I think this right here is where we differ ideologically. I believe in taxes and I’m perfectly fine with a reasonable progressive system (I personally believe the top rate should be a max of 25%). However, that is to pay for constitutional programs only. I do not believe in taxation as a means to redistribute wealth. I understand that Bernie fixates on the “billionaire class” (there about 550 billionaires in America fwiw), but the vast majority of tax payers, whose wealth gets redistributed, aren’t even millionaires. Redistribution of wealth does not increase production, it does not grow the economy (it isn’t a fixed or either), and it does not identify and address the real underlying issue, which imo is, why are x # of people earning the minimum and how do we increase their productivity and thus their income.
This approach, take from one group and throw it at the problem, is not unique to Sanders, but it is his favorite go to policy from what I can tell.
“I’ll disagree on the grocery example. I already mentioned earlier that the cost of groceries has not increased with higher wages. Groceries are actually cheaper today overall than they were 30 years ago. When you throw inflation into the mix, they’re effectively WAAAAY cheaper. I certainly don’t expect a 10+% increase in grocery prices, as your example would have me believe would be the result.”
The minimum had never been doubled as far as I know, though. This is uncharted territory. I would be shocked if doubling the minimum didn’t have an inflationary effect on prices.
“I guess I’ll ask you a question. Do you believe large corporations, and the wealthiest people in the US, are paying a fair amount in taxes?”
I believe C Corps in the U.S. have the highest statutory rate in all of the OECD and that’s too high and one of the factors driving C Corps out of the U.S. “Fair” is subjective and I don’t know what that means to you vs. me but I absolutely believe those paying the highest rates pay well beyond their fair share with 2 possible exceptions, hedge funds and carried interest @ cap gains rates.
I person could be taxed as high as 73% under a President Sanders, that is luxurious to me.
The minimum won’t be doubled. I mentioned in another post here that I expected the actual result to be up to around 10 dollars. 15 is his ‘campaign number’. And it certainly won’t happen over night anyway. So that’s not something I think we actually need to be concerned about.
Yes, a person could be taxed at that high a percentage, for income over a particular amount (I don’t remember what number that is, but it’s high enough). But a couple things: 1. We’ve had higher tax rates, and under Conservative presidents at that. 2. That 73% number can only possibly apply to earnings after the first 10 million in a year. Are you seriously concerned about that? I’m not. And I wouldn’t be if I was in that position. If that generation of money has the potential to give the poorest people in our country a leg up (which certainly seems to be the end game here), I can’t disagree with it. I understand not agreeing with this based on certain principles, but we clearly have different underlying beliefs about what the government should and shouldn’t be doing in general.
I don’t think the fact that something occurred in the past is a good enough reason to do something now. Hyperbole here, but we owned people in the past. I don’t think we should own people now. There were specific reasons tax rates were so high in the past and they were temporary as well.
If I’m not mistaken it was 65% at $250K. I might be misremembering. These numbers don’t include many taxes people don’t think about like the tax on oil for example.
Again, though, how does giving the poorest money alone help them get a leg up? You’re putting a certain % of them out of work (a conservative est. Is 500,000 fewer jobs, but could be higher), and they aren’t learning any skills. Some of them will have more disposable income, but it doesn’t create growth it contracts the economy. Government intervention almost always does.
We haven’t even touched on how the wealthy will react (leaving the country, offshore wealth, etc…) or how many company’s will just leave as regulation continues to drive the cost of business up. These are the job creators. I think it would be unwise to continue to drive them away.
It does seem like we disagree on the underlying principles, which I think is odd. Look at it this way, you’ve trained for 10+ years building an impressive physique. You’ve sacrificed for this development. If it was possible for Sanders to take some of your gainz and give it to say one of those dumbass kids in the steroids forum would you be okay with him forcing you to give up said gainz? Should Amit have to give up more than you because he’s a world record holder?
