Want to see how America is changing? Property taxes hold the answer

[ET180]

Once the elderly exhaust their life savings they simply go on medicaid. So we have all the elderly people and all the poor people taken care of. What more do you need comrade?

I think S-Trader was considering the case (not as it is today, but what I proposed) of having everyone pull their own weight / save for own retirement.

What about medical/healthcare/eldercare costs? They can eat away at, or even wipe out retirement savings in a surprisingly short amount of time, they're not easy to anticipate in terms of scale, and we're living longer.

Roughly 40% of us will get cancer at some point in our lives. By age 65, the risk of having Alzheimer’s is one in six (17 percent) for women and one in 11 (9 percent) for men. Beginning at age 60, your chance of getting dementia doubles every five years... and if you survive into your nineties, then there is roughly a one in four chance that you will have dementia. Yada, yada, OK... but many people underestimate both the costs involved for fairly common healthcare/eldercare issues, and overestimate the extent to which insurance will cover those costs.

I agree with you. The current healthcare situation is not sustainable. There's no way lower the cost of cancer, Alzheimer's, etc without curing it completely or preventing it. Even if we could simply raise taxes enough to pay for it all, then that would suck away money for other things that need funding and simply be an unproductive drain on society. I don't think we can simply force or coerce people into having more kids to hopefully be hosts to the growing parasitic drain of healthcare costs. We just need to eliminate / prevent the diseases which cost so much money. Won't be easy, but easier than simply letting grandparents die.

As for "poor life choices" -- aside from the obvious cases (e.g., drug addict, morbidly obese person), how can you really determine or differentiate what those are, and/or to what extent they contributed to any given person's situation?

Haven't really considered that since it will never happen without a dramatic cultural change. However, some ideas:

1. I have heard that in Japan, people have to pass physical fitness tests to qualify for corporate-provided healthcare. (Update: After a 2 minute Google search, I can't find any sources to substantiate this idea. So maybe it's not true or no longer done. However, still might be a good idea for setting insurance rates.)
2. Pretty hard to hide obesity. For those who love taxes, how about a BMI tax?
3. Cigarettes, if not banned, how about $40 / pack? $5 is for the cost of the product, $35 goes towards lung cancer research. I know cigarettes are taxed anyway, but currently the money does not go towards health research.
4. Smokers already pay a higher premium for health insurance. How does the health care company determine if someone is actually a non-smoker or simply lies about not smoking to get the lower rate?

 

[sle]

I agree with you. The current healthcare situation is not sustainable. There's no way lower the cost of cancer, Alzheimer's, etc without curing it completely or preventing it. Even if we could simply raise taxes enough to pay for it all, then that would suck away money for other things that need funding and simply be an unproductive drain on society. I don't think we can simply force or coerce people into having more kids to hopefully be hosts to the growing parasitic drain of healthcare costs. We just need to eliminate / prevent the diseases which cost so much money. Won't be easy, but easier than simply letting grandparents die.

I think majority of health care costs in this country are a function of rent-seeking by the health care industry. Many other countries spend significantly less per capita and seem to have similar quality medical care if you judge by survival/death rates for all major health issues.

2. Pretty hard to hide obesity. For those who love taxes, how about a BMI tax?
3. Cigarettes, if not banned, how about $40 / pack? $5 is for the cost of the product, $35 goes towards lung cancer research. I know cigarettes are taxed anyway, but currently the money does not go towards health research.

Taxing negative externalities is a rather smart idea (soda, tobacco etc.). However, you never going to get enough to support a proper government.

 

[sle]

Americans are fleeing areas with higher property taxes, making housing markets and local finances more stagnant in those areas.

Manhattan condos are probably the highest in terms of fixed costs. For instance, my place has an effective scrape of 3.5%. And yet there is no shortage of eager buyers and the prices go up every year.

In the end, housing does not exist in a vacuum - the desire of people to live somewhere is correlated (mainly) to the availability of employment. If you can be making 300k in the NYC area while paying 25k/a on a 1.5m house, you are not going to move to Cleveland, OH to be making 100k but reducing your property tax burden by 60%.

In short, I think the hypothesis presented in the report is crap. I might have to read the original to convince myself either way.

 

[ET180]

I think majority of health care costs in this country are a function of rent-seeking by the health care industry. Many other countries spend significantly less per capita and seem to have similar quality medical care if you judge by survival/death rates for all major health issues.

You might be right. I'm not very familiar with healthcare cost breakdowns. Part of it might be drug prices, but how much of it is due to malpractice insurance and other liabilities imposed on the healthcare system? Doctors aren't cheap and any non-trivial procedure usually involves an entire crew of them. It's also very difficult to become a doctor so there needs to be an incentive to attract the best talent (granted, there are people who will still become doctors because they want to help people, but if wages are lowered, at some point it won't make financial sense given the amount of time, debt, and risk required to become a doctor). Basically, I don't know where fat can be cut, but I suspect liability and malpractice coverage could be a bigger factor here in the US than other countries. Would be curious about why our healthcare costs so much relative to other countries.

 

[OddTrader]

US housing starts tumble 6.8% in March
April 18, 2017
http://www.news.com.au/finance/busi...h/news-story/dc7be303486bc442b16d15df6e598260

 

[murray t turtle]

Perhaps, although most people who are starving are in conflict zones so it's a logistics and safety problem, not a supply problem. Since Still Hungry in America was published in the 60s and a number of programs set up in response, any starvation in the U.S. is a failure of our programs, not the result of dystopian policy like our friend here advocates. But you're right, people in town hall meetings against healthcare did yell "yes" when asked if sick people should just be left to die if they don't have insurance, so there are at least a few who meet the ultimate in selfishness that they feel death is the appropriate punishment for a combination of poor decisions and poor luck. Luckily they're in still in a very small minority. Sadly most of them are also benefiting from some form of govt outlay that exceeds what they paid in, Medicare fits that bill for most, and are blind to their own hypocrisy.

Partly true, SIG,10 cents TN ammo tax turn into million$ for TN; even more so for TX. But that is a user fee, chosen by many millions in private sector

Anyone that thinks the key to good health is ''poor luck'' or good luck,+socialised medicine; is on a gov TrainWreck========================================================================================. Since emergency rooms are required to take anyone; that town hall question is as BIG a scam as socialized med. Thanks