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The Progressive Revolution: From Democratic to Liberal to Progressive to Socialist


Muda69

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Elizabeth Warren Has a Fake Plan To Pay for Medicare for All: https://reason.com/2020/01/16/elizabeth-warren-has-a-fake-plan-to-pay-for-medicare-for-all/

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In releasing a proposal to pay for single-payer—the fully government-financed health care system she calls Medicare for All—Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) faced two challenges. The first was to produce a plan that did not raise taxes on the middle class. The second was to produce a plan that was simple to understand and easy to explain. As one anonymous outside adviser told The Washington Post, her campaign "want[ed] to figure out—with one go—how to stop the 'How are you going to pay for it?' question."

As it turned out, she failed on both counts.

Warren's plan, released at the beginning of November, starts with the fact that employers spend about $9 trillion a decade on health insurance for their workers. She aims to move the private spending onto the federal budget, transforming it into government spending. Under her proposal, large employers who currently pay for health coverage would be required to pay a comparable amount, equivalent to 98 percent of what they now spend, adjusted for the number of workers they employ, in order to help finance Medicare for All.

Warren claims "we don't need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All." Instead, she refers to this as an "employer Medicare contribution" under which companies "would send payments to the federal government for Medicare."

But there is a commonly accepted term for requiring companies to send payments to the federal government in order to finance government programs. That word is tax. Her plan is thus a nearly $9 trillion tax on employers, charged on a per-worker basis, with exceptions for small businesses. That would inevitably end up affecting employees' compensation. It is hard to see this as anything other than a massive middle-class tax hike.

Warren has argued that total costs for middle-class families would go down under her plan, but there are reasons to doubt this, including an analysis from Emory University health care economist Kenneth Thorpe finding that under Medicare for All, more than 70 percent of people who currently have private insurance would see costs increase. A separate analysis from the liberal Urban Institute projects that single-payer plans would raise national health care spending by $7 trillion over a decade, contrary to Warren's estimates.

Other outside experts, meanwhile, have suggested that Warren's plan will cost more than she anticipates and raise less revenue. In an analysis of the fiscal effects of Warren's plan, Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, estimates that she would end up increasing deficits by about $15 trillion over a decade.

That's because Warren doesn't account for the likely economic ripple effects her plan would almost certainly cause; instead, she assumes that even with an array of new taxes and fees on businesses and wealthy individuals, economic growth would continue without change. Corporate tax rates would go from 21 percent to 35 percent, which, as Roy notes, "would have a meaningful [negative] effect on employment and economic growth, especially in the manufacturing sector and other capital-intensive industries." This allows her to claim far more tax revenue than is realistic.

In addition, Warren assumes that by moving nearly all of America's health care financing to the federal government, administrative costs—the overhead that supports the actual delivery of care—can be cut down to levels that few independent experts believe possible. Warren also calls for paying hospitals 110 percent of today's Medicare rates, reducing the cost of her plan by a little more than $4.2 trillion relative to other projections. Yet faced with political pressure from hospitals, which are typically paid much higher average rates due to private insurance, state-based programs in blue states like Washington and Maryland have ended up paying far higher amounts.

For Warren, however, realism is clearly not the point. She released her plan after months of pressure to explain precisely how she would finance the tens of trillions in new government spending that even the cheapest, most implausibly efficient version of a full-fledged single-payer system would require. Just as World War I generals used wooden tanks to fool enemy infantry, Warren has enlisted a legion of implausible savings mechanisms and unworkable tax hikes, hoping to look convincing from afar.

Warren did not come up with a plan to pay for Medicare for All. Instead, she concocted a $52 trillion package of fanciful assumptions and unworkable reforms, and figured out how to pay for that.

 

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'No One Ever Makes a Billion Dollars. You Take a Billion Dollars.

What is the correct reward for the person who creates something that millions of people want badly enough to pay for it?

': https://reason.com/2020/01/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-no-one-ever-makes-a-billion-dollars-you-take-a-billion-dollars/

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On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) spoke to author Ta-Nehisi Coates about billionaires and wealth inequality at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event at Riverside Church in Harlem, New York.

