What's so bad about the estate tax? Afraid your sheltered little brats can't hack it with only $5M?
/edit typed the exact opposite of what I meant
You know the standard thing: tax stuff if you want less of it.
A carbon tax is much more about last-ditch attempts to avoid total climate mayhem than about raising taxes.
Incidentally, universal healthcare is the sort of thing that lowers overall costs for society by treating people before they spread disease and end up in emergency rooms…
Bernie Sanders is not interested in taxes, they are a means to various ends. He wants to use whatever tools will achieve the goals of having a healthy, just society.
I think it's just dogmatic to be fundamentally worried about taxes one way or the other. The question is what we use the money for. Raising taxes could be terrible or could be great, all depends on each case, what and who are taxed, why, and what do we do with the revenue.
Not really. Check out the Oregon Medicaid study. Higher costs with universal coverage, but no better outcome.
Real universal healthcare is what you see in other countries: Canada, Japan, U.K., Denmark, Costa Rica, Cuba…
And you'll find enough variation among those to acknowledge that the devil is in the details still. Interesting stuff though… despite being poorer and spending far less on healthcare, Cuba and Costa Rica have the same life expectancy as the U.S.
And life expectancy is a terrible measure of the quality of healthcare. It's been rehashed plenty of times on HN. Too many confounding factors.
And unless an estate tax is 100%, you're not going to change how wealth is passed down. Bill Gates could pay a 50% estate tax when he dies and still leave every offspring a "sheltered brat" as you put it.
I guess I am just completely opposed to the idea that what I own, I own just because the government lets me. I'm fine with paying taxes on my income, but at some point it becomes my income and I should be able to do with it as I please.
The other point is that many left leaning countries have no death tax (Canada). They seem to get along fine.
I should be able to give what I own when I'm alive to whomever I please once I die. That is, unless you believe I never owned it in the first place.