Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 13:17:26 -0400
From: Elizabeth K
Subject: Reply to chathammatters
chathammatters in Chatlist 4659: I feel called on to reply to your post but am really hoping not to antagonize you (or any other reader) and not to be subjected to the insults, vilification, or flaming that have become so common on the Chatlist. If you wish to reply and take me to task for any of the following, please have the courtesy to give your name‹if you don’t wish to publicize it, you can certainly reply to me off-list.
“You may be interested to learn that taking money away from individual taxpayers and businesses means that they have less money to spend on their own housing, on their own food, on their own health, on their own children,
on hiring others who would then be able to take care of their own families’ needs.”
This is absolutely true‹of middle- and lower-class families. The Walton family, to take one example, has a combined net worth of $115.7 billion. If they paid enough in taxes to DOUBLE the salary of every Walmart employee (a majority of whom qualify for SNAP [formerly food stamps] and Medicaid), this would not impact their lifestyle in the slightest; they wouldn’t even notice.
“The best answer to poverty, hunger, housing, and healthcare always isŠa Job!”
Those in our military service, to take one example, have jobs, and they and their families enjoy free health care, yet statistics from 2012 show that the number of military families that were eligible for SNAP had tripled from the preceding year.
“Just look at the demarcation line between North Korea and South KoreaŠThe only difference is the North has embraced the political policies of left,Šbut the South has embraced individual freedom, private ownership of property, and the free market.”
South Korea also has universal health care with a single-payer system: basically, everyone is covered for everything, and South Korea spends only about 6.3 percent of its GDP on health care (the US spends over 15%).