5 ms·

Passing costs on the client isn't something you can just do. Many products and services have elastic demand. Fast food, for example, has been has found it very

Passing costs on the client isn't something you can just do. Many products and services have elastic demand. Fast food, for example, has been has found it very hard to raise away from their dollar menu pricing. Businesses don't have to cut jobs either. They just have to move them. Edit2: Costumers can also shift to lower cost alternatives. Online retailers have less overhead and lower labor costs. If you make Walmart more expensive than Amazon, Walmart will shutter stores laying massive numbers of people off. Edit: Some economists have argued that past raises in min wage have not made noticeable impacts in employment. But this is way outsides of a normal rise in minimum wage. Going to 9 or 10 makes a lot sense. 15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
>15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work. So be it. Can't find a job that offers a living wage? We provide a social safety net and increase taxes on the wealthy to pay for it. Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate. Tax rates are the lowest they've been in the history of the US, and all we've seen is a disgusting level of income equality.
- JonFish85 11y ago
  "Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate." Great. Then what? Everyone currently making over $1m a year will cut their salary to $1m. Then you gotta start taxing the upper middle class -- what rate do you want to tax people making over $500k? $250k? $100k? Those are the ones that will pay for this program. As much as you want to tax "the wealthy", there really aren't enough wealthy people to pay for everything, and it comes down to how much you want to tax the moderately successful person who is trying to pay for their 2 kids' college expenses while saving to have a retirement.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > Great. Then what? Everyone currently making over $1m a year will cut their salary to $1m. Do wealthy individuals in other countries with a heavier tax burden (Europe, Scandinavia to be specific) do this? Would be nice to see evidence of this behavior before outright dismissing raising taxes.
    - JonFish85 11y ago
      If the tax rate is 95%, a company would have to pay someone a $21 million dollar salary to pay that person $2m. I suspect that no company would do such a thing, as it's just throwing money away.
      - bryanlarsen 11y ago
        5% of a very large number is still a large number. Very few people are going to say "don't give me that extra $20 million because the government will take $19 million." $1 million is still a lot of money. And of course, there are lots of deductions. You could give that $20 million to a charity and the government would get none of it. You wouldn't get any either, but you could certainly get a lot of indirect value out of giving away $20M.
        JonFish85 11y ago
        What company is going to pay that? It's just silly. If you felt that a CEO/athlete/whatever was worth $30m a year, you'd have to pay that person $581 million dollars. They'd find some other way, that money wouldn't go to the government.
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        > They'd find some other way, that money wouldn't go to the government. And so we keep closing loopholes.
    - caseysoftware 11y ago
      Yes. Google "millionaires leaving X" and see what the autosuggestions are for X and choose one. While some are US states - NY, Maryland, etc - most are countries. Here's the top couple using France: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/07/23/flight-of-millionaires-reasons-to-give-thanks-for-one-percent-taxes/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/07/23/flight-o... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-75percent-supertax http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-75...
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >As much as you want to tax "the wealthy", there really aren't enough wealthy people to pay for everything, The point isn't to make them pay for everything. The point of taxing them is to mute the inflationary effect of letting them keep their money. The primary noticeable effect of taxing the wealthy on the rest of us would be to make property more affordable once again.
    - JonFish85 11y ago
      "The point of taxing them is to mute the inflationary effect of letting them keep their money." What? How is it inflationary to let "the wealthy" keep their money vs. artificially raising the wages of the minimum wage workers? "The primary noticeable effect of taxing the wealthy on the rest of us would be to make property more affordable once again." Also--what? Being that we're on Hacker News, the majority of people here are probably making $100k+ a year and are solidly in the top 10% of wage-earners in the country. We're the ones driving up housing prices on a macro scale across the country, not the few people that have hundreds of millions to spend.
      - crdoconnor 11y ago
        >What? How is it inflationary to let "the wealthy" keep their money Because they spend it. >We're the ones driving up housing prices on a macro scale across the country, not the few people that have hundreds of millions to spend. Both are. The few people with hundreds of millions of dollars will buy large properties in central locations in multiple cities, shrinking the available housing stock for the rest of us.
        JonFish85 11y ago
        "Because they spend it." So does everyone, they just spend it differently. Bill Gates' money isn't sitting in a checking account, it's in stock certificates. High net-worth people don't put money under their mattresses, they spend it, albeit in different ways. I don't know how to compare consumer spending vs. investments, so I can't say if one is "better" than another, but that money isn't just sitting in bank accounts. Available housing stock on the whole is just fine in the US. Sure, you and I probably can't afford to live on Park Avenue or overlooking Central Park, but that's because those properties attract worldwide money. We're not there yet. San Francisco's housing problems aren't as simple as "some people have money". Taking money away from people isn't going to solve this.
- bko 11y ago
  A job is not just a job to most people. It's their livelihood and purpose in life. It's very cruel to deny someone their an opportunity to be independent of the state
