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[Maximum Spin]

We should at the very least start with the obvious changes. Convert to a single payer universal healthcare, cut the military budget by A LOT, and tax the rich more. Then we can see where we stand and adjust from there.

Why do you want to increase the deficit?

[Micro102]

Lol why do you think any of those would increase the deficit?

[EuchreJack]

Lol why do you think any of those would increase the deficit?

Single payer Universal Healthcare, you really don't see that costing anything?

[Maximum Spin]

Lol why do you think any of those would increase the deficit?

Because you want to increase healthcare spending while setting off a recession and crashing the stock market, which will crater tax income and increase unemployment and other entitlement spending.

Everything you do to the economy has far-reaching consequences. There are no low-hanging fruit.

[MrRoboto75]

lmao but you'll spend 20 years in the fucking desert doing fuck all

[EuchreJack]

lmao but you'll spend 20 years in the fucking desert doing fuck all

We're already in the desert doing fuck all, the only debate is how long we've been here.

Oh look, a wikipedia article on Single-payer healthcare!

[Maximum Spin]

lmao but you'll spend 20 years in the fucking desert doing fuck all

That's not any better, for sure, but do you understand the ramifications of sending all those people back home unemployed and laying off all the jet-builders and bomb-makers? In this economy?

Believe me, I think deep defense cuts are a necessary part of the only viable path, but it will destroy hundreds of thousands of lives. There's no not-destroying-hundreds-of-thousands-of-lives option.

ETA: By the way, not even to mention just the transit costs of bringing them back home, which we learned in relation to Afghanistan; and cutting defense spending also means cutting commitments to Ukraine, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel...

[Micro102]

Universal single payer healthcare would not increase the deficit. It would decrease it.

It costs X amount of money to treat the average person. Now you can do this through single payer where one group (the government) can negotiate the price for all the citizens, working much like a union. Larger groups have more bargaining power. And the ability to pass laws like forcing the price of insulin to a normal level.

Or, you can treat them through 500 different healthcare insurance companies. Each with their own accountants, lawyers, and CEOs who are going to pocket hundreds of millions and store it in tax havens.

Universal single payer healthcare costs less per person and we know this.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%202021%20(U.S.%20dollars,%20PPP%20adjusted)

Divert those $12914 that in part go into the pockets of insurance companies because they are incentivized to charge you as much as possible without the average person dying in order to maximize their profits on this commodity that people need to live, and pay a fraction of that in taxes. Everyone now has more money to spend on other things, which boosts the economy.

[Micro102]

(Ignore this) (is there a way to delete comments?)

[Maximum Spin]

Universal single payer healthcare would not increase the deficit. It would decrease it.

It costs X amount of money to treat the average person. Now you can do this through single payer where one group (the government) can negotiate the price for all the citizens, working much like a union. Larger groups have more bargaining power. And the ability to pass laws like forcing the price of insulin to a normal level.

Or, you can treat them through 500 different healthcare insurance companies. Each with their own accountants, lawyers, and CEOs who are going to pocket hundreds of millions and store it in tax havens.

Universal healthcare costs less per person and we know this.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%202021%20(U.S.%20dollars,%20PPP%20adjusted)

Divert those $12914 that in part go into the pockets of insurance companies because they are incentivized to charge you as much as possible without the average person dying in order to maximize their profits on this commodity that people need to live, and pay a fraction of that in taxes. Everyone now has more money to spend on other things, which boosts the economy.

The statistic you link is the wrong comparison, and this is not how it works.

Even if the numbers were exactly the same as you describe, divert those $12914 that in part go into the pockets of insurance companies, and some people now have more money to spend on other things, while people who work for or own shares in insurance companies, as well as the people who get money from those people directly or indirectly, now have less. The total amount of economic activity doesn't change, because you didn't add any value to the system, you just moved it around.

Even if a single-payer healthcare system were cheaper in the US than the current system, which is incredibly unlikely because other countries' healthcare systems are subsidized by the US, the current system doesn't pay for most healthcare out of government coffers, so your plan would still increase the deficit.

[Micro102]

Ok I'm going to have to assume you just didn't actually read my comment, because you seem to have just missed the part where there are all these CEOs hoarding money in tax havens and the part where taxes get increased so we breakeven or get a surplus from healthcare.

Yes, it redistributes wealth from the people who won't spend it, to people who do spend it. And that's what makes an economy function.

EDIT: Also, it seems like you are ignoring long term benefits in favor of short term gains. I don't care about some people losing stock market bids if it means better stability for the entire country.

[Maximum Spin]

Ok I'm going to have to assume you just didn't actually read my comment, because you seem to have just missed the part where there are all these CEOs hoarding money in tax havens and the part where taxes get increased so we breakeven or get a surplus from healthcare.

