So I'm sure you read, this is a near total what I feel will solve the countries problems, create more jobs for those millions that want to work (62% participation rate), generate the US then worlds economy and raise pay scales without being mandated by the Federal...post 16 this thread. Actually I want "Mom & Pop" business to increase, what I've always been involved with...but increased regulation and some States increasing minimum pay scales and other regulation is keeping many from even starting off, much less becoming bigger employers. I'm guessing the liberal dream world would be if the Federal Government simply took over ALL business in total, as desired regarding Health Care, then dictating everything what everyone can have...
I also want the mom and pop businesses to increase but not at the expense of everyone else. If they cannot pay a living wage they should not be in business because they are making everyone else pay more taxes so their employees can live. There are many business regulations that are the result of businesses activities that the populace has clamoured for due to egregious business misbehaviour. There are also many regulations that businesses themselves have clamoured for to impede or eliminate competition. The former should be retained and the latter removed. Some may view government regulation as a gross imposition on their Constitutional guarantee of individual Liberty and Freedom, but those guarantees do not extend to lying and cheating and doing whatever you want regardless of how anyone else feels about it. The government's remit is to insure a level playing field for all human interaction. This may require the imposition of some minimum standards of behaviour for participants in certain activities, like operating a business or participating in certain markets. The government must act against participants who exhibit a disregard for the public good, cheating, lying, poisoning or otherwise acting unfairly towards the public. The reality is if businesses were not so dastardly for so many hundreds of years they would never have been subject to regulation in the first place. But they were and they continue to be and there is no expectation that they will change any time soon so, since the business community cannot provide a record of even one day when not one business did not lie or cheat or poison or otherwise abuse employees or customers there is absolutely no reason to believe that they will behave better if regulations are reduced or removed.
I'm not sure what percentage of Restaurants go out of business within two years of starting up, but around 2006 it was 90%. Some non franchised start ups do go on to add new Restaurants and do very well. I'm using this an example, but to as lesser degree it fits virtually every type business, where somebody goes out on the limb, borrowing money or risking what they have for some dream they have of becoming wealthy. They hire people, nobody forces them to work for minimum wage or whatever benefits there might be, but for whatever reason (working there way through school/entry level job/second job, etc) those jobs are filled. We're talking millions of jobs and my point is there are tens of thousands of others that would try a start up business and hire millions more. Then "what's a living wage"; Where I live, a person or family can survive very well on 1/5th what it would take in 95% of the US or 1/10th what it would take in SF, NYC or maybe the DC area. Why would you set any National "Living Wage" based on say what that means in DC...Said another way...in my town 7.50/Hr is more than a living wage, where in NYC your probably eligible for 20 welfare programs. You were presenting your argument fairly well, until the above, but how on earth can a business, stay in business providing what you apparently believe is the rule, not the exception. In fact who would want to work there or not sue them, which has nothing to do with minimum wage or for that matter regulations!!!
Pretty much what you said. 95% emphasis on supply side, 5% emphasis (mostly for show) on demand side. Give big business everything it wants so it can outsource more jobs and kill more unions. Gotta stop printing cash. It's all ending up in NYC where it's being turned into run-up snot. We have a history of this. Next crash coming soon.
If we were producing all this stuff in the US, no one could afford anything. TaTa Motors of India produces much of their product outside India, especially trucks, yet is doing very well in India. There are many countries or States of the US, that produce very little, yet are getting along just fine. These Country or State economies come from local small business/farming/ranching/service, which are all important to an economy and in the US generally hurt the most by regulation...like' As said before, to permit a business to build in the US, alone can cost more than to permit/build in another country and probably a couple years of labor cost.
Look what these learned men of economics have done to our middle class. To our increasing numbers in poverty. Who benefitted from globalization, this neo feudalism? Look at the disparity in income, its growth to see. Offshoring living wage jobs to slave labor, automation, will implode capitalism. And you can't wish or use logic and reason to get out of it. Logic and reason shows it is not sustainable, socially. Globalists will be hung from the nearest oak trees as millions of average working people began to suffer more and more, as we have to cut back social safety nets, or implode from debt.
You aren't even making a valid argument, and your fundamentals of economics are so misguided that the quoted is just #feelings. How does obtaining cheaper goods hurt the middle class? And without international trade labor wouldn't be able to specialize and ends up not as productive as it could be.
