How about funding Health Care w/ 10% Fed. Sales Tax on all "Premium Goods" purchased by Super-Rich?

[99th_Monkey]

You know, stuff like yachts, mansions (say anything over $1 million), any article of clothing or jewelry over $250, private jets, etc.

What did I miss? Hookers who charge more than $1000. ahhh.. help me out.

[Cleita]

1. They tried it once and the rich stopped buying luxury items. n/t

[jobycom]

3. Yep, and the people who built the luxury items lost their jobs. nt

[99th_Monkey]

18. ok, scratch that. my bad. how would you suggest soaking those rich bastids? ~nt~

[Cleita]

26. Bring back the inheritance tax and make a transaction tax on the transfer

of wealth, like stocks and bonds purchases, real estate purchased for income, etc.

[petronius]

36. Wasn't it more that they stopped buying such goods in the U.S.?

An aggressively pursued use tax would capture revenue from overseas buying, and remove the incentive to buy outside the U.S.

I'm not sure I'm actually in favor of this idea, and I doubt it's as much money as the OP hopes, but I think it could be done effectively...

[Cleita]

38. I believe they did. Maybe putting a high tariff on all imports would work

on many levels including this one.

[Ilsa]

39. They stopped buying luxury goods long enough until they got the bill

overturned. When they held out ad people started losing their jobs, Congress had to repeal a law like that. the rich win by holding out.

[Xenotime]

2. How about a tax on all of their investments too.

You know they have tons of money sitting in stocks.

[Cleita]

6. This would actually be the way to go. Putting a transaction tax on each

trade or purchase of securities would bring in lots of money into the Treasury.

[RC]

8. And us little people with 401K's?

There needs to be some rules here to protect peoples meager retirements.

[Cleita]

10. Sure since the rules haven't been set up yet, they should take this into

consideration. Perhaps mutual funds could be exempted as they are what the IRAs and 401ks mainly invest in. However, a lot of those transactions like shorts and other ways billionaires have of manipulating the markets, that causes it to tank when it crashes, would really be slowed down by a transaction tax.

[Angleae]

28. IRA/401k mainly invest in stocks and bonds.

There isn't enough return on mutual funds to make them a worthwhile inventment for retirement funds until you're close to retirement for security purposes (less risk).

[Cleita]

30. Actually DH and I did ours in CDs before retirement. Less risky yet.

Of course with interest as crappy as it is today, I guess some people venture into stocks and bonds but I would find that too risky for my retirement fund. I guess those people are a lot richer than we were.

[ipfilter]

40. Just increase short term capital gains. nt

[99th_Monkey]

17. I'm all for a transaction/transfer tax on all stock market trading, for sure. ~nt~

[sandnsea]

4. How 'bout cigs, booze, junk food, hookers,

and pot.

Live it up - and get free health care!

:woohoo:

[Parker CA]

9. Agree 100%, Sandnsea!! That could turn around CA's mess in a relatively modest amount of time.

[sandnsea]

12. Only for free health care

Wouldn't support taxes on any of that for anything else.

[Cleita]

11. Cigs and booze are already taxed beyond maximum. Junk food is all that some

poor people can afford. Let's not tax them on top of it. Pot and hookers probably should be taxed like booze and cigs.

[sandnsea]

14. And the taxees aren't getting free health care

If they were, I bet they'd happily pay twice as much as they do now.

[Cleita]

21. A lot of it goes to specific health care like addiction treatment and the

new cig taxes coming up will help fund SCHIPS health care for kids.

[sandnsea]

23. Not the same as health care for all

If it were free health care for everybody, nobody would complain about the taxes on any of that stuff.

[Cleita]

24. One thing annoying me about your posts is the free health care thing.

Universal health care is not free. Everyone has to pay into the risk pool in order to participate. Sure we will of course give health care to children, old people, the disabled, the out of work and any one else who can't always contribute to the risk pool, but it's not free. If people know that their taxes were going for something that they can benefit from like health care and education, they don't complain. What seems to have been happening for the last hundred years, is that our tax money seems to be going into the pockets of corrupt corporations and a war machine. I've been bitching about it for forty years and you can see, there has been no headway. Part of the reason is, when you let the RW describe a program as being "free", they love to paste a welfare label on it and nothing ever gets done to improve the situation.

[sandnsea]

25. But it would be free, that's the point

If the taxes on all of that stuff would cover the cost, then we'd have free health care and nobody would complain because it would be paid for with stuff they didn't wnat to have to quit doing anyway.

Generally, I agree, using the term "free health care" irritates me too.

This is a different take on the whole "sin" tax thing. Stop calling it a sin. Double, triple the tax on junk food, fast food, booze, cigs, gambling, prostitution, all of it. Pay for free health care for everybody.

