The next frontier in workplace wellness: financial health The rule is spend less than you earn. But no one today wants to hear that they should not lease a new car this year, or buy a new big screen TV or up the cable package to include 57 more inane unwatchable channels. Instead, the world has run amok due to Boomer materialism. More below. Back in 2010 when Obamacare was being debated, I had a friend who took the position that we need socialized medicine because people cannot afford to pay for medical payments insurance. Her first mistake was believing that insurance improved health outcomes, it doesn't. Her second mistake was arguing that a woman she employed off and on, Branca, could not afford medical payments insurance. After getting some basic information about her, I was able to prove that she could buy her family insurance from Regence Blue Cross, with a reasonable deductible and copays for under $1,000 per year (I don't remember her particulars anymore but the premium number is close).
My friend said, the woman could not afford this amount, and when I asked if she had cable, well, of course, she did, and she was paying over $100 per month. To which I replied, that the woman was not serious about health insurance payments insurance. If she were serious, she would make the necessary budget alterations and buy it. The more I probed, the more I found that she liked her lifestyle and thought she should not have to pay for everything. She felt it better if you paid for her. The real solutions here would be for the US government to create Social Security accounts where the individual could take his entire payroll tax amount of about 20% of income and place it into an SS retirement account, an unemployment insurance account, and a disability account and use those proceeds only for those products. The SS account would not be accessible until a specified age; the other accounts would only be available under prescribed terms. Next, the federal government should reduce its spending; it is shockingly wasteful. The goal should be to achieve 15% of GDP revenue for the next three years, then reduce the amount by 1% of GDP every three years until the federal revenue is at or below 10% of GDP. This would provide much-needed tax relief to the working taxpayers. The next things necessary are to means test (both wealth and income) Social Security payments, Medicare and other old age benefits so that we are not paying the upper middle class and wealth to retire. This will greatly reduce the costs of these programs and allow the reduction of income and payroll taxes noted above. Last we need to defraud the entire welfare system including SS and Medicare. Again, this will allow tax reductions. Part of this defrauding should include the requirement that all persons receiving government assistance of any type work either for remuneration or charitably.
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