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[Trekkin]

You can't solve everything, but by God you can raise a hell of a lot of revenue just by closing tax havens down

That is true. Unfortunately, per Oxfam America's analysis of the Panama Papers, a hell of a lot of revenue is only $111 billion, about 1.9% of what PTTG would need just for the parts of his plan I added up.

[Loud Whispers]

You can't solve everything, but by God you can raise a hell of a lot of revenue just by closing tax havens down

That is true. Unfortunately, per Oxfam America's analysis of the Panama Papers, a hell of a lot of revenue is only $111 billion, about 1.9% of what PTTG would need just for the parts of his plan I added up.

I'm seeing $188 billion, you could purchase 2,000 more F-35s with that kind of dosh

[Trekkin]

I don't think that link goes where you want.

[PTTG??]

But let's take a step back and talk about the actual policies we need, in no particular order:

And you're paying for them how, exactly?

Don't get all fiscal conservative on me. There's always money for another war, but the minute someone suggests actually improving living conditions for anyone, all of a sudden we're a pauper nation. But to answer the question, #4.

Oh, if you're going to just start demanding that multi-trillion dollar programs materialize from whole cloth and branding everyone who asks how you're going to do that as a war hawk, then yes, I am absolutely going to "get all fiscal conservative" on you until you actually take the time to show how the numbers add up. Single-payer would cost about $1.9 trillion, if we take the average of the Sanders and Thorpe plans. We already spend $620 billion on education; I'd like to know what counts as "proper" in your eyes, because I've seen approaches that would triple that called insufficient. Mars is another $1.5 - $2 trillion on top of that, if you want people living there. "Apollo-scale" carbon sequestration sounds grand but says nothing about how much you want sequestered; if you mean all of it, that's another $800 billion using median estimates of $130 per metric ton.

Adding all that up, you're asking for about a 1768% hike in corporate tax revenues to cover the extra $5.7 trillion in spending you want. That's a hard sell, particularly when our defense budget is barely 11.7% of that at 681 billion.

Wait, are you trying to pay for my wish list with the revenue of one year? You're also ignoring that healthcare would be a net negative cost since people aren't going to be spending on private healthcare. Also that space mining will pay for itself -- at $20T per rock, even after you assume metal markets collapse 75% it pays most of the extra costs by itself.

But yeah, the stuff needs to be done, and it needs to be paid for (at least partially). But we can do deficit spending. After all, we still have vast quantities of untapped productivity. And, we can take decades to do it.

[Loud Whispers]

I don't think that link goes where you want.

Lmao you're right, I realise now when you scroll down on forbes it changes the link to a new page

[Maximum Spin]

You're also ignoring that healthcare would be a net negative cost since people aren't going to be spending on private healthcare.

hahahahahahahahahaha

Also that space mining will pay for itself -- at $20T per rock, even after you assume metal markets collapse 75% it pays most of the extra costs by itself.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You haven't actually seen many government programs, huh?

[Loud Whispers]

Wait, are you trying to pay for my wish list with the revenue of one year? You're also ignoring that healthcare would be a net negative cost since people aren't going to be spending on private healthcare. Also that space mining will pay for itself -- at $20T per rock, even after you assume metal markets collapse 75% it pays most of the extra costs by itself.
But yeah, the stuff needs to be done, and it needs to be paid for (at least partially). But we can do deficit spending. After all, we still have vast quantities of untapped productivity. And, we can take decades to do it.

Regarding healthcare, free healthcare cuts costs for patients pretty dramatically, for the very simple advantage that people are willing to go to the doctors to investigate early symptoms - allowing doctors to detect and treat illnesses before they become serious or chronic illnesses. It's something every country should work towards imo

[Doomblade187]

>We can do deficit spending

... pls no more. I know it hasn't come home yet, but being 20 trillion in debt isn't a good thing. Raising corporate taxes is a priority for this reason, imo.

[PTTG??]

You're also ignoring that healthcare would be a net negative cost since people aren't going to be spending on private healthcare.

hahahahahahahahahaha

Also that space mining will pay for itself -- at $20T per rock, even after you assume metal markets collapse 75% it pays most of the extra costs by itself.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You haven't actually seen many government programs, huh?

