No one wants to work, or no one wants to work for 13 an hour

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91% was the top individual tax rate in 1951. The top capital gains tax rate, for both individuals and corporations, was 25% (it is 20% for the highest earners). Do you believe if the top capital gains rate (which is 20% today and applies to earners making more than $551,000) was 91% anyone would invest their money in the USA? You can not conflate the tax on earned income with the tax on capital gains.

Accumulated knowledge favors the employer. Those with capital have the systems and power to improve the techniques of exploitation over time. To us, "progress" means we can carry a supercomputer that allows us to argue with strangers online. All other benefits, even of our own labor, goes to capital. And they use it to learn how to exploit us more. And to purchase politicians.

It is systemically impossible to get out of this without revolution. And they've been busy preparing for that (witness that it is becoming illegal to even demonstrate), so we are probably screwed.

Haha!

Just gonna leave this here, BTW (does not apply to Canada):

"In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.

Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe. It is greatly to their interest to do this because decent living, widely spread among our 125, 000,000 people, eventually means the opening up to industry of the richest market which the world has known. It is the only way to utilize the so-called excess capacity of our industrial plants. This is the principle that makes this one of the most important laws that ever has come from Congress because, before the passage of this Act, no such industrial covenant was possible."

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

I don't know, where I was working, they were never too worried about not having enough labor, they just gave MORE labor to the few workers they had. Lots of OSHA violations, to be sure.

And you're just supposed to put up with it like a man, because MURRICA!! !

Gotta keep those gears turning, we can't have no slackers, no sick days, no vacations...you can sleep when you're dead.

Well, I'm dead now.

Zzz...Zzz...

I'm not in a rich area though, I'm in redneckistan.

I'd invest in guillotines.

I keep misreading the title as "No one wants to work for 13 hours"

That's not true today.. people earning above average wages are seeking evening and weekend work just to make ends meet. I see posts on Facebook all the time seeking more hours because people can't earn enough to pay rent/feed their families/keep their vehicle on the road etc. It's pretty gross.

goldfish is on the mark regarding living costs. They are crazy in the US & Canada and almost as crazy in the UK.

Yep!

I am very fortunate to have very inexpensive housing costs which allow me to have multiple vehicles, sporting goods, free time to ride the motorcycle and go kiteboarding etc.

But people with dependants to feed & house at market prices = gtfo is the only way unless you earn a LOT of money.

One thing about the extreme housing costs that I can and will use to my advantage is that when I quote prices if someone thinks my price is a bit high I'll remind them that rent costs 3 grand a month and driving costs 2 grand a month and I gotta eat soooo I can't work for peanuts. Meanwhile in reality my rent is extremely cheap and I have 3 vehicles with no payments so all three are on the road for under 1500 but they don't need to know that. Obviously I can't charge more than the market will bear, but I Can justify charging near the top end w/o clients knowing that my disposable income/savings rate is higher than most peoples'.

I see no issue with that. It would mean more smaller investors. Right now, the only businesses that ever go out of business are small businesses that aren't large enough to have anything that larger businesses want.

Keep in mind that the 91% was on the top income bracket, the money made at lower income brackets was taxed at those amounts, it's not like they were being hit with a 91% bill on all the money they made. A higher tax rate would also incentivize investors to exercise more caution when investing and allow more money to trickle down to the job creators at the bottom of the economy. The people who actually pay for the goods and services that the folks at the top are siphoning money from.

Haha. You seem savvy with the monies!

Gotta be if you wanna accumulate any savings/figure out a way to stay living here and not be forced to relocate.

I've been good at saving. Then spent a bunch this last year. Gonna get back to saving soon. Need to get better at investing vs. having money not really making me money, though. But can't get toooo risky and lose it as I'll need that money to spend in the future. Gotta strike a balance.

Whatever - I'll do okay. Maybe not Great nor ever own my own home (Millions!) but I don't plan on making the kinds of mistakes that would ever see me broke again. Being broke sucks.