Ah, you actually understand. How odd that is today with the political tribalism. And of course you nailed it. Now, this will implode market capitalism. And that is a given. For what makes capitalism work is for the masses to have disposable income to buy what the machines make. But we will replace more and more humans with machines. Even the service sector is not immune from this trend. For machines are cheaper to use for profits than humans. The question which must be answered is what will replace capitalism? The only intelligent model is a resource based economy, with no monetary system. But we will have to get there in stages. We could start by redistributing income to the people without jobs, by paying them living wages, so they could buy what the machines make. At some point we would have to get off of the monetary system completely, in steps. The final goal being an end to the rich and the poor. Without a special elite class being created in this move. A society based upon science and technology instead of scarcity.
The object should not be the cheapest goods, but to provide consumers of goods with disposable income. We are doing things bass ackwards. For most of my life somehow, someway, we could pay our workers enough to buy what they were making. Of course this meant lower profit margins, yet somehow we survived. Sir, I owned my own manufacturing business until I retired a few years ago. I paid living wages, i.e. middle class wages. Now, this meant I kept less for myself, and didn't own the huge homes that my competitors owned, as they had to make sure society knew "they had arrived'. You cannot tell me anything about economics, or how to run a successful business. I have done this all of my life, since college. I am surrounded by idiots. Who are not old enough to remember a different America. With that said, capitalism plus automation equals implosion, the end of capitalism as an economic system. And if you cannot see that clearly, you need to get outside of that box that you are stuck in. For in the not too distant future, it will take 10 percent of a workforce or less to produce what a nation needs. But there is a huge problem. What will millions do to earn an income to buy what the machines make, and what the service sector which will be greatly automated provide? Good lord, you people are stuck in boxes. Or were never taught to think, logically, reasonably. I have never seen such blindly conditioned brains in my life, hanging on to something that is doomed to fail.
[ Bottom line; for those who expect 0% unemployment and higher wages, there must be several million more sustained jobs. Those jobs can create products or services. If it's products, then someone somewhere in the USA must be manufacturing something. The only question is what will they be producing? My county produces two things; wine and hospitality. One product and myriad services. If we lose our grapes to global warming/drought then we won't have a product and hospitality will end as well. If this happens we must find something else to produce or just let the dust blow...
The future will not require the employment of a large portion of the population at every projected level of population growth for any nation. In other words, the future includes the inevitable massive reduction in jobs everywhere. If consumption is to be maintained consumer income gaining methods other than employment for wages must be employed.
Market economics is one thing, capitalism in another. Our capitalists have turned market economics on its head.
Sorry, I have gone to school for economics. Your views are completely misguided and empirical evidence backs me up. The median wealth in the US has risen as the nation has shifted from manufacturing into the service sector. It goes back to fundamentals. Nations gain when they trade with one another because they gain the ability to specialize in what they are good at. You remember the government bailing out GM (a manufacturing job)? The Japanese and other countries were making cars that suited their customers better and gained a competitive advantage over the US. Whereas the US got better in the field of pharmaceuticals. Hanging onto industries that are underperforming isn't sound economics. Innovation is.
The fundamental problem in our economy is that their is insufficient demand for goods and services to power the kind of strong recoveries we had in the past. It is not just this recovery that has been slow and weak. Compare the recoveries in 1990, 2001, and the current one, with earlier recoveries: As the (now somewhat outdated) chart shows, all the recoveries before the mid 1980s were sharper and faster. IMO, this is not simply some gigantic coincidence. Consumer spending drives the economy and recoveries, but has been anemic. The great engine of spending, the middle class, is tapped out and overridden in debt. As a result, we are not seeing growth in personal consumption like we did in earlier recoveries: Year - % chng real personal expenditures 1982 1.4 1983 5.7 1984 5.3 1985 5.3 Average: 4.4 1992 3.7 1993 3.5 1994 3.9 1995 3.0 Average 3.5 2002 2.5 2003 3.1 2004 3.8 2005 3.5 Average 3.2 2010 2.0 2011 2.5 2012 2.2 2013 2.0 Average 2.2 Source data: http://bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=9&step=1#reqid=9&step=1&isuri=1 Table 2.3.1. Percent Change From Preceding Period in Real Personal Consumption Expenditures by Major Type of Product A big reason why we aren't seeing spending from the middle classes is that since the early 1980s is because we've taken almost all the growth in income and wealth of this country over the past 30 years and diverted it to the richest 10%, and mostly to