Sorry but I come from a time when we got paid for our contributions and growth...not because we made demands on the business. Those who show up to work and perform at moderate levels at most should receive COL increases. Those who put forth a personal effort to achieve more, to offer more, are rewarded with greater wage increases and promotions. I will never agree with forcing higher labor costs on business solely because of politics...
Those who function in the lower rungs of our economy, no matter if they earn $7.25/hour today or $15/hour in ten years, will always depend on government welfare programs! During the ten year period of increasing minimum wage we also will have 20% inflation which no one can escape. Both $7.25 and $15.00 are MINIMUM wages and will always carry the issues of earning minimum wage while the other 150-175 million Americans earn more than them. IMO the only solution is to greatly increase GDP, creating many more jobs, to the point in which supply of labor is less than demand, and in parallel greatly reducing wasteful spending at government levels. Those who are incapable of earning an income can receive support while all others must work for a living...
A college degree never has and never will guarantee anyone a job! A college degree ONLY gets the job candidate in the door for a job interview. And this assumes the college degree matches a viable job position. Further, someone living in rural USA and obtaining a college degree cannot expect to find suitable employment where they reside...they must relocate to where jobs exist. Well...if someone needs additional education or training to remain in the job market, earning whatever it is they desire, then their ONLY choice is to obtain additional education or skills no matter what their age might be. The other option is to do nothing and let the workplace pass them by then they can complain. I think a trained physician will earn more than someone with little to no skills...I will take this bet...
There are laws for so-called slum lords. And if those laws are not very effective then change the law. My first problem is the local governments are not keeping the public infrastructure at acceptable levels. What can be the excuse to allow ghettoes? Well...minorities have found great success over the decades so this cannot be stereotyped to be about prejudice. How about government taking the lead to maintain every square inch of their jurisdiction to the same levels?
the capitalist has the freedom to pay as little or as much as the capitalist desires, no one should force the capitalist do what the capitalist does not want to do in a free country. a better solution than using government force to violently take from the capitalist to give handouts to the poor, is by putting tariffs on those capitalists who create jobs outside of this free country, where freedom is not honorably defended by this great military.
Not quite sure of where your information comes from but commerce is a statutory right regulated by government. If that wasn't the case the "capitalists" would have already poisoned, polluted, and destroyed all of nature as they each fought to accumulate as much money as possible before they made the planet uninhabitable.
To establish the 'median income' government would need to list all income earners, with their incomes, listed in descending or ascending order, do a total count, divide this by '2', then find this spot on the list, and whatever that person is earning is basically the median wage...50% earn above this number and 50% earn below this number. I'm guessing when they list 150 million incomes that in the median wage area of the list they are separated by pennies? This is the thing with a federal government minimum wage covering all 50 states; all of them have a different cost of living from one city to the next. Most all of these areas have already increased the local minimum wages to something more in line with the local cost of living. This is one reason why I believe there are only 1.5 million workers who actually earn the federal minimum wage. The feds can increase the $7.25 by 10% every year and it will take years to reach the minimum wages that already exist in many areas. The minimum wage in San Francisco today is $13/hour...the political federal minimum wage will never make a dent in the SF minimum wage problems! Just like our education system in which we educate according to the lowest achievers, the federal minimum wage will always serve the lowest cost of living areas and all others will do their own thing... - - - Updated - - - If you create a scenario in which people have more cash to spend, however, their purchasing power has not increased...what have you gained?
If I recall correctly 40% of the workers that pay into Social Security/Medicare die before they're old enough to collect. Social Security/Medicare has, since it's inception, been a tax and spend government welfare program and not a personal retirement account. Yes, in the 1980's under the Reagan Administration the tax rates were increased based upon projected shortfalls where the political argument was that those paying in more would ensure their own retirement would be the same when the shortfall eventually occurred. As we know today that was a bald-faced political lie because Congress has been cutting benefits for several years already by raising the retirement age and changing the COLA formula to one unrelated to old age retirement expenditures so that it reduce the COLA increases. It is effectively no different that other tax and spend welfare programs like SNAP with the minor exception that the taxes only fund basically four different welfare programs. My tax proposal is not based upon raising the taxes on the wealthy but instead it standardizes the taxes for everyone. Some very wealthy households, that were paying too much tax under our current tax codes, will realize a substantial reduction while others, currently under-taxed by our current tax code, will pay slightly more than today. In point of fact the tax rates for the wealthy that pay too much today will be reduced far more than the tax increase on those that haven't been paying enough.
crony capitalists would and do poison, pollute, and destroy the planet for profits due to no competition, and the people having no choice but to buy products and services from them. real capitalists would compete in a free market with other real capitalists to provide clean products and services, because the people would have more businesses to shop from and would make the best choices for their country. this is why we need Donald Trump to impose tariffs which would punish crony capitalists and reward real capitalists. that will balance the budget by creating net contributing taxpayers, instead of net recipient taxpayers of the present poorer half of Americans .
