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PITTSBURG —
You’ll hear a lot in the coming weeks about how the Republicans are going to take away your Medicare. But what you won’t hear are two popular ideas from the left that will lead to a similar result.
The first idea is a value-added tax on everything we buy. Like a sales tax, it does not take into account whether someone has enough income to pay the tax. I believe this tax is very detrimental to economic growth and does a very poor job of raising revenue. Exhibit A is Europe, whose economies are mostly contracting and whose countries are mostly broke.
Granted, our VAT would start off low, but the fact that the Europeans kept raising theirs to astronomical levels suggests that it must not have been very effective at raising revenue in the first place.
The second harmful tax scheme is a tax on retirement accounts, which is sure to arrive because that’s where the money is. You’ll lose about a hundred thousand for every 10 percent of tax on income if the account is allowed to grow for 40 years.
The combined effect of these taxes — slower growth, less money to save for retirement, and less money in your retirement account — will make it very difficult to pay for meicare premiums and supplemental insurance with their plan. The moral of the story is that when your country gets this far in debt there are no good options left. But you won’t hear much about the Democratic plan.
Dan Redmond
Pittsburg
You’ll hear a lot in the coming weeks about how the Republicans are going to take away your Medicare. But what you won’t hear are two popular ideas from the left that will lead to a similar result.
The first idea is a value-added tax on everything we buy. Like a sales tax, it does not take into account whether someone has enough income to pay the tax. I believe this tax is very detrimental to economic growth and does a very poor job of raising revenue. Exhibit A is Europe, whose economies are mostly contracting and whose countries are mostly broke.
Granted, our VAT would start off low, but the fact that the Europeans kept raising theirs to astronomical levels suggests that it must not have been very effective at raising revenue in the first place.
The second harmful tax scheme is a tax on retirement accounts, which is sure to arrive because that’s where the money is. You’ll lose about a hundred thousand for every 10 percent of tax on income if the account is allowed to grow for 40 years.
The combined effect of these taxes — slower growth, less money to save for retirement, and less money in your retirement account — will make it very difficult to pay for meicare premiums and supplemental insurance with their plan. The moral of the story is that when your country gets this far in debt there are no good options left. But you won’t hear much about the Democratic plan.
Dan Redmond
Pittsburg