When Coates pressed Ocasio-Cortez on whether billionaire entrepreneurs deserve to keep their money, she responded, "Well you didn't make those widgets, did you?…You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages—and in some cases, real modern-day slavery, depending on where you are in terms of food production."

"You made that money off of the backs of undocumented people, you made that money off of the backs of black and brown people being paid under a living wage, you made that money off of the backs of single mothers," Ocasio-Cortez continued. "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars."

Later, she turned her attention to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, suggesting that "if Jeff Bezos wants to be a good person, he'd turn Amazon into a worker cooperative."

Suggestions like that are more interesting than her philosophical insistence that no one deserves to be rich because anyone, anywhere has to work in order to eat. But it's unlikely to work for a company of Amazon's size. As John McClaughry wrote in a 1985 issue of Reason

An unstructured participatory workplace can cause problems of severe emotional intensity. Jane Mansbridge reports the prevalence of rage, tears, splitting headaches, and other real stress afflictions when workers or citizens are suddenly cast into an unstructured decision making forum. The appearance of one or more tyrants, bent on dominating the group, also seems almost inevitable. Implementing workplace democracy is hard enough when everyone involved comes from a common cultural, ethnic, racial, or political background. Where the membership is heterogeneous, success can be close to impossible.

Speaking of Amazon: As of 2015, the company claimed to have more than 300 million active user accounts. Amazon Prime ended 2019 with more than 112 million users worldwide, an estimated 90 to 95 million of them based in the U.S., which tells us that nearly a third of American residents find Amazon Prime valuable enough to shell out roughly $100 annually for the service.

A vast pool of people are willing to pay for Prime memberships for the convenience of having Amazon products delivered to their door in two days flat; a massive library of on-demand music, TV, and movies; and other conveniences.

What is the correct reward (to borrow Ocasio-Cortez's framing) for the person who creates something that millions of people want badly enough to pay for it? Does that reward scale up based on the number of paying users? Should it be decided democratically (and who should we trust to make such a call)? Would the reward scale for entrepreneurial success be adjustable for inflation? What about the entrepreneur who invests his allotted reward? What about the entrepreneurs who lose money?

The process of determining by fiat who gets what sounds like it might be more difficult than Ocasio-Cortez implies. Luckily, markets do that for us.

Profit is a tremendous part of what inspires people to innovate. Why build new tech products or household appliances or lab-grown meat substitutes if you're not going to be rewarded for your endeavor? "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner," goes the old Adam Smith quote, "but from their regard to their own self-interest."

The development of new vaccines, the aforementioned pursuit of meat substitutes which will prevent animal slaughter and all kinds of environmental havoc, aren't motivated solely by altruism. The technologies that will make those innovations possible were also not developed for free. Markets play matchmaker between people with ideas, people with resources, and people who can use the latter to realize the former. Central planners like Ocasio-Cortez toying with the levers to determine who makes what amount of profit might even prevent future Amazons from existing at all.

Ocasio-Cortez is right to be concerned with working conditions for those at the bottom of the income distribution latter, and for would-be competitors who are sabotaged by the union of big business and big government. Undocumented immigrants do have to settle for less because they can't work here legally. Then again, the fact that they can work in the U.S. at all—making less than native-born workers but more than they would in their country of origin—is possible thanks to markets. 

She's also correct that Amazon succeeds at rent-seeking and cozying up to politicians in order to be the beneficiary of all kinds of political favors. When Amazon announced it was seeking a location for its second headquarters, governments engaged in a subsidy bidding war at taxpayers' expense. Shame on Amazon, as well as the many politicians who think it permissible to dole out money to companies like Amazon. But does Ocasio-Cortez honestly believe we'd see less of that if the government had even more power to choose which companies win and lose?

Amazon, at its best, despite its many flaws, is the product of what's best about capitalism: It enables millions of people to have access to consumer goods more cheaply than before, and it provides consensual work opportunities for people who want them. The company could be better, but Ocasio-Cortez and bigger government are unlikely to beat the market. 

