
Bernie Tax Calculator - keehun
http://Bernietax.com
======
bsbechtel
It's not just about how much in taxes you would pay; it's about the risk of
you actually getting quality care for what you are forced to pay in taxes. The
risk of that care not being adequate is significant...consider that Bernie
Sanders is Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee which oversaw
people dying in waiting room floors of VA hospitals. Sanders originally tried
to blame the Koch brothers for this episode instead of fixing it. The voters
had very little recourse like they do in the free market where they can just
go to a different healthcare provider, because they are forced to pay taxes
for the VA hospitals either way. The same goes for the Flint water issue in
Michigan as well. The citizens of Flint are being forced to pay for water that
they can't drink or use, and they were lied to about the risks it posed to
their health for almost a year before the truth came out. This is the real
risk you face with any government program, regardless of how little a tax
calculator website will tell you it is going to cost you.

~~~
wrong_variable
Bernie never spoke about banning private healthcare.

I find it amusing you think there is a free market for healthcare in the US.

Bernie's main idea is to destroy all forms of monopoly in various industries
in the US - banks,healthcare. It's no different than state capitalism ( in
USSR ).

Bernie is not against the free market. He wants single payer to leverage the
free market in healthcare which is dominated by big players on the supply
side.

You as an individual are free to afford whatever you want. But the govt's
concern is improve the standard of living for the average citizen. And all of
the world it has been proven time and again that single payer is the best
system - empirically. So any arguments you make without any data but on some
notion of "choice" will not be as convincing - sorry.

~~~
bsbechtel
My original comment wasn't about banning private healthcare, it was about a
government forcing people to pay for a product or service that isn't
acceptable, or actually damages people's lives because it is managed so
poorly. The Citizens of Flint still have access to bottle water, thank
goodness, but they still have to pay their city water bills unfortunately. The
same would go for Bernie Sander's health plan whether or not the service
provided was actually worth the price paid.

>>You as an individual are free to afford whatever you want.

That is not actually true. I'm spent the afternoon searching for health
insurance for my wife, who is pregnant, and trying to immigrate to the U.S.
Thanks to the 2,000 pages of ACA regulation, there is no clause or loophole
that allows us to purchase insurance for her. Your argument using 'data' is
not sympathetic nor persuasive to me.

~~~
makecheck
Bernie's real expectation is that things will get better if people get off
their butts and take action. I doubt he believes that government programs will
be magically efficient and effective without the right people to make them
that way.

Government jobs are available. You can't really complain about something being
"managed so poorly" unless you're one of the people in that organization
trying to make it better.

Currently the U.S. has a system where doctors' offices need SEVERAL _full
time_ staff _just to deal with insurance companies_ , which is _insane_ and
_nothing_ like what I have seen elsewhere.

~~~
bsbechtel
>>Bernie's real expectation is that things will get better if people get off
their butts and take action. I doubt he believes that government programs will
be magically efficient and effective without the right people to make them
that way.

The problem is, with a government program, we're all forced to pay into it, no
matter how good or bad the program actually is. When you are forced to pay for
services from an organization, you have every right to complain about how poor
those services are if you suffer because of them. If you expect that a
government program will be great because Bernie hires the right people, what
about the next President, and the President after that? The capabilities of
individuals is government statistically by a bell curve and normal
distribution. Even if you can select the very best person to manage that
program for 4 years, the law of regression to the mean dictates that some
future hire will be less capable. So how to we prevent mediocre people from
eventually filling these positions, and thus wasting the money we are forced
to pay in taxes to fund them?

~~~
makecheck
Well one thing to consider is that a great many countries have managed to do
it so we aren't exactly charting scary new territory. We've essentially been
_told_ that this _has succeeded_ so the real question is why haven’t we at
least _tried_ our own version of it?

Every single job or project has the risk of eventually being taken over by
less competent people (or at least, people who didn't understand the entire
original vision). Every taxpayer has to live with the fact that he or she
won't agree with everything the government does with money. I would have
personally loved to have contributed no tax money at all on the military
wastes of the last decade, for example. Taxpayers don't really get to choose
at a low granularity, otherwise everyone would find some way to cherry-pick to
the point that nothing big could get done.

The way to fix it is to put skin in the game personally. Quit your job and
apply to work for the government; or, write to a congressman and really press
on them that you consider this important; or better yet, tell 50 of your
friends and get some network effects; or join some larger group that petitions
for change (as so many other groups do).

