I'll try another line of reasoning:
Take person A and person B.
Person A makes $1 million a year. Let's say they get taxed at 50% (a stretch in the United States. More than likely, they avail themselves of all the loopholes they can manage and end up paying a Warren Buffet-like 13% or so, but ignore that for the sake of the real point I'm making). So they pay $500,000 this year.
Person B makes $20,000 a year. Under the current rules, let's assume they don't end up paying any taxes (i.e., they receive all their federal income tax back at the end of the year.)
Now let's assume that Person A stays healthy, and Person B, through no fault of their own, develops a health condition before they are able to avail themselves of a company health plan (let's say the shitty corporation they work for did not have an employee health plan until after they developed their condition, and so they were denied coverage).
Now, let's assume that under the new Healthcare Mandate, Person B is now provided a means to be given coverage, but still pays no federal taxes.
Now let's assume that (contrary to the stated claims of the administration) the new system INCREASES the deficit. (The Administration actually claims that the new mandate will DECREASE the deficit, but never mind that for now).
You are making two claims:
1) We shouldn't have changed the system to something we have even less ability to pay for.
2) Even if we COULD pay for it, it's unfair for Person B to receive coverage and treatment for a condition through an insurance plan their taxes haven't paid into.
The first claim is plausible, as I've said. Yes, it's true that increasing government spending at ANY level, without increasing REVENUE is OBVIOUSLY going to be a problem. No one is arguing about this. But that's why they are increasing revenue. Which is where (2) comes in. (2) is a claim about the chosen METHOD of increasing revenue. Namely, of not taxing the poor, but of increasing taxes on the rich to pay for an enlargement of a social service that the poor make use of.
There are a bunch of questions to ask here. Here's the first one, which I think is the easiest: Would it help pay for a larger social safety net to tax those who current aren't paying any federal income tax?
Let's say we implement a modest tax rate of 10% on Person B. That means instead of paying ZERO, they pay $2000. This means that their net income is now significantly lower -- $18k, less other taxes, less the fact that they can't avail themselves of a team of high priced accountants to sequester their money in tax-free havens.
This makes a huge difference to the quality of life of a person at that level. It means if they have a modest amount of credit debt, they are $2000 less able to pay down the interest, and so on.
Not only this, but let's say there are 50 million people who at 10% would pay an average of about $2000 in federal income tax under this supposedly "fairer" system. That generates $100 billion dollars in revenue.
That may seem like a lot, but it's not. Some of the SMALLEST federal programs cost that much. Canada only has 35 million citizens (and far less than that many tax payers) and we have a trillion dollar GDP and hundred billion dollar budget. It would not make much of a dent in the $900+ billion dollar a year Social Security payments or the $1 trillion medicare/medicaid budget.
Now let's say we close a couple of loopholes and increase the income tax rate on the RICHEST tax bracket from 50% to 51%.
Instead of paying 500,000, Person A now pays 510,000. That's 8,000 more dollars than taxing Person A would net (i.e., 5x as much), and so taxing people in Person A's bracket ONE MEASLY PERCENT more, which they can CLEARLY afford, covers FIVE poor people. So instead of taxing 50 million poor people $2000, you can tax 10 million people who clear a million dollars a year an extra $8,000 (over the amount you'd tax the poor) to net the same amount. If you tax the 50 million poorest Americans at 10% you have made their lives significantly harder. If you tax the 10 million richest Americans SLIGHTLY more, you haven't made anyone's life significantly harder at all.
Why on earth is it more fair to tax 50 million impoverished Americans?
I really don't get it.
) so I have seen both sides of things. I love the vacation stuff in France, I love the idea of health care for everyone. But I'm a realist, someone has to pay for it. 