(04-04-2015 11:29 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(04-04-2015 10:54 AM)Max Power Wrote:  Yeah, because the GOP hasn't blocked every single proposal he's made to redistribute from the 1% to the working and poor classes for the last 5 years at all.

But Max, here's the part you don't get. Proposing to redistribute more income from the 1% to the working and poor classes is the most effective way possible to screw the working and poor classes.

So you raise taxes on the 1%. What do you expect them to do? Pay more taxes or find ways to cut their tax bill? I have a new business that I expect to make $100 million pre-tax profit. Do I put it in the US and pay $40 million in taxes on it, or do I put it somewhere else in the OECD and pay an average of $25 million in taxes on it? How difficult is that decision? And note that I'm not talking about putting it in China or the third world here. I'm talking about modern countries with democratic governments and advanced economies that can provide pretty much the same lifestyle as here.

So what happens when those jobs go overseas? Well here's a pretty good summary.

(04-04-2015 10:58 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  For decades young people with only a HS education entered the workforce and steadily rose in economic status throughout their work careers...especially in trades and manufacturing. There are simply few jobs available today that fit that bill. We have turned into a service economy that has no need for unskilled labor. What it left? Food service and retail. Neither offer upward mobility.

And that's not something that we are speculating might happen in the future. It is happening now, and has been for some time. Ross Perot picked up on it 20 years ago. Since then it's gotten worse, not better.

We are destroying our middle class by "redistributing" income from the 1% to the lower classes. At the same time, we are creating a permanent welfare-dependent class.

What I don't understand is that on the one hand the left goes ballistic because US companies are offshoring and outsourcing to get lower costs, lower taxes, and less cumbersome and intrusive regulations, but their solution is higher costs, higher taxes, and more burdensome regulations. How can that possibly work?

Of course, maybe you DO get it. Keep them dumb, keep them poor, and keep them voting democrat, right?

I think the vast majority of liberals are caring..well intentioned folks in regards to their philosophies. I just think they are wrong.

(04-04-2015 11:49 AM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  I think the vast majority of liberals are caring..well intentioned folks in regards to their philosophies. I just think they are wrong.

At the citizen level I agree. I was posting in response to Tom on another thread that I know a lot of well-meaning and intelligent people who just get this wrong.

The Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis and the like, that's a different story. They are mean b******s who get their jollies f-ing other people over.

(04-04-2015 11:48 AM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  Cons want to expand the pie for everyone.

Libs just want to divide the pie differently and don't even care if it shrinks, as long as the pieces are distributed more equally (Cuba).

Cons and libs as normal people want the first.

Cons and libs as politicians and elite want the second.

In fairness, it's been how many years since we have a President who did anything that left a lasting positive impact on the middle class? Republican Ron doesn't even count.

It's American politics, period.

(04-04-2015 11:48 AM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  Cons want to expand the pie for everyone.

Libs just want to divide the pie differently and don't even care if it shrinks, as long as the pieces are distributed more equally (Cuba).

This.

They're also convinced, woefully wrongheadedly, that if someone else has done well or is doing well it is at the expense of someone else. That the "pie" is a finite sum of $$$'s to be divided up. Of course in a truly growing economy, 6, 7 even 10% nothing could be further from the truth. Problem is we have an entire generation or more, the occupy stupid street crowd, that has never experienced that.

Similar to the saying "Winning cures all ills", good economic times and a lot of this teeth gnashing and whining goes away.

As well as their being the ones to decide how to divide that pie. ^^^

(04-03-2015 07:43 PM)200yrs2late Wrote:  

(04-03-2015 06:55 PM)UCF08 Wrote:  

(04-03-2015 06:40 PM)EagleRockCafe Wrote:  

According to the latest data, after 6 years of Obama, the only financial segment of the American population to see their incomes rise, have been the wealthy.

