What the biggest employment problem in the economy?

What would that look like, assuming you could get something through? I'm not sure I can imagine right now what you mean in a way that wouldn't make things tougher overall through higher taxation.

 

Thanks for proving my point.

 

There seems to be two major problems with our economy. We need to borrow to sustain it and for the first time in half a century other countries are producing more per person (measured in purchasing power parity) than us. We were passed up in 2012 by the E.U. and then in 2014 by China.

As individuals we want more and as a country the competition is out pacing us. The question isn't who failed, it's how can we do better. If we want to increase our collective productivity to sustain our collective appetite and to make us competitive with other economies, people need to do better.

I'm open to any solutions. I think it's going to take an across the board effort. And I think that means many jobs that used to be 'good enough' in the past, won't be in the future.




​

 

ABSTRACT

Recent economic research has improved our understanding of who bears the burden of the corporate income tax.

One key finding is that a substantial share of the return to corporate capital is from “supernormal” returns, the returns to successful risk taking, inframarginal returns, and economic rents in excess of the “normal” return (the riskless return to waiting).

The other key result is that international capital mobility shifts some of the corporate income tax burden on the normal return from corporate capital to labor, which is relatively immobile internationally.


Based on these recent research findings, TPC has updated its corporate income tax incidence .For standard distributional analyses, TPC now treats 20 percent of the corporate income tax burden as falling on labor, 20 percent on the normal return to all capital, and 60 percent on the supernormal returns to corporate equity (shareholders)
.

Our updated approach to incidence reduces somewhat the measured progressivity of the corporate income tax, but has little effect on the distribution of the total federal tax burden.


We now also distinguish the incidence of changes in the corporate income tax that affect only the normal return, such as changes in cost recovery rules, which we distribute 50 percent to labor and 50 percent to the normal return to all capital.


In addition, for short-run analyses of changes in the corporate income tax we now treat all of the burden as falling on shareholders


http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/412651-Tax-Model-Corporate-Tax-Incidence.pdf



In this view, capital bears the full burden of the worldwide average corporate tax. Deviations from the average worldwide corporate tax are allocated according to the central estimate derived from the review of the general equilibrium models of corporate tax incidence. This alternative method suggests that, even in an open economy, capital could bear virtually the entire tax burden and that the open-economy assumption is not sufficient to shift the burden of the corporate tax from capital to labor



https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/367-gravellepdf


CRS:

The analysis in this report suggests that many of the concerns expressed about the corporate tax are not supported by empirical data. Claims that behavioral responses could cause revenues to rise if rates were cut do not hold up on either a theoretical basis or an empirical basis. Studies that purport to show a revenue maximizing corporate tax rate of 30% (a rate lower than the current statutory tax rate) contain econometric errors that lead to biased and inconsistent results; when those problems are corrected the results disappear. Cross-country studies to provide direct evidence showing that the burden of the corporate tax actually falls on labor yield unreasonable results and prove to suffer from econometric flaws that also lead to a disappearance of the results when corrected, in those cases where data were obtained and the results replicated. Similarly, claims that high U.S. tax rates will create problems for the United States in a global economy suffer from a misrepresentation of the U.S. tax rate compared to other countries and are less important when capital is imperfectly mobile, as it appears to be.





....Finally, note that as long as countries tend to choose tax rates similar to each other, which appears to be the case, the world becomes like the original closed economy, a model stressed by Harberger, with the burden falling on capital. According to the Treasury Study, the U.S. combined state and federal corporate statutory rate is 39%, the G-7 average is 36%, and the OECD average is 31%. Effective tax rates, which should govern the movement of capital, are even closer together, and in some cases are lower for the Unit ed States than for other countries. More recent updates of tax rates indicate that U.S. rates are similar to the rest of the world.

Jennifer Gravelle uses OECD tax rates to estimate the share of the U.S. tax falling on labor using a global approach and finds that over 90% falls on capital.


http://www.ctj.org/pdf/crscorporatetaxreformissuesforcongress.pdf






“Who Bears the Burden of the Corporate Tax in The Open Economy?”

