Mike Huckabee: Warren's 'Medicare for All' Will Decimate the Middle Class With or Without Tax Hikes
Since Elizabeth Warren has been as slippery as an eel in a vat of Vasoline about how much her “Medicare For All” plan would cost and who would pay higher taxes to cover it (other than “the rich”), I wrote recently about a new study by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Government that estimated what it would take to pay for it.
As a reminder, some of the various options included a 32 percent payroll tax, a 25 percent income surtax, a 42 percent VAT (value-added tax) or more than doubling all individual and corporate income tax rates.
But now, Sen. Warren has finally put a price tag on her plan, even if she’s still being evasive about who would pay it. Her estimated cost (which I think we can safely assume is a lowball estimate) is $52 trillion over the first 10 years.
But her campaign claims this would all be paid for by trillions of dollars in new taxes on “employers, financial transactions, the ultra-wealthy, large corporations and more,” so it wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class “by one penny.”
Except that hitting employers with massive new taxes would destroy so many jobs that a lot of people might no longer be in middle class.
Her campaign claims it wouldn’t be that hard for employers because they’d no longer have to pay for private health care for employees.
So in case you were wondering, it’s official: “Medicare For All” means “all, whether you want it or not, and if you want to keep your employer-provided care; tough noogies, you’ll be forced onto a government health care program.”
It’s really cute how Warren and her eager beaver “progressive” campaign staff, none of whom have ever run a business, think they’re smart enough to remake the entire economy without causing any problems.
Warren concedes another study that estimates her plan would kill 2 million jobs, but calls that “part of the cost issue.” If you’re one of those 2 million newly unemployed, the elimination of your job isn’t a cost issue, it’s a catastrophe.
I know she taught “economics” at Ivy League universities, but here’s a lesson in Real World Econ 101: you can’t tax employers without it costing employees because all costs of employing someone are deducted from the total of whatever the job is worth.
Every government mandate your employer has to cover to keep you on staff is money that might have gone to you, because they start with what your job is worth and give you what’s leftover after paying all the other expenses of keeping you on.
So you might not get the bill for “Medicare For All” directly, but the cost absolutely will come out of your paycheck before you ever even see it.
Until leftists find a way to pass a bill repealing fiscal reality, there will be no such thing as a $52 trillion government program that doesn’t cost middle-class workers a penny.
Whenever you hear that promise, I suggest you watch this movie clip:
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