Wait until you get a job, then you'll see that corporations are no better.

[Folly]

Gov Brown of California is currently talking about the fires. He's basically saying that this is the new normal, and it's going to get much worse in coming years. Sounds like California is basically fucked.

[Gentlefish]

Well, considering recent yearly revenues for health insurance companies is $851 billion, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that nixing private healthcare and moving to a single payer system is out of the question.

Since single-payer healthcare wouldn't be profit-driven and looking to compete with other HICs, the average cost per-person should actually decrease. Meaning it would be not unreasonable to see a ~8% federal tax rate increase to cover the costs completely. (assuming 122 million taxpayers with a conservative 55K gross income, that is.) As unreasonable as 8% sounds, that's only 4.4k/year for the average person. For total healthcare coverage for the entire US population. Just under $1k cheaper than current average yearly cost per person.

In other words, single payer healthcare isn't just reasonable, it may even be cheaper.

[Maximum Spin]

Wait until you get a job, then you'll see that corporations are no better.

...I didn't say anything about... eh, whatever.

[Loud Whispers]

Well, considering recent yearly revenues for health insurance companies is $851 billion, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that nixing private healthcare and moving to a single payer system is out of the question.

Since single-payer healthcare wouldn't be profit-driven and looking to compete with other HICs, the average cost per-person should actually decrease. Meaning it would be not unreasonable to see a ~8% federal tax rate increase to cover the costs completely. (assuming 122 million taxpayers with a conservative 55K gross income, that is.) As unreasonable as 8% sounds, that's only 4.4k/year for the average person. For total healthcare coverage for the entire US population. Just under $1k cheaper than current average yearly cost per person.

In other words, single payer healthcare isn't just reasonable, it may even be cheaper.

“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask

Your countrymen > profits
Yet patriots do so often oppose this hmmmmmm

[hector13]

Hey man, market forces fix everything.

The thing is how you define “everything”.

[Trekkin]

Wait, are you trying to pay for my wish list with the revenue of one year? You're also ignoring that healthcare would be a net negative cost since people aren't going to be spending on private healthcare. Also that space mining will pay for itself -- at $20T per rock, even after you assume metal markets collapse 75% it pays most of the extra costs by itself.

But yeah, the stuff needs to be done, and it needs to be paid for (at least partially). But we can do deficit spending. After all, we still have vast quantities of untapped productivity. And, we can take decades to do it.

Yes; the education, health care, and carbon sequestration costs are per-year, so if you want to take the Mars program off it's still an annual cost of about 4 trillion. I didn't add the space mining since the initial costs affect what is within the delta-v capability of the mining fleet and what's required of the mining target composition to enable ISRU (since everyone just assumes that for propellant now) and so there's not a single concrete budget without more information. If you have a specific proposal in mind we can certainly add those costs and eventual profits, but many of the more economical proposals run into the same problem as the rest of your wish list: the benefits lag behind the cost by more than an election cycle. If you take decades to do it, ignoring the urgency of the climate problems all the rest of it, the opposite party will claim, accurately, that you've raised everyone's taxes to buy things for other people. Voters hate that. They, like you, want other people (the rich, in your case) to pay for their things, not the other way around. So, four years of taxes into your plan, you lose to President Anti-PTTG, who promises to can illegal immigrants for school lunches and burn down our forests just to teach the liberal climate who's boss but also stop the hardworking taxpayers of this country paying for some scapegoat's cosmetic surgery and some other kid to go to an irritatingly fancy school (and you know those stories will crop up, like with welfare, from nothing if need be), and that's the end of that.

It's unavoidable as a consequence of dramatic overhaul, I'm afraid. Fix the school system, and the benefits ramp up over a twelve-year period after you've finished. Fix health care and you've got to deal with the backlog of people with untreated diseases before the effect of early detection really starts to show up. Mars takes months just to get there and years to build anything, space mining could take a decade, and of course the climate's going to take even longer to restore.

I actually like your list. I'm just wondering if there's a way to implement it so we don't get a repeat of Trump taking credit for Obama's effect on the economy and so forth.