Outsourcing is a critical tool for business when they are forced to seek other operating options...like the cost of labor, cost of materials, etc. If we look at 95% of the retail stores in the USA, from Macy's to Ace Hardware and every small town outlet, a huge percentage of their products are fully or partially sourced outside of the USA...and this includes automobile manufacturers. Any tariff on all of these products not only will increase the consumer prices but also negatively effect US exports, and effect competitiveness. I don't know any business owner who is eager about doing business outside of the USA...
You can force business to do things not considered viable to the business but there will be repercussions. A local government can say no red roofs are allowed and KFC will simply locate to other areas who accept red roofs. A local government can impose a 20% sales tax and business will decide if it works for them? Of course government must have regulations and mandates, etc. but if they are not reasonable there will be tradeoffs...
Well...no play no pay kind of means it's not a general tax but instead a payroll withholding that directly benefits those paying into FICA. FICA cannot be an option until someone designs an equivalent program that guarantees retirement assistance and health care...
no its not, the welfare programs that bill clinton ruthlessly ended in the 1990's was funded from a different pot of money specifically for the oppressed poor with no dignity. a separate pot of money by dignified working taxpayers back when living wage jobs weren't outsourced by the greedy rich, was what funded social security/medicare.
the high wage jobs brought back to America will allow the people to afford the higher prices that come with tariffs which punish unpatriotic businesses. Donald Trump is a businessman by career, he is not a career politician paid for by the rich and knows what he's talking about.
Almost correct but not quite. In determining the median wage on workers, not retirees or investors, are counted to the total is somewhere between 90 million to 100 million workers as I recall. Yes, it's a lot of numbers to crunch but computers are our friend and that information can be collected from the W-2's of the workers that are sent digitally to the IRS today. In the final analysis there will unquestionably be several million workers within a few cents of the true median wage and then there will be many more millions that are all over the spectrum above and below the true median wage. So the point is? When I was trying to establish the Exemption I came across the same problem based upon the MIT Living Wage Calculator because it varied by individual county as well as the demographics of the household. It would have been impossible to deal with that complexity so I settled on the logical choice of using median household income. It mostly covered all of the Living Wages except for large families and for smaller families or single individuals that are typically young workers it gave then a little extra tax break they need to save and invest for future marriage and retirement investment as well. Not a perfect solution but instead a pragmatic solution to the complexity of the "living wage" that varies around the United State. A minimum wage law based upon a "living wage" can also be pragmatically established based upon the following statement from FDR in 1933: It bothers me whenever I quote FDR because politically I oppose much of what he did in the 1930's but this is highly accurate of what we need to do. We need to set a minimum wage that's more than is absolutely necessary to fund the minimum-mandatory expenditures of the median household. This creates slightly more income than is necessary for the minimum-mandatory so that the workers have a "decent" living as opposed to a "barely above poverty level" living. Yes, some locations already have a higher minimum wage and they're ahead of the curve and it will be far easier for them to accommodate the increase than other places that are still using the federal minimum wage. The difference is obviously because some states and cities actually wanted to reduce their welfare expenditure while other states and cities continued to embrace welfare assistance to provide the additional income to subsidize the enterprises that didn't provide a living wage to their workers. This gets back to a previous post I made. Either the enterprise pays a living wage or the government provides welfare to pick up the shortfall between the employer's paycheck and the cost of living for the worker. Either we have wealth distribution based upon a living wage or we have wealth redistribution when the government has to subsidize the enterprise. Take your pick. One thing positive aspect of a standardized national minimum wage is it establishes a level playing field for all business throughout the United States. All enterprises, regardless of where they might be located, have the same bottom line cost of labor. There's no advantage for a business to be in one state over another based upon the minimum cost of labor. As noted though this can be complex so the key is to search for a reasonable solution based upon pragmatic options so that the established minimum wage can be logically supported. It will never be perfect, just like my tax proposal isn't perfect, but it can be acceptable based upon compelling arguments.