 

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35 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'No One Ever Makes a Billion Dollars. You Take a Billion Dollars.

What is the correct reward for the person who creates something that millions of people want badly enough to pay for it?

': https://reason.com/2020/01/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-no-one-ever-makes-a-billion-dollars-you-take-a-billion-dollars/

 

Did the masses want MS Windows? 

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13 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

Did the masses want MS Windows? 

Sales history and the fact that we are currently on Windows version 10 says yes.

Did Mr. Gates earn his billions, Dante?  Did Mr. Bezos?  Why or why not?

 

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Bernard Arnault was briefly the richest man in the world, displacing Jeff Bezos late last year. He's the head of LVMH, which is the umbrella for many high end brands, Louis Vitton, Tag Heuer, Moet, Christian Dior, Givenchy, etc. In other words built an empire on expensive crap that people don't need. He didn't build a better mousetrap, he built a mousetrap with hip and trendy logo on it. What does this actually tell us about the financial woes of the world?

Bill Gates created a product that people wanted. He took the computer from the backroom with the geeks and put it in the living room for grandma and grandpa. Bill Gates is one of the wealthiest people in the world, he's also quite liberal. We've often heard him rail on the want for higher taxes and more social programs. But a couple of things bother me about this. Number one, why hasn't Bill Gates written a check to the US Treasury to pay more? I have no doubt Gates and MS for that matter have an entire battery of lawyers and accountants to in fact keep from paying any more in taxes than they absolutely have to. So why is it that one of the riches men in the world who often lobbies for higher taxes would act in this seemingly contradictory manner? To his credit he is a VERY charitable man, his foundation donates millions to worthy causes around the world. Why is this? It's quite simple, he, like so many understands if the money goes to the government it will be squandered. The vast majority of the money will be eaten up by the top heavy bloated bureaucracy. And what's left over, they'll screw it up. 

Why are successful people demonized rather than celebrated. I say good for them. VOC can complain about them all she wants, but these uber rich dudes/dudettes didn't get that way by accident, they've been hungry, they've been driven, and they've worked incredibly hard.   

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10 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Sales history and the fact that we are currently on Windows version 10 says yes.

Did Mr. Gates earn his billions, Dante?  Did Mr. Bezos?  Why or why not?

 

Do you not remember the antitrust case against Microsoft?

Also, the fact that the Zune or the Windows phone didn’t take off should show how well Microsoft’s products were received. 
 

Also, Windows 10 is free. If people liked MS Windows, it wouldn’t be free.

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1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

Do you not remember the antitrust case against Microsoft?

Also, the fact that the Zune or the Windows phone didn’t take off should show how well Microsoft’s products were received. 
 

Also, Windows 10 is free. If people liked MS Windows, it wouldn’t be free.

Apparently they didn’t discuss diversification in General Business.

Microsoft made billions in royalties from Android sales.

The 10 billion in revenues in 2018 from Xbox clearly indicate products that no one wants.

Give away the operating system to sell them Office, or an online subscription to lightweight Office Suite products.

OEM licenses, enterprise products.....you’re right DE, Bill Gates and the braintrust at MS are clearly idiots.

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1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Microsoft made billions in royalties from Android sales.

Citation needed. 

1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Give away the operating system to sell them Office, or an online subscription to lightweight Office Suite products.

They didn't need to give away Windows for free for the last 20 years. 

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1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

The 10 billion in revenues in 2018 from Xbox clearly indicate products that no one wants.

march-2019-sales-1-1.png

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/437098/switch-vs-ps4-vs-xbox-one-global-lifetime-salesmarch-2019/

1 hour ago, Impartial_Observer said:

OEM licenses, enterprise products.....you’re right DE, Bill Gates and the braintrust at MS are clearly idiots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPfsr8BBdA8

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Rumors of MS’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/18/microsoft-earnings-q4-2019/

Successful businesses evolve, diversify, and markets change. I never said MS had the gaming market cornered, they certainly have a profitable entry. 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-may-relinquishing-billions-android-patent-royalties-141047213.html

This has been entertaining, but seriously you are arguing MS make products no one wants? Laughable.

