4 ms·

> No leftie is arguing or longing for any of these policies. What we're looking for is just more equality in economic opportunities and esp capital and that dis

by MBlume 11y ago

> No leftie is arguing or longing for any of these policies. What we're looking for is just more equality in economic opportunities and esp capital and that distribution of capital to be more fair across all the classes and not to be a privilege only for rich and highly connected people. > That's how we envision the solution to fix this problem of "fragmentation" as he put when it exactly is more like a "segregation" problem but not based on racial or cultural factors but on economic one into two completely separate societies between the haves and have-nots, between the 1% and the 99% of the population and it's getting worse and uglier by the day. This kinda reads like word salad to me -- I have absolutely no idea what concrete policy changes it's meant to imply.

Retric 11y ago
Revert tax policy back from an effective sub 15% at the top to far more reasonable levels. To start, SS taxes apply to all income levels. Next, you can't avoid capital gains by donating appiceated assets. Further, capital gains is taxed at the same rate as all other income. And my personal favorite, there are zero corporate tax breaks of any kind.
- incompatible 11y ago
  And at the other end? The popular opinion seems to be that we just need to force companies to pay higher wages, i.e., put up the minimum wage. Now those low paying jobs are illegal and people end up unemployed instead, especially when the economy is bad. I'd be willing to try abolishing minimum wages and letting the government pay a subsidy to anyone making a genuine effort to work, so that they have a reasonable standard of living. I'm just not sure how you measure genuine effort, so that you don't end up subsidising people who pay each other $1/week to go surfing.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Guaranteed minimum income has a lot going for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income U.S. politics has gotten strange, people complained about welfare mothers not working when that's shat the system was designed to do. IMO, hand out a small fixed amount every month, then flat tax everything last that point and get the government out of micromanaging the economy. Upside, no tax breaks makes everyone's taxes easy, downside would never get implemented.
    - incompatible 11y ago
      Yeah, but I expect that to be rather expensive, requiring high tax rates with limited chance for evasion with everybody who bothers to work. The fact that it never seems to have been implemented on any large scale also makes me think it's unpopular, perhaps due to people not wanting to subsidise people who choose not to work.
  - ptc 11y ago
    There's no solid evidence that increasing the minimum wage will create fewer jobs. From Paul Krugman's review of Robert Reich's new book > Other evidence points indirectly to a strong role of market power. At this point, for example, there is an extensive empirical literature on the effects of changes in the minimum wage. Conventional supply-and-demand analysis says that raising the minimum wage should reduce employment, but as Reich notes, we now have a number of what amount to controlled experiments, in which employment in counties whose states have hiked the minimum wage can be compared with employment in neighboring counties across the state line. And there is no hint in the data of the supposed negative employment effect. > Why not? One leading hypothesis is that firms employing low-wage workers—such as fast-food chains—have significant monopsony power in the labor market; that is, they are the principal purchasers of low-wage labor in a particular job market. And a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/robert-reich-challenging-oligarchy/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/robert-reich-chal... There's also something similar to your subsidy idea today called the Earned Income Tax Credit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit]. Guaranteeing a minimum income does seem like a promising idea, but it will probably have to be tried elsewhere before the U.S. will adopt it (if ever).
    - PantaloonFlames 11y ago
      > a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more. The theory is that the buyers of labor in these cases will simply buy alternatives - specifically low-labor alternatives, like automation. Think of automated checkout stands at retail stores, but applied to fast food. Time was, fuel filling stations all had attendants. Drivers didn't get out of their cars when they purchased gas. They drove up and were greeted by an attendant who operated the pump and took payment. We don't do that anymore - now that attendant job doesn't exist. There's nothing stopping that same kind of transition for many other service jobs.
      - thedufer 11y ago

by MBlume 11y ago

Retric 11y ago

Revert tax policy back from an effective sub 15% at the top to far more reasonable levels. To start, SS taxes apply to all income levels. Next, you can't avoid capital gains by donating appiceated assets. Further, capital gains is taxed at the same rate as all other income. And my personal favorite, there are zero corporate tax breaks of any kind.

incompatible 11y ago
And at the other end? The popular opinion seems to be that we just need to force companies to pay higher wages, i.e., put up the minimum wage. Now those low paying jobs are illegal and people end up unemployed instead, especially when the economy is bad. I'd be willing to try abolishing minimum wages and letting the government pay a subsidy to anyone making a genuine effort to work, so that they have a reasonable standard of living. I'm just not sure how you measure genuine effort, so that you don't end up subsidising people who pay each other $1/week to go surfing.
- Retric 11y ago
  Guaranteed minimum income has a lot going for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income U.S. politics has gotten strange, people complained about welfare mothers not working when that's shat the system was designed to do. IMO, hand out a small fixed amount every month, then flat tax everything last that point and get the government out of micromanaging the economy. Upside, no tax breaks makes everyone's taxes easy, downside would never get implemented.
  - incompatible 11y ago
    Yeah, but I expect that to be rather expensive, requiring high tax rates with limited chance for evasion with everybody who bothers to work. The fact that it never seems to have been implemented on any large scale also makes me think it's unpopular, perhaps due to people not wanting to subsidise people who choose not to work.
- ptc 11y ago
  There's no solid evidence that increasing the minimum wage will create fewer jobs. From Paul Krugman's review of Robert Reich's new book > Other evidence points indirectly to a strong role of market power. At this point, for example, there is an extensive empirical literature on the effects of changes in the minimum wage. Conventional supply-and-demand analysis says that raising the minimum wage should reduce employment, but as Reich notes, we now have a number of what amount to controlled experiments, in which employment in counties whose states have hiked the minimum wage can be compared with employment in neighboring counties across the state line. And there is no hint in the data of the supposed negative employment effect. > Why not? One leading hypothesis is that firms employing low-wage workers—such as fast-food chains—have significant monopsony power in the labor market; that is, they are the principal purchasers of low-wage labor in a particular job market. And a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/robert-reich-challenging-oligarchy/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/robert-reich-chal... There's also something similar to your subsidy idea today called the Earned Income Tax Credit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit]. Guaranteeing a minimum income does seem like a promising idea, but it will probably have to be tried elsewhere before the U.S. will adopt it (if ever).
  - PantaloonFlames 11y ago
    > a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more. The theory is that the buyers of labor in these cases will simply buy alternatives - specifically low-labor alternatives, like automation. Think of automated checkout stands at retail stores, but applied to fast food. Time was, fuel filling stations all had attendants. Drivers didn't get out of their cars when they purchased gas. They drove up and were greeted by an attendant who operated the pump and took payment. We don't do that anymore - now that attendant job doesn't exist. There's nothing stopping that same kind of transition for many other service jobs.
    - thedufer 11y ago