Industry doesn't need a "helping hand". It needs a free hand and a level playing field. If government wants to offer a helping hand, how about helping to address the rampant industrial espionage on the part of our trading partners.
That sounds like a Trump Tweet. Are there any facts supporting the theory that the US is more of a victim than everybody else?
Is the US more of a victim than any other country? Well, insofar as US businesses manufacture more in China by volume than anyone else, yes. Although not on a case-by-case basis - a Canadian company is just as much a victim as any American one.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2013/05/do-patents-help-or-hi...
1. Guilds. Frowned upon, but not without their uses, benefits, and sound arguments. (Actually, part of Watts' problem was that he was thrown out of the Hammermen's Guild -- the black-smithing union, in Scotland, from which Adam Smith had Watt installed at the University of Edinburgh.)
2. A royal charter. Rather than a patent, say, the formation of a public corporation (similar to, say, the contemporaneous British East India Corporation), to which subscribers could buy shares and steam power be distributed throughout England (this was pre-Unification).
3. A royal or parliamentary award or prize. This was offered to several other of the major inventors of industrial technology (largely in the textiles trade).
4. An obligatory license. This would have allowed Watt a share of revenues on his invention, but not limited the rights of others to enter into trade.
5. A guaranteed or favourable government contract. This is essentially what Eli Whitney secured, not with his cotton gin, but with his mass-produced arms, in the United States. And from whence he gained most his financial gains.
That's just off the top of my head.
Patents are both tremendously distortionary, and not particularly good at rewarding actual inventors.
The guy tried. That a spaceship or marvelous benefactor or coincidental prize could have landed and paid him money is true, but not probable. Governments weren't in the business of mining (the application then.) They had no interest, but in any case do you really want them picking winners today? Their record is horrible in that way. You cite a military example with Eli Whitney, but I had answered that in advance. As for industry prizes only he understood that such an advance in fuel-efficiency was possible.
I really don't think you've ever tried to sell an idea of this kind.
Isn't that assuming current costs for care don't change? Seems a bad assumption since medicare for all would cost less than health insurance for all and be a much more efficient and thus less overhead process while simplifying the system across the board for doctors and hospitals greatly reducing the costs to them by virtually eliminating the huge hassle that is medical billing these days.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/federal-receipt-an...
The study is here[0], even accounting for Sanders proposed major tax increases on the wealthy and middle class he still fails to fund it by over 50 percent, and private expenditures would continue to climb. Then you have to consider the costs of "free" education and the multitude of other increased social programs. Sorry it's a fairy tale, him and people like him are lying to get your vote.
[0]http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay...
In 2016, Medicare cost a total of $588 billion [1], covering over 55 million people [2]. The vast majority of those people are over the age of 65 and on average, over 50% of a person's lifetime healthcare costs will be paid after the age of 65 [3]. It would cost over $3 trillion to have Medicare for all if every person alive in the United States was over 65 years old, which is obviously wrong. The real cost would be closer to $1.5 trillion if the US just paid private insurance companies to cover everybody.
> Current tax collection collects about 1.5 trillion.
No, 2016 tax collections for just the Federal government were $3.3 trillion [1]. The combined total of federal, state, and local is estimated to be at least twice that.
> If you tax millionaires at 100% you'd see maybe another trillion.
A 15-35% tax rate on millionaires yields at least $500 billion a year in income tax revenue [4]. Increasing capital gains taxes to 100% alone would net almost $2 trillion a year.
[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-...
[2] https://blog.medicare.gov/2015/07/27/medicare-and-medicaid-5...
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/
[4] https://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Individual-Income-Tax-...
I was unclear. The 2016 budget had 1.1 trillion in discretionary spending and 2.4 trillion in mandatory spending.[1]
If you stopped paying the national debt, skipped out on our UN and NATO obligations, and ended social security as well as many other social programs then you have the number you quoted. Still in 2016 we borrowed over 500 billion as we can't afford to meet our current obligations as is.
State and local governments are cash strapped for the most part. For many existing taxes don't even cover their current expenditures. You can't simply divert all of those funds to healthcare, massive cuts to services would have to be included.
>Increasing capital gains taxes to 100% alone would net almost $2 trillion a year.
An increase of even half that would turn the United States into a third world nation overnight as huge amounts of capital flees our unreasonable tax system.
As for the rest of it the economists and policy analysts at the Urban Institute disagree with your assessment:
http://www.urban.org/research/publication/sanders-single-pay...
In 2016, Medicare cost a total of $588 billion, covering over 55 million people.
medical costs are very high in the US, and these are the patients who need the most care and the most treatments. I would expect the cost for medicare (a program that is legally disallowed from negotiating prices with their suppliers, and which covers only people aged 65 or over) to be quite high, and actually im surprised its that low.
This is accurate I think. Canada spends $230 billion per year and has 1/10th the population. $6,299 per Canadian in 2016.
BUT. You get to SUBTRACT our current healthcare spending
$3 trillion - $3.35 trillion = $750 billion saved.
That would have us closer to Canadian spend per person.