From Yahoo! News:

Quote:Most Americans’ incomes continued to fall last year, but the richest 20 percent saw theirs rise, a new Labor Department report showed Thursday.
In fresh data that adds fire to a growing debate over income inequality, the department said that Americans on average saw income decline for the second straight year in the 12 months to June 2014.
The average pre-tax income fell 0.9 percent from the same period a year earlier, to $64,432.
But broken down into quintiles, those in the top 20 percent of incomes saw their money stream grow by 0.9 percent to $166,048 on average.
Every other group lost ground, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most: their average income dropped 3.5 percent to $9,818.

http://news.yahoo.com/except-rich-americ...35392.html

Stagnant growth for lower earners have been a staple since almost any of us here have been alive.



Though if you're really concerned about this, increasing minimum wage to something that is actually livable without relying on government subsidies, would do more to help this than any tax would. Guess which party is against that?

Minimum wage jobs aren't meant to support a family. They should be a temporary situation or for high school kids.
Increasing minimum wage to what some are calling for would be a disaster.

Based on what evidence?

A study done by the Cato Institute showed raising the minimum wage hurts young minorities the most. For many of them, minimum wage jobs are their ticket into our economic system. If you remove the bottom step on the ladder, they can never get up the ladder.

(04-05-2015 05:19 PM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  A study done by the Cato Institute showed raising the minimum wage hurts young minorities the most. For many of them, minimum wage jobs are their ticket into our economic system. If you remove the bottom step on the ladder, they can never get up the ladder.

Per the Department of Labor -

Quote:A review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernable effect on employment. Additionally, more than 600 economists, seven of them Nobel Prize winners in economics, have signed onto a letter in support of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016.

Per the Congressional Budgetary Office, a non-partisan, congressional research organization which does some of the best research on subjects like this -

Quote:Once fully implemented in the second half of 2016, the $10.10 option would reduce total employment by about 500,000 workers, or 0.3 percent, CBO projects.

And this doesn't even begin to bring up the issue of how low minimum wages result in government subsidizing minimum wage employees as their salaries are simply not enough to live on. You want to lower government assistance? Provide a salary which a person can actually live on.

So why should an employer be forced to pay $10/hour to someone whose work output is only worth $7/hour? What do you think is fair for the producers?

All these movements are at their core are an attempt, misguided or not, at reviving the idea of Fordism.

It should be incumbent upon every employer to pay their employees as much as can possibly be paid. That's an upward push as opposed to the downward push we have today where companies try to screw everybody as hard as possible to fatten the bottom line for the good of Officer pay and share price.

I'm not against the idea behind that but I am against the culture of it that does seek to transfer money away from the bottom and concentrate it at the top.

We are at the point where not only are wages stagnant and people continually devalued but corporations in general are providing products and services with an eye for the bottom line alone, and not the consumer.

It's a perversion of the fundamental ideas of capitalism, of providing a better service or good for a better price. That isn't where American corporate culture is at. It's become so top heavy it's all about the transfer to the top.

So, with that in mind, screw it, let's push a $15 minimum wage. In a period of record corporate profits its time we pushed back a bit against this abomination we pretend is capitalism these days. Capitalism is about opportunity and equity, improving products and services, not greed, massive officer salaries, and limiting the options of consumers.

Over concentration of capital is not good for society, for capitalism, or anybody in the end. The left-wing obsession with wage inequality etc is right for all the wrong reasons. There is nothing wrong with one person making 50x what somebody else does. There is a problem when it happens on such a scale that the end result is unequal access to capital for society at large. That has the net effect of slowing economic development. Money is like mulch, the more it turns the better it is. The more money that trades hands between as many people as possible the better.

(04-05-2015 05:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  So why should an employer be forced to pay $10/hour to someone whose work output is only worth $7/hour? What do you think is fair for the producers?

They expect the employer to operate at a loss.

My first job in high school was in 1979. I was a stock boy and occasionally sold lighting fixtures. My boss was a great guy. He used to joke, "We lose money on every item we sell, but we make it up on volume".