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    That is American/Japanese nonsense. You don't have to be defined by your work.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Therapy can be provided through universal healthcare if you'd like. What work would you like to make up for people when technology has replaced everyone's work? Salespeople? Digging ditches and filling them back in?
    - bko 11y ago
      I don't know what work people will be doing when technology replaces everyone's work. It's also true that were I around in 1880 I would not know what roughly half of the US population who were then farmers would be doing after automation. For those new-age luddites who are generally afraid of technology destroying jobs, why stop at tomorrow's technologies? Why not outlaw washing machines? Surely elimination of washing machines would bring back a lot of jobs. Or let's outlaw productivity tools like spreadsheets. If people were forced to do everything by hand, surely this would create a lot of jobs. Would you propose we eliminate any of today's technology? Why is it always that today's technologies are OK but not tomorrow's? Those will surely be our downfall. Ironically, increasing the cost of human capital through a minimum wage will surely hasten the replacement of human capital by machines.
- rhino369 11y ago
  >Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate. That is just a bad plan. You are essentially outlawing income over a million. If you didn't apply it to capital gains, you are just fucking over lawyers, bankers, consultants, and CEOs. It would actually lower tax revenue. Because all that money that is getting taxed over a million a year would disappear. And the truly mega rich would actually be better off. No more having to pay high priced lawyers, bankers, and CEOs. If you tried to place that restriction on capital gains, everyone ounce of capital in the this country would flee.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I intend to tax capital gains just as high as well, unless its in a retirement account. > If you tried to place that restriction on capital gains, everyone ounce of capital in the this country would flee. Feel free to take your capital out of the country. It'll be taxed with an expatriation tax. Attempting to evade the tax will allow the IRS to confiscate assets anywhere in the world the US has a tax treaty with (ie everywhere).
    - rhino369 11y ago
      You realize what would happen right? The rich would divest from all their investments permanently. They'd sell all their assets foreigners[1] who aren't subject to the tax. There is no point risking losing your investment if taxes will take any gain. It fucks the expected value of investment. Would you take a bet on a coin flip, if when you lost you paid a dollar, but when you won you'd get a nickle. Banks would implode. The credit market would stop. Any business survive on a line of credit would just fail immediately. Best case scenario, you'd just replace American rich for foreign rich. [1] if you tried to tax foreign capital gains on American assets, you'd just destroy the entire economy. There would be huge lack of capital. Your plan is insanity. Edit: And some country would be creative and end tax treaties with the US just to get a couple trillion of capital flowing through their economy.
- TheGrimDerp1 11y ago
  Or maybe just a fair flat tax on all new goods and all services at ~8%. Everybody always pays the same percentage: tourists, bajillionaires, hobos, you name it.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Flat taxes are regressive. They're simple, but they don't work. You consider it "fair" because everyone pays the same. Not everyone should pay the same tax. Some people should pay more, some less.
    - seanflyon 11y ago
      Define "regressive" because when I google it I get "(of a tax) taking a proportionally greater amount from those on lower incomes". Are you talking about the wealthy having greater ability to find tax loopholes or do define "regressive" as everyone paying the same proportion of their income?
      - jon-wood 11y ago
        8% is going to hurt at different levels depending how much you have to spare - compare the pain caused by losing $8 of the $100 you have for the week to the $800 of $8000 for the week. One of those people is going to have to make real sacrifices, and it won't be the guy with $7200 left over.
      - velik_m 11y ago
        Going from 1000 USD to 900 USD hurts a lot more than going from 1 million to 900k.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work. Like it did in Australia?
- rhino369 11y ago
  But you also have to compare PPP, cost of living, and unemployment rates. Australia's PPP adjusted minimum wage is 10.50 USD. It's very possible that Australia's min doesn't hurt employment and it would in the USA. It's also plausible that Australia's recent increase in employment (while US is hitting post 2008 lows) is partially caused by too high of a minimum wage.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >It's very possible that Australia's min doesn't hurt employment and it would in the USA. Much as the National Restaurant Association, Cato and American Enterprise Institute would love for us to believe this, it just isn't true. It would hurt profits, though, and a lot of those restaurants paying minimum wage would go out of business (and be replaced by other restaurants).
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Costumers can also shift to lower cost alternatives. Online retailers have less overhead and lower labor costs. If you make Walmart more expensive than Amazon, Walmart will shutter stores laying massive numbers of people off. Yes, that's a good reason why we shouldn't subsidize capital intensive businesses over labor intensive business by taxing capital income less than "normal" income and then adopting additional taxes on labor income on top of normal income taxes, but should instead treat all income alike for tax purposes without regard to source (and also, therefore, for benefit-eligibility purposes for past-income-qualified benefits for which dedicated taxes on income are taken to fund benefits.) > But this is way outsides of a normal rise in minimum wage. Not really. The article claims that $12 in 2020 would bring it above its 1968 peak level in inflation adjusted terms (the 1968 peak level, $1.60, is about $10.97 now, so $12 now would be a little bit ahead of it, with 2% annual inflation from now to 2020, $12 would be almost exactly the 1968 peak level.) So, a $15/hr. federal minimum wage in 2020 would be a higher-than-historical minimum wage, but not by a large margin. And a little-over-doubling from 2009 to 2020 wouldn't be an unprecedented jump over an 11 year period, either (from 1945 to 1956 it got a 2.5 multiple from $0.40 to $1.00 -- and over 12 years, from 1938 to 1950 -- it tripled from $0.25 to $0.75.)

