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>It’s not the employers responsibility to subsidize below-median earners, because they aren’t the ones collecting the surplus from the above-median earners. Th

by geggam 7y ago

>It’s not the employers responsibility to subsidize below-median earners, because they aren’t the ones collecting the surplus from the above-median earners. This I disagree with emphatically. The empoyers benefit from the social structure supported by tax dollars. Could you imagine a starting a business in the wilderness with no transportation, utilities or other community supported infrastructure ? Those companies also put the most wear and tear on the infrastructure.

zaroth 7y ago
I’m not following the logic. Obviously we build infrastructure so that we can have an economy. You don’t get a $20 trillion economy without it. Now we have the infrastructure and the economy, from which the government collects ~$6.5 trillion each year. Companies hire people and pay them for the jobs they perform. In general, more valuable jobs pay higher salaries. The whole thing is a virtuous cycle. Without companies paying salaries, no consumers are buying products from those companies, and so on. In the end, all of the $6.5 trillion comes from people living here. Whether it’s payroll taxes, income taxes, excise taxes, business profit taxes, usage fees,... it’s people paying these taxes out of their personal bank account, or out of a corporate bank account which is in turn owned by the shareholders of that company. Generally increasing the tax rate on a company just increases the price of that conpany’s goods on the market. The customers of the company pay, or the company goes out of business. The infrastructure is there so that companies can use it to hire employees, sell goods & services provided by their employees, grow the economy, increase payroll, and generate more tax revenue. The tax structure is designed around redistribution of wealth. It does not follow that therefore somehow employers are underpaying their employees. There have been cases where employers have colluded to keep wages below market. The government should prosecute those cases and fine those companies. And like I said, if we want a minimum wage, that’s fine, but what it’s setting is a floor on the marginal value of an employee that is hireable, and anyone below that threshold becomes un-hireable.

by geggam 7y ago

zaroth 7y ago

I’m not following the logic. Obviously we build infrastructure so that we can have an economy. You don’t get a $20 trillion economy without it. Now we have the infrastructure and the economy, from which the government collects ~$6.5 trillion each year. Companies hire people and pay them for the jobs they perform. In general, more valuable jobs pay higher salaries. The whole thing is a virtuous cycle. Without companies paying salaries, no consumers are buying products from those companies, and so on. In the end, all of the $6.5 trillion comes from people living here. Whether it’s payroll taxes, income taxes, excise taxes, business profit taxes, usage fees,... it’s people paying these taxes out of their personal bank account, or out of a corporate bank account which is in turn owned by the shareholders of that company. Generally increasing the tax rate on a company just increases the price of that conpany’s goods on the market. The customers of the company pay, or the company goes out of business. The infrastructure is there so that companies can use it to hire employees, sell goods & services provided by their employees, grow the economy, increase payroll, and generate more tax revenue. The tax structure is designed around redistribution of wealth. It does not follow that therefore somehow employers are underpaying their employees. There have been cases where employers have colluded to keep wages below market. The government should prosecute those cases and fine those companies. And like I said, if we want a minimum wage, that’s fine, but what it’s setting is a floor on the marginal value of an employee that is hireable, and anyone below that threshold becomes un-hireable.