thousands of people hopelessly in debt is a huge drag on the economy. And some bright kids can't go to college at all because of the expense. An educated society is a good thing and I don't mind paying more in taxes to accomplish that goal. The happiest, most contented countries in the world are the Scandinavian countries, which have high taxes, free college, and free or low-cost health care. Norway and Sweden also have more billionaires per capita than any country but the United States, so their brand of "socialism" seems to be working well. There's a strong safety net but you can still get rich. The difference is that their billionaires didn't get rich at the expense of everybody else.