Millions of Americans have always worked for low market level wages. Unions were able to raise wages for their members - until their companies became uncompetitive and disappeared. Unions should have negotiated harder for equity share than wages - there would be a lot more employers and union workers if they had done that.
its a matter of survival. If our goods are not world class neither will be our military and then we'll be defeated. PLus trade with China is our defense policy. It makes them rich and capitalist just like us so no reason for war anymore thanks to Republican Capitalism. Do you understand?
unions can't work to raise wages if the companies left the country for slave labor in foreign countries where that is okay. the rich shouldn't make Americans work for low wages to prevent a nuclear war with china that means the rich have the best lives, and everyone else has a miserable life. either the rich become innovative and create higher paying jobs, paid training for the people to do those jobs, or the people who aren't rich and are more politically powerful in a democracy would be willing to risk a nuclear war.
1) low wages are far better than being dead in a nuclear war 2) it not the rich that drive jobs to china but liberalism a) highest corporate tax in world b) libcommie unions c) huge budget deficits d) 20 million illegals who take our jobs and drive down our wages do you have the IQ to understand any of the above? Lets us know. - - - Updated - - - can you say who brainwashed you to think it is the rich rather than the liberals who are responsible
Minimum wage and lower wage jobs were and are not meant to be careers or pay living wages? They are entry level wages, part-time wages, where people with little or no education/skills get their foot in the door. When I was 16 years old working part-time at a bowling alley there could be no rationale whatsoever to demand that the company pay me 'living wages'! When I was 18 years old working 30 hours a week at a manufacturing company while going through school there could be no rationale whatsoever to demand that company pay me 'living wages'. Since my earliest years working there has always been 'entry level' workers earning the lowest pay. It was a great system in which a person can get paid while proving to the company they have more to offer and let the company invest in them. Today we should ask why so many people cannot earn more than minimum or lower wages? One answer is that with population growth to 320 million we have millions more 'entry level' jobs. And, millions of Americans have done little to enhance their education and skills. Somehow you and others believe that the private sector owes all American workers a living wage when in fact the private sector owes nothing when it comes to wages determined by education and skills and experience and supply & demand of labor. People who have or refuse to put forth more than minimum or lower paying jobs should thank their lucky stars they even have a job! If you don't wish to hear my comments about all Americans paying for the government which THEY demand, then all of this dialogue should be aimed at Congress and not members of this forum. Where I live the median price of homes is $650K and a small fixer upper is $1-$1.2 million. If there is not a mortgage deduction many people will not buy property and simply become lifelong renters. There's nothing wrong with renting but there are some obvious benefits to owning. The person paying rent is paying a price based on supply and demand of rental housing...has nothing to do with the owners mortgage deductions, and, the owner holds the loan not the renter. This nation cannot continue without most of it's citizenry helping to fund the government which they are demanding. How and where the tax revenues are collected is another complex discussion but IMO all of us must contribute something...
You and others can ask for anything you wish but you should be asking all tax payers to fund your ideas and not the private sector...
IMO all of this debt spending creates sort of a false economy. For example the $10 trillion in new debt spent over the past few years certainly effected inflation. The same applies to how we spend using personal credit...a person earning $50K can have credit purchases equaling $200K-$300K, all of which effect inflation but the person still earns only $50K...
