The Internal Revenue Service is in a bind. The agency's job is to collect the taxes that fund everything else in the government, from Social Security to the Post Office to Medicaid to the military's endless conflicts across the globe. But the IRS is struggling: According to Vox, Americans owe a cumulative $131 billion in unpaid taxes, enough to completely fund the Department of Education for two years. The bulk of that money is owed by the wealthiest people in the country, yet the IRS isn't attempting to collect it from them. Instead, as IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig confirmed in a letter to Congress recently, the agency literally can't afford to audit the rich, so it's pursuing the poor instead. read more
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and fellow member of the Squad Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., vowed Saturday to contribute to a fund that is raising bail money for the 36 counter-protesters arrested at the "Straight Pride Parade" in Boston. Nine of the counter-protesters arrested have been charged with assaulting police officers, the Boston Herald reported. Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley both tweeted out a link to a crowdsourcing page called The Solidarity Against Hate Legal Defense Fund, which has raised nearly $25,000 to pay bail and other legal fees of those arrested while protesting the march.
Why does someone have to engage legal assistance in order to protect themselves from the healthcare system in this Great Country?
It is such a simple question.
I have yet to see it answered.
#8 | POSTED BY LAMPLIGHTER
One of the worst and most ignored problems facing everyone with a savings account in the U.S. We live in a system designed to make certain that below a certain class level, most of us will see our estates drained to nothing by healthcare and the expenses of dying. An entire industry is built around that exact business model.
At this point, we are very limited in our ways around the system. We can attempt to estate-plan around it; often an expensive endeavor that's still bound to fail. We can hope for a quick death that leaves most of our savings intact.
My own favorite; We can plan for our own demise. Personally, I'd rather put a bullet in my brain than live a long death at the hands of the healthcare industry, while they do everything possible to prolong my life as they drain my coffers. I only hope that I'm able to make that choice at the proper time.
Whatever you do, make certain that you have a detailed living will.