Raising the minimum wage is good for the economy.

it also wasn't true

 

Ok, this is apparently resolved, so I'll give you one last chance to clarify as I had posted. If you do, I will reply.

 

So you actually mean that taxes and regulations exist solely to punish business? That's what you posted and now you say that is exactly what you meant.

Scary.

 

The answer is to get government out of the way! We *were* creating more startups then losing failures -- except for the past few years when Obamacare taxes and regulation plus Dodd/Frank regulations really took hold. We *can* do it again.

You have to change the regulations *FIRST*!

How was the Peace Corp financed? By taking dollars out of my pocket just to put them in someone else's pocket?

This isn't rocket science. If I spend that dollar or if someone in the Peace Corp spends that dollar why do you think the economy cares?

And, one more time - FDR did *NOT* get us out of the Great Depression by creating government jobs. He kept us *IN* the Great Depression by doing so!

MALARKY! I've told you a DOZEN times what the government can do! And it isn't either of these.

The government can:
1. cut capital gains taxes
2. cut business taxes
3. get rid of Obamacare taxes and regulations on business
4. get rid of Dodd/Frank regulations limiting lending to business
5. Allow depreciation of capital assets over 1 or 2 years instead of 5, 10, or 20 years.

All of these will spur the economy and do it pretty quickly!

You left off getting rid of the Obamacare taxes and regulations. Those will have an *immediate* impact. People will get to work more than 30 hours and business will grow past 49 workers. Getting rid of the Dodd/Frank regulations limiting lending and you will see an *immediate* surge of business beginning to remodel, expand, etc. Some of it will take enough time for the durable goods supply chain to catch up but in the meantime carpenters, electricians, drywall installers, etc can get to work immediately.

I keep repeating this but it doesn't seem to get through. Even borrowing then money doesn't help. It just means that dollar in my pocket has to go to pay interest on the debt. It still hurts the economy when that dollar leaves my pocket!

My wife pointed this out to me the other day. Retail shopping on the internet *is* going to saturate at some point. It's less of a pain to go to the store and see if something fits and looks good then to order on line, try it on, have to return it, wait for the replacement, etc......

The malls are going to change, that's for sure. And what gets sold in them is going to change. And some malls will *not* adapt and will close.We are already seeing that. But those that adapt will survive. I know it sounds crazy but I won't buy a frying pan, shovel, or hoe till I can try it out to see if it fits me. That's not going to happen online for a long, long time.

And it is *NOT* cheaper to manufacture elsewhere. We may not be able to compete on labor rates but we *should* be able to compete on energy costs and shipping costs. We have far better electric grids than most countries and far better infrastructure. The main impediment is not traditional cost sectors, it is taxes and regulations.

Give business a chance and they *will* create planty of high-paying jobs. They had better because government jobs is a losing proposition. Think about, if it's too expensive to manufacture here then how will government jobs help anything? We'd just be throwing good money after bad down a rathole!

 

Of course it is true. It is why business moved so many workers into shifts of less than 30 hours. It's why so many businesses woulln't expand past 50 workers. It's why so many small businesses can't get loans to expand.

What? You think Obama *did* have 3% GDP growth in one or more years?

 

So you actually mean that taxes and regulations exist solely to punish business? That's what you posted and now you say that is exactly what you meant.

Scary.[/QUOTE]

That is *NOT* what I said. Did you see the words Obamacare and Dodd/Frank in my post?

"It's fact. Obama punished business with Obamacare taxes and regulations and Dodd/Frank regulations."

Can you READ?

 

The post seems pretty clear to me. Put down the whiskey bottle.

 

no, it isn't.

businesses have been doing that long before Obama. And small businesses couldn't get loans because they had shitty credit, or too much debt to income.

no, but the economy isn't capable of producing more than a 3% growth rate in the current climate. Obama has nothing to do with it.

 

Yes, can you type consciously? You typed:
"Business can't create jobs *here* because of our punishing taxes and regulation, which exist solely to punish business. Every where you look you see the left in this country excoriating business just as they castigate conservatism. "

Note, you typed "Business can't create jobs *here* because of our punishing taxes and regulation, which exist solely to punish business."

"SOLELY" to punish business.

Now apologize.

 

You vote on this doesn't count.

 

My son lives in downtown St Louis, *NOT* a low cost area, making $28K per year. In four years he has saved more than 50% of his annual salary. But he has made *very* good life choices. He has a car but puts less than 2K miles on it per year. He hasn't knocked anyone up. He doesn't party three nights a week in clubs.

Median income today, according to Soc Sec, is over $48K per year. That is actually *more* than inflation since 1981. I think we went through this already. In 1981, median income didn't qualify for public assistance. If it does qualify today then there are probably two main factors at play - more profligate individual spending than in 1981 and looser requirements for qualifying for public assistance. It can't be inflation. Neither of these two reasons are good ones. They indicate a lack of discipline in both individuals and in government policy. It just plain comes down to living within your means or to increasing your means to match your lifestyle. Both take discipline.

 

Obamacare taxes and Dodd/Frank WERE MEANT SOLELY TO PUNISH BUSINESS. Not for any other reason. I'll not apologize for saying that. They killed any economic growth we could have had. And that is inexcusable. The Marxist Democrats *deserve* to be castigated for punishing business in this manner. That may be an inconvenient truth but it is the truth nonetheless.

 

You do want it. I'm not baiting and switching a thing. I'm calling your ideology lazy, and a failure. You refuse to believe that people with median incomes can save, and I've told you that already happens.