toomuchtodo 11y ago

>15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work. So be it. Can't find a job that offers a living wage? We provide a social safety net and increase taxes on the wealthy to pay for it. Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate. Tax rates are the lowest they've been in the history of the US, and all we've seen is a disgusting level of income equality.

JonFish85 11y ago
"Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate." Great. Then what? Everyone currently making over $1m a year will cut their salary to $1m. Then you gotta start taxing the upper middle class -- what rate do you want to tax people making over $500k? $250k? $100k? Those are the ones that will pay for this program. As much as you want to tax "the wealthy", there really aren't enough wealthy people to pay for everything, and it comes down to how much you want to tax the moderately successful person who is trying to pay for their 2 kids' college expenses while saving to have a retirement.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > Great. Then what? Everyone currently making over $1m a year will cut their salary to $1m. Do wealthy individuals in other countries with a heavier tax burden (Europe, Scandinavia to be specific) do this? Would be nice to see evidence of this behavior before outright dismissing raising taxes.
  - JonFish85 11y ago
    If the tax rate is 95%, a company would have to pay someone a $21 million dollar salary to pay that person $2m. I suspect that no company would do such a thing, as it's just throwing money away.
    - bryanlarsen 11y ago
      5% of a very large number is still a large number. Very few people are going to say "don't give me that extra $20 million because the government will take $19 million." $1 million is still a lot of money. And of course, there are lots of deductions. You could give that $20 million to a charity and the government would get none of it. You wouldn't get any either, but you could certainly get a lot of indirect value out of giving away $20M.
      - JonFish85 11y ago
        What company is going to pay that? It's just silly. If you felt that a CEO/athlete/whatever was worth $30m a year, you'd have to pay that person $581 million dollars. They'd find some other way, that money wouldn't go to the government.
        toomuchtodo 11y ago
        > They'd find some other way, that money wouldn't go to the government. And so we keep closing loopholes.
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    Yes. Google "millionaires leaving X" and see what the autosuggestions are for X and choose one. While some are US states - NY, Maryland, etc - most are countries. Here's the top couple using France: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/07/23/flight-of-millionaires-reasons-to-give-thanks-for-one-percent-taxes/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/07/23/flight-o... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-75percent-supertax http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-75...
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >As much as you want to tax "the wealthy", there really aren't enough wealthy people to pay for everything, The point isn't to make them pay for everything. The point of taxing them is to mute the inflationary effect of letting them keep their money. The primary noticeable effect of taxing the wealthy on the rest of us would be to make property more affordable once again.
  - JonFish85 11y ago
    "The point of taxing them is to mute the inflationary effect of letting them keep their money." What? How is it inflationary to let "the wealthy" keep their money vs. artificially raising the wages of the minimum wage workers? "The primary noticeable effect of taxing the wealthy on the rest of us would be to make property more affordable once again." Also--what? Being that we're on Hacker News, the majority of people here are probably making $100k+ a year and are solidly in the top 10% of wage-earners in the country. We're the ones driving up housing prices on a macro scale across the country, not the few people that have hundreds of millions to spend.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      >What? How is it inflationary to let "the wealthy" keep their money Because they spend it. >We're the ones driving up housing prices on a macro scale across the country, not the few people that have hundreds of millions to spend. Both are. The few people with hundreds of millions of dollars will buy large properties in central locations in multiple cities, shrinking the available housing stock for the rest of us.
      - JonFish85 11y ago
        "Because they spend it." So does everyone, they just spend it differently. Bill Gates' money isn't sitting in a checking account, it's in stock certificates. High net-worth people don't put money under their mattresses, they spend it, albeit in different ways. I don't know how to compare consumer spending vs. investments, so I can't say if one is "better" than another, but that money isn't just sitting in bank accounts. Available housing stock on the whole is just fine in the US. Sure, you and I probably can't afford to live on Park Avenue or overlooking Central Park, but that's because those properties attract worldwide money. We're not there yet. San Francisco's housing problems aren't as simple as "some people have money". Taking money away from people isn't going to solve this.
