Having been lucky enough to have been born in, and later to have emigrated to, a country with universal health care, it has been with some bemusement that I have been watching the recent push towards comprehensive health care reform in the United States.
Universal health care is expensive, but, it is a necessary expense. It is something that the richest country in the world should be able to afford. And yet, beyond countering the scare mongering about the quality of universal health care being spouted by the private health industry, the question of how to fund it has been a vexing question for the Obama Administration.
The latest plan proposes drawing on prospective funds garnered from a repeal of the Bush tax cuts but also from the introduction of a new 45% marginal tax rate on high earners with incomes over $300,000 a year.
The political right in the United States have seized upon this proposed means of revenue generation not just as evidence of breaking a campaign promise to not raise taxes on high income earners beyond levels experienced in the 1990s, but more powerfully as an attack on the American middle class.
This claim is completely preposterous.
According to the US Census Bureau, the mean annual income for households in 2007--a measure that can be inflated by high incomes-- was $67, 609. The mode annual income range for households in the same year--the range in which the highest number of households fell-- was between $100,000-$149,999 with a mean in that bracket of approximately $120,000.
Only 1.9% of households had an annual income in 2007 over $250,000--the highest the category covered--with a mean income of approximately $418,000.
So, there is an incredible level of deception going on here. The proposed tax increase will effect the very richest of the rich, representing less than 1.9% of the total population, who on average earn 6 times the national average income, and 3.5 times the mean of the range that represents the national mode. In trying to foment opposition, the private health industry, the Republican party, conservative pundits, and the fantastically rich themselves are claiming that they are middle class in order to build up solidarity with a segment of the population that will actually benefit from the universal health care that will result from tax increases that real middle class households will not have to pay.
And all of this is taking place at time when the super-rich, particularly those in the financial industry who contributed to the current economic turmoil, continue to reap massive annual compensation awards according to the Wall Street Journal.
It's enough to make you sick.
Photo credit: s.alt
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