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>Note that this isn't racist, or even anti-immigration. The goal is not to be anti-immigrant. The goal is to protect the status of the working class by lowering

>Note that this isn't racist, or even anti-immigration. The goal is not to be anti-immigrant. The goal is to protect the status of the working class by lowering supply in the labor market. Despite the unemployment figures (which is really only everyone who lost a job in the past 12 weeks), there is a massive job shortage in many parts of the US. >Will this make cleaning silicon valley toilets more difficult and expensive ? Yes. That's good. If you were looking to advance the status of the working class as a final goal, there are several other things you would do first before talking about deregulation, immigration overhauls, or austerity. A short list: * Raise taxes on the rich, and invest the money in infrastructure, schools, and civic life. You want to push up wages, you hire people directly. * Move from the ACA to single-payer health-care. This reduces expenses on bureaucracy and bullshit all around the economy, frees people to pursue entrepreneurship, and frees people to change jobs -- all good for the working class! * Shore up Social Security by lifting the contribution cap. People who make $120k/year are not working-class, and they can afford to pay taxes so that the working class can afford to retire in dignity. The more elderly working-class people can retire, the more jobs are freed up. * Nationalize natural-resource extraction industries, pour the profits into the national coffers, and use those to reduce taxes and increase wages for the working-class people in those industries. This will especially help in industries where competition has pushed wages and prices to near-zero, most employers are conglomerates rather than small proprietorships, but the products remain essential. For example, farming. * Encourage the formation of worker cooperatives over other forms of business. * Strengthen labor unions. Revamp the Taft-Hartley Act to bring back the powers organized labor had in the mid-1930s New Deal period. Pass the Employee Free Choice Act. * Break up all monopolies and oligopolies. This is a convenient alternative to nationalization. * Universal overtime pay for everyone who works more than 40 hours/week, no matter their job role. If they work for a living, they get overtime pay. Your proposals don't sound at all like they're designed to strengthen workers against management and owners. They sound like they're designed to do the opposite: strengthen owners and managers in exploiting labor as cheaply as possible.

candiodari 10y ago
> Raise taxes on the rich, and invest the money in infrastructure, schools, and civic life. You want to push up wages, you hire people directly. Coming from a country with a vastly bigger public sector than the US, allow me to say : no. Thanks. Don't do this. I'm not against public sector jobs, but I am against the government (or large companies supported by the government) taking care of anything that can realistically be done by anyone else. > Shore up Social Security by lifting the contribution cap. People who make $120k/year are not working-class, and they can afford to pay taxes so that the working class can afford to retire in dignity. The more elderly working-class people can retire, the more jobs are freed up. The numbers don't work. And the numbers are positively disastrous starting 10 years or so in the future. This is generally true about your raise taxes ideas. When push comes to shove, money represents value. The only way to provide more goods and services to the elderly is to have everyone work more, produce more. Tax raises cannot affect this, in fact they make it harder. But it would depend on what tax to raise. I think I'd most like either a direct wealth tax, or a land value tax. With serious punishments for cheating with undeclared wealth or colluding with government to lower land value. Move the tax burden away from labour. > Strengthen labor unions. Revamp the Taft-Hartley Act to bring back the powers organized labor had in the mid-1930s New Deal period. Pass the Employee Free Choice Act. I like the idea of strengthening unions. Sounds like a great idea. > Break up all monopolies and oligopolies. This is a convenient alternative to nationalization. Whilst I definitely agree in the case of Comcast, I'm not sure this would work well in general. > Universal overtime pay for everyone who works more than 40 hours/week, no matter their job role. If they work for a living, they get overtime pay. Sounds like a good idea, except perhaps that it's too easy to cheat rules like this.

candiodari 10y ago

> Raise taxes on the rich, and invest the money in infrastructure, schools, and civic life. You want to push up wages, you hire people directly. Coming from a country with a vastly bigger public sector than the US, allow me to say : no. Thanks. Don't do this. I'm not against public sector jobs, but I am against the government (or large companies supported by the government) taking care of anything that can realistically be done by anyone else. > Shore up Social Security by lifting the contribution cap. People who make $120k/year are not working-class, and they can afford to pay taxes so that the working class can afford to retire in dignity. The more elderly working-class people can retire, the more jobs are freed up. The numbers don't work. And the numbers are positively disastrous starting 10 years or so in the future. This is generally true about your raise taxes ideas. When push comes to shove, money represents value. The only way to provide more goods and services to the elderly is to have everyone work more, produce more. Tax raises cannot affect this, in fact they make it harder. But it would depend on what tax to raise. I think I'd most like either a direct wealth tax, or a land value tax. With serious punishments for cheating with undeclared wealth or colluding with government to lower land value. Move the tax burden away from labour. > Strengthen labor unions. Revamp the Taft-Hartley Act to bring back the powers organized labor had in the mid-1930s New Deal period. Pass the Employee Free Choice Act. I like the idea of strengthening unions. Sounds like a great idea. > Break up all monopolies and oligopolies. This is a convenient alternative to nationalization. Whilst I definitely agree in the case of Comcast, I'm not sure this would work well in general. > Universal overtime pay for everyone who works more than 40 hours/week, no matter their job role. If they work for a living, they get overtime pay. Sounds like a good idea, except perhaps that it's too easy to cheat rules like this.