the richest 1%: Today the 1% has double the share of the nation's income (20%) and nation's wealth (40%) than it did 30 years ago. That is the proportional equivalent of about $1.5 trillion going to the 1% instead of the 99%, every single year. If the richest 1% spends even half of its income, that equates to about $750 billion less spending in the economy. That is about the equivalent of 3 Stimulus packages every single year! As a result, the middle class, the great engine of spending (and thus demand) doesn't have the additional resources to spend. So when we have a recession, is it any surprise that recovery is slower? We've taken the assets and purchasing power away from the middle class, who spend it, and transferred them to the richest, who proportionately do not spend it, and thus have gutted the engine of growth and recovery. The problem isn't an overall lack of money to spend. There are trillions and of trillions of dollars sitting in offshore bank accounts and in corporations and banks not being spent. The problem is that our "trickle down" policies over the past 30 years have not "trickled down" but instead have transferred those assets to people who don't spend them and away from people who do. So should it be any surprise that when we look at the recoveries since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution took effect, including the current one, we see shallower, flatter recoveries than we did before? Also, compare the following: Reagan Federal Spending increase, 1981-1985: +39.5%. Total government employment, 1981-1985: +607,0000 Bush Federal Spending increase, 2001-2005: +32.7% Total government employment, 2001-2005: +603,000 Obama Federal Spending increase, 2009-2013: -1.89% Total government employment, 2009-2013: -667,000 We've aggregated the problem of a decimated middle class with Govt austerity and layoffs that have acerbated the problem. What would be the situation if we'd seen spending increases over the past four years, and the Republican dominated states had not added over 600,000 people to the unemployment rolls, but had added 600,000 more paid jobs? If we want a return to stronger economic growth, we need a return to the policies that built up the middle classes. We don't need to pander to the richest any more. We need to reverse "trickle down" policies, not extend them.
First, ALL spending, no matter if it's from the rich or poor, energizes the economy...trickles up, down, left and right. YOUR idea of trickle down was allegedly that the wealthier got all of the tax reductions but didn't spend any of their money. This is absurd since the wealthy are spending money in every sector all across the nation for years now...the result of this is the ever-expanding corporate and commercial and residential development. A huge portion of lower and middle class Americans don't pay any federal income taxes, and in fact, many of them actually receive tax credits. Easily this is a minimum of 50% of American workers who earn $35K or less...about 75 million Americans. There is no way to 'reduce' the federal income taxes on this group of people and create your fantasy economic plan of 'trickle up'...
That is so, whether it is from individuals or the Govt. As long as it is spent. The wealthiest only spend a fraction of their income. The rest gets saved or horded or invested but isn't being spent on goods and serves creating demand for production and services. Give a $100 million to a billionaire and only a portion will be spend in the economy. Give a $100 million to the middle classes and virtually all of it will be spent in the economy. Cut their FICA taxes. But there are several things we could do to reverse the flow of money from the middle class to the richest. Raise taxes on the richest, cut them on the middle class. Empower unions to leverage higher wages. Increase the min wage. Change the overtime laws so more people fall under it. Require employers to provide health insurance. Use Govt spending to create jobs and demand for workers. Equalize taxes on earned and unearned income, like FreshAir mentioned. Increase estate taxes to lower earned income taxes. Just a few things off the top of my head.
The tax brackets are marginal brackets, not overall brackets. You start paying 25% only on adjusted gross income above $34000 (2011). In this case you would subtract the standard deduction and 1 personal exemption ($5800 $3700=$9500) and get an AGI of $35000-$9500=$25500. The rate on the first $8350 is 10% ($835), The tax on the remaining portion ($25500-$8350=$17150) is 15% ($2572). The total Fed Income Tax is $2572 $835=$3407. This is 9.7% of income and what is realized in the pay check. However, this does not take into account all the tax deductions like mortgage interest deduction, health insurance, moving expenses, child tax credits, dependents, etc. etc. etc. When you look at the federal income taxes paid annually by those earning $35K or less, fact is...they are not paying much in federal income taxes...
Fine with me if you cut their FICA taxes but then they are not eligible for SS and Medicare in retirement. If they want these programs then they must pay for those programs. Your suggestions above are political pipe-dreams? Every suggestion you made has consequences! Nothing is for free! Politically they sound nice but practically they are not solutions to any root problems. IMO taking more money from the wealthy, solely to give it to government, is about the dumbest thing we can do. Government is the most non-productive, inefficient and ineffective system we have in the USA...why would we want to expand and/or encourage something so ill-conceived and poorly implemented?