~~~
bsbechtel
Your points are not completely unreasonable, but there is more to consider. I
agree with you about wasting tax dollars on military affairs in foreign
countries, but at least those expenditures are (theoretically) temporary.

Consider that many other countries, mainly in Europe, have managed to put in
place a single-payer healthcare system over the last 20-30 years. In the time
span of governments and the legal system, this is the blink of an eye. Again,
consider statistically that eventually someone incompetent is going to be put
in place running one of these systems. This happens in government, and it
happens in the private sector (how many firms are in the S&P 500 from 20 years
ago?). The difference in the private sector is, when failure happens,
individuals are free to choose a competing option, and are not forced to
continue to pay for the failing one. I'm sure you've heard the lines about how
competition in free markets (truly free, not highly regulated insurance) drive
down prices too.

Consider also that no benefit system has lasted longer than a generation and
been successfully managed by a federal-level government. The closest we have
is Social Security, which is well on it's way to bankruptcy here in the U.S.

Furthermore, the great majority of what are considered good single-payer
healthcare systems have been implemented in countries with Parliamentary Style
Governments. What this means is when the party in power is no longer doing
it's job, the citizens or opposing party can vote them out, more or less ASAP.
The difference with this and our Constitutional Style Government is that if we
elect the wrong person, or they put the wrong person in charge of our
healthcare, we have very little power to change the situation for 4 years. In
this sense, those Parliamentary Style Governments operate closer to what an
actual free-market operates, giving their Citizens much more power over who
runs and manages their single-payer healthcare system than we could.

The reason we haven't tried our own version of it is, because once it is
implemented, it is very, very hard to change or roll back. Furthermore, as is
with all the data coming out about Obamacare, it is very hard to actually
judge whether such a program is actually successful.

------
twoodfin
Fairly certain this calculator fails to account for Sanders' proposed lifting
of the Social Security tax cap for (presumably household?) earnings over
$250,000. That's a fake 6.2% and real 12.4% marginal income tax hike.

Also the brackets don't match up with this analysis[2], though I have no idea
who's right. That analysis also suggests Sanders' plan adds _another_
employer-paid payroll tax of 6.2%! I'm not sure how that overlaps with the
"Medicare for All" tax. Let's assume they're not cumulative. The result is
still something like a real 60% marginal rate on a household with two $150,000
earners. Before state and local taxes, of course.

EDIT: No, of course, the 2.2% employee and 6.2% employer taxes are cumulative!
It's disingenuous to imply that your wages aren't being taxed if your employer
pays the tax instead of you.

[1] [http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-
senato...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-senator-
bernie-sanders-s-tax-plan)

[2] [https://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand-
socia...](https://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand-social-
security/)

~~~
jstelly
Yes, this looks like a simplified picture that is much more incremental than
what is actually proposed on the Bernie Sanders site:

[https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-bernie-pays-for-his-
pro...](https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-bernie-pays-for-his-proposals/)

The "more accurate" calculator linked from github is similarly limited.

------
keehun
Note: not an official website of the Sander's campaign. Also, let's keep it
apolitical?

What's interesting to me is that there's not yet a product-comparison-like
table where you enter your income and relevant financial information (stocks,
etc) and it would tell you how this candidate's tax idea would affect you.
This calculator for Sander's idea is amazing, and I hope to see more of these
for other candidates!

~~~
pc86
> _Also, let 's keep it apolitical?_

Uh, it's a tax calculator from a presidential candidate. How on Earth can you
discuss that apolitically?

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oxguy3
Should probably make it a little bit more obvious that this isn't an official
website; the way the logo appears at the top right now makes it look way too
official.

~~~
holmak
I noticed that too. It amuses me that it just takes a couple of tasteful red
and blue stripes to make something look official!

------
STRiDEX
Tax rate needs to be area dependent. 150k in the bay area isn't the same as
150k even just a few hours in any direction. I don't know how they'd implement
city based tax rates, but I'm never going to own a house here if I keep
getting taxed 50% and more.

Sanders calculator says I'd be paying more.

~~~
pc86
It's _Federal_ income tax for a reason. Are you suggesting people get a cost-
of-living adjustment for federal taxes?

~~~
STRiDEX
Yes, see you get it.

