US Politics : Biden 100 days edition

[greg0205]

Raising taxes has almost universally resulted in lower economic growth and making everyone poorer. You don't tax people into prosperity, doesn't work. Unless you have a specific argument for why "this time it'll be different" as you say.

No. Just no.

The argument that income tax cuts raise growth is repeated so often that it is sometimes taken as gospel. However, theory, evidence, and simulation studies tell a different and more complicated story. Tax cuts offer the potential to raise economic growth by improving incentives to work, save, and invest. But they also create income effects that reduce the need to engage
in productive economic activity, and they may subsidize old capital, which provides windfall gains to asset holders that undermine incentives for new activity. In addition, tax cuts as a stand-alone policy (that is, not accompanied by spending cuts) will typically raise the federal budget deficit. The increase in the deficit will reduce national saving—and with it, the capital stock owned by Americans and future national income—and raise interest rates, which will negatively affect investment. The net effect of the tax cuts on growth is thus theoretically uncertain and depends on both the structure of the tax cut itself and the timing and structure of its financing.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/09_Effects_Income_Tax_Changes_Economic_Growth_Gale_Samwick.pdf

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

The pandemic showed that fast food workers are exploited and mistreated by customers.

Line cooks in the USA suffered one of the highest COVID rates.

Line cooks have the highest risk of dying during pandemic, plus other riskiest jobs: study

Line cooks had a 60% increase in mortality associated with the pandemic, compared to a 22% increase overall.

www.cnbc.com

Fast food workers are fed up.

Think about why fast-food workers had one of the highest covid-19 rates (HINT: very little to do with being "mistreated" by bosses).

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

They tried to make the argument that employers will just use robots if workers don't want to accept indentured servitude

Flipping burgers is a low-wage job for a reason - basically anyone can do it. Why would you expect someone flipping burgers to have a "comfortable" or middle-class lifestyle? To be brutally honest, you are not adding much value to society, hence the low wages. Like, duh. Flipping burgers should only be a job for the youth to earn some extra pocket money, not some 30-year-old trying to raise a family.

 

[cerebus]

Flipping burgers is a low-wage job for a reason - basically anyone can do it. Why would you expect someone flipping burgers to have a "comfortable" or middle-class lifestyle? To be brutally honest, you are not adding much value to society, hence the low wages. Like, duh.

You aren't making a very good case for why anyone would want to continue flipping burgers for a living

 

[Brenden_E]

You aren't making a very good case for why anyone would want to continue flipping burgers for a living

People don't do crap jobs because they have a choice. These people are usually poor at organizing themselves and as a result, have poor skills that aren't worth much in the marketplace.

Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes.

 

[greg0205]

Hey Siri, what is privilege?

People don't do crap jobs because they have a choice. These people are usually poor at organizing themselves and as a result, have poor skills that aren't worth much in the marketplace.

Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes.

 

[Unhappy438]

Don't you worry your precious progressive head on this. Soon the US won't have any of those evil poverty exploiters left.

Sounds like some nice corporate propaganda to threaten the rubes so that they continue with their servitude.

 

[konfab]

People don't do crap jobs because they have a choice. These people are usually poor at organizing themselves and as a result, have poor skills that aren't worