Who is going to pay for all the ‘free’ stuff if Mamdani gets into office?

[Anonymous]

Free rent, free groceries, free utilities, free transportation, free healthcare, free iPhones, free clothes... and on and on.

The wealthy of New York aren't going to pay for it, because their money is handled somewhere else. Any wealthy person who does have some aspect of their life affected by it is going to leave. The ‘middle class’ can't afford to pay it because they're barely making it as it is, and they have to live 2 or 3 hours away from their jobs now, most times not even in the state of New York. The poor aren't going to pay for it because they don't have any money and they're the ones who are expecting the free stuff anyway.

So in a best-case-scenario, how is this supposed to work.

Also, prediction, after the victory rally, you will not see Bernie Sanders or AOC even one time in New York or with Mamdani.

[ohsheeT]

He's a politician, it's all in the wording. You will give a $5 voucher for everything that he is promised power housing food. Health care getting robbed

Come on, politicians do it all the time. They can say anything they want it doesn't mean they have to do

All he has to do is make it into office whether he stays there one year. 2 years it doesn't matter. He will get $250000 every year for the rest of his life, just because he was whatever office he was in, so they can all lie just to get their a**** in office. And then they make that money.
Every single year

[Effably]

There seems to be a basic misconception here.

Let us use healthcare.

The average annual cost for insurance and everything else in the US is about 8600$.
The average annual cost for entirely free healthcare is typically around 4000$.

The extra 4600$ is extra profit that pharma and hospitals extract, beyond already being well paid.

Making healthcare free in the USA will reduce annual average costs by 4000 to 5000$ per person. So multiply 350million by 4000.

USA would save, roughly, 1.4 Trillion Dollars every year by making healthcare 'free'.

Now it is still difficult in other ways but even a financially illiterate person will see that this is uniquely cost saving. So it will pay for itself, and then some.

[Chazmatazz269]

Do you even read your own words?
If healthcare is “entirely free”, how does it cost $4000? You refer to “financially illiterate” without acknowledging that you are yourself. $4000 is NOT “free”. $1 is NOT “free”. Get that through your head.
If everyone stops paying the “average” $8600 per year, then healthcare STILL costs someone $8600 per year. $4600 of costs don’t just evaporate. Even if it is profit for healthcare providers and insurance companies. What do you think happens then? People who work for those companies get laid off to maintain profits. If you’re planning to shut down insurance companies and handle everything through the state, same people and then some still lose their jobs.
You also conveniently left out copays and overages. The $8600 is PREMIUMS ONLY. How financially literate do you really think you are? You know way less than you think you do and you literally started your response by suggesting someone who is at least asking good questions knows too little. You have a LOT of reading and listening to do before you have the credibility to talk down to people like that. Check yourself.

[Effably]

Okay. You are being contrarian.

The total cost per person in the US is about 14 000$. The total cost per person in countries with equal or better but free healthcare is 7000$.

Of course it is not free in its entirety, it is free in the sense that there is no upfront cost. But the rest of the world pays half as much for the same thing. Slicing your costs in half and enabling it to everyone is a major benefit.

I am more than happy to educate you on the field if you need it. But you do need to acknowledge reality first. USA has the world's most expensive healthcare but not even close to the world's best.

The entire rest of the world is moving or have moved to make it "free". Because it is seen as a vital advantage for a country. You can pretend not to understand and delay this process but it will eventually happen because USA can not afford to not make it free.

[Chazmatazz269]

I’m not being contrarian. I pointed out your own ignorance. Now i get to point out your lies and half truths. The cost of healthcare in the US is closer to $15k. Less than half of all US citizens pay into the IRS. So the cost to taxpayers for your “free” healthcare is over $30k per earner. A little over 20% of full time workers make $30k or less per year. So they’re not going to cover their own costs. I make almost double the US average annual income and i paid just over $20k in taxes last year. Your fantasy has the majority of taxpayers paying at least triple that in order to cover the costs of people who earn significantly less, or nothing at all.
Not to mention, the corporations that are making the trillions aren’t being run by the people who need affordable healthcare. So “we” don’t have to do anything but protect the bottom line. You do realize that US healthcare subsidizes costs for those countries you think are doing everything perfectly, right? It’s the same corporations running things all over the globe. That was the entire point of the global economy. The profits those companies make off the US allows them to produce goods and services at or near costs in countries that regulate gouging. If everyone on the planet is getting healthcare that costs them nothing up front, who pays for it? And what happens to the hundreds of thousands of people who are out of a job due to cost cutting in your fantasy?
No country on Earth has gone from a system like that in the US to full universal healthcare at no cost to users. You can’t just copy and paste their programs on top of ours. But you know that because you are financially literate. Yes?
Ell oh ell!
Like i said. You have a lot of reading and listening to do before you can educate anyone on this subject.

[Effably]

We can stop right at your 30k claim. This is utter nonsense and whether you are entirely lack understanding or just enjoy brazen lies is hard to tell.

I gave you authentic figures. Half. Half is what free would cost. Not double. Half. If you can not even imagine copying an existing format from the majority of the world which has made healthcare free then why bother lying?

Current costs are 15000$.
Free costs woulf be 7000$.

There is no need to extrapolate falsehoods to lie. Making it free would be far FAR cheaper. Absolute and undeniable truth. I am not going to argue with you about whether fire is hot or not. Enough lying.

[Ariesman81]

@Effably

Get the word free out of your vocabulary. You dont know what it means.

[Effably]

It is not a mistake I am making but simply what it is commonly called.

I am puzzled as to how people seem to think it is bad because it costs money, when it costs half as much.

Yes. It is not free. But it cuts costs in half. Making it not only free but beneficial by contrast.

[Ariesman81]

FREE! FREE! FREE! I know it's not free but I'm gonna keep calling it free cause it sounds better than what it actually is! It's shit man

[Effably]

I am calling it that because changing the word the entire world uses to accommodate your sole argumemt that it is only way cheaper, not free, is excessive.

We could call it a vastly cheaper and equal quality option. Do you prefer that? Better is better.

We call USA a democracy for example. It is not. It is a federal republic. We call koala bears, bears but they are marsupials. Peanuts are called nuts but are actually legumes, basically beans.

A lot of things have names that are misleading but still the name people know it by. Surely you know this.

Free healthcare is not free. It would just save USA trillions at no cost. Happy?

[Ariesman81]

Democrats call themselves smart too... more misleading information?

[Effably]

I feel like you are making a baseless claim. Do they? Is this a viewpoint I have expressed?

Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. There is a very interesting phenomena of political belief and intelligence. While interesting it seems irrelevant to the point I am making that Cheaper is... cheaper. Paying less than you already are is not a hard to fund task.

[Ariesman81]

Then why does the cost of subsidized goods and services increase faster than the rate of inflation?

[Effably]

I think you are hinting at some sort of link between subsidies and inflation but am not sure what conclusion you want us to draw.

Money into any economy can cause inflation. Or lower it. It depends on how it is done. The amount of subsidies does not directly correlate to inflation.

A super cool study was done in 2022 about adding money into an economy. I will link it here if you want to nerd out over it. Genuinely super cool. www.econometricsociety.org/.../General-Equilibrium-Effects-of-Cash-Transfers-Experimental-Evidence-From-Kenya

But the long and short of it is that subsidies can cause inflationary pressure. Which does not seem yo be what you are saying. However that it can also lower it. Or, as in the study I linked, have no impact at all on inflation but reap amazing returns. It all comea down to how. If you worry about healthcare there are dozens of countries with well documented processes that you can study. None of them suffered any significant inflationary backlash.

But walk me through your question and I'll answer it as well as I can.

[Ariesman81]

I really don't have a question. It was more to get you to think about the effects of pooling money.
When you mandate something that is what you are doing. Very similar to how the fed "stimulates" the economy by increasing cash flow to Americans. The result is more money businesses can charge for products and services as there is a greater pool of money to pull from. It ultimately only benefits businesses. In the case of subsidized healthcare... the insurance companies and the poor who don't contribute to the pool. That's why we say subsidies only hurt taxpayers. If you mandate subsidies, you're not hurting the ultra rich insurance companies because they can just increase premiums or increase your deductible to keep their profit margins. You're not hurting the poor, cause well... it costs them nothing. So, who are you hurting?