You really don't know anything about economics, huh?
Okay, what are you going to tax? How are you going to do this without collapsing the stock market, eliminating people's retirement savings, and devastating the economy? How do you even plan on stopping CEOs hoarding money in tax havens (which is mostly mythical) given that those are other countries whose laws you cannot change (especially if you slashed your defense budget so you can't even invade them), rather than just convincing even more to pull out and run to the nearest Caribbean island to avoid your tax increases? And what happens to the people employed by the businesses you just decimated doing so?

Yes, it redistributes wealth from the people who won't spend it, to people who do spend it. And that's what makes an economy function.

Wrong. What makes an economy function is producing valuable goods and services. Money is an abstraction.

EDIT: Also, it seems like you are ignoring long term benefits in favor of short term gains. I don't care about some people losing stock market bids if it means better stability for the entire country.

The country is not going to be very stable when people are poor, starving, and dying because of your policies. Especially when you just made sure a bunch of them are ex-military with guns and training and a chip on their shoulder against the country that abandoned them. Pretty sure there's a few stories about how that goes in history.

[Micro102]

That is some strong projection right there.

Notice how, like, EVERY other country in the world that doesn't have our shitty privatized healthcare system hasn't collapsed into a pile of rubble like you seem to suggest will happen if we switch to universal healthcare (which you provide no reasoning to at all, just asserting that disaster will happen).

You stop the CEOs from hoarding the money, by not letting them get the money in the first place. If there is universal single payer healthcare, there are no more CEO positions for all these health insurance companies. This isn't just an understanding of economics. You don't seem to even understand the concept of what single payer itself is.

Also, have you not seen the Panama papers? This isn't up for debate. You are denying reality itself here.

EDIT:

Wrong. What makes an economy function is producing valuable goods and services. Money is an abstraction.

No, you also need the goods to be purchased.

And what happens to the people employed by the businesses you just decimated doing so?

I forgot to respond to this part. You still need those people to take care of the population, just like they previously did. The primary people losing their jobs are the ultra rich positions. And lawyers and whatnot, but their jobs do not outweigh the huge burden that would be lifted off everyone else.

[Maximum Spin]

Notice how, like, EVERY other country in the world that doesn't have our shitty privatized healthcare system hasn't collapsed into a pile of rubble like you seem to suggest will happen if we switch to universal healthcare (which you provide no reasoning to at all, just asserting that disaster will happen).

I didn't say it will collapse into rubble. I said it would increase the deficit. It also reduces quality of care. However, it's a fact that those countries' healthcare systems are heavily subsidized by the US. If the US goes single-payer, it actually has knock-on effects that will bring down the quality and increase the price for ALL of them.

You stop the CEOs from hoarding the money, by not letting them get the money in the first place. If there is universal single payer healthcare, there are no more CEO positions for all these health insurance companies. This isn't just an understanding of economics. You don't seem to even understand the concept of what single payer itself is.

You're talking about just insurance companies? Bro, that's peanuts. It's a meaningless amount of money.
But since you were talking about taxing those CEOs, if you're ending health insurance, you're not getting any tax dollars from them, so how are you breaking even again? And remind me, what happens to all the people who work for those insurance companies? Do they just politely evaporate?

Also, have you not seen the Panama papers? This isn't up for debate. You are denying reality itself here.

I've seen them, but it sounds like, like a lot of people, you didn't understand them, lol. Probably got your interpretation from a Voxsplainer.
The scale of the US public debt is over thirty trillion dollars. The scale of the deficit is one and a half trillion dollars a year. There aren't enough tax havens in the world to fix that.

ETA:

No, you also need the goods to be purchased.

"purchased" is also an abstraction.

I forgot to respond to this part. You still need those people to take care of the population, just like they previously did. The primary people losing their jobs are the ultra rich positions. And lawyers and whatnot, but their jobs do not outweigh the huge burden that would be lifted off everyone else.

Okay, but you just ended all the insurance companies, so everyone who works at an insurance agency is unemployed, down to the clerks and office janitors. And even the lawyers, whether you care about their jobs or not, like to feed their kids every day. Now all those people are either competing for the fewer jobs left, bringing down wages for everyone, or drawing an unemployment check, increasing the deficit again.

How many people do you think will even want to be doctors and lawyers, if being a doctor or a lawyer stops being a high-status money-maker (which is already in the process of happening)? How many people are going to pay for the extensive schooling with no chance of return? What happens to the professors and administrators at medical and law schools when demand collapses?

[MrRoboto75]

The scale of the US public debt is over thirty trillion dollars. The scale of the deficit is one and a half trillion dollars a year.

Which only really matters... all of the sudden, when we need to make up a reason for it to matter.

Neither of us can conceptualize what the real difference between a deficit of 30 trillion and, oh I dunno, 31 trillion.  Neither of us could tell the other what actual impact a deficit of 32 trillion would be on our day-to-day life.  It is a meaningless number.

Unless you default on it, then it would matter.  It would matter, in fact, too much.  Good thing the government can just not do that, like its done some 70 times with no real consequences.  Like half the reason we hit the debt ceiling at all is because we agreed on a budget that hits the debt ceiling.  So we can cry about the debt ceiling.  Again.