bko 11y ago
A job is not just a job to most people. It's their livelihood and purpose in life. It's very cruel to deny someone their an opportunity to be independent of the state
- littletimmy 11y ago
  That is American/Japanese nonsense. You don't have to be defined by your work.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Therapy can be provided through universal healthcare if you'd like. What work would you like to make up for people when technology has replaced everyone's work? Salespeople? Digging ditches and filling them back in?
  - bko 11y ago
    I don't know what work people will be doing when technology replaces everyone's work. It's also true that were I around in 1880 I would not know what roughly half of the US population who were then farmers would be doing after automation. For those new-age luddites who are generally afraid of technology destroying jobs, why stop at tomorrow's technologies? Why not outlaw washing machines? Surely elimination of washing machines would bring back a lot of jobs. Or let's outlaw productivity tools like spreadsheets. If people were forced to do everything by hand, surely this would create a lot of jobs. Would you propose we eliminate any of today's technology? Why is it always that today's technologies are OK but not tomorrow's? Those will surely be our downfall. Ironically, increasing the cost of human capital through a minimum wage will surely hasten the replacement of human capital by machines.
rhino369 11y ago
>Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate. That is just a bad plan. You are essentially outlawing income over a million. If you didn't apply it to capital gains, you are just fucking over lawyers, bankers, consultants, and CEOs. It would actually lower tax revenue. Because all that money that is getting taxed over a million a year would disappear. And the truly mega rich would actually be better off. No more having to pay high priced lawyers, bankers, and CEOs. If you tried to place that restriction on capital gains, everyone ounce of capital in the this country would flee.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I intend to tax capital gains just as high as well, unless its in a retirement account. > If you tried to place that restriction on capital gains, everyone ounce of capital in the this country would flee. Feel free to take your capital out of the country. It'll be taxed with an expatriation tax. Attempting to evade the tax will allow the IRS to confiscate assets anywhere in the world the US has a tax treaty with (ie everywhere).
  - rhino369 11y ago
    You realize what would happen right? The rich would divest from all their investments permanently. They'd sell all their assets foreigners[1] who aren't subject to the tax. There is no point risking losing your investment if taxes will take any gain. It fucks the expected value of investment. Would you take a bet on a coin flip, if when you lost you paid a dollar, but when you won you'd get a nickle. Banks would implode. The credit market would stop. Any business survive on a line of credit would just fail immediately. Best case scenario, you'd just replace American rich for foreign rich. [1] if you tried to tax foreign capital gains on American assets, you'd just destroy the entire economy. There would be huge lack of capital. Your plan is insanity. Edit: And some country would be creative and end tax treaties with the US just to get a couple trillion of capital flowing through their economy.
TheGrimDerp1 11y ago
Or maybe just a fair flat tax on all new goods and all services at ~8%. Everybody always pays the same percentage: tourists, bajillionaires, hobos, you name it.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Flat taxes are regressive. They're simple, but they don't work. You consider it "fair" because everyone pays the same. Not everyone should pay the same tax. Some people should pay more, some less.
  - seanflyon 11y ago
    Define "regressive" because when I google it I get "(of a tax) taking a proportionally greater amount from those on lower incomes". Are you talking about the wealthy having greater ability to find tax loopholes or do define "regressive" as everyone paying the same proportion of their income?
    - jon-wood 11y ago
      8% is going to hurt at different levels depending how much you have to spare - compare the pain caused by losing $8 of the $100 you have for the week to the $800 of $8000 for the week. One of those people is going to have to make real sacrifices, and it won't be the guy with $7200 left over.
    - velik_m 11y ago
      Going from 1000 USD to 900 USD hurts a lot more than going from 1 million to 900k.

