Donald Trump promises universal healthcare and zero taxes for the poor if he wins in 2016

Wow, I might be forced to vote R for President if the Donald gets nominated. Assuming that I am convinced he isn't just saying anything to get elected, which is highly likely.

originally posted by: olaru12

Republican firebrand Donald Trump has promised to scrap taxes for America’s poorest and offer healthcare for all if elected president — paid for by renegotiating the NAFTA accords and picking a trade fight with China.

The Republican presidential frontrunner and billionaire businessman promises to unveil Monday what the national economy would look like under a President Trump.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” program, he presented an outline of that program, insisting he had a recipe for balancing the country’s books while cutting taxes across the board.

Whoa!!! Sounds like progressive pie in the sky rhetoric to me. What's next "free phones"?

How do the conservative fan boys feel about their chosen one now?

The reality television star promised to do away with President Barack Obama’s signature health reform program, and replace it with a rival plan to provide coverage for every American.

Socialist bastard...

www.rawstory.com...

Pressed to explain the financing of his pledges, the real estate mogul said the nation’s $19 trillion federal debt would be erased by expanding the economy, “if the economy grows the way it should grow,” and by recovering manufacturing jobs lost overseas.

How?

They are all socialists... Corporate Socialists (aka, Crony Capitalism). Trump knows the same thing that all politicians know - keep the poor dumb, fat, and give them just enough.

It's something the ruling elite learned from the French Revolution. See, they learn from their mistakes... WE DON'T.

originally posted by: CB328
Wow, I might be forced to vote R for President if the Donald gets nominated. Assuming that I am convinced he isn't just saying anything to get elected, which is highly likely.

Its not even about whether he's being genuine, its about whether he'll even have enough power in congress to actually make it happen.

I'm not even American, but even I remember one Obama's main campaign proposals was to create a universal healthcare system in the US. But when he got into power, the republicans blocked him from achieving it. So all you ended up with was some kind of compulsory insurance system.

Its just so stupid and completely short sighted, since the current system is so unregulated and ineffective that the federal government still ends up spending more on healthcare (per capita) than every other country in the world.

Whats needed is a centralized and highly regulated system, to make it more effective and efficient.

But you know, right wing ideologies and all that nonsense... They'd rather pay though the nose for an ineffective and sub-par (compared to most other developed nations) healthcare system, than allow the federal government to have control over anything. Except if it only effects poor people, of course. The conservatives allow the federal government all the power they want, if its dressed up as a way to sting minorities and the poor.

Illogical extremist ideologies come with a hefty price tag... I suppose.

a reply to: olaru12

Trump for President...doesn't quite sound the same when you realise 'Trump' is British slang for 'Fart'.

I can see the cartoonists having a parp-pa-parp-parp field day if he gets in.

Not particularly cerebral or highbrow i know, but true nonetheless.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: amazing

I'm not pro colonialism, I don't want to go around invading other countries and turning them into our property but a military is for more than that and self defense. If a nation has the ability to invade one country without compromising their self defense, that means that using that ability effectively reduces that nations diplomatic power if they project force. This is part of why Iraq was such a disaster for the US, a military is best used as a threat that never gets put into action. For example lets say NK decides they can't abide by the cease fire any longer and we have to step in and help South Korea, tying our troops up in that war reduces our ability to threaten force against Russia, Iran, China, or others. If you can't threaten force with a military then you might as well not have one. Reducing our defense budget too far effectively destroys our ability to threaten force which is a major diplomatic loss.

When it comes to people in Congress making decisions for us, I expect them to. That's why they were elected, and is largely the point of government. I have no problem with large government provided the people in power are working in the interests of the people, and that no individual has too broad an area of influence. At best I am an expert in one field and even that is debatable, that is true for most other people as well. That means that on most matters I am not qualified to give an informed vote, and with over 300 million people there is no way for each of us to have 1 on 1 discussions with those who are experts prior to each vote. By electing a small number of people to vote, it's possible for them to make informed decisions which results in much better outcomes than a population that is 99.99% low information voters on any given issue.

I actually was in favor of the bailouts, this is something I think about occasionally. What would have happened had we not done them? The outcome would have been far worse than what we experienced. The failure wasn't in the bailouts but in the fact we allowed the banks and even the automotive industry to get to the point where needing to bail them out was even an option. With the banks particularly it was a two fold failure as we not only let them merge and consolidate into larger entities but we also failed in regulating their financial products to keep them from making overly risky investments and leveraging at too high a rate.

When it comes to health care I did say I was in favor of providing it. To be honest I'm not sure what the best system would be though. Obamacare for all of it's faults is better than what we had because the poor now have greater access to health care (atleast in the states that expanded medicaid) but it clearly has some problems as well. Single payer seems to work well in other countries and could be worth a try, but if we move to single payer there's no moving away from it to try something else since the insurance industry will cease to exist.