FWIW on the hourly wage thing as this thread is kind of about: When I quote my own jobs a Low wage would be around $40-45/hr. I try to work quickly enough to make $50+, buuut I know myself and I'll be slow and meticulous about things.. I do an extremely fine detailed job that no one will ever complain about, but it certainly costs me time to do it and I'm about the only person that would ever notice it lol MOST ppl would work quicker, leave small flaws almost no one will notice, and make more $/hr. But still, I've managed to have some jobs I made $75/hr on, and one I made $95/hr cash on.

Had I continued working Union as I was before covid, my wage would be approx $37/hr or so + $10-11/hr in benefits, so around $47/48. So, working for yourself ya gotta be able to make more than you could at a Job or what's the point in doing your own sales/quotes/bookkeeping etc ?? May as well get a job if you can't make more money solo.

I almost Never quote by an hourly rate, though. I just look at the job and say "$1700 labour, $300 materials.. 2 grand it'll be done right." And then I've got to complete it in fewer than 34 working hours to make more than $50/hr. Sometimes I learn that my price was too cheap and then know to bid $2300 labour on a similar job in the future. More often than not I think I under bid, but there's a wide range of prices and quality levels and I think I do Ok.

But I don't quote hourly rates because people get all pissy about how they don't earn that much at their job blah blah blah. Ok, cool story bro - learn a trade that can command this pay and then go run your own contracting business then. Ffs people pay $135/hr for a service plumber or $150/hr for a mechanic at a shop, so a tradesman making $65-75/hr to ply his trade efficiently isn't exactly sky high prices. Especially since the only way to make that much is to be pretty good at it and reasonably quick - which takes thousands of hours of practice. Besides that, for a certain quality level of job the job is worth a market price of $x -> say $1000. If I do it to that level in 10 working hours I made $100/hr, but if I take 40 hours I only made $25. The value of the job done right doesn't change.. but a Good skilled tradesman who's pretty damned quick might even be able to do it in 6-7 working hours. (I've seen it from the guys doing it for 50 years)

Going to explore an out of town opportunity that pays 5-9x the rate the cheapest contractors in the city pay, which is 2.5-4.5x what a decently good paying gig in the city pays. Then I'd really be able to stack some cash.

Blah blah blah learn a skilled trade and then take on the "goldilocks," sized jobs that pay well. (In my trade big jobs pay too little, and tiny jobs often aren't worth all the driving around.. but juuuust right and you can charge Good $ for jobs that bigger crews won't touch and weekend warrior handyman types can't handle.)

Limiting yourself to so-called "unskilled," jobs forever, and the very low pay that comes with them, sucks. Time is going to pass anyways, and you've gotta work, earn money, pay bills.. so you may as well be doing a thing that builds skills and has increasing wages over time. Hence my suggestion of any skilled trade in any union environment. Pooooor apprentice to begin with, but after a few years $ starts to come your way.

You sound like you are doing well as a tradesman and with life in general.

Kudos!

Do you understand how venture capital works?

Do you think as a 38 year career corporate finance lawyer that I need to understand from you how marginal tax rates work?

Putting that aside, you understand the tax system in 1951 was screwing everybody, not just the big earners, don't you? In 1951 a person making $2000 was making the equivalent of around $23,500 today, Yet the effective federal tax rate of the worker today is 11% while the effective federal tax rate of the 1951 worker was 22.2%. That's over 100% more tax withheld in 1951. A person making $3,767 in 1951 would be making $44,725 today, yet today's worker would have an effective federal tax rate of less than 12% while the 1951 worker would have an effective federal tax rate of over 23%. That's almost 100% more tax withheld. A person making $100,000 today would have an effective federal tax rate of 17.4 %, but a person earning the equivalent amount of $8,423 in 1951 would have a effective federal tax rate of 28%? That's around 65% more tax withheld. Yeah let's go back to 1951 rates.