"You just demonstrated your ignorance of health care issues"

great argument- just insult when frustrated!

"The United States currently spends 15% of its GDP on health care more than any other country. Yet the WHO ranks the our health care at #37 in the world"

We spend alot on heathcare because we're a bunch of fatasses. Hart disease and diabetes are eating us alive. Take responsibility for your health- if you don't, just don't ask me or the rich to pay for it.

"Yet the WHO ranks the our health care at #37 in the world".

The technologies fostered by the AMERICAN free market- created by companies like abbot labs, tellabs, JNJ- are invaluable and probably have saved the life of someone you know.

"All that extra money is lining the pockets of the owners of health insurance companies"

Yes, that would be investors who own the companies such as me, you and your pension fund.

"A single-payer system is simply more efficient."

Ah, yes Uncle sam, that efficient captain of industry!! I could drive out competition too if i had the power to tax and print dollars.

“1. Reagan did an across the board tax cut, but it was a percentage across the board tax cut, so to say it was equal is incorrect.”

It was equal in that everybody who paid income taxes got a tax cut. Unlike Bush’s tax cut you didn’t have to be in a certain category or class to get a tax cut. Furthermore, I have always heard that the tax rates were all cut by 25% so everyone received the same tax cut.

“ie 3% of 1,000,000 is a good chunk of change, but 3% of 30,000 is like groceries for a week.”

Since when is it fair to tax someone just because they have more that can be taxed? Does paying 3% of 1,000,000 earn the taxpayer to more Medicare/Medicaid, more food stamps, better public schools or better roads than paying 3% of 30,000? No. The opposite is more likely true. Taxing people to make them pay for welfare that they are not entitled to is the essence of communism.

“2. Yes, building factories etc is the standard explanation. But that's not how it works. People build factories when and only when there is demand.”

People build factories as an investment in hopes of making a profit in the future. They don’t always wait for consumer demand to develop.

“I say that Republicans are trying to rewrite history, because that is precisely what they are doing. They are trying to say again that Reaganomics is somehow the solvent for our problems,”

You mean solution and your general level of ignorance is showing- or either you are foaming at the mouth to the point that you cannot talk.

“3. GDP is only one indicator of a nations prosperity.”

Then what else should be considered? What other than GDP tells us that Clinton’s economy was better than Reagan’s?

“During the Reagan years we still had a huge national defecit,”

Which we also had under Clinton until the Republicans in Congress balanced the budget.

“Clinton has been the only one in recent history to erase that defecit without a world war, and he did so with what would be almost the exact opposite of what Reagan did.”

Explain. What did Clinton do to reduce the deficit and grow the economy?

“That was the highest since the great depression, and higher than now.”

As of this morning only by 0.5 percentage point, so what’s your point?

“And Republicans blamed Carter for this... that's two years into his presidency,”

Reagan’s tax cuts were not made law until the summer of 1981 and they were phased in over a 3 year time period, so whatever happened in 1982 was still being influenced more by Carter than Reagan.

“Things like not counting unemployed people as unemployed after 6 mo. to make the numbers look better.”

Documentation?

“And of course that funny math remains in government even today.”

So Obama is using it too?

“And finally, are you kidding me? You're actually going to try to credit the House and Senate with anything as far as the economy is concerned during the 90s?”

Yes. The federal budget was not balanced until after the Republicans took over both Houses of Congress.

OMG. i'm no economist i admit.but please do some basic reading on how fed reserve discount window and open market operations influence money supply and interest rates. The rate of gdp growth during clinton was great- it was expansion fed by the housing bubble created by easy money. who cares what president saw the bubble pop when the seeds were sown earlier?

Affordable housing: a bit of sarcasm. the housing bubble popping gave us this recession and affordable housing(lower prices) for those who get obamas $8,000 freebie. But my housing value went down. seems like a wealth transfer from me to them, so please forgive the sarcasm.

I am not familiar with this notation !=.

But either way our tax code is skewed to tax the rich. The working poor and the middle class are pretty much one and the same thing when it comes to taxes. They both either have little taxable income relative to the rich or their deductions erase whatever taxes they do pay.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/22958.html

This data is in a table format; I don’t know how it will show up here:

Individual Income Tax Due in 2008,

Bush Law versus Clinton Law

For taxpayers who take the standard deduction and have no children

Taxpayer Tax That Would Have Been Owed under Clinton-Era Tax Law Tax Owed under Current Law, with Bush Tax Cuts

Single, income of 30,000 $3,157.50 $2,756.25

Single, income of 50,000 $7,262.50 $6,606.25

Married, income of $50,000 $5,085.00 $4,012.50

Married, income of $60,000 $6,585.00 $5,512.50

Single, income of $75,000 $14,262.50 $12,856.25

Married, income of $75,000 $9,426.50 $7,762.50

Single, income of $125,000 $29,378.50 $26,472.25

Married, income of $125,000 $23,426.50 $19,462.50

*This chart does not take into account the Alternative Minimum Tax

http://www.parapundit.com/archives/004657.html

People with an annual income greater than $364,657 file only 1% of the total number of federal income tax returns, but they pay 38.39% of all federal income taxes that are collected.

People with an annual income greater than $103,912 file only 10% of the total number of federal income tax returns, but they pay 70.3% of all federal income taxes that are collected.

50% of the people who file federal income tax returns earn less than $30,881 but they pay 3.07% of all federal income taxes that are collected.

Your user name is appropriate since you must have lead for brains.

As long as supply and demand are in equilibrium there will be no change in price. If the price for something goes up it either means that there are more consumers or the same number of consumers want to buy more or there are fewer producers or the same number of producers are producing less than they were before or the supply of raw materials has declined relative to demand over time so it costs more to produce the same amount of finished product.

What we are having now- high consumer prices and high unemployment- is just what we had during the Carter Administration. You cannot stimulate an inflationary economy- something Carter tried doing with $50 government stimulus checks. The economy couldn’t produce enough energy and food and manufactured goods to meet consumer demand. People who had money would try to buy more than they needed or could use right away because they knew that if they waited to buy, prices would go up in the meantime. Inflation in the late 1970s became a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are not far from the same thing now.