It's a losing game, because, if you accept that progressive social programs require tax increases, you're in a debate that will inevitably focus precisely on taxes. That's a debate where you (the "left") are trying to make everyone pay more tax and the rightists are trying to help everyone pay less, and saying, correctly, that you'll end up raising taxes forever--and you lose.
Republican reactionaries will watch in delight as you become enmeshed in preaching about the need to raise the most regressive taxes on the most overtaxed people--the payroll taxes that are deducted every week from working-class paychecks. "Just a teensy bit. This is the last time, I swear. Look at my calculations." You can write Paul Ryan's answer.
We have to get off their ground. This fight is not about numbers; it's about power. It's not about a tax; it's about a right. It's about replacing the power of an enormous private industry to profit from healthcare services and prices with the power of a social program that manages them for everyone's benefit. It's about giving all working-class people more personal health and economic security and more power over their social lives. We have to refuse their "how are you going to pay for it" numbers game, and focus relentlessly on our point that healthcare must be a non-discretionary social right.
Nowhere Man, Please Listen
But if we're not going to stand on their ground, we have to stand somewhere else. We have to realize that the bedrock of their ground is the proposition that taxes fund government spending, that the federal government must get money from taxpayers--per Maggie, the money "people themselves earn"--to pay for any government program.
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