The "wealth tax" can't work

It’s obvious that Senators Saunders and Warren have not dealt with wealth very much.  Their proposed wealth tax is indeed a bright and shiny tax to look at.  My 45 years working with the current wealth (Estate) tax has convinced me that this tax won’t work.  Most of us non-billionaires know to within a few thousand dollars how much we are worth.  As the value of our assets increase, the valuation of them becomes more and more uncertain.  We regularly see mansions go down in price between listing and selling by millions of dollars.  Famous artwork can go from a few hundred thousand to a few million in the short period of an auction.  It’s pretty much accepted that the market value of an item is what a willing buyer will pay a willing seller.  Without a willing buyer how do you value anything?

 Most large estates take years to settle with the IRS due to court hearings, with highly paid valuation experts testifying on the value of assets.  Many lawyers are employed using trusts, limited partnerships, and other tools to keep the value of the estate assets down.  To ask for an annual valuation will do nothing but bring on lawsuits and complications for our taxing authorities.  The elimination of the “step up in basis” on death is a similar bright and shiny tax that doesn’t seem to die.  We tried it in the 80’s and found it totally flawed in its’ execution because no one kept track of decades of additions to the tax basis.   We still hear from our legislators that eliminating the “step up in basis” would be a great idea.   I wouldn’t expect to hear much about this from tax practitioners as they always seem to welcome new tax twists as job security.  The far left has better ways to tax the super rich: from transaction taxes to increasing the estate tax.  They need to actually work through the mechanics prior to trying to blind us with shiny non-sense.

Our Refusal to Read

Listening to the Impeachment hearings I am reminded of my psychologist father’s favorite saying: “50% of the population is below average intelligence.”    What really concerns me, however, is the smarter 50%’s refusal to read.  I have long wondered about the hate that evangelists spread and now realize that they haven’t read the New Testament.  Hearing the GOP’s response to the Mueller report it was obvious that they haven’t read it.  It’s now obvious that many of our Senators haven’t read the constitution!  The power brokers of our country have decided that spreading hate is the best way to gain power.   As long as we continue to listen to hate radio, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox news  we will continue to rip the country apart.

It's all about the Benjamin s

I’ve been trying to understand how we came to our current situation where the best we can say for our guy is the other guy is worse and political ideas are discussed in two or three words that mean different things to different people.  This causes anger, fear and hate to motivate many of us.  We have gotten good at blaming others for all our problems without realizing that we are all to blame for what’s going down!  

The lack of concern about the foreign funding of our elections has make me realize that it’s all about the money. Top issues to many of us: high drug prices, social security, health care, and campaign finance  all desperately needing reform are basically being ignored because lobbyists are very happy with the way things are. We, as voters, allow this system to continue because we are convinced that our jobs rely on us contributing to the appropriate lobby, union, or party to keep our way of life. This allows the lobbyists to fund election campaigns for or against specific politicians who hold a strong view on their issues.  Because we are a nation of laws, we sometimes confuse what is legal with what is right particularly concerning election campaigns.  We seem to all agree that when Russia tampers with our election it is wrong.  When I’m in Minnesota and asked to contribute to a campaign in South Carolina this is legal; however, I believe it is just as wrong as Russia contributing to Trump’s campaign.  Because virtually everyone involved in politics is either getting rich or will get rich once they are out of office from the current revolving door system, we need a grassroots movement to move forward in a unified way.

Christian version of Sharia Law?

As an old white man, I understand the abortion question as: When is a person a person?  The only answer to this is a religious one.  The only biblical reference I find that comes close to answering the question is: Genesis 2.7 “and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  Now, I don’t want to argue that the ability to breathe determines when the soul enters the body, but I’m certainly not going to argue against it.  Freedom of religion means we are allowed to believe what we want, without others forcing their beliefs on us.  From my  point of view the pro-lifers are trying to legislate religion just like the Sharia law they oppose so much.

Bullshit, Fear, Anger, and Hate keep the status quo

Can we pause for a second from all the divisive diversions and hateful rhetoric and listen to what is going on in the present.  The good of America is being held hostage to a power struggle between people that are much more invested in keeping their power than in moving America forward. Both parties have adopted a “my way or the highway” approach that can only lead to more extreme positions.  Fear is the motivator of both parties.  Arguments are framed in the horrible things the opposition is trying to accomplish, without regard to truth. The media is much more concerned with promoting controversy than reporting the details of the truth.  From fear it is very easy to ramp up anger, and then hat..  Fear and anger tend to rule out reason, and the lack of reason is our largest current problem.  Bad people have been doing good things and good people have been doing bad things for a long time.  Calling people names just ramps up the anger and hate and doesn’t move us forward.  The following ten issues have become so imbued with fear that we have lost track of some basic truths about them.

1.Health care:  Ignoring the ethics of making money from peoples suffering, the only way that ‘for profit’ health providers can increase profits is by: having more sick people, more treatable conditions,  raising prices, prolonging treatments and ignoring cures.  We already have universal coverage  for Emergency Room admissions,  the most expensive kind. There is a huge parasitic industry concerned only with money in healthcare consisting of benefit managers and insurance companies.  Both Federal and State governments provide substantial funding for reinsurance, subsidizing the insurance companies.