[Effably]

Ah. I see where you struggle. Okay. It is fine. Really is a basic misconception.

So let us look at Diabetes as an example. The yearly cost for my country when it comes to the pills is about 500$. This leaves a very nice profit for the pharmacy but is rather affordable. Of course we pay this entirely via taxes. I stress the point that 500$ covers resesarch, salaries, production, and a good return.

The yearly average cost, and it is admittedly hard to do averages so if you want to run with different numbers that is fine but the trend remains, in the US for those same pills is about 12000$.

The 24x price increase is just greed. At 500$ there is a nice profit. 12000$ is just silly.

If you happen to be a republican this is what Trump likely meant when he, mistakenly, said he was going to cut prices 1200% and other silly numbers. He would use the government to negotiate reasonable prices and then lock them there. That is how it is done and more or less requires a union, government or other representative.

"Free", I get that you dislike the name, healthcare is based around that. You decide a reasonable profit for pharma, doctors, etc. They get that but not more. That is really all it is. And it is a lot cheaper without being worse.

You, USA that is, already do this for a lot of goods. Some food is controlled this way. Some international trade deals are done like this. So on.

The only real novelty here is that we decide that "Healthcare is important, so no extortion there. Profit, okay. But no extorting dying people.". And that maths out to being a lot cheaper.

The reason I lead with insurance premiums was because the tax needed for 100% covered healthcare is a lot less than the insurances today.

So while it is not free it would save people trillions and USA is literally the only developed country on earth that is not doing it. All thanks to lobbying and lies about fake costs.

[Ariesman81]

An average earning single taxpayer in Sweden is paying ~40% in taxes vs. 14.5% in the U. S. It's impossible for you to say if the single payer system is advantageous or not without knowing the exact percentage you pay for healthcare. What's even stranger, is that the average family of 4 in Sweden only pays ~17% taxes even though they probably burden the system more.

[Effably]

I hear you, but that's not correct numbers for Sweden. The actual percentage paid on salariein 2024 was about 23.5% average for people. If you earn more, you pay more. Compare that to 24% average in OECD countries.

You can absolutely reach a much higher number by counting more taxes but then we'd need to do it for both sides.

Your 40% vs 17% comes from this. They are counting entirely different things. Its like if I included the tariff costs on USA's tax burden right now. The short of it is that Sweden pays a lot of tax, but it is only comparable to the heavier taxed states in the US.

[Ariesman81]

What percentage is the average earning taxpayer in Sweden paying for healthcare? Can it even be quantified?

[Effably]

It absolutely can! We have these numbers public and available.

Healthcare, Elderly care, dental, etc etc all amounted to about 10% to 11%. Compared to USA's 18% gdp for only healthcare.

If we look at only hospital in Sweden we pay about 2000$ a year for that to remain free. If we include all of it, about 4400$.

So not at all hard to quantify. Sweden, as well as dozens of other countries have all the numbers public. This is why free heathcare is such a no-brainer. I will even happily confess Sweden is one of the worse examples. Like I said, it is just cheaper and a no-brainer.

We can get into more nuanced discussion about public transport and such which is not as clearcut since people just don't want to use it. But as for healthcare, the numbers do not lie. We can argue up and down a bit, but the gist of it all is always that "free" is way cheaper.

The Republicans technically agree too, they just don't know it. Reducing costs on pharmaceuticals is literally a key part of it after all and one Trump is outspoken about wanting to do.

[Ariesman81]

The reality is the U. S. ACA program is in essence the same system as yours. And the reality is, premiums and deductibles rose dramatically when ACA was implemented.

The only difference being who controls the money... insurance companies or the government. Frankly, half our government can't tell you what a woman is. At least in an open market with insurance companies, Americans can pick and choose based on price and level of coverage. I won't give up that freedom.

[Effably]

But it is not freedom and having a literal cartel making money off of you is not at all the same as someone trying to cut your costs down.

Swapping will roughly halve your costs. Absolutely, you should have transparency and oversight. But those are far smaller problems than outsourcing it to someone wanting to profit.

You are so very close to realizing cheaper is cheaper and if quality is maintained, which it tends to be, it is just better.

