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Friday, November 8, 2019

Do you have an ideal decade for the tag "Make America Great Again" ?



I would pick the 1950s - 1960 plus or minus a few years.  Honestly, what do you think?  Write it down now, before you look at the rest of this post.

What's wrong with the "now"?  Nothing!  But as always we are struggling to know how to deal with change or trends.

The last part of the following program brings out that our constant problem is intrinsically being human and that we like to "share" and we cannot always know everything - so we have to trust.  We have created a super highway of information flow and there are just as many bad drivers as ever.

HIDDEN BRAIN: Facts Aren't Enough: The Psychology Of False Beliefs

As a result of listening to the podcast I bought the book -

The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread


Now for the IRONY !  Let's take just one look at the decade that I chose.  They were great economic times, war was over, GI Bill was putting people through college, employment was good, you would be able to put your kids through college, etc.

I put forward a major character of the times that I think most of us have forgotten or never knew.  A little Wikipedia History lesson - follow the money.



History of taxation in the United States (mostly gov doc)

For tax years 1944 through 1951, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 91%, increasing to 92% for 1952 and 1953, and reverting to 91% for tax years 1954 through 1963.[36]
So am I to conclude that "good times" are associated with high tax rates.

For the 1964 tax year, the top marginal tax rate for individuals was lowered to 77%, and then to 70% for tax years 1965 through 1981. In 1978 income brackets were adjusted for inflation, so fewer people were taxed at high rates.[37] The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% for tax years 1982 through 1986.[38] Reagan undid 40% of his 1981 tax cut, in 1983 he hiked gas and payroll taxes, and in 1984 he raised tax revenue by closing loopholes for businesses.[39] According to historian and domestic policy adviser Bruce Bartlett, Reagan's 12 tax increases over the course of his presidency took back half of the 1981 tax cut.[40]
For tax year 1987, the highest marginal tax rate was 38.5% for individuals.[41] It was lowered to 28% in revenue neutral fashion, eliminating many loopholes and shelters, along with in corporate taxes, (with a 33% "bubble rate") for tax years 1988 through 1990.[42][43] Ultimately, the combination of base broadening and rate reduction raised revenue equal to about 4% of existing tax revenue[44]

Read the book and read the document in Wikipedia.


WI 1848 Forward: Do you have an ideal decade for the tag Do you have an ideal decade for the tag "Make America Great Again" ? #MAGA #FakeNews If only our memories were as good as reality in telling us how it really was?!

Do you have an ideal decade for the tag "Make America Great Again" ? #MAGA #FakeNews If only our memories of the depression were as good as reality in telling us how it really was?! So think "great recession" times 100!

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Medicare For All - KERFUFFLE


Lots of ideas start and/or end with some sort of tag or label.

"Medicare For All" is one such tag and whoever introduced it I'm sure meant it "positively".  Now it is being construed or conflated with all kinds of negative tags.


Denial of choice.  You are only one step away from government takeover!

We can't afford it is another common refrain.


I'm still stuck back at the basic idea that "everyone deserves equal access to healthcare".  What does that mean?  Does it mean if you have the money you can have access?

There are other things going on with healthcare - personal/family bankruptcies, unnecessary suffering, premature deaths.  What causes these problems?

How should clinics and hospitals be sited? Discriminate against rural populations?  How come some physicians have three or more offices.  How many MRI or CAT SCAN facilities do we need in a city?

Why are drugs so expensive, e.g., here in the U.S. but not Canada?

Clean Air? Pure Water? Climate Change?

The discussion is needed.  What we mean by Medicare For All embodies a concept or idea.  How we choose to define it or implement it is downstream.  A consensus will emerge if the fear mongers and immoral are recognized for what they are.

1/8/2020

More than a third of U.S. healthcare costs go to bureaucracy - Linda Carroll

(Reuters Health) - U.S. insurers and providers spent more than $800 billion in 2017 on administration, or nearly $2,500 per person - more than four times the per-capita administrative costs in Canada’s single-payer system, a new study finds.



Medicare For All - #KERFUFFLE #MedicareForAll #Sanders #Warren #HealthCare

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Wisconsin GOP - Republican senators vote to oust Gov. Tony Evers' ag secretary

Madison.com 20191105 ... Follow the money ... critically - who benefits ... small vs big, corporate vs family, are urban interests really in conflict with rural interests?


Wisconsin Republican senators vote to oust Gov. Tony Evers' ag secretary

The state Senate voted along party lines to remove Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection Secretary Brad Pfaff during its floor session on Tuesday. 

Pfaff drew the ire of Republicans after he targeted the Legislature's powerful budget committee this summer over the release of farmer mental health funding. But Fitzgerald's office pointed to other issues, including a proposed rule change for livestock siting operations that's faced criticism — though DATCP on Friday announced it was postponing a plan to pursue the tweaks.

What kind of lobbying does DATCP do?



#DefeatFitzgerald #Fitzgerald ... Wisconsin farmer's deserve better ... #DefeatVos #Vos #GOP .  End the #Gerrymandering #FollowTheMoney