You look cute in your cheerleading skirt Barry.

 

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12 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Do you not remember the antitrust case against Microsoft?

Also, the fact that the Zune or the Windows phone didn’t take off should show how well Microsoft’s products were received. 
 

Yes, I remember the MS antitrust case.  What about it?

Comparing hardware products like the Zune of Microsoft phone to software the Windows Operating Systems is apples to oranges.  Nice try, although it is true that MS hardware products are a mixed bag.

12 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Also, Windows 10 is free. If people liked MS Windows, it wouldn’t be free.

Yes, an upgrade to Windows 10 is free, if you already have a paid and licensed earlier version of Windows currently running on a computer.     Try purchasing Windows 10 for free if you are building a brand new PC.

 

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9 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

Citation needed. 

Easily:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-android-patent-income/#b4f4fc95c6cb

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...

Financially Microsoft is one of the biggest winners from the growth of Android as a platform, thanks to its wide range of patents. Samsung's royalty payment to Microsoft in 2013 was for over one billion dollars ($1,041,642,161 and fifty cents), roughly $3.41 per device. With roughly 300 million Android handsets sold last quarter, that could be another billion coming to Redmond.

...

If you go with Android's total installed base of 1.808 billion smartphones, at that $3.41 value, Microsoft's take from Android could easily reach six billion dollars.

....

Talking intelligently about technology really isn't your forte, Dante.  Maybe you need to stick to social studies and socialism.

 

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1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Easily:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-android-patent-income/#b4f4fc95c6cb

Talking intelligently about technology really isn't your forte, Dante.  Maybe you need to stick to social studies and socialism.

 

What within a Samsung phone is generating royalties? 
 

Apple still uses Samsung as a chip contractor.

 

Who makes $$$ off of Android itself?

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7 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

What within a Samsung phone is generating royalties? 
 

Apple still uses Samsung as a chip contractor.

 

Who makes $$$ off of Android itself?

What part of the statement " thanks to its wide range of patents." did you not understand?  Your intellectual property teacher/professor in school must have been awful.

The Android operating system itself is open source,  so if you want to download it, compile it, and install it on a piece of hardware that will run it then go for it.  There should be no cost for that.  It's the services and software built to run on android where companies, primarily Google, make their money:

https://www.feedough.com/how-does-google-make-money-from-android/

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How is Android still in the market if it is not charging money? What exactly is Android revenue model?

Well, the two major sources of income for Google that keep Android afloat are:

1. Avoiding additional costs for paying to be a default search engine of any other OS (Google paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 to keep Google search bar on iPhone)

2. Google Play Store

Android earns revenue by not incurring expenses for being any other Operating System (OS).

In other words: Android earns for not being iOS

Google is, after all, an advertising company (Its major revenue comes from advertising). Which means that displaying advertisements and hitting it to the right target demographic is their primary agenda. Android is your Google data acquirer in a pocket.

How does this work?

Google smartly put up its operating system for free: Which eventually helped cheaper phones to develop as they don’t have to put up with the licensing fee as long as you have the hardware.

Customer base grew until Android had a firm grasp over the market.

....

In 2018, Google Play generated gross revenue of 24.8 billion USD as compared to the 19.5 billion USD in the previous year. Needless to say, Google play plays a very pivotal role in the Android revenue model.

 

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44 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

What part of the statement " thanks to its wide range of patents." did you not understand?  Your intellectual property teacher/professor in school must have been awful.

The Android operating system itself is open source,  so if you want to download it, compile it, and install it on a piece of hardware that will run it then go for it.  There should be no cost for that.  It's the services and software built to run on android where companies, primarily Google, make their money:

https://www.feedough.com/how-does-google-make-money-from-android/

 

So, Samsung pays Microsoft over everything other than the OS?

