Obama's "New" plan to reduce the deficit

Post Reply New Topic

A statement for which there is no actual evidence or data to back.

It's not so much bribes as it is blatant conflicts of interest. Many (most?) congressmen are businessmen. There businesses provide the majority of their incomes. Their government positions are merely side jobs that allow them to legislate laws in their favor.

This problem with conflict of interest is plaguing our democracy. We have board directors as heads of our government protection agencies. Big business makes the rules not because the bribe the law, they are the law.

It hasn't always been this way. We used to recognize conflict of interest and prohibit it. Now it has been embraced by the powers that be (both business and government) and anyone not in the loop gets the shaft.

It's common sense. Having a job is better than having no job and being locked out of the job market. A high minimum wage drives jobs overseas and you're not even really going to make any more money because the additional costs employing people will drive up the price of the goods and services as well. It's pretty dang hard to even get a minimum wage job right now and the longer you're out the of job market the more likely that you'll become permanently unemployable. You're not going to be able to support yourself independently on $7.25 an hour and I think you can understand what would happen if they raised it to like $15 or $25 an hour.

In 1995, millionaires payed an effective tax rate of 30.4%, and unemployment was 5.6%.

In 2009, the effective tax rate on millionaires fell to 22.4%, while unemployment climbed to 9.3%.

It therefore follows that cutting taxes on millionaires will reduce, rather than create, jobs.

The only solution is to raise taxes on the rich, which will cause unemployment to fall.

That's such a hyperbole. How about $10 or $11/hour? It's not quite a living wage, depending on location and dependents, but it's a heck of a lot closer and would greatly reduce taxpayer subsidization of making ends meet.

To solve the outsourcing problem, how about taxing companies that do it and incentivise domestic hiring?

The working poor don't have to take the hit on this one.

I do not think that the issue is nearly as clear cut as you would have it.

An employer needs a certain amount of productivity. A 7-11 needs 336 person hours of work if it is to keep two cashiers in the store on a 24/7 basis. It doesn't matter whether those cashiers are paid $5/hr or $15/hr, the business needs them. Meanwhile, it is not going to hire a third cashier if it only needs two, even if those two only earn $5/hr, because it has no need for that third worker.

Those employees' wages are not drawn from a static pool of money--when 7-11's costs go up, it passes those costs on to consumers. The elasticity that lies at the root of the minimum wage question is not the capacity of employers to pay a higher minimum wage, but the capacity of the marketplace to absorb those costs.

In my view, labour cost will not impede an employer from creating a job, provided that the employer is satisfied that it will receive greater benefit from the employee's productivity than the cost that it will expend to hire the employee. If I'm going to get $50/hr worth of productivity from you, it doesn't matter whether you cost $5/hr or $15/hr, I'm still going to hire you.

But if you are only going to give me $10/hr worth of productivity, I might still hire you at $5, but not at $10--but how durable is that job that I have created? The moment your productivity falls, or my other costs rise, you might no longer be a bargain.

At the end of the day, there are certainly scenarios in which some employers will create fewer jobs with a higher minimum wage--but with a minimum wage that creates a living income for a full-time worker, those jobs are more robust, and create greater consumer confidence. I suggest that this is better, overall, for the economy than the marginal difference in job creation.

I don't think the "robustness" of the job is as important as getting people in the workplace in the first place. A low wage job isn't meant to be a permanent job that can completely support someone independently, it's stepping stone and when you raise the minimum wage you cut off the bottom of the ladder. I see the good intentions about helping the "working poor" but what of the many below them even who are locked out of the job market? Are they doomed to a lifetime of dependence and hopelessness? Either that or life of criminality, I suppose the prisons we would have to build to house these wretched souls would create jobs. The scary thing about this is that the people most negatively effected by high minimum wage are young people. youth unemployment is what? I remember reading it's like 25% and for young black men is something like 40%.

Even back when things were booming and unemployment was low, employers were very reluctant to raise wages of workers at the bottom of the ladder to anything above minimum wage, even though the minimum wage has hardly gone up in decades.

Lowering the minimum wage isn't going to increase employment--all that will happen is that workers will be more miserable.

Maybe we should rethink the whole capitalism thing if from now on we are going to have a society where the bottom 5% (which would include a lot of mildly disabled people) can't possibly work for a living wage. The total hands-off free-market approach is only going to work when there is enough work to go around such that all unemployment is transient and enough of a employer self-imposed minimum wage exists to guarantee that people's most basic needs are met. Failing to take care of the long-term unemployed is a recipe for social strife, not to mention morally wrong.

Last I checked we had a Chicago-style way of doing business going on, not real capitalism.

You can keep deluding yourself that the free-market is going to create jobs and take care of the unemployed for all eternity. The truth of the matter is we had a completely hands-off unregulated market throughout the 18th and 19th century and things were not good. There were times when unemployment was high and people were homeless and malnourished. The conditions of the majority of people living under the capitalist system back then were so oppressive that it lead to the rise of Marxism throughout the world. The thing that saved the west from the spread of revolutionary ideology was the eventual capitulation of capitalists to the demands of organized labor. Government regulation finally helped smooth things over in the 20th century.

We aren't going back to full employment here in the US until corporations stop exploiting cheap labor around the world. It seems like we're going to have to live with it for a while.

I remember back in 2002, when i was an unemployed tech worker, how the Bush administration was arguing that we have to allow American companies to move their production over-seas, just so they can survive, and then when the economy improves clearly they will see the value in moving those jobs back to the USA.

What a load of bullflop.

Conservatives are always complaining that US corporate taxes are too high. Perhaps we can modulate the corporate tax rate to reflect how much of a burden a corporation puts on the people. Double it for companies that produce outside the borders, cut it in half for companies that produce in the USA.

What you think is common sense is not evidence nor data.

Indeed. I would like to see some employment, median wage, and cost of living statistics for developed nations with no minimum wage.

Thanks, glad you think so.

Still not seeing any data to back your claims...