(04-05-2015 05:38 PM)UCF08 Wrote:  

(04-05-2015 05:19 PM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  A study done by the Cato Institute showed raising the minimum wage hurts young minorities the most. For many of them, minimum wage jobs are their ticket into our economic system. If you remove the bottom step on the ladder, they can never get up the ladder.

Per the Department of Labor -

Quote:A review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernable effect on employment. Additionally, more than 600 economists, seven of them Nobel Prize winners in economics, have signed onto a letter in support of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016.

Per the Congressional Budgetary Office, a non-partisan, congressional research organization which does some of the best research on subjects like this -

Quote:Once fully implemented in the second half of 2016, the $10.10 option would reduce total employment by about 500,000 workers, or 0.3 percent, CBO projects.

And this doesn't even begin to bring up the issue of how low minimum wages result in government subsidizing minimum wage employees as their salaries are simply not enough to live on. You want to lower government assistance? Provide a salary which a person can actually live on.

I have no problem subsidizing working people to help them out. Clinton enacted workfare. It addressed this problem. King Zed dismantled that program.

(04-05-2015 05:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  So why should an employer be forced to pay $10/hour to someone whose work output is only worth $7/hour? What do you think is fair for the producers?

Fair?

(04-05-2015 07:34 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  

(04-05-2015 05:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  So why should an employer be forced to pay $10/hour to someone whose work output is only worth $7/hour? What do you think is fair for the producers?

Fair?

Right. Fair is the maximum amount of money I can extort from a business owner after I declare him to be a racist or homophobe.

For that matter, what's fair about expecting to be paid $10 after doing $7 worth of work? Of more likely $5?

Employees should be paid what their work is worth. If that's not enough to provide a "living wage," then it is appropriate that society should bear the burden of making up the difference. Not the employer.

(04-05-2015 09:50 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Employees should be paid what their work is worth. If that's not enough to provide a "living wage," then it is appropriate that society should bear the burden of making up the difference. Not the employer.

Less than 10% of minimum wage workers are single parents with children. The vast majority are kids and seniors who have other sources of income in their families.

Arbitrarily raising the minimum wage far above what those jobs would get in a free market will hurt minority kids the most. There will be fewer jobs for them. The absolute last thing this country needs is to make things harder for minority kids who want to work and be productive.

Employee pay isn't tied to their value, employees are paid the least amount possible that still allows employers to produce their product/service. Those employees with specific skills can bargain, as they are uncommon. However, those with minimal skills have no leverage, and therefore cannot expect to bargain with business owners over their wages regardless of their labors' value to the company. A server today, using any number of the ubiquitous POS systems you find in virtually every restaurant, is far more efficient and makes less mistakes than servers prior. Roofers with pneumatic nail guns and specialized trucks are able to roof faster too, for instance. The same improvements are everywhere, in all industries, yet I see no wage increase to mirror the increase in productivity.



Everyone understands how the market *should* work, but the problem is that it doesn't work like that and quite frankly, I think a lot of your great grandparents would smack you upside the head for being gullible enough to think it actually does.

(04-05-2015 06:22 PM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  

(04-05-2015 05:49 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  So why should an employer be forced to pay $10/hour to someone whose work output is only worth $7/hour? What do you think is fair for the producers?

They expect the employer to operate at a loss.

My first job in high school was in 1979. I was a stock boy and occasionally sold lighting fixtures. My boss was a great guy. He used to joke, "We lose money on every item we sell, but we make it up on volume".

Do you not understand that the employer doesn't bear the cost of increased labor, the consumer does. If the cost of labor increasing puts you out of business, it's your business model that's to blame because there will be other businesses taking your place just fine. To argue otherwise ignores pretty much every economic principle I'm aware of.

I think the original reason for minimum wage laws was because workers were being exploited. If companies didn't exploit employees in the first place, I don't think there would be any need for minimum wage laws.