Only those that don't want to save don't save. Only those who are irresponsible and sponge off of others don't save.

 

It wasn't until Obama that America started to see more business failures than business startups. The cut back in hours and employees could be seen in the labor force participation rate and the number of part-time jobs under Obama. The evidence is pretty clear.

Small business couldn't get loans because Dodd/Frank made capital requirements so high that banks didn't have the capital to loan. It's just that simple. Banks loan out customers deposits. When they have to keep more capital on hand to cover customer deposits that means they have less money to lend.

It wasn't the businesses fault, it was OBAMA'S fault.

There is nothing different about the economy today other than taxes and regulations that keep us from competing with other countries for economic growth. TAxes and regulations put in place under Obama

 

If it's on an open forum then it *does* count.

 

Then the problem was you, your choices and your circumstance. The statistics from that era don't lie: every income quintile improved their circumstance.

Do you think that such a thing means everyone - unanimously - did great?

There are arguments against such a claim, but you won't hear them, like you haven't heard anything else.

Reagan's spending? The economy improved because the private sector did the heavy lifting.

Tax cuts will help at least as much, as they have every time they're implemented.

 

The government can:
1. cut capital gains taxes
2. cut business taxes
3. get rid of Obamacare taxes and regulations on business
4. get rid of Dodd/Frank regulations limiting lending to business
5. Allow depreciation of capital assets over 1 or 2 years instead of 5, 10, or 20 years.

History says that's not true.

What it WILL do is make the rich richer. Are you that wealthy? Most of us aren't

 

Your propagandic version of history is the only thing which says it isn't true. You refuse to admit what Reagan did for our country, and those were the kinds of things he did.

 

Because they don't need to now. The federal government takes care of it.

The community can enable the person to survive while he learns the skills necessary to provide value to the rest of society, and get paid for that value.

A higher minimum wage will prevent the low-skilled person from competing on price. Let's say the minimum wage is $15/hr. Let's say there's a job opening, and there are two applicants. One has worked for several years and the employer would hire him for $15/hr even without a minimum wage. The other is low-skilled and inexperienced. He'd like to just have a job, regardless of the pay, so he could get some work experience and advance his career. So the employer knows that if he hires either one of these applicants he WILL have to pay $15/hr. Which of the two applicants do you think will be turned away and end up unemployed?

 

History says it *is* true. We have evidence of such from John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George Bush who *all* cut cap gains taxes and saw economic booms. Reagan cut regulations significantly and that helped also. Clinton reformed welfare which also helped by cutting federal revenue requirements.

What makes you think that when the rich get richer the poor don't get richer as well? How do you think the rich get richer?

 

Every state in the union allows limited liability companies (LLSs). These are like partnerships, but with limited liability for the partners. A group of workers could easily establish a LLC and run it with whatever profit-sharing system they choose.

So get busy!

 

After reading this post, I feel like I am talking about apples and you're answering me with oranges.

My point is underemployed people receive government subsidies because the business takes a profit instead of paying their employees a salary they can live on. Because we are subsidizing them at the minimal level, they do not have any disposable income to spend and grow the economy.

We'd be better off economically, if the government hired them instead, paid them a living wage they could spend to grow the economy, and we'd get infrastructure built using that labor.

The whole discussion about raising minimum wage is to get more velocity into the economy to spur growth, not just to pay people more for no reason. We are stuck at <2% growth, all the monetary tricks have been used, and it's still not growing. It won't grow until more people are spending more than they are now into the economy. That requires people to make more money than subsistence level. Bush and Obama both used stimulus spending to try to jump start the economy, and it worked, but the results were temporary. Once the stimulus money was spent, the working and middle class stopped spending. People must have disposable income to create velocity in the economy. Raising salaries is long term fix for that problem.

 

Of course you see the problem is me, just as I see the problem is your economic philosophy.

Did you have a problem with Bush's stimulus? How about Obama's stimulus? Why do you think they both chose to stimulate the economy with a large infusion of cash? Neither of them were great economists. Why did their advisors recommend a stimulus? Once you answer those questions, we might be able to speak about the actual topic of the thread and not just pass philosophic posts back and forth without agreeing.

 

If you raise the bar for employees such that an employee must be a $15/hr employee in order to be hired, you are dooming many lower skilled employees to unemployment.

So the people aren't producing 2% more goods and services than they produced last year. Why do you think more goods and services need to be produced than the people are currently producing?

Raising salaries will doom low-skilled and low-experienced applicants to losing out to those who have more skill and experience. And you won't even let them say, "Hey, I know I have less experience than that other guy, but I'll work for half of what you pay him."

Very hurtful to those who are most vulnerable.

 

You're still missing the point. While I am very sympathetic to the plight of the poor, raising the minimum wages is about making the economy healthy.

The economy is sick. It is stuck at an unsustainably low growth rate. If the economy isn't growing near 3% per year, we aren't paying off our debts, paying interest to savings and retirement accounts, companies aren't growing, thus causing even more unemployment as young people move into the job market.

As far as the economy goes, being unemployed and underemployed do the same thing… lowers demand, and requires government supplementation. Our economy works when people spend money. It does not work when people are in debt and don't spend money.

History has shown us when there is large income inequality, it leads to revolution. Business doesn't seem able to pull us out of low growth. If it could, it would have done so already. Profits are up. Stock Market is up. Productivity is up. The economy is still low growth. We have to try something different than what we're doing now. The stimulus worked, but only temporarily. Raising salaries is a long term solution, not a band-aid.