Not according to Adam Smith, generally recognized as the Father of Free Market Capitalism, in his book The Wealth of Nations. According to Smith the only motivation for the capitalist is greed (self-interest) and any benefit to society is purely by accident (i.e. the invisible hand) and it only occurs rarely because it would be against the self-interests of the capitalist to do it on purpose. The capitalist will rape, pillage, and plunder the land as long as they can earn a dollar from their actions. They'll exploit every worker and literally poison the general population if no one prevents it by law. This belief that capitalists are somehow good people that care about anything but themselves is the greatest myths being propagate by Republican that are the foremost crony capitalists in America. Donald Trump is one of the greatest crooks in the history of the United States and he's only concerned about one thing and that is Donald Trump. This falls into the category of the myth propagated by Republicans that the wealthy are good people. Anyone that believes anything that Donald Trump says deserves what they get because he's nothing but a con artist that has screwed people throughout his business career.
crony capitalists who are in power today are the worst capitalists, because they pay the government to favor them in competition, and this is contrary to a free market. in a free market the crony capitalists of today would all have the freedom to fail, but they use their capital to cheat legally with the help of government laws. the people don't want to buy their stuff, they are forced too because there is no competition.
3) The person chooses not to become an employee but starts his own business enterprise. 4) The government doesn't take people's money to fund anyone's mandatory expenditures. Instead, those who want everyone's mandatory expenditures to be funded can voluntarily donate funds to do so.
Crony capitalism is certainly something we agree exists and it exists in all cases where the government provides "favorable treatment" to some over others. The failure to prevent unfair business practices, price gouging, and monopoly control being some of those cases. It's also occurring in our tax codes with the different tax rates for "earned income" and "unearned income" where the tax rates on unearned income (where the highest incomes exist) are roughly I/2 of the earned income tax rates. Since I was only dealing with taxes in my proposal I've eliminated the "unearned income" category (i.e. capital gains) and tax all income the same regardless of source. I've done that as well with enterprise to eliminate the "corporate tax rate" where taxes were less than for the sole-proprietor that paid the regular "earned income" tax rate on their profits. All income, regardless of source and regardless of whether it's income to a person or enterprise, is taxed at the same rate.
Proposed alternatives actual have to work to be considered. 3. Few people have the business skills to successfully start a new enterprise and overwhelmingly the start-up requires a significant capital investment that most can't fund. Even for those that think they have those business skills and that have capital to invest we know that four out of five fail within the first five years according to the SBA. At best this proposal is that "four out of five"or 99 out of 100) people are just supposed to die so we don't have to deal with them anymore. 4. In the entire recorded history of civilization private charities have NEVER come even close to providing the assistance necessary to fund the financial needs of the poor (i.e. those without adequate income to fully fund minimum-mandatory expenditures). So we have the same problem with this proposal as we have with the prior proposal. The death of the poor is the only result because private charities have never been able to fund the needs of the poor, ever. People, generally Republicans, like to suggest the above as solutions but the problem is that they can't demonstrate how either will always ensure that the minimum-mandatory expenditures of all households that don't have adequate income are fully met. They might just as well be proposing that every poor go out and buy a Power Ball ticket to fund their family's financial needs because that's roughly the odds of either of these proposals actually working. So yes, these "alternatives" can be mentioned but they really require the caveat "But It Won't Work in Reality" because that's the truth.
If a person can't find employment, and can't run a business enterprise, and can't get the voluntary help he needs to live, he does not need to die. Fortunately, the armed forces and the peace corps are viable options to keep one from dying of starvation. No need to steal people's money to be handed out as charity.
The vast majority of people that can't fully fund the minimum-mandatory expenditures of the household are working people! A Living Wage only applies to working people and not to anyone that doesn't have a job. So we're not talking about the unemployed or someone that is sitting around on their ass. We're talking about a person that's already working full time and still can't pay their bills. We're back to the same two options I mentioned. Either the employer provides the full income necessary (wealth distribution) or the government must subsidize the income from the employment with welfare assistance (wealth redistribution). I also believe that there are roughly 40 million households that we're talking about and I don't think the US Military or the Peace Corps have that many openings.
Instead of the government stealing people's money for redistribution, these people who can't pay their bills should take steps to remedy their situation. They should reduce their bills, or increase their value so that they can demand a higher wage that will pay their bills, or find additional revenue streams, or all of the above.
They can't reduce their bills because the bills are already the minimum-mandatory amount. Employees don't establish the wages. The employers establish compensation and it's not based upon the employee's skills or knowledge. Employee compensation is based upon the market that always pays the least amount possible for the labor. That's one of the problems we have today. Prior to about 1970 organized labor provided a counter-acting force to the downward pressure on compensation by the market so that a relative balance was achieved. The Market pushed down and Organized Labor pushed up. It balanced out to the benefit of both the enterprise and the worker equally. Then we killed the power of organized labor and that balance has been lost since about 1970. That's why the middle class is disappearing in the United States because there's no counter-acting force to the downward pressure on compensation by the Market today.
