General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRaising the cost of Medicare to the recipients is the same as placing a new inheritance
tax on the middle class.
If you are middle-class, and your parents pay more for their healthcare costs than your grandparents did, you will receive less in your inheritance.
Cuts to Medicare. that is changes to the program that raise costs or reduce services to those covered will hurt the middle class. The rich won't care. The poor will be taken care of.
The children of the middle class will pay the cost.
Raising Medicare costs for the elderly is simply a way of imposing an inheritance tax on the middle class -- adding a tax on the middle class that wasn't there before.
We who are on Medicare paid for our benefits during our working lives. That money went to take care of our parents. Now we are being asked to pay more or to do with fewer benefits than our parents did. That's fine. But it is you who are younger and middle class who need to understand that the extra money your parents have to pay will eventually be taken out of your pockets.
The proposed cuts to Medicare are a tax increase for you -- kids of the middle class. If you are OK with that, fine. If not, you need to say something now. In a few weeks, this may be a done deal and it will be too late for you to oppose this new tax.
If you are OK with it. Fine. But I suspect that this new tax will mostly affect the sons and daughters of the Tea-Baggers and Republicans. What do you think?
An alternative would be to simply return to the Clinton era tax rates. We would all pay higher taxes, but the rich would feel the increase the most. What do you prefer? Higher taxes now spread across the board or increased taxes in the form of a lower inheritance from your parents when they die?
How about getting rid of tax loopholes for corporations instead?
Or take the risk that the economy will improve if we just continue to let the deficit increase?
I'm posting this because I suspect that a lot of younger people feel that Medicare cost increase only affect their parents and grandparents. Not so. Generally, the elderly have what they have and won't be earning more once they have retired. If they do earn more, it will usually be very little. So, if Medicare becomes more expensive, the additional costs will come out of the savings of middle-class seniors. That's the same place where the modest inheritances of middle class kids come from.
Nothing is free. How do you prefer to pay?
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)And now they want more, MORE.
Sick.
Thanks for a great post!
Faryn Balyncd
(5,125 posts)MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)Watch out!
indepat
(20,899 posts)in effective tax brackets big brother would never dream of imposing on large corporations and the most affluent. How sick and depraved is that, or am I just making gigantic mountains out of bitty mole-hills?
aquart
(69,014 posts)When you balance your budget on the back of the middle, you break the middle's back.