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October 9, 2007
What's $100 Billion Buy These Days?
This evening I needed some yard-waste bags and decided I'd ride the bike to Home Depot to pick them up.
When that mission was accomplished I shot off to McDonald's for a Fruit & Yogurt Parfait and a grilled chicken wrap (no sauce). I started a new book on the PDA as I sat and sipped on my super-big water.
As I was preparing to leave I caught a bit of the conversation the two guys behind me were having. One was going on about how the Democrats had increased the cost of a program by five times and how they were going to pay for it with an increase in the tax on tobacco products and how unfair that was.
He was, of course, talking about a bill Bush had vetoed. A bill that would have provided health care for uninsured children.
I was eager to continue my ride so I could get home in time for Carpoolers and I missed the rest of the conversation. I'm guessing, though, that the guy talking continued thusly:
"Of course, in 1998 smoking added $75 billion to the cost of health care in the United States. About 20% of the population smokes and I guess it really isn't fair that the 80% of the population that doesn't smoke has to pay a portion of this or that their premiums keep going up year after year. AND, I guess the money the Dems are asking for is less than half of the $100 billion smoking-related illnesses cost the nation in terms of health-care costs and lost productivity. And, if you think I'm making any of this up you can Google for it when you get home."
Though I could be wrong. The rest of the conversation may have simply been, "You gonna eat them there fries?!"
(For the record folks, this isn't an anti-smoking post. It's an anti-dumbass post.)
Posted by delmer at October 9, 2007 8:34 PM
Comments
I just want to know what those McChick Wraps taste like ... care to rate 'em?
Posted by: Nancy at October 9, 2007 11:07 PM
I think they're pretty good. I normally have one when I'm out riding the bike. I get the grilled ones without any sauce and it seems to me they have about 250 calories ... more or less.
Posted by: delmer at October 9, 2007 11:18 PM
why dont they put $0.10 on the petrol price as tax and let that pay for the kids health. It would do 2 things: 1) less petrol consumption so good for the enviroment. 2)healthy kids.
Run for congress Delmer....
Posted by: Jack at October 10, 2007 5:56 AM
Better make that $0.20 per gallon and pay for the "alternative immigrant's children" too. But wait! Let's waive gas cost increases for anyone making less than 25k a year. Or better yet, we'll GIVE them the gas and a FREE ginsu knife set if they act now. But wait...!
Slogan: Del-bait in '08 !
Posted by: Darrell at October 10, 2007 1:50 PM
Why does one singular group of idiots (not Democrats, but smokers) have to pay for every child that doesn't have insurance? Because they are to stupid to stop no matter what the cost of a pack? What is the insurance burden of overweight people, $78 billion in 1998? Most of them do not smoke so lets tax Biggy Size Fries? But that's not fair to the skinny guy that loves the fries and doesn't smoke! So the only way you can get everyone to pay is to tax toilet paper, then bidet sales will go up. Damn!
Posted by: mikeo at October 10, 2007 8:10 PM
MikeO: There was a guy behind me bitching about the fact cigarettes were going to be taxed to provide insurance for children that don't have it. He seemed to be unaware of the fact that non-smokers, about 80% of American adults, were helping to pay the 100 billon dollars smokers bring to the party in increased health care costs and lost productivity.
There was not a heavy guy sitting behind me bitching about the cost of providing health care to a group of Americans who can't care for themselves, can't vote, and have no rights.
I can't control which dumbasses sit close enough to me that I can overhear their conversations.
Well, at work I can ... to some extent.
(I wasn't picking on smokers ... or heavy people. I was grumbling about people who say dumbass things.)
Posted by: delmer at October 10, 2007 8:45 PM
But it is unfair to tax the smokers.....
Posted by: mikeo at October 10, 2007 9:05 PM
For the sake of argument, let's say the smokers all stopped tomorrow, better yet half of them died in the next year. Where's the tax money going to come from?
Posted by: mikeo at October 10, 2007 10:39 PM
MikeO: Please reread the bit where I state this isn't an anti-smoking post ... but an anti-dumbass post. The guy bitching was complaining about not wanting to pay for something he felt was unfair to him ... without being able to see that he was engaging in an activity that was unfair to about 80% of the population if you were to simply use his argument against him.
Anyway, the money would come from:
The 100 billion we'd save annually. Actually, we'd have a surplus then of 65 billion. (I know the math doesn't work like that.)
Taxes aren't fair.
You and I are being taxed to send our children to public schools we don't use. At a pack a day a smoker will be taxed an additional $365.00 a year. You and I are paying about 10x that much for something we don't take advantage of.
We've killed about 81,000 Iraqi civilians in the war. About 9% of those are children. The war has cost 458 billion dollars, so, we're spending about $5,654,320 to kill each civilian or about $41,220,000,000 if you total up the number of children killed. If we can spend that kind of money to kill children in other countries, certainly we can find the money to provide health care for ours.
The war has cost Ohioans 16 billion. There are 11.5 million of us. That's about 1,400 for each one of us. My kids rarely make their beds, I'm pretty sure they aren't paying taxes and that I'm picking up their slack, or $5600 of my tax dollars have been used to relandscape another country.
I would rather my money not be used for that. But I don't get to choose.
Posted by: delmer at October 11, 2007 8:41 AM
"If we can spend that kind of money to kill children in other countries"
????
Posted by: Darrell at October 11, 2007 8:53 AM
Oh, Mike and I are being unreasonable with each other. Later, when he's not at his desk I'm going to sneak down and eat some of his Trail Mix.
Posted by: delmer at October 11, 2007 9:14 AM
Here's a thought. The sales tax in Australia was 10%. That shocked me (being a Pennsylvania resident with only 6%) until I learned about their awesome health coverage. I would GLADLY pay a higher sales tax if it meant free insurance for me and my kids! I think smokers should have higher premiums on their healthcare, but nonsmokers shouldn't have to. That's just me though. You know what they say, if one person could change the world, we wouldn't need AARP (but I'm far too young for that anyway).
Posted by: Sue at October 11, 2007 10:47 AM