Like you I grew up with my first job being at the local car wash, part time when I was in high school, and then worked my way up the employment ladder. That was in the 1960's and the minimum wage really did relate to part time work typically for those attending high school or college. This isn't the 1960's anymore. We need to think about today and not 40 years in the past. Today tens of millions of people in their 20's, 30's and older are working full time jobs from the current Federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr up to $10/hr and $10/hr ($20,800/yr for full time work) isn't enough for even a single person to live on in the US according to the MIT (minimum) Living Wage Calculator. The minimum wage no longer applies to just entry level work for young people. It applies to the general population where adults, often with children are trying to earn a living. Unlike in the 1960's through perhaps the late 1980's or 1990's the "middle income jobs" have been drying up. Yes, there are more people, which expands the economy, but per capita there aren't as many middle income jobs, the steps in the ladder for a person to achieve financial success. There are more and more people that simply can't advance in employment because there aren't enough middle income jobs for them. It isn't like when I was climbing the economic ladder when lots if middle income jobs existed and you could learn on the job and take a step up the ladder. It isn't that the people today are less qualified than I was but instead there aren't the economic opportunities for them because the jobs don't exist for advancement. We need to deal with the reality today as opposed to what did or didn't happen in the past. Your one of the long-time members that I respect the most and your comments are always welcome but I would take exception to the following. First of all government spending isn't driven by demand but instead it's driven by necessity. For example, if you're like me, you don't like federal aid to education but it's necessary. It's necessary because the States, that are responsible for providing the education, refuse to fully fund their educational expenditures. Get the states to collect enough revenue to fund expenditures the state should be responsible for and it ends the necessity for the federal funding. Problem is that the federal government doesn't have the Constitutional authority to require the states to fully fund their expenditures. The next exception I would note is that my proposal clearly establishes that we don't need to tax those earning less than median income to fully fund our government and, based upon earned income tax rates, the actual tax rate would be substantially less than today. Based upon an analysis on 2014 general expenditures and 1/2 of gross personal income (to account for non-taxed money below the Exemption) the tax rate would have only been 24% as opposed to the current 39.6% and it would have been a far more progressive tax than our multi-tiered tax rates. 2014 also happened to be my personal highest income year, between $100,000-$200,000 for the year, and I paid more than I would have under this tax proposal. I paid more but the additional taxation really didn't make any difference to me because I was earning a metric butt-load of money in 2014. I could have afforded twice the taxation and still would have been living a very luxurious lifestyle. It was a very sweet year. There's an additional bonus. Because the "Personal Income Tax" form would be so simple it would probably allow the US Treasury able to deal with taxation eliminating the IRS. It only requires three basic lines to calculate. 1) Gross Personal Income; 2) Minus Exemption; 3) Result, if it's a positive number, multiplied by the tax rate and enter that amount. Taxes done for the year. A commercial rental property doesn't qualify for the mortgage deduction and all of the interest on the loan is deductible anyway without any limit (the mortgage deduction only goes up to the interest on a $1 million home if I recall correctly) There are numerous reason for owning your own home and none of them have anything to do with the mortgage deduction. People don't purchase a home to get the deduction. They purchase the home because they want to own their own home. I've owned homes most of my life and never once did the mortgage deduction influence my decision to purchase or even on how much I was willing to spend on the purchase. To believe that people purchase homes because there's a mortgage deduction is nonsense IMHO.
It is simply much easier to do at fifteen dollars an hour than it is at our current minimum wage. why not actually help solve the problem instead of just making the poor work harder for less, just so the rich can get richer faster. - - - Updated - - - According to the right, you are being disingenuous, since Firms don't pay taxes or wages, but customers do.
It would take a very low IQ to believe anything except #1 above because all of #2 is false. This is a thread on taxation though so it would be off-topic to discuss how wrong #2 really is.
according to mitt romneys estimate 47 percent of American's are net recipients and don't pay taxes, so the 53 percent of productive American's can't afford to pay this bill without help from the rich corporations. the private sector could offer paid training to the 47 percent of low wage or unemployed workers that could create more revenue if they become net contributors. the compromise could be that the rich continue to pay no taxes, but make investments in America workers through paid training.
the people making low wages aren't able to pursue happiness properly, and when they see the rich sending their jobs to other countries with the utmost of happiness, they may be okay with risking a nuclear war to bring those jobs back home. in a democracy you can only sell out the future of a minority of people for profits and manage it, but Trump voters represent a majority on the right, and may represent a majority in the whole country after November.
That isn't what the 47% represents. This is based upon current IRS tax codes and deductions where the intent was to exclude necessary expenditures from taxation and the 47% don't have enough income, or barely have enough income to meet their necessary minimum-mandatory expenditures based upon the tax codes. The problem is that the politicians nefariously extended the deductions to far beyond the minimum-mandatory expenditures in many cases. For example the Mortgage Deduction provides for the deduction of mortgage interest on loans of $1 million while no one in America actually needs to live in a million dollar home. In eliminating all deductions and tax credits, replacing them with the Exemption, I've eliminated the nefarious deductions that are unrelated to the minimum-mandatory expenditures of the household. In principle I cover all of the minimum-mandatory expenditures under the single umbrella of the Exemption. Or we could impose a living wage where it becomes financially necessary for the enterprise to train their employees so that they generate more revenue for the enterprise. If we wait for private enterprise to do this on their own it's never going to happen because they have no financial incentive to provide the training to the under-paid worker. The wealthy aren't really involved in the operations of the enterprise. They're basically silent partners in the ownership of the corporation that's managed by the corporate executives. The role of the corporate executives is to generate profits for the expansion of the enterprise, which increases it's value to the owners, and to pay direct dividends to the owners so the executives often have no reason to provide training to under-paid workers. Of note only a small percentage of all investments are even related to enterprise. Stocks and corporate bonds are but commodity trading, money markets, and hedge funds are unrelated to the actual operations of an enterprise.
the rich are involved in the operations of the companies their invested in, the CEO's are their puppets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_shareholder clinton will never reinstate glass steagall because her rich friends don't like it, Carl Icahn, a good friend of future President Donald Trump supports the reinstatement..
