Re:The U.S. economy is killing off the middle class
by davidw on Saturday January 31, 2015 @05:41AM
(#8976404)
The US spends a huge portion of its GDP on health care - more than anywhere else:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal...
But this sounds like politics, so ... article flagged.
Re:The U.S. economy is killing off the middle class
by Brakenshire on Saturday January 31, 2015 @07:34AM
(#8976573)
The US even spends more tax money as a percentage of GDP on healthcare than Britain.
Re:The U.S. economy is killing off the middle class
by maxerickson on Saturday January 31, 2015 @04:53AM
(#8976333)
The only step in Medicare taxes occurs at $200,000 (or $250,000 for a married couple). Given that those numbers are well above the cap for social security (which provides a nice break in marginal rates), I doubt that Medicare taxes are factoring into decisions to work more or not.
Re:The U.S. economy is killing off the middle class
by douche on Saturday January 31, 2015 @07:48AM
(#8976595)
Probably not, but all of the other small income-based social programs add up in a hurry, especially for people who are on the bottom end. If you know that working more will cause your earnings to rise just enough to knock you over the line and end the free healthcare, fuel assistance, food stamps and all the other programs, its a huge disincentive. What's the point of working harder, if it means you're going to have even less money than if you didn't work at all?
Re:The U.S. economy is killing off the middle class
by maxerickson on Saturday January 31, 2015 @08:38AM
(#8976676)
Sure, at this point it's pretty well understood that it is bad to build programs with regressive structures. I think the phrasing of the OP threw me off, I had thought they were saying that payments in raised the effective marginal rates, not the loss of the benefits.
Increasing the payouts for earning less, not surprisingly, erodes the middle class. Either you are determined enough to work more to earn less and maybe in a few years come out on the other side of the chasm, or you work less and immediately benefit from it.
Check out Figure 1 (page 6) in this CBO report, and note it's worse now than when this was written;
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/...
It's amazing how little value you actually gain from the first $60k of earnings! If you prefer a more newsy analysis;
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21585010-america...