This paper investigates the long-run incidence of the corporate income tax in an open-economy model calibrated with two economies: the United States and a larger mirror economy representing the rest of the world. Imperfect substitutability of domestic and foreign products plays a key role in limiting – often eliminating – the incidence borne by domestic labor. We reach two novel conclusions. First, contrary to conventional wisdom, our analysis reveals that most of the long-run incidence of the corporate income tax is not borne by domestic labor. Nor is much of it borne by landowners. This finding is usually true even at an implausibly large portfolio substitution elasticity. The incidence is typically borne by domestic capital, as in the original Harberger (1962) closed-economy model. Second, for those parameter values in which the incidence is not borne mostly by domestic capital, interestingly, most of the incidence is exported. The exportation of the incidence of the corporate income tax, which has received little or no attention in the previous literature, might motivate tax coordination between countries. These results are robust to a range of parameter values and model assumptions. Our model is also compatible with several empirical rigidities.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w8280


The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertl...of-the-nation-earn-half-of-all-capital-gains/


Capital Gains Tax Cuts ‘By Far’ The Biggest Contributor To Growth In Income Inequality, Study Finds

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20...r-to-growth-in-income-inequality-study-finds/

 

Yes, YOU did. Shocking

"YOU IGNORING POST 70 IS NOTED BUBS"

 

... the result would be getting the same job done by using more people and spending more on it. I don't see how making American labor even less competitive is a good thing.




​

 

We borrow money from China to maintain our economy. We aren't self-sufficient.




​

 

Money is just how we track productivity. Printing more money is just promising more productivity. We need more than promises.




​

 

You're not talking about more jobs, just splitting the jobs that already exist among more people at a greater price. That's not increasing actual productivity, only the cost of it.



​

 

Hedge Fund Manager John Paulson Takes Home Record $5 Billion in Profits in 2010


Industry experts say it could be the largest yearly haul ever for a financial trader, but the stunning income is hardly new for Paulson. He set the previous record of $4 billion in earnings in 2007 by betting against the risky mortgages that brought down the housing market.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/hedg...aulson-makes-record-billion/story?id=12790176


PLEASE explain how that's "productive"?

 

Employers are willing to pay for a good work ethic, that's why the cream rises to the top, but I've hired workers that took naps in the stockroom as soon as the supervisor left. Union jobs might pay more but that's where the poor work ethic started that now infiltrates the employment force. Keep in mind that I'm not pointing out any single worker - I'm looking at a large problem that has tainted the workforce and prevented employers from hiring more people or offering hiigher wages.

An example - teacher tenure. It's very difficult to remove a bitter tenured teacher, be we've all seen a few in our lifetimes. This is tragedy for the students and drain on taxpayer monies. Now the school board has to hire para's for those classes to help the students and the teacher. Do that enough times and it drains the budget.

It really is work ethic. That's the only thing an individual worker can control. Not all industries will recognize a great work ethic but the majority will and it's the worker's responsibility to get out of a dead end job - even if it means becoming self-employed.

 

The main problem for Western employment is that in wide productive areas of the planet job costs really a lot less than here. This has made capitals move there, creating jobs there and erasing productive jobs here [it's the phenomenon of outsourcing].

This has forced workers here to accept more little wages to be competitive.

Without the outsourcing today Western workers would perceive well higher wages, but Communism would still dominate 1/2 world ...

It has been a geopolitical choice with a great price to pay: worse social / economical conditions for our low classes [the hope was that our population would have concentrated its majority in the so called middle class, but also the middle class has suffered the fall of the demand of the low classes ... a shopkeeper earns less money if families have got less money because there is no job ...].

 

SS is not an entitlement either, its earned. So is Medicare. An inheritance is actually more conducive to sloth and lack of ambition or will than a measly welfare check of 500 bucks a month to a paraplegic (SSI) or the measly few bucks a family gets for food stamps while they all have full time jobs at Walmart. A system or ideology that celebrates inheritance and castigates helping someone in a tough spot is really one sick system, it surely is not Christian, it's not American (founders hated nobility) and it is completely warped.

