This caught my eye:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A different health care issue has emerged for Democrats, in sync with the party’s pitch to workers and middle-class voters ahead of next year’s elections.
It’s not the uninsured, but rather the problem of high out-of-pocket costs for people already covered.
Democrats call it “underinsurance.”
In 1986 Ted Kennedy voted to cut the top income tax rate to 28%. In 1987 the NYT advocated eliminating the minimum wage. In the 1990s Paul Krugman spoke up for sweatshops. By 1999 he was ridiculing the idea that Japan should rely of fiscal stimulus, when monetary stimulus was the obvious choice. In the 1990s lots of liberals favored ideas such as a progressive consumption tax, and health savings accounts. They favored free trade agreements. I miss the 20th century.
And now even Fox News seems to find the FairTax (a flat consumption tax that rebates the estimated tax paid by the poor, making it progressive) to be too right wing for their taste.
Eight years ago the minimum wage was $5.15/hour, and people were proposing a 40% increase to $7.25/hour. Cynics said, “if $7.25 is such a good idea, why not $15?” The minimum wage advocates said that this sort of reductio ad absurdum argument was ridiculous, no one is advocating $15/hour. Until now. So I’ll ask the obvious question—if $15/hour is such a good idea, why not make it $30?
The New York Times was right in 1987, make it zero. And Warren Buffett is right today, raise the wages of the poor with a higher EITC (but also stop EITC fraud.)