Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist, seems to be seeing at least some light on the left side of the tunnel these days. His blog post about health care costs and taxes, comparing the US with other OECD developed countries, should at least cause some on the right-wing rhetoric tour to stop and think. He demonstrates that the US is low in ostensible taxation (with the Bush tax cuts, we have very low effective tax rates just on income taxes, and of course we don't have the VAT and other taxes that most Euro countries have). But he also shows that when you take account of the much higher health care costs in this country, it means that the average US taxpayer has considerably less disposable income, and the tax + health burden here is about as high as in Europe, where everybody generally has health care through the tax and spending system. We get low wages and spotty health care; they get higher taxes and more consistent health care (and other benefits).
See Bruce Bartlett, What Your Taxes Do and Don't Buy for You, New York Times, June 7, 2011.
And while your reading about health care, you might want to pick up Economist's View's post on Jared Bernstein's critique of the GOP attempt to privatize Medicare based on the right-wing rhetoric that misleadingly characterizes the system as bankrupt. See Economist's View, Misleading Medicare Mantra (and includes Jared Bernstein's post), June 16, 2011.
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