[Ariesman81]

By a government that wants abortion to be "free"? Or that it's acceptable to chop children's dicks off? You think that's who I want making monetary healthcare choices?

Now I get that insurance companies have the ability to control prices, but their incentives are to keep prices low or no one will buy their service. The government getting involved allowed the insurance companies to gouge. I see no other explanation.

Technically there's only two solutions. Actual capitalism (prior to ACA) or true socialist healthcare. Frankly, I don't trust the government to run it, and I would much rather the control of my finances be with me.

[boundless]

Generally how it works in Socialism is that those who complain get picked up by the police to be taken to the work camps where they become slaves manufacturing whatever is demanded of them until they die of starvation. Then the elites sell their production and spend about 1% of it on the people that don't complain and pocket 99% of it for the "good of the party" as they live lavishly off of the slavery and death of those who do not submit to their totalitarian power.

[boundless]

They also confiscate all of the processions of those who complain and liquidate their assets... Maybe Democrats have set up work camps underground in the subway system or something and are prepared to carry out their final solution...

[boundless]

Better load up your U-Haul before they are all gone...

[Telekinetic-Potato]

Trump effectively bought Argentina. And he's doing it under the condition that when he gets elected again he has to pass legislation that will help ensure they have a functioning economy so they can more or less pay us back.

It's like your parents bailing you out of your first financial hardship and now you gotta listen to them again till they're paid back.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

Oh, which obviously they'll never be able to. Forgot that part.

[Ariesman81]

He didn't buy Argentina. He sold them our Soybeans at below market value so that farmers could get something rather than potentially nothing.

[Telekinetic-Potato]

@Ariesman81 lol, no. I don't know if I'm the right guy to be teaching advanced economics but I'll try my best.

Trump did what's called a currency swap line. This is a line of credit where effectively their money only has value because of the currency swap line. So Argentina gets liquidity (the ability to actually use their money)

If Argentina pisses trump or any other president after him off, we can cut the line, now their money isn't backed by anything and we've only lost the spending which had been approved up till that point. But Argentina not only crashes harder than it already has, but has all the new people they did business with to answer to. Not to mention we will have so much of their currency at such a point. We will still be in a position to do business with them in a way that is uniquely affordable for us.

Seriously, I'm kinda curious if trump got the idea from Soros somehow because this is almost an: it's impossible not to win, situation.

[genericname85]

nothing is ever "free". every single cent a government has to spend comes from the peoples pockets. that's a basic truth everyone needs to understand. so if you manage to take the money from the "right" pockets somehow, their vision "can" make sense but i deem that to be highly unlikely cause the people with the most stuffed pockets have the strongest ability to avoid someone taking from them.

[Pterodon]

The very people he’s promising free stuff too. The rich that he’s gonna penalize for being successful will leave and along with it his tax base so he won’t have any choice but to get it from the people that can’t afford to leave.
The problem with socialism is you’ll eventually run out of other peoples money
—Margaret Thatcher

[exitseven]

President Trump has already said that the fed will absolutely not bail out NYC. I wonder if they get hungry enough will he legalize cannibalism?

[FunkyMonkee]

He thinks he's going to tax the rich!
My question is, who are those towelheads sitting behind him? Are those members of his new cabinet?

[Anonymous]

The tax payer. I can't believe the people of NY are going to let that piece of shit win. Especially when he called the 9/11 terrorists "freedom fighters"..

[DrPepper12]

Please tell me more about the place you've never visited let alone lived in...

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Mamdani should pay for all the free stuff himself

[msc545]

Taax money. Might be used for needed things for a change.

[noohair]

Who should work for free so people have free things? The line forms to the left...

[seeyounexttuesday]

NYC is fucked. Didn't they learn the last time a muslim tried to destroy the city?

[CupcakeTheDestroyer]

I don’t think you know how taxes work

[Ariesman81]

The people dumb enough to stay.

[loveslongnails]

Daddy Trump will pay for it. LOL

[beefcakebradybatson]

The overlords were there REAL justice.

[OddBeMe]

Rich people

[Asker]

Rich people's money is not going to get near that city if he takes over, they have access to thousands of ways to keep it protected.

[OddBeMe]

It would actually. A trillion a year?