Busted, but only 6/8ths.Originally Posted by Havakasha
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Busted, but only 6/8ths.
Or 3/4's. Or how about 2,190 days or .... hours.
In other words you were WAY off! Got to know your facts if you are going to argue them.
Enjoy the rest of your Havakasha free day. LOL. You are now free to dissemble the facts until i return.
Alright Ralph, you're right about my John statements. That was out of my frustration with you not understanding the tax code and how it works. I'm sorry about bringing him into the conversation.
This should have never happened regardless of who voted for it.
Huffington
If there is one tax loophole that looks dead in the water, it's the law that lets hedge fund and private equity managers pay a 15-percent capital-gains rate on the multimillion-dollar fees they collect -- substantially less than the top income tax rates paid by their secretaries, chauffeurs, and the pilots of their private jets.
On the surface, the stars are aligned. There is a newly elected Democrat in the White House who is desperate to raise revenues. His budget calls for killing this tax break to raise $14.75 billion over five years and $23.89 billion over ten years. In addition, there are Democratic House and Senate majorities - representing the party of working people - and what could more unfair than letting billionaires pay taxes at a fraction of the rate of the guy with the lunch pail ?
But reformers seeking to raise the taxes of the super-rich should not assume this is a slam dunk. The Democratic majority in the Senate has looked at this provision before -- most recently two years ago. Many Senate Democrats saw the legislation as biting the hand that fed them and breathed a sigh of relief when, on December 6, 2007, Republicans mustered enough votes to filibuster the proposal to death.
Not only have hedge and private-equity fund managers earned massive amounts - in 2007, according to Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine, John Paulson made $3.7 billion while George Soros and James Simons came in at just under $3 billion (to make the top 25 required $360 million) - even as their compensation does not require them to put their own money at risk.
The most common arrangement provides that fund managers get a) a fee of 2 percent of the value of the fund, whether it goes up or down - a fee on which they pay ordinary income tax rates of up to 35 percent; and b) 20 percent of the annual profits, on which they pay only a 15-percent capital-gains tax rate.
Combined, the top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers last year earned $29 billion (hedge and private equity funds can make money by 'going short' or 'going long'.)
You might expect these rich folks to be Republicans, but, it turns out, hedge and venture capital people like Democrats - so much that they have lavished millions of dollars to help them win re-election. As an expression of their love - and of their desire to influence tax policy - hedge and private equity fund managers and their PACs gave more cash to Democrats than Republicans in 2002 and 2004, even before the Democrats rose to power.
(snip)
Thank you Atypical. Interesting article. We should be more pissed about the 2% because it is automatic whether the fund wins or loses. 2% of anything valued in the 100's of millions is good coin.
At least the 15% is taxed based on the profit of the fund, but agreed, if it is income, it should be taxed at the normal income tax rate.
Have you an idea of the aggregate effect of a "rule" that allows hedge fund managers to get paid 15% of the profit created instead of 35%?
535 views of this thread indicates to me that we've approached a topic that some people have an interest in.
It would be nice to hear a little input from some of these readers.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 29, 2010) — Among the general U.S. population, people who are uninsured are about half as likely to receive critical care services as those with insurance, according to systematic review of the literature by the American Thoracic Society's Health Disparities Group. They also found that once admitted to the hospital intensive care unit, uninsured patients are less likely to have invasive procedures or pulmonary artery catheterizations and more likely to have life support withdrawn.
"Patients in the United States who do not have health insurance and become critically ill receive fewer critical care services and may experience worse clinical outcomes," said J. Randall Curtis, M.D., M.P.H., president of the ATS, and an investigator for the review. "Improving preexisting health care coverage may be one mechanism to reduce such disparities."
The researchers reviewed more than 5,500 citations on critical care and insurance status, ultimately identifying 29 observational studies that described the admissions and outcomes for critically ill patients with and without insurance.
The results are published as an official systematic review in the May 1 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Currently, one-third of the population under the age of 65 is uninsured for a portion of any given year, and the costs of critical care is approaching one percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.
In addition to reduced services and greater discharge delays among uninsured, the review found that while uninsured patients were slightly more likely to be admitted overall, the difference was not statistically significant, those with traumatic injuries were 63 percent as likely to be admitted as those with insurance.
"The finding that the uninsured were more likely to be admitted to the ICU after arriving at the hospital could occur if the uninsured delayed going to a hospital until experiencing a more advanced stage of illness," wrote Robert Fowler, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Sunnybrook Hospital, the University of Toronto, and lead author of the systematic review. "That the uninsured were perhaps less likely to use an ambulance to get to the hospital provides some support for this concept."
Finally, uninsured patients were more likely to face discharge delays.
"Although U.S. hospitals are legally obligated to care for patients who are emergently ill, they are not obligated to be the continuing provider for medically stabilized uninsured patients," Dr. Fowler noted. The increase in discharge delay may be due to the "difficulty in finding healthcare providers or facilities to accept these patients."
Overall, lack of insurance is independently associated with reduced access to care and poorer outcomes. "We found evidence that patients who are critically ill with lesser degrees of insurance coverage receive fewer critical care services compared with those who have more insurance. Developing more comprehensive programs and legislation to improve health coverage for patients who are acutely ill would therefore seem a logical avenue for investigation," the authors conclude.
While increasing access to insurance inevitable raises concerns about costs, the costs of underinsurance are already borne by society at large, as uninsured patients rely more heavily on emergent care, and the ultimate responsibility for unpaid bills falls to the states and ultimately the tax payers. Furthermore, concerns about possible over-usage are not substantiated by research. Recent evidence shows that individuals who move from no insurance to more comprehensive coverage do not use more resources than the consistently and long-term insured.
"[O]ur review indicates that there may be inequalities in the provision of care to a vulnerable segment, that is, those who are very sick and in need of care but who cannot afford care," concluded the authors. "Even with increased access to health insurance, other factors such as poverty, limited health literacy, limited social support, and homelessness will continue to conspire against equitable care. As a society, we should urgently explore options to reduce such disparities across the population and particularly for those most vulnerable and those most in need."
Last edited by Atypical; 05-01-2010 at 08:09 PM.
You can't dispute those facts Ralph.
Insured people have better healthcare....that's a fact.
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/pm120/
Welfare for the rich this is, but some would rather complain about about the lower class "cheats".
Last edited by Atypical; 04-29-2010 at 06:02 PM.
To use the word cheats against the lower class is simply wrong. Just as wrong as it is for them to not pay their own way like the rest of us do. I think another and more proper word would be sponge. The lower class doesn't pay Federal Income Tax like the rest of us do, and yet they sponge off the system more than the rest of us do. That's not cheating because that's the way the system has been set up by the politicians.
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