Capitalism

[Atomic Pirate]

Free healthcare is a laughable idea anyway because it's essentially an impossibility unless you have some sort of magical ability to create valuable currency out of thin air without messing up rates and can continually back up its value, which is in itself an impossibility. Or if you just plain don't give a hoot about sending the medical economy spiraling into the ground.

Whether paying for it up front or with taxes (as "free" healthcare usually totes), you're still paying for it.

Allow me to educate you.

The rich have a lot more money than the poor in America -- That's why they're called "the rich" and "the 1%". In fact, the average household income of the top 1% is about $1,300,000. That's about six times the average income of the top 20% -- about $230,000. And then we have the bottom 40% -- That's 2 out of every 5 Americans -- who have an average income of about $17,000. You don't have to be a statistician to realize that this is a problem.

Because of the fact that the rich are so rich, it makes sense that they would have to pay higher taxes. Yeah, they might not have enough money to buy that diamond-plated Bugatti after being taxed, but they should just be thankful that they are still able to live a comfortable life in a nice house, unlike many Americans who struggle just to make enough money to get by every year.

The money taken from these taxes would go to providing free healthcare for the people of the country. After all, it's kind of bogus to have to pay the government to get a life-saving operation that you can't afford. Didn't the founding fathers talk of "being endowed to the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? If you truly support the ideals of the founding fathers you should be all for free healthcare. After all, it directly supports the basic human right of life. And it's kind of hard to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" when you're getting paid 7 bucks an hour at McDonalds because you were born into a poor family and could never afford to go to college and you have a devastating disease that you need to get treated but can't afford to.

Not to mention, to all you self-proclaimed "God-fearing conservatives" who claim to follow the Bible word for word, shouldn't you be against capitalism? I'm no theologian, but from what I've read of Jesus he seemed like, well, a liberal and a socialist. He was for nonviolence, he hung out with rejects and outcasts, he healed the sick for free, he was for separation of church and state ("Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's"), against public prayer, and he didn't exactly like the rich ("Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven").

 

[Oryx]

Allow me to educate you.

The rich have a lot more money than the poor in America -- That's why they're called "the rich" and "the 1%". In fact, the average household income of the top 1% is about $1,300,000. That's about six times the average income of the top 20% -- about $230,000. And then we have the bottom 40% -- That's 2 out of every 5 Americans -- who have an average income of about $17,000. You don't have to be a statistician to realize that this is a problem.

Because of the fact that the rich are so rich, it makes sense that they would have to pay higher taxes. Yeah, they might not have enough money to buy that diamond-plated Bugatti after being taxed, but they should just be thankful that they are still able to live a comfortable life in a nice house, unlike many Americans who struggle just to make enough money to get by every year.

The money taken from these taxes would go to providing free healthcare for the people of the country. After all, it's kind of bogus to have to pay the government to get a life-saving operation that you can't afford. Didn't the founding fathers talk of "being endowed to the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? If you truly support the ideals of the founding fathers you should be all for free healthcare. After all, it directly supports the basic human right of life. And it's kind of hard to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" when you're getting paid 7 bucks an hour at McDonalds because you were born into a poor family and could never afford to go to college and you have a devastating disease that you need to get treated but can't afford to.

Not to mention, to all you self-proclaimed "God-fearing conservatives" who claim to follow the Bible word for word, shouldn't you be against capitalism? I'm no theologian, but from what I've read of Jesus he seemed like, well, a liberal and a socialist. He was for nonviolence, he hung out with rejects and outcasts, he healed the sick for free, he was for separation of church and state ("Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's"), against public prayer, and he didn't exactly like the rich ("Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven").

When most people speak about "free healthcare", they're not speaking about "free healthcare for all under $50k a year". We already have something like that, albeit with a lower income level usually. It's called Medicaid, you might have heard of it. When people say that there is no such thing as free healthcare, what they're saying is that someone has to pay for it. You are agreeing with CarcharOdin by saying that someone has to pay for it, and delving into who should be paying for it, which he didn't touch on at all.

I'm not sure the argument of "because the rich are so rich, they should be paying higher taxes" flies without further evidence. That is an often disagreed-with argument; taxes are meant to be done at a percentage of your income, so rich people already pay more because their 10% is much larger than a poor person's 10%. That they should have to pay a higher rate on top of that can't be asserted with the argument "because they're rich", because that doesn't prove your conclusion at all.