~~~
pc86
Move somewhere cheaper.

------
mchahn
I watch a lot of UK television, even though I'm not an ex-pat or anything. I
just find it better than US television. So I get a lot of insight into the UK
culture. One thing I see is that the the citizens of the UK are actually very
happy with their socialized healthcare. There are very few negative jokes
about it. When I see how they take advantage of it, especially with home-care,
I am extremely jealous.

------
bobby_9x
This is pretty useless.

We still don't really know what his tax plan is.

I heard him in an interview that the upper federal tax bracket will be 55%.
This combined with state and local taxes means it will be closer to 75% (not
including sales tax and countless other taxes that are paid).

It's just like in Norway and Sweden (the countries he wants to emulate). On
paper, it looks like a small amount. But when it actually comes down to it, it
makes it nearly impossible for even things like startups to thrive.

I also heard him say that the money will only come from 'greedy wallstreet
executives' (I got a flyer in the mail saying exactly this).

I think many people will be in for a rude awakening when the middle class has
to foot the bill for all of this and the system is substandard compared to the
rest of the world.

~~~
Afforess
Not only that, but this whole health plan debate is weird for those of us in
high deductible HSA plans. My health insurance costs _negative_ $1000
($-1000), because my company _pays_ me extra if I choose an HSA plan, and the
company covers the high deductible premium. What the heck happens to those if
health insurance goes single payer?

~~~
exelius
You have to admit, it's a fucked up system when your employer is basically
paying you not to use your insurance.

Your employer should have no influence on health care decisions, which is one
of the many reasons we need to fix our current system.

~~~
chimeracoder
> You have to admit, it's a fucked up system when your employer is basically
> paying you not to use your insurance.

That's not what an HSA plan is.

I'm not OP, but OP's situation is pretty common, and it's more equivalent to
employers offering 401(k) matching. They deposit a certain amount of money
each month into your HSA account, though by law, you can only have an HSA
account if you're on a high-deductible plan.

Generally, the only employers who offer this are the ones who have the money
to offer very attractive benefits (ie, tech companies). This usually includes
covering part or all of employees' premiums, so their employees usually don't
pick the government-mandated HMO plan option (it ends up not being any cheaper
for them to choose the more restrictive plan).

~~~
exelius
HSAs in general are not a terrible idea; but they have created some scenarios
(like OP's) that are pretty counter-intuitive. But HSAs are basically "small
insurance" \- if you max out your HSA on a high-deductible plan, you probably
will never use your insurance. So you're paying for most normal medical
expenses out of pocket, and your insurance plan is basically a backstop for if
you get cancer, have an accident, etc.

Overall though, health care should not be tied to your employment.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Overall though, health care should not be tied to your employment.

Yes, I agree.

> So you're paying for most normal medical expenses out of pocket, and your
> insurance plan is basically a backstop for if you get cancer, have an
> accident, etc.

That's literally what insurance is supposed to be: a financial mechanism for
smoothing risk. The actuarial price for insurance on routine events will be
exactly the same as paying for those routine events directly.

Economically and financially, "insurance" is explicitly _not_ supposed to
cover predictable, routine costs, because there is no risk associated with
them. It is a really terrible and unfortunate misnomer that we call this
"insurance", because it's not. You wouldn't expect your collision insurance to
cover your annual DMV fees.

If you want normal, routine medical expenses to be priced below cost, then
you're talking about a subsidy. But a subsidy is not insurance. Insurance
pools money from at-risk parties. A subsidy is a transfer of wealth.

To be honest, it's perfectly fine to advocate that if that's what you really
want, but it's misleading to call this "insurance", because it serves a
completely different goal (wealth transfer vs. risk pooling).

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captn3m0
Very minor nitpick: It shows "higher", even the difference is exactly $0.00.
Inputs: 251429 (Income) and 4955 (Health Insurance).

------
tn13
I come from India and if USA is going socialist path I think I will better go
back to India. Socialism can make even a big ship sink faster than you can
imagine.

I think American youth has developed a sense of entitlement and no clue about
rest of the world, that is why people like Bernie are getting such support.

~~~
wrong_variable
India's problem was never socialism vs capitalism. India's fundamental problem
is systemic corruption and heavy bureaucracy. Those things can arise under a
capitalist or socialist system.