It’s a silly analogy and it’s not 100% apt, but I think you can see where I’m going with this. Redistributing wealth is basically the same thing. I’ll use myself as an example. I 've got an undergraduate degree in accounting. I’m 2 courses shy of a grad degree in accounting ( I pay for some out of pocket and my company pays for some). I’m a section shy of being a CMA (about $2k) out of my pocket. I spend nights and weekends working on school work and studying. Why should my tax rate go up in order to simply shift my I make, much of which is a result of these sacrifices, to someone that doesn’t put the same effort as me? Yes, many people are born into bad situations and I’m happy to help get them out of those situations via tax dollars, but a lot of people also make very poor decisions and don’t try at all to rectify their shortcomings and better themselves. Why should I be forced to support these types of people? And yes, it looks like my income tax will go up under Sanders per what I posted plus the increased payroll tax. I’m confident other taxes will go up as well.
This article is well worth the read.
The problem with raising the minimum wage is that it affects the wages of non-minimum wage workers too.
If the burger flipper who made $8/hr now makes $15/hr, then the lead burger flipper who has been working there for 2-3 years who was making $15/hr wants a raise too because the new hire is making his current wage. So he gets a bump up to the same as the shift leader. The shift leader wants a raise because the lead burger flipper now makes as much as he does, so he demands a raise and ends up making as much as the assistant manager. And on and on and on.
You cannot absorb a 50% increase in labor costs without a) cutting hours b) cutting workers c) raising prices d) going the fuck out of business.
Flip great to see you in here!
I’ve enjoyed reading your well thought out posts in this thread quite a bit. Obviously I believe we disagree on principles here (I take much more of a usmc line), but I appreciate someone who can thoughtfully and civilly come from another perspective and make me think.
The question I would like to ask you is why you think this minimum wage hike, if successful, will be different from the last several. I am pulling this from memory while on my phone, so might bw wrong, but according to a number of reports purchasing power for minimum wage earners is stuck at 1980s levels…and has been every time they have hiked the rates up again to “help more people”. The pattern is a brief and transient spike in purchasing power, followed by an increase in costs of goods, followed by regression back to 1980s purchasing power levels.
Why, exactly, will this one be different? And if it cannot be shown that it will be different in outcome this time, why should we try the same solution again?
I would also really like to say that the argument from government corruption substituting for cronyist corruption is compelling to me–companies at least are in competition with one another and therefore can be foiled, or you can move in most cases. Government corruption is inescapable and moves in one direction only, same as the national debt these days.
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A raise would have to be pretty gradual to not disrupt the economy, but doubling it overnight means game over for businesses unless they take drastic measures.
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i fu–ked up bad life decisions, work a fast paced manual labor job ,
pay has gone up over the years,
sometimes hours are cut so i do not make more money
sometimes there is enough work where i get 40 hrs
the pace of work has steadily increased
where we would have 2 people we have 1
if minimum wage goes up the amount of work i will have to do will be ridiculous
the boss is not going to cut his pay
I’m sorry to hear that man.
The unfortunate fact is…we pay our lab technicians around $11 an hour, and we basically break even with them. If we had to pay $15 an hour, we would have to raise our sample prices accordingly and most of our work would go to larger labs, whose volume would allow them to charge less than us.
So would would have to let our 3 technicians go.
But hey, maybe they can get a job at McDonalds.
There is an obscene problem with homelessness in San Fran, and not much better in Los Angeles.
Lol, I’ve been saying this for a while now.
As capitalists seek to gain more profits at the expense of anything fewer people will have money to spend to buy their products or service and capitalism will destroy itself. An internal contradiction built into the system. Much like the jobs being sent overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs. Eventually wages will be depressed to the point where fewer and fewer people will be able to purchase their products and economic growth comes to a halt. And capitalism eats itself.
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What economic model is better and why?
An economic model where the workers own the means of production and not just a few. Decisions will be based on what is good for the whole rather than the few.