2,Global warming:  The conservatives are all aghast about the job losses, while the liberals celebrate all the job opportunities. Seems to me there’s room for discussion.

3.Social Security:  Liberals are afraid of cutting benefits, conservatives are afraid of raising taxes.  Politicians are afraid period.  The sooner it’s fixed the easier the fix is, why can’t we bargain?

4. Regulations:   Big money is for getting rid of them, Democrats don’t want to lose all the money their lawyers get from lawsuits. Can’t we eliminate some paperwork by putting the perpetrators in jail instead of giving them bonus’s while penalizing the shareholders with large fines?

5.Immigration:  We need immigrants for our economy to run.  We have several ways to take advantage of those wishing to live with us, without demonizing them.  Dreamers need to be dealt with, migrant labor needs to be made easier and better. Take out the fear and much can be done.

6.Government shut down:  This is what ISIS and Russia have been hoping for.  We have instituted slave labor by asking people to work for free.  Every day of the shut down brings us closer to becoming a third world nation!

7.Abortion:  The granddaddy of all hate issues.  Is making it illegal going to keep it from happening?  More women will be in ER’s due to botched procedures.  I don’t understand why the pro lifers have to punish the “evil doers”.  Is their faith so little that they don’t think justice will come in the afterlife?

8.Public debate:  First rule of debating reads: If you can’t win with logic go with insults.  The first insult tells you the loser of the debate.

9.Gun control:  The fear is taking all the guns away.  I want to know how that could happen?  Who goes door to door?  How do they know they’ve got them all?  It can’t happen.  Why can’t we talk about keeping them out of dangerous people’s hands?

10.Socialism, Capitalism, and Communism are all failed 19^th century ideas that really have no bearing anymore.  Every advanced country has some state ownership, some private ownership, a safety net for the poor, and incentives for the exceptional.  It’s just a matter of degree.

We live in an age where we are forced to be willfully ignorant about many things just to live an ordinary life.  We must realize when commenting on issues just how ignorant we are of them, and refrain ourselves as appropriate. As FDR said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

Single Payer?

I think that many of our problems with the cost of medicine date back to the 80’s and 90’s when state by state we passed laws requiring emergency rooms to admit all that came in without telling the ER’s how they would pay for this.  We truly have universal coverage because of these laws, and it is the most expensive type possible.  Prior to forcing hospitals to use creative accounting, ($40 aspirin), they just added a margin to their cost and charged like any other ethical retailer.  Now the system is to charge as much as possible depending on the patient and their coverage.  This philosophy has now spread to the entire medical industry and spurred the development of many well paying professions in the “managing benefits” industry and buying medical accounts receivables.  Keeping  track of the many insurance plans and how they differ in their payments also keeps many employed.  The growth of employment in medicine has been boosted way beyond reasonable with all these people making a living without ever seeing a patient.

In an effort to keep their jobs, these non-practitioners have orchestrated a huge fear campaign.  They cite  huge additional costs for ‘single payer’ when they don’t even define what it is covering, and ignoring the money currently being spent that would no longer be spent.  Until it is designed we can’t possibly know what the cost will be.  They also trash the “Canadian System” for long wait times.  Well, Canada has a different system for each province and some are better than others.  The long wait times usually refer to elective procedures.  The folks I’ve talked to in both Ontario and Quebec wouldn’t change their system for anything.  The phoniest objection I’ve heard is fear about a government bureaucrat making decisions for you.  I think a non-profit government bureaucrat would make more favorable decisions about my care than the current ‘for profit’ insurance company bureaucrat would.

I think it’s obvious to all that reform is needed.  We need to communicate with each other to get it right.  Both the fights for Social Security and Medicare were contentious, but civility lead to the compromises we have now: government provides the base protection, and the individual provides the extras:   By setting a payment schedule, similar to  Medicare,  and then paying the providers 100% of the schedule amount if the provider bills for that amount, and then reducing  the payment to the provider by the same percentage that the provider charges over the scheduled amount.  This would allow the providers to charge what they want while allowing the patient to keep their doctor, if they can afford him/her.  It also leaves open business for our health insurance companies with “gap”  or “advantage” insurance similar to Medicare.

With the health insurance industry and the pharmaceuticals leading the country in political donations we are unlikely to see any changes. 

Unsolvable problems highten emotions

I don’t think our Founding Fathers would be pleased with our present version of democracy.  How did we get to a point where we are voting against people instead of for them?  The use of fear and anger has led many to abandon reason and embrace emotion.  Somehow we have people that believe the impossible intentions of others are somehow achievable.  Single unsolvable issues have blinded us to other issues that are solvable.  Abortion,  guns and tax cuts in particular increase the emotional level.  Why isn’t it obvious that abortion isn’t going to go away if it is made illegal?  It will just cause the death of more women due to unsanitary conditions and fuller jails.  I really want to know how the guns are going to be taken away!  Who is going to go door to door asking for guns?  Would we really want to hire someone crazy enough to do the job?  And then: how do you know you’ve got them all?  The tax cutters seem to be the worst.  Don’t they realize that cutting one tax just causes another to go up?  Not only do they want to cut taxes but they then want to say we don’t have the money to carry out essential programs.  Divide and conquer is the strategy of the day. Hypocrisy is the tactic.  To hell with unite and prosper.  We have an inability to see that even bad people can do good things; even Hitler made the trains run on time.