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NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

nysenate.gov

421–430 of 569 posts

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#421
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be rude, but if you paid 17%, that's basically the minimum income tax rate (10+4+3) for NYC. That's pretty far form the OP's "NYC high earners". Of course, if you got credits, that's orthogonal as normally those credits cost more than they are worth. For instance, the child credit is far from the cast of raising a child.

If you're a "high earner" there are a panoply of services that allow you to structure your income, wealth appreciation, or other forms of wealth generation in tax-optimized vehicles. The tax universes at 200k/yr and 500k/yr-2m/yr income look very different.

If you’re earning 500k-2m from your own business/investments, this might be true.

If you’re earning that as w2 income (as many of the nyc high earner taxpayers are), then yeah you’re gonna be paying >50% taxes if you live in nyc.

Speaking from my own experience.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#422
post #73
post #30

it will be interesting to watch NY (and/or CA) put something like this in place and observe from afar. i strongly feel that states should be much more aggressive running policy experiments if their constituents desire them, and at the national level we all get some benefit of seeing how things turn out in real time. all that said, assuming there is some tangible tax increase, NYC high earners are going to be knocking…

NY should pay for single payer in part by raising real estate taxes, it's the only clear way the state has to avoid capital flight in the way you're describing here. This said, a big thing NY benefits from is that a lot of people work in NY state temporarily as consultants in addition to the bridge and tunnel crowd that come in from NJ and CT, this gives them a much larger tax base than the population living there br…

How would raising taxes on real estate not cause capital flight?

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in Quebec so I paid 29% on everything over 66k to federal and my provincial rates were 20% (over 50k), 26% (over 100k), and 29% (over 150k). We also have a 15% sales tax. I paid more than a 50% effective rate last year. This is the cost of our social safety net. It feels like too much too me and I’ll be relocating next year.

Quebec has one of the higher tax rates in canada. You still get a similar safety net in the rest of canada for lower (albeit still high if you are a high earner) taxes.

No post body was provided.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#424
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's also crazy that your access to healthcare is based on how the government prioritizes your need of it. Triage is a pretty universal concept. Healthcare has difficulty with competitive market effects because the amount anyone is willing to pay to live is essentially infinite.

> "... the amount anyone will pay to live is essentially infinite." This has actually been studied, and is not true.

I suspect that there are people who would rather die than burden their families with crushing debt but that's a slightly different issue.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#425
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want it nation wide? Even if you “support it”, I’d much rather watch the implications from the various experiments across states. Then we can select the best option. Personally, I’d like to see some states ban healthcare outright. Others have full coverage and everything in between. Then wait 10 years and we can see the results. I strongly suspect there would be states willing to do this.

Exactly. US salaries for healthcare are the best on the planet, period. The comparison (and to be fair, this is a very high level) paints an extremely clear picture: United States $313,000 Germany $163,000 United Kingdom $138,000 France $108,000 Per: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-highest-p... So yes, I absolutely want to see how many physicians stick around if you tell them "your salary will now…

I see this argument made often on HN. I would imagine if we compared software engineering salaries in these same countries you would see that similarly software engineers in the US are also "overpaid".

Software

United States of America $95,879

United Kingdom $68,664 = 72% USA

Germany $61,390 = 64% USA

France $47,617 = 50% USA

Medicine

United States of America $313,000

United Kingdom $138,000 = 44% USA

Germany $163,000 = 52% USA

France $108,000 = 35% USA

(I believe the software salaries I've sourced are somewhat conservative)

[0] https://www.codingame.com/work/blog/find-developers/average-...

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quebec has one of the higher tax rates in canada. You still get a similar safety net in the rest of canada for lower (albeit still high if you are a high earner) taxes.

yeah here in NZ we pay 39% marginal over $180k, 33% $70k-180k - no state tax - mostly free public health (5$/drug $100 max per year, $30 to visit GP, nothing for hospital/urgent care/everything else) What we don't do is spen d all our money on a military industrial complex

> What we don't do is spen d all our money on a military industrial complex

I know it's a bit of a meme, but military spending is far from our only problem. We could cut military spending to $0 and not even make a dent in the defecit, let alone be able to cut taxes. Social security, Medicare, and medicaid together make up 42% of federal spending. (Not to mention food assistance, housing assistance, unemployment, or the dozens of other programs). The US spends a lot on social programs! We just don't get much of anything for it.

EDIT: for completeness - defense spending was 12% of the federal budget in 2021.

[1] https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305...

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if I am going to live in an area for a year... I should be required to purchase a house, including all the money, time, and effort that involves? I would hate to live in a world where that was the case. I have both owned and rented at different points in my life. There have been times where renting was a better choice for me, for a variety of reasons. I am glad that renting is an option.

In a world where there was no rentals there would probably be new things we can't imagine such as community ownerships. The specific thing that shouldn't exist - in parent commentors and myself is that the renter is paying money so that the actual owner pays off the property for their benefit, not the renter. If some kind of community property system exists (not for ALL properties but a large number of them) then any…

That's how it used to work in the UK with social housing. The local authority would collect the rent and it would be used for upkeep of the properties, with surplus going to other public works. This was set up in the decades following the Second World War as Britain rebuilt, and it generally worked really well.

But then a right-wing government came to power and sold most of the social housing off, while banning local authorities from building any more. So now, we have the situation here where the large majority of tenants are renting from private landlords, who are just pocketing all the rent for themselves and doing the bare minimum upkeep, while holding a rapidly appreciating asset.

Which is exactly what the right-wingers wanted, but of course doesn't help everyone else who isn't a landlord, and just wants somewhere decent and affordable to live.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#428
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY should pay for single payer in part by raising real estate taxes, it's the only clear way the state has to avoid capital flight in the way you're describing here. This said, a big thing NY benefits from is that a lot of people work in NY state temporarily as consultants in addition to the bridge and tunnel crowd that come in from NJ and CT, this gives them a much larger tax base than the population living there br…

How would raising taxes on real estate not cause capital flight?

You can't move a house (or the land it sits on) out of state.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isnt that the main reason the salaries are so high? It's because the NIH limits the amounts of medical residencies in the country, and to become a doctor with a license to practice, you must have completed residency somewhere. The amount of doctors in the US are kept at low numbers because of this.

I didn’t know that. Why does the NIH limit the number of residencies?

Imagine you were working in an industry where you got to decide the number of people you can let in behind you.

The option almost everyone picks is “no one”. Keep supply of your services low and increasing demand means more money for you.

Re: NY Senate Bill S5474 proposing a universal single payer health plan for NYers

#430
post #248
post #30

it will be interesting to watch NY (and/or CA) put something like this in place and observe from afar. i strongly feel that states should be much more aggressive running policy experiments if their constituents desire them, and at the national level we all get some benefit of seeing how things turn out in real time. all that said, assuming there is some tangible tax increase, NYC high earners are going to be knocking…

Where does 60% come from? I used this calculator - https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes It said if I (married) made $675,745/year in Manhattan I'd pay 39.59% of my income in taxes.

im adding marginal rates which is somewhat lazy. assuming 1,080,000 as a single earner (married changes the calculation of course):

  - 37% federal
  - 9.65% state
  - 3.876% city tax
  - 3% SS and medicare
  - ?? disability, unemployment, etc.
  - some additional % to cover single payer
so thats somewhere in the mid 50% range adding up. again, effective rates won't be that exact number except for ultra high earners. this also doesn't include property tax or sales tax (8.875%).

crocodile tears for million dollar earners and their tax bills of course, my point being that chasing away a small amount of residents can have an outsized effect on state revenue. (0.3% of returns account for 27% of revenue federally)

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