In some cases that is true but it's a rarity and the CEO, CFO, COO and other corporate officers are contracted employees that cannot generally be told what to do by an individual stockholder. If they're that weak of an executive then they're probably a very poor person to have running the business. The corporate executives are employed by the corporation because they know more about operating the enterprise than the stockholders. Of course we've seen cases where a wealthy person, based upon controlling interest, has used their power as a majority "activist" stockholder in appointing themselves as a corporate executive and it resulted in disaster for the corporation. Donald Trump appointed himself to the CEO position of the Taj Mahal and then drove the corporation into bankruptcy because he's a grossly incompetent corporate executive. Being wealthy has never implied that a person was a good corporate manager. Most wealthy individuals actually know that they're not the best person to run the corporation and instead seek out those that do have excellent management knowledge and skills to be the top executive officers of the corporation and then let those executives do what they're qualified to do without interference. You'll find this to be true in virtually all of the major corporations. Of course there are exceptions but they are exceptions and are not common in corporate America. The wealthy stockholder may sit on the Board of Directors but the Board of Directors is not responsible for the general operations of the corporation. What the hell does my tax proposal have to do with Glass Steagall or Hillary Clinton? And why would I care about Donald Trump that's a four-time loser when it comes to being the CEO of corporations and that doesn't have a clue when it comes to banking or the US economy? I don't support Hillary Clinton and I sure as hell don't support Donald Trump. These are the two worst choices for president in the history of the United States. Now, can we return to the tax proposal because that's the topic of the thread. It doesn't fix the thousands of problems that exist in the United States but instead fixes our income taxes and ensures a balanced federal budget.
your tax proposal favors the rich because it does not address glass-steagall, and will never balance a budget. http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-financial-regulation/ hillary and her rich friends would support most of your tax proposal, Trump who is a businessman and balances budgets as a career, would not support this tax proposal because his best friend Carl Icahn supports glass steagall.
Banks should be legally prohibited from lending out or otherwise investing depositors' funds. They should be legally required to keep depositors' funds on deposit. If they want to make loans or investments, let them use their own money, so if they make a bad investment only their money is lost, not the depositors.
The reality is we have more workers earning below the median wage today but this is not a reason to highjack business and demand business pay everyone a living wage. What has society and government done in the past five decades to provide a world-class education system, to provide affordable housing, to provide effective and affordable public transit, to better design urban areas? IMO all the additional forced wage increases cannot solve a problem until society and government do something about the fundamental infrastructure that should be in place! The federal government is already spending $4 trillion per year and this will increase every year into the future. No matter any proposed tax system, that system must extract $4 trillion from society in myriad ways. When government refuses to pay their way we have what we have today which is $19 trillion in debt. The federal government today requires every man, woman and child in the USA to be responsible for $12,500 each in taxation...and this is ludicrous! Even solid middle-class families cannot afford to pay this amount of tax...a family of four would owe $50K/year! A family earning $150K/year cannot afford to pay $50K in taxation! Since IMO this issue cannot be only about a few wealthy people funding the government...it must be about all Americans funding the government with a progressive tax system in which people pay $100/year to $500K/year depending on their income...no one pays $0. All business expenses are deductible. When a person has the means to buy property, owning is advantageous to renting because of the taxable income deductions, because of the potential increase in the value of the asset, and because of pride of ownership. People who rent, and might not itemize deductions, they still get significant personal deductions against their income without the risks associated with home ownership...
No matter what the overall wage scale might be, whether it is $7.25/hour to $100/hour or $15.00/hour to $150/hour, in both cases, those who earn $7.25/hour or those who earn $15/hour will forever and always be functioning in the bottom rungs of the economy. There is job advancement in every career for those who put forth the effort to achieve personal growth. It will always function this way! If a business cannot earn profits they must close the doors. You cannot expect business to sacrifice profits by taking the hit for taxes and wages? If you hire a guy to build you a house, he might have $100K in expenses, desire to earn $25K in profit, and will sell you the house for $125K. If you tell this guy he cannot expense taxes and wages, or greatly increase his price to you, meaning his profits are greatly reduced, he will close the doors. I never understand your and others concerns about business earning profits, even humongous profits, because can you imagine how our economy would be today if we had 100's of Microsoft's, Apple's, Google's, etc.??
IMO nearly every new employee, no matter the position from the lowest to highest paid, must be trained on the job. Therefore, all companies are training all employees. Why should a business pay for someone to be trained? Just because you think all businesses are wealthy? The wealthy now pay the bulk of federal income taxes??