 

Which is why free trade has always been nothing more than a way for capital to find the cheapest labor and when government goes along by granting unfair trade agreements, the people lose. But remember, it was sold to us as a way for us to provide all these new middle class people with services. Remember the services economy? I always wondered what service a guy who used to make bicycles or pumps or steel or clothes or furniture or toys or tools or whatever was actually going to give that worker in China after he makes 10 bucks a day. What were all those union workers going to do for those factory workers in Mexico again? You want to know which services they were selling? Wall Street.

My lord, I have lived long enough to see everything.

 

Unions promote poor work ethics? That is complete horses**t. Lazy people are lazy regardless of what their union or job situation is, the vast majority of union workers are hard working dedicated employees and anyone who tells me differently is lying. I got news for all you anti-union folks, we need about 100 million good paying jobs to keep this place going. Not everyone is going to be the very best employee you ever had but they are all human beings, they need a certain level of income to survive and any system that does not account for the needs of the many ends up favoring the needs of the few. When this gets bad enough, the few better have protection because it always gets ugly. You can look it up.

 

More right wing nonsense. Shocking


Conservatives simplistic minds

If you are rich it is because of your merits. If you are poor its because of your faults.



Yes, the GOP do speak a different language, the language they speak is lies and distortion, the language they speak is double-talk to promote the upward concentration of wealth, a 30 year trend in this country.

They mask it in the misdirection of "personal responsibility" and "individual initiative" but, in the end, it's all lies.




In 1980 the top 1% earned 8.5% of total income. In 2007 they earned 23%.

In 1980 the bottom 90% earned 68% of total income. In 2007 they earned 53%.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2012#table3

GOV'T POLICY MATTERS !!!



Want to appeal to the working class ? Few suggestions.


1) Quit destroying the unions
2) Stop sending our jobs overseas that make a working class a working class
3) Plug up the tax loopholes that favor the rich over the poor
4) Have the wealthy class pay their fair share of the tax burde
5) Most importantly, quit lying about helping the working class and actually do something that benefits them rather than continues to destroys them





Republicans approve of the American farmer—
but they are willing to help him go broke.
They stand four-square for the American home—
but not for housing.
They are strong for labor—
but they are stronger for restricting labor's rights.
They favor minimum wage—the smaller the minimum wage the better.
They endorse educational opportunity for all—
but they won't spend money for teachers or for schools.
They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine—
for people who can afford them.
They consider electrical power a great blessing—
but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.
They think American standard of living is a fine thing—
so long as it doesn't spread to all the people.
And they admire the Government of the United States so much
that they would like to buy it."
~ President Harry S. Truman

 

I have economical study behind my shoulders [and I've lived the process from an Italian perspective, since here it reached considerable levels in early 90's with the great optimization of the productive system ... I was just beginning to work ...] and I remember that when I was still studying, Socialism was still an alternative available economical system on Italian economy books [so you can guess when I begun to study economy: in late 80's].

The first step of the process of globalization was just favored and encouraged by the competition with the Soviet system: the United States first and than the other Western countries took the choice to make business with Chine to take that giant depot of workers off of the orbit of Moscow.

The second step was obvious. As soon as international Socialism fell down, there was no more political "defense" for the low classes in European countries [in Italy the Communist Party which collected 1/3 of the electorate begun to disappear and it changed its name and nature up to be the present Democratic Party which has just modified the job laws in Italy towards a more flexible and free market ... theoretically the opposite we could expect from former Communists!].

So, on a side an enormous low cost job market became totally available and on the other side our job market was no more politically controlled [there was no more the "red danger" in Western Europe].

Result: deep globalization.

Globalization had planned actually in the perspective to see our economies passing from industrial to post-industrial, that is to say service economies.

But a service economy needs an internal demand to sustain it and this means that common people has to have enough money and free time to spend money buying services [going to restaurants, cinemas, sailing on the net ...]. But one of the effects of globalization is the low level of wages in our economies and this forces workers to work a lot and so they have got less free time [and less money!].

No demand to sustain a service economy in the expected measure ...