One of the big hurdles we need to overcome in any health care plan is in treatment costs. I've touched on this in other threads and maybe even in this one but one of our problems is that it costs 5 billion dollars to make each drug, but other nations simply copy the medicine and produce it for themselves for a fraction of the cost. If we could get some other high population nations like China, India, or the entire EU on board with respecting our patents we could bring our drug costs way down but doing so presents a real diplomatic challenge.

Good Reply. Two things, I think I disagree with you on. One is Congress. Sure we pay them to make decisions for us, but does a multimillionare in congress understand the struggle of lower middle class or poor us citizens? And are they making the best decisions for us? I don't think so. I think they're out of touch. Short Term limits and reduced pay would ensure that we would get a more diverse demographic in congress representing us.

Next, Military. Yes a war with NK would drain our military resources, but does that mean we need 700 military bases around the world? no. you mention that with our military stretched out it might open the door for China and Russian and that we need a big military force to prevent that. Again, my opinion is no, because of our allies. England, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, Jordan etc. all of our allies together is enough to stop any aggression from our perceived enemies.

Just to take one ally. France has over 200,000 troops, over 400 tanks, over 1200 aircraft, over 100 naval vessels including 4 aircraft carriers, and it just goes on and on and on from there. It's the treaties and alliances that have all the power, not American military spending.

a reply to: amazing

Congress is a tough issue, I see where you're coming from it's a rather popular sentiment I just happen to disagree. In my opinion the two biggest issues we face in Congress are that the previous professions of our congressmen don't represent the diverse backgrounds of the people and that special interests are able to pay our reps more than we do, which buys their loyalty.

On the first issue, the more professions that look at a problem the more perspectives you're going to have which increases the quality of answers they can come up with. The answer to that seems to be term limits to increase the total number of people in Congress but elections have shown that simply increasing the quantity of people running does little to change the demographics so I remain unconvinced that that's an answer. On the other hand, without term limits we can have professional politicians who need to appease their electorate to remain in office and keep their jobs, reelection is a powerful motivator. Reduced pay is something I completely disagree with because it encourages corruption, and most congressmen already act rather bitter that lobbyists make so much more than they do.

My solution to Congress would be twofold. First we increase the pay of Senators and Reps and second we increase the number of people in Congress. Increase the number of Senators per state to 3, and increase Reps by some number. The 1:20,000 as listed in the Constitution would be nice but I think that's unmanageable in practice.

The basis of my argument is that corporations pay lobbyists individually but we pay salaries collectively. If we spend $317 million more on congress that only costs each of us $1 on average but it costs each and every corporation $317 million more to keep pace. Using this we can price the corporations out of influence. Right now at 175k each and 535 members we spend roughly $93,625,000 on their salaries each year. If we went to 50% more Senators (150 total) and 100% more reps (870 total) and then increased the pay of each of them by a factor of 10 (from 175k to 1.75 mil) we would spend 1,610,000,000 on them per year. Expressed as tax payments that's a jump from $0.29 annually to $5.07 annually. Yet at the same time, if we get improved legislation we'll manage to save that $5 per year.

With the increased numbers in Congress I would want to make more committees with subsets of the members, but give each committee a more narrow range of influence which can also serve to limit the influence of corruption, or make it more expensive to carry out.

On the subject of a military, treaties and alliances are useful but most nations we're allied with don't have much in the way of force projection capabilities. It takes a very broad coalition to put together meaningful numbers and that's not always possible. For example if we want to stop Russian aggression somewhere there is very little Europe can do because they're reliant on Russia for oil and natural gas. The US is actually trying to work on this specific issue by sending our oil and gas exports to Europe but it's still going to take us several more years to push Russia out of the area. The geopolitics are similar for other nations though, for example taking action against China can cause a nation to lose access to rare earths.

originally posted by: staticfl
a reply to: olaru12

One thing I find funny no one is talking about is that if you make under $25k/yr you pay no tax but if you're a fast food worker liberal demanding a living wage of $15/hr, that's $30K/yr and now you will pay taxes. It's skin in the game, but once these people find out, they wont want the $15/hr.

No, they'll just work less than full time so they can keep getting their subsidies.

www.foxnews.com...

"Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise – in a bid to keep overall income down so they don’t lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent."

"Despite a booming economy throughout western Washington, the state’s welfare caseload has dropped very little since the higher wage phase began in Seattle in April. In March 130,851 people were enrolled in the Basic Food program. In April, the caseload dropped to 130,376."

Granted, I'd like to find their May - August numbers. September is probably asking too much right now.

a reply to: Teikiatsu

You actually think that "Foxnews" is any different than the "National Enquirer" or "Globe" or "Star" or whatever tabloid???

Really? You actually think that?

Hitler promised "freedom and bread."

Why would ANYONE trust a politician? ...Sanders, Trump, Clinton, Bush... Why?