crdoconnor 11y ago

>15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work. Like it did in Australia?

rhino369 11y ago
But you also have to compare PPP, cost of living, and unemployment rates. Australia's PPP adjusted minimum wage is 10.50 USD. It's very possible that Australia's min doesn't hurt employment and it would in the USA. It's also plausible that Australia's recent increase in employment (while US is hitting post 2008 lows) is partially caused by too high of a minimum wage.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >It's very possible that Australia's min doesn't hurt employment and it would in the USA. Much as the National Restaurant Association, Cato and American Enterprise Institute would love for us to believe this, it just isn't true. It would hurt profits, though, and a lot of those restaurants paying minimum wage would go out of business (and be replaced by other restaurants).

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Costumers can also shift to lower cost alternatives. Online retailers have less overhead and lower labor costs. If you make Walmart more expensive than Amazon, Walmart will shutter stores laying massive numbers of people off. Yes, that's a good reason why we shouldn't subsidize capital intensive businesses over labor intensive business by taxing capital income less than "normal" income and then adopting additional taxes on labor income on top of normal income taxes, but should instead treat all income alike for tax purposes without regard to source (and also, therefore, for benefit-eligibility purposes for past-income-qualified benefits for which dedicated taxes on income are taken to fund benefits.) > But this is way outsides of a normal rise in minimum wage. Not really. The article claims that $12 in 2020 would bring it above its 1968 peak level in inflation adjusted terms (the 1968 peak level, $1.60, is about $10.97 now, so $12 now would be a little bit ahead of it, with 2% annual inflation from now to 2020, $12 would be almost exactly the 1968 peak level.) So, a $15/hr. federal minimum wage in 2020 would be a higher-than-historical minimum wage, but not by a large margin. And a little-over-doubling from 2009 to 2020 wouldn't be an unprecedented jump over an 11 year period, either (from 1945 to 1956 it got a 2.5 multiple from $0.40 to $1.00 -- and over 12 years, from 1938 to 1950 -- it tripled from $0.25 to $0.75.)