~~~
kamaal
As an Indian who has lived in both majorly socialist and now a mixed economy
India.

I can tell you corruption is way worse under a more capitalist society. Reason
is simple, if people are making nice profits why not ask them to pay a little
extra bribe.

Every one starting from the government to the private citizen is involved.
Scams run in the tune lacs of crores, government servants think they are
entitled to a bribe, you will be hard pressed to get a driving license without
greasing some one's palms(I was asked by a license agent, why I was worked up
about paying a bribe while I was getting paid well as a programmer), the
postman thinks if he delivers a important document like a passport he deserves
a bribe(because you are going to US, and will earn well anyway, why not pay me
a bribe tip here), clerks in the income tax office rake up all kind of false
flags when questioned they will tell you, they put it out if you pay a small
bribe. The list is endless. Every single activity or a movement of a file, has
a bribe fee on it. Every single one, no matter what activity you do.

Lastly this isn't just government corruption. Private companies have rampant
corruption issues. Even in top MNC's managers routinely favor people from
their states and people who speak their mother tongue. Promotions, raise,
stock bonuses, salary bonuses, foreign travel and many such things are decided
based on which state you come from, which language you talk, may be even caste
and religion too. God save if you, if you don't have a match with your
manager.

But surprisingly every body thinks, every one apart from them is corrupt. So
corruption is somebody else's problem. The very same manager who cheats openly
will complain why India isn't making progress because of corruption. Irony.

One guy even told me he was not cheating or doing anything wrong. He was
simply "Helping" people from his state.

~~~
tn13
You have confused scale of corruption, definition of corruption with something
that you think is wrong.

I remember we had to bribe a local fair price to get sugar and better quality
rice. Those days are over long back.

Also I don't see private company managers favoring people from their state of
region as a corruption. It all depends on company's internal policies and
whether they can run profitably under those cases or not.

~~~
kamaal
>>You have confused scale of corruption

Everything that I wrote, right from the prime minister's office to ordinary
man on the street is public knowledge.

>>definition of corruption with something that you think is wrong.

If you think corruption is only when a printed note is exchanged, I wouldn't
be surprised to see why its so hard to eliminate corruption in India. Bulk of
the corruption doesn't see any exchange in money. Its the favors and grants
that are exchanged in way that facilitate further ease in earning money.
Bargaining ministries, portfolios, license et al work this way. Heck bulk of
the corruption in the Media in India doesn't even involve money.

>>I remember we had to bribe a local fair price to get sugar and better
quality rice. Those days are over long back.

When did you leave India? This was the scenario circa pre 1995. I don't even
know any one close, even my relatives who are poor who take rations from
government fair price since more than a decade and a half. I think only BPL
people get it these days.

>>Also I don't see private company managers favoring people from their state
of region as a corruption.

So true, most beneficiaries of a scam rarely see the scam as a scam. They see
this as an one time opportunity to get ahead, and others are supposed to lie
down and co operate.

Like I said before, most managers who do this think they are just "helping"
their pets.

>>It all depends on company's internal policies and whether they can run
profitably under those cases or not.

A manager openly manipulates employee ratings, discriminates on the basis of
language, geography, caste or religion. The person in full knowledge hands out
rewards to people who don't deserve. And denies and discriminates against
those who do. Not only do you see nothing wrong in it, you seem to be
justifying it.

Hardly surprising, why its considered impossible to eliminate corruption in
India.

------
mudil
I came from Soviet Union. I don't have any illusions about socialist ideas.
Lots of young people here might have illusions. But I don't.

~~~
givinguflac
There's a huge difference between Socialism and Democratic Socialism,
surprised you wouldn't know that.

~~~
jeremyt
Perhaps you could explain the difference, because I don't see it.

~~~
keehun
"Democratic Socialism" the best I understand it seeks to further Democracy by
putting the power back into the social class, not the oligarchy as the US (in
my eyes) become. I think it's putting the "we the people" back into power.
Look at Bernie's top-priority messages. Get rid of Citizens United (money in
elections) and get rid of big banks. If those two things are accomplished, "we
the people" would have more power and held less at-hostage by the oligarchies
at power... But just my thought. This video does a decent job:
[https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/57540356...](https://www.facebook.com/DemocraticSocialist/videos/575403562607686/?pnref=story)