I also did IP law as an online class.

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2 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Yes, an upgrade to Windows 10 is free, if you already have a paid and licensed earlier version of Windows currently running on a computer.     Try purchasing Windows 10 for free if you are building a brand new PC.

 

How much did the upgrade to XP cost? That wasn’t free, and neither were any other previous upgrades to Windows.

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4 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

So, Samsung pays Microsoft over everything other than the OS?

I also did IP law as an online class.

Samsung paid Microsoft $1 billion in Android patent-licensing royalties in 2013: https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-paid-microsoft-1-billion-in-android-patent-licensing-royalties-in-2013/

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....

Thanks to a filing unsealed on October 3 in the  Microsoft vs. Samsung U.S. District Court patent-royalty case  filed in early August 2014, we now know that Samsung paid Microsoft $1 billion in 2013 for a single year's worth of patent-licensing royalties.

Samsung agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft a then-undisclosed amount for licensing patents upon which Android allegedly infringed. That agreement was structured as a cross-licensing and business-collaboration agreement.

According to the unsealed filing, Microsoft is contending that "(U)nder the License Agreement, Samsung agreed to make patent royalty payment to Microsoft for a period of seven fiscal years, in exchange for the right to use patented Microsoft technology in Samsung smartphones and tablets that use the Android operating system."

The filing says that Samsung failed to make its year-two royalty payment on time and to pay interest for not doing so. Samsung, for its part, claimed it shouldn't have to make good on the contract because Microsoft bought Nokia's devices and services business.

Microsoft said Samsung owed interest in excess of $6.9 million for its late Android-patent fee, which it still hadn't paid as of the date of the filing. That amount is calculated on the $1 billion that Samsung owed Microsoft in Android patent licensing royalties as of August 29, 2013, according to the unsealed documents.

...

And remember: Samsung is just one of nearly two dozen companies that are paying Microsoft Android and Chrome OS patent licensing fees. 

 

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4 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

How much did the upgrade to XP cost? That wasn’t free, and neither were any other previous upgrades to Windows.

https://www.cnet.com/news/gates-takes-wraps-off-windows-xp/

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...

Windows XP Home Edition will be available as an upgrade version for $99. The full version of the OS will cost $199. Windows XP Professional will cost $199 for the upgrade and $299 for the full version, according to Microsoft.

....

 

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56 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

How much did the upgrade to XP cost? That wasn’t free, and neither were any other previous upgrades to Windows.

You're the one who made the argument if anyone wanted Windows they wouldn't be giving it away. Do you even read anything you post?

2 hours ago, DanteEstonia said:

What within a Samsung phone is generating royalties? 
 

Apple still uses Samsung as a chip contractor.

 

Who makes $$$ off of Android itself?

 

1 hour ago, DanteEstonia said:

I also did IP law as an online class.

And this forum is free! I would pay for this level of entertainment. 

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10 hours ago, Impartial_Observer said:

This has been entertaining, but seriously you are arguing MS make products no one wants? Laughable.

I am saying MS-

1. Has always made subpar products 

2. Only ever became successful due to monopolistic practices that they could only sustain through shady and borderline illegal business practices 

3. Contributed nothing original or anything of substantive value or original to household computing

4. Is only able to stay in business due to legacy applications 

 

and all of this has bore out in every segment of computing outside of PCs, where Microsoft failed. Microsoft is not a company to be lauded, it is one to be despised; and Bill Gates is a parasite upon the world of computing.

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5 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

I am saying MS-

1. Has always made subpar products 

2. Only ever became successful due to monopolistic practices that they could only sustain through shady and borderline illegal business practices 

3. Contributed nothing original or anything of substantive value or original to household computing

4. Is only able to stay in business due to legacy applications 

 

and all of this has bore out in every segment of computing outside of PCs, where Microsoft failed. Microsoft is not a company to be lauded, it is one to be despised; and Bill Gates is a parasite upon the world of computing.

Do you own or use any Microsoft products?

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