And for the last point. The problem is, that it will not be enough to increase taxes only for the very rich, if he wants to bring real change. He won't be that transformative, that the US society changes in such a way, that it would become difficult for his successor to revert. He won't bring enough change, that the people can see that a social state works. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
This being said, you can pretty well arguably wipe out the US federal budget deficit by taxing the top 1% at the same levels they were taxed at under the Nixon admnistration. And if you tax them at Eisenhower levels, you'll have enough to pay for healthcare reform.
Can't speak to income distributions or tax and revenue incidence in Germany, but in the US, that's how it works. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
But neither party in the US believes in fair taxation, because their major funding sources would not be happy with paying their fair share. The free rider problem is one of many flaws of basic human nature, and the concentration of power in the US has gone so far as to make reform very difficult, if possible at all. Imho. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
This being said, his own plan cannot be fairly characterised as comprehensive, progressive or universal, either. Standard-fare Democratic party incrementalism.
You really only have to look at who his chief economic advisor is. That's not left, the economic policy an Obama administration is likely to pursue. It's the American centre, or the European far right. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
He was attacking Clinton on her mandated health care because her "plan" basically consisted of passing a law saying that everyone must buy insurance. It wasn't universal health care, it was highway robbery.
Is the word "basically" here used in the sense of, "not in reality, but can be caricatured as?"
If a pay or play plan has a cap at 15% of income, payments from the employer under the "pay" option directed to the plan selected by the employee, whether the employee chooses a community-rated private plan or a community-rated public plan ...
... it seems to me that it consists of something more than "passing a law saying that everyone must buy insurance". Indeed, that a claim that is "basically" amounts to that is confused at best, deliberate politically-inspired misinformation at worst.
There are some places where Senator Clinton watered down the original Edwards plan so that she could claim "it will create no new bureaucracies", but there is no doubt which of the two were (since the NC and IN results, that is past tense) closer to Universal Health Care proposals.
No plan that can get through Congress could be what most Europeans take for granted as a bare minimum for a civilized society, but Senator Clinton's would have been a more serious step in that direction. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
