My wife and myself grossed around $91,000 this year and paid around $19,000 in taxes.On top of that we have a 13% sales tax on most purchases.How does this compare to USA taxes considering our healthcare is included?
DS,
It would seem on the one hand right now that the US "might" be better tax wise than Canada but I'm not one to automatically think that. In the US, the tax burden can vary from locale to locale as local officals tax in different ways but the one thing that rarely gets included in the US because both parties do it equally well is factor in inflation and public debt burden. When you take into account the actions of State Capitalism using the public trough for both corp. and public welfare means (yeah big business is behind public welfare so don't kid yourselves) and this debt load being passed onto the taxpayer even in future payments or the debt monetized as reflected in inflation of the value of our currency, I believe that the US may indeed be worse off than Canada when it comes to true gov't economic burden. If anything, Canada may be a bit more honest in keeping their true burden up front with direct taxation so at least you can see it coming. Canada is also in better shape because they didn't use debt load to finance now and shift the burden of payments to future taxpayers like the US has or at least not to the same scale. That's how I see it anyway and a credit to you guys for not doing it.
Canada also has another advantage over America not often considered and yet I believe it is a major factor. Kirkpatrick Sale who is a left/liberal leader in the US Sucession movement did
a study of nationstates and regardless of left/right/middle, he looked at what worked and what were the common factors with a view of individual freedom and economic stability and burden on the citizen. He found that not only now but historically, size does matter and size towards a smaller nationstate model. Not geographic territory but numbers of citizens was the key factor. Now Canada although smaller in population than the US does pretty good in overall scheme, there are even smaller countries population wise that does even better than Canada. IMHO, regardless of one's political POV, I think it's a must read and worth the few minutes to do so.
As for Obamacare, Diesel's point about Romneycare is dead on the money and I'll go one step further. Had the republicans won the day in 2006' and again in 2008' we'd still have today almost the same healthcare bill that Obama will sign later today except the roles of the parties would have been reversed. The only reason Repubs. are objecting is that the other party gets the credit. Clinton also wanted a privatized option with Social Security but repubs. drugout Monica to shame the democrats and setup a republican white house in 2000' and then they came out with SS privatization and like clockwork, democrats who followed Clinton on this now rose to oppose because it was a republican.
This also IMO shows to the heart of how truly phony the 2 parties really are. Truth is, SS privatization was to retirement what Obama/Romneycare will be to the health industry. A STATIST BOOM!
Like Diesel, I don't think anyone here wants a bad healthcare system nor do they want to see anyone just allowed to die in the streets. But Diesel like many good people (a majority in truth) think that the State can act as an unbias middleman to control some people who want to go beyond moral and ethical norms in chasing the almighty dollar. It is easier for us to just throw our hands up, extoll "I can't do this and listen to Bobby Darren and drink Starbucks too" so we tell some central figure we've chosen to pick out a group of "experts" and just take care of this for us. "That's why we vote for you so handle it!" Hey, I like flaking out on the couch and getting a good nap during the ballgame too!
I think it was Baba who posted that one problem is that health insurance in many cases is provided by the employer and this method itself has caused an embalance in the true marketplace and BaBA is dead on the money with that. Do employers also provide auto, home, life (OK, they do a little of that but it's VERY little) but my point is, these other means of insurance require you (us) to go out and shop for the best and specific policy to suit our needs and no it's not a perfect system either but the more open competition helps force costs down. It's not a single solution to fix the entire problem but it would be a start IMO. (BaBa, if it wasn't you that said that, sorry and sorry to the person I failed to give credit too as it was a very good point.)
But while
we sleep listening to Darren (what they want us to do and that crashing sound you heard was pickup scrambling awake and knocking the keyboard to the floor as "we sleep" are his buzz words
) they are in the corridors of power right in the middle of the very agencies we trust to protect us using them to make even more money and to further consolidate their power and marketplace from any true competition. And then we believe them at the turn of every new adminstration when they tells us they are gonna fix this or that and it will be an American Utopia and we fall for that trick everytime. If we actually got off the couch and did just the smallest research we might find what we thought were our friends and protectors are in fact our true enemy. Case in point?
The Pharmaceutucal Industry Complex: A Deadly Fairy Tale
Healthcare Profiteers: A Billion Dollar Lobby
Compulsary Private Health Insurance: Just Another Bailout for the Financial Sector
That's a very small and I mean very small tip of the iceberg and both politcal parties have been running the same con job on us. There is never a perfect, flawless system and to expect one no matter which direction one goes is moronic but to also think the system we have right now prior to President Obama's signature is somehow perfect is equally moronic. I believe whether it's the before or after system, it is not sustainable over time and the new system will fail in time and require more massive change to keep the sustainability (not for us) for the big players and corporations to keep milking the public to feed their monopoly/cartel system until it's own weight crashes it all to the floor. I guess by then the international trade agreements, enforced and embedded by the blood of our soldiers will have created new and growing markets in places like China, India and the like and these same Corporations who have used gov't to bleed us dry can then just uproot and move lock, stock and barrel to the new countries to keep their feeding processes going on a new stock of chattel property (China/India has more bodies for an even bigger Corp. Global Army) thanks again all to the power of the State. And you thought Capitalism and Socialism are polar opposities. Really? Explain then how so many rich people are as some of you call them socialist and communist? Pelosi and Feinstein are by no means dirt poor but once you've gamed the "capitialist" system to make yours, gov't and socialism if you will sure makes it a good means to protect and even grow bigger what you've got! If we just had true and total transparency as promised and bothsides promise this in one way or another, the current mafia just made a bigger issue of it, we'd begin to see all of this and we'd see the real causes and effects and thus we could develop a much better system that in truth would probably incorporate ideas from all fronts and most likely everyone would have some skin in the game. Anyone opposed to doing that?
When America is finally left in ruin and what few resources we've not used up in chasing the empire and power for them that is left, we will fight over among ourselves until a balance is found and like the empires of old, we will take our place as dead has beens, a burned out star in the night sky. And all because like Kirkpatrick Sales points out and like some of our founding fathers understood, we forgot, smaller is better. Even think about the more we consolidate power to a central authority the worse everything gets?
BTW: Start thinking now about what you might do ahead in case the worse does start to happen. Always pray and hope for the best but don't discount the worse. And rearranging the deckchairs in November won't fix
it either. Work local, think local, act local!
