Re: Re: Re: Re: "How to Kill Orchestras" - NY Times


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Posted by Bill on July 03, 2003 at 13:10:38:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: "How to Kill Orchestras" - NY Times posted by Rick Denney on July 03, 2003 at 12:23:14:

Tax rates should not favor how your money is made, in my opinion. We are not in a situation where there isn't enough money for investment. There is not enough money for spending, so businesses are cutting employment, or are not hiring new employees. The unemployment rate is now up to 6.4%. It was as low as 3.9%. During the stock market bubble, Clinton cut capital gains rates to 20%, regardless of whether you were making hundreds of dollars or millions. What effect did that have on the "irrational exuberance" of the late 90s? Let people make decisions with their money based on rate of return, risk and needs or wants. Tax rates should not favor what source the money comes from.

As far as health care. I know a Canadian musician who said if she ever got sick, she wanted to go back to Canada. We have seniors going to Canada to but prescriptions because they are cheaper there (to buy the same drug, one that probably got US funding for R&D). In single-payer systems, care is based on need, not ability to pay. People who are able to pay for great healthcare come here, because if you can pay for it, you can get whatever healthcare you want. To the rest of us, explain why the US spends more on healthcare than any other country per capita, though every other country that is at or comes close to our economic prosperity has universal care. I love your pronouncements on how bad universal care is without any real data, just anecdotes. Try some data on for size:

"Americans spend considerably more money on health care services than any other industrialized nation, but the increased expenditure does not buy more care, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They found that the United States spent 44 percent more on health care than Switzerland, the nation with the next highest per capita health care costs, in the year 2000. At the same time, Americans had fewer physician visits, and hospital stays were shorter compared with most other industrialized nations. The study suggests that the difference in spending is caused mostly by higher prices for health care goods and services in the United States. The results are published in the May/June 2003 edition of Health Affairs."


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