CPCFTW

In a report just released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and also reported on by Rob Portman, the U.S. Senator ® for Ohio, the top 20% of tax payers in the United States are now paying 94% of the total tax collected, up from 86% in 2007 and 81% in 2001. http://www.saveamericafoundation.com/2012/07/12/the-top-20-of-taxpayers-pay-94-of-all-taxes-when-is-enough-enough-by-fred-brownbill/ According to OECD statistics, the United States spends 3.3 percent of its GDP (2006-2011) on infrastructure investment http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/04/01/infrastructure-gap-look-at-the-facts-we-spend-more-than-europe/ During FY2012, the federal government collected approximately $2.45 trillion in tax revenue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget US GDP = 15 trillion. 3.3% x 15 trillion = 0.5 trillion/2.5 trillion tax revenue = 20% of revenue spent on infrastructure. Top 20% contribute 94% of total taxes collected. Top 20% pay for everything but interest:

Businesses and 20% of taxpayers did pay for them already. And they chipped in for the 80%'s share too.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

I never said it was the most cost-effective.. Just more cost-effective than the US system. Not exactly a high bar. Corporations and the top 20% of taxpayers likely pay the entire costs of all those services. Yet it's usually those who pay little to nothing who do all the whining about fairness.

Is that what your faith has taught you? Better round up the heretic wealthy people and string them up! I thought witch hunts were a thing of the past, but I guess history is doomed to repeat itself.

More heresay. Let's get some citations or this all sounds like more faith-based nonsense from the left. "All praise our lord and saviour the benevolent government and damn those who don't!"

Many industries have an allowance for bad accounts built into their cost structure. The people who use the system most would pay for those costs, the same way people who don't default on their credit card payments pay for other people's bankruptcies. That's not "socialized".

I said I don't support an employer-based system because it would increase costs over the current system, which I already think is too costly. It's not that complicated.

You implied that if I didn't accept Canada's publicly funded system, I must want the US's employer-backed system. That implication does not make sense since I had previously argued that health care is not a substantial benefit to employers. If that is my belief, then why would I accept a system which imposes a higher cost on employers? You seem to be lost in a false dichotomy.

Private health care. People who want health care can pay for it. Employers who want to provide insurance as a benefit can do so if they choose. Freedom. Governments can provide tax incentives to save for health care, or just use the savings to slash taxes on the low to middle class. People making 0-50k contribute very little to government coffers.. Dump public health care and we could cut taxes on that class dramatically.

Yes if you make the faulty assumption that the only alternative to our system is that of the US then I guess your comment makes sense. I don't see why anyone would make that assumption based on what I've written so far though. My initial argument was that health care doesn't benefit employers substantially, so why would I want to increase the cost to them?

I never argued for employer-paid healthcare.

There you go again only looking at one side of the equation. Yes there is a benefit to socialized health care.. There is also a cost which you continue to ignore.

The conclusion tells you all you need to know: Despite its escalating costs, the health care sector may be creating more value than it consumes. After all that effort the author still can't conclude that the health care sector creates more value than it consumes, and yet you and WWWTT ridicule anyone who disputes that public health care does not pass a cost/benefit test. The arguments in the article are pretty weak too. 1. Arguing that the health sector "creates jobs". Those jobs would exist in a private system as well, but people could choose to use/pay for them. The money taxed and distributed by the state to public health care would not disappear... it could be used to reduce taxes (lower tax rates on middle class anyone?), or transferred directly to individuals through some sort of health care savings vehicle (eg. RHSP Registered Health Savings Plan), or employ people in other industries (eg. finally constructing some freakin' better subways in Toronto). 2. Arguing that workers are more productive when healthy. This requires one to assume that workers would be unhealthy if we didn't subsidize health care or provide public health care. The increase in life expectancy in modern economies is a result of better medicine and the rule of law (less crime), not because of public health care. Wealth is far more correlated to life expectancy than the existence of public health care is. 3. Arguing that the health care sector is a pillar of science and research. Government can still take a role in research by providing funding grants... this is not an argument for a public health system.

Cite. I'd like a cost/benefit analysis please. Not just benefit analysis. That's the problem with you people.. You skip half the equation.

The biggest costs of government are health care, education, and social assistance. What does health care do for business? Most employees are retired by the time they start excessively using the health care system. What does education do for business? Children can't be hired until they're 15 anyway, so businesses have no opportunity to educate the workforce. Does a high school degree make someone flip burgers better than someone without a high school degree? If the taxes businesses paid were used mostly for infrastructure, we'd probably have subways with 10 minute commute times (instead of 50mins), electric car recharge stations all over the country, railguns to launch cargo to the moon, etc.

Dividends from investing in stocks are residual income paid after the company you are invested in has already paid corporate taxes directly, personal income taxes indirectly through employees, sales taxes on purchases of materials/supplies used in production, and payroll taxes. Plus investments support the entire investment management service industry which is the largest component of the Canadian economy. People who invest indirectly pay far more taxes than people who don't. Fyi, in lower tax brackets Canadian investors can pay an effective negative tax rate on dividends. Nothing wrong with encouraging people to save.

Alternatively (and these are ballpark numbers), if 20% of the labour force is employed by the public sector, then reducing pay by 20% across the board would allow us to employ 5% more of the labour force (reducing unemployment and the associated social costs from 7.2 to 2.2%). Freeing up the expenses of supporting that 5% unemployed could be used to offer raises to the public sector in the future, or to spend on crumbling infrastructure.

That's not true. Taxes come from the bottom line. If other expenses are "being reduced to zero" then tax revenue will have to increase. Greater profits means greater tax revenue. The other consideration is that if expenses were 0 then competitors would enter the market freely and offer better wages or lower prices. If you could start a convenience store and pay 0% of your revenue to taxes and 1% to labour, and other convenience stores were generating 50% margins, would you? Of course you would. Note: I'm not arguing for reducing wages to 0.. Just illustrating how reduced small business expenses provides incentive to others to risk their capital on a small business venture. It's definitely a good thing if you want a society that rewards entrepreneurship and hard work. If you want a society that rewards complacency then it's certainly preferable to create a society where unionized bus drivers, librarians, and teachers comprise the upper middle class.

No anyone who watches that video and believes in the alternate reality of evil 1%ers hoarding all the wealth and destroying society is ignorant.

I said no such thing. I said I know more about economics than most people on this forum and certainly more than a fisherman who gets his economics lessons from david suzuki. The drivel is the video that was linked in the op. If you don't see how it's drivel then you're more ignorant than I thought.

What a ridiculous video. It's sad that lefties believe this drivel.

But that would destroy good Canadian jobs in governance and hollow out the middle class!

No there isn't when you come to the realization that corporations are a collection of people (employees) who are employed by other people (investors). Helping corporations helps people. What injustice? I don't need to be a big shot economist to know more about it than a fisherman and most of the rest of this forum.

You realize the top 20% isn't a monolithic entity of people who occupy that bracket for their entire lives? Most people start in the lower brackets of income then move towards the upper brackets as they progress in their careers. There's nothing wrong with a society which rewards people who work hard for most of their lives. The fact that teenage Wal-Mart employees make slightly less now than teenage roller disco attendants did in the 60s does not "corrode the social contract". Get a clue.