[Thothmes]

37. What happens to the health care system you envision

If people cut back on booze,start to eat healthy, stop smoking. No program that is as important as National Health Care should be based soley on taxes of peoples habits. Particularly habits that society is trying to change. National Health care needs to be based on steady, reliable, predictable tax
program. Sin taxes wont cut it. Imagine social security based on taxes of cigaretts, or hamburgers. I would change the income tax to tax all forms of income wages, capital gains, dividends etc would all be taxed equally. Ensure the tax is progressive. Increase the tax rates at the hi end. At the same time, institute a national health care tax, fully progressive. The tax would income based and progressive. This would be paid at the same time as the income taxes are paid. May also collected the IRS. Health care money would go to the health care accounts. They could never be spent by Congress for any other use (lock box theory). JMO

[DFW]

5. There will always be a way around that

Besides, all states have the power to levy local sales taxes as they see fit for their
own local economies. Then you get the question--do you put a federal tax on top of the state
tax? Do you make them pay federal tax on the whole sum, including the state tax? They did
that in Germany, adding VAT onto the price of gasoline including the oil tax. So now,
Germans pay 19% sales tax on the oil tax. It never ends. Just increase the top income tax bracket nationwide by 1% on incomes over $150,000 and you'll raise multiples of what you'll
raise by instituting a tax on people who'll feel singled out. A;so, think of the ordinary workers who help build those mansions, or work in distribution of jewelry over $250, etc.

Any move that global must take into consideration how many jobs it would eliminate as
opposed to how much extra revenue it would create.

[99th_Monkey]

16. thanks for your thoughtful reply. whatever works to soak the rich.

how would you suggest doing that? .. if you are for, it that is.

[DFW]

35. I guess it depends on what you call "rich."

I'm for soaking those who have a lot of money and never did anything for it (lobbyists), or
did illegal things to get it (Blackwater, Halliburton). If they earned it honestly, had some
idea that clicked or just make music that is so good that everyone will pay to hear it, then
what the hell--I'm not for soaking them. I'm also one of the few Democrats who thinks inheritance
taxes need to be reformed--if taxes were paid on the money once, then that's enough. I'm not for
taxing inheritances already taxed, but I'm in the minority there. I'd probably come up with
something equitable in my eyes if it were my responsibility to do so, and I'd probably get stoned
by all sides of the argument for doing so.

[jtrockville]

7. Here's the thing....

We spend an ENORMOUS amount of money on healh care (via insurance). Way more than other countries. We can fund health CARE easily, without additional money, if we REMOVE health insurance from the equation.

It's really that simple.

[Cleita]

13. Yes, it is.

We need to think of a way to drive the private insurance companies and HMO's out of the business voluntarily because they won't give up otherwise.

Any ideas?

[jtrockville]

19. Elect Dennis Kucinich for President?

Or maybe, get more people to watch Sick Around the World?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p101&continuous=1

So we can all learn how developed nations provide health care:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/models.html

[Cleita]

22. I tried to get Dennis elected. He was the only candidate I sent what meager

contributions I could afford to. But I guess Dennis didn't have a chance considering what the media did to him cutting him out of the debates and such.

[Greyhound]

29. HR 676. n/t

[99th_Monkey]

15. I'm all for that, but wouldn't that put all the insurance vampires in the soup lines?

oh wait, maybe that's a good idea ... ok. I'm with you.

[jtrockville]

20. If that happens, I'll volunteer to serve up the soup.

Even these vultures deserve to be treated as humans, even though they're barely recognizable as such.

[Cleita]

27. I would love to see that, former CEOs who fleeced the taxpayers standing

in line for food and sleeping in card board boxes.

[Spike89]

31. Pay for health care easily

Kill the insurance industry as a major start. They aren't all evil, in fact they are in many cases doing the best they can in the system we have. The system is bad. Killing it alone will nearly fund universal health care. We also need to restore the balance on inherited/investment wealth. Certain investments should continue getting very low tax hits against profit, but based upon social and national priorities. For instance, invest in a Government approved alternative fuel enterprise, pay only 15% taxes on the dividends. Invest in yo-yos, gold, basically anything not on the small list of priorities and pay 30-50% taxes on dividents (perhaps exclude the first $30,000/year for retirement investments). Also, tax the crap out of inheritances over a certain amount, make the obvious exemptions for agriculture and other small businesses. You also need a complex code and tables to neutralize the large and increasing variances in regional economies (a "modest" house in L.A. may buy a whole block of houses in the heartland).

It isn't money for health that is the problem, it is inertia and the fact that rich people write the tax laws.

[cherish44]

32. How about taxing the boob jobs they get for their trophy wives...

You KNOW they won't give up the plastic surgery!

[ContinentalOp]

33. To be fair you should also let them write off the depreciation.

To account for sag.

[99th_Monkey]

34. Fuck being "fair" .. I want revenge and I want it NOW.

not only that, but poor folk have been on the other end of 30+ years of "trickle down" UNfair abuse
by these uber-wealthy bastids. Now we need to swing to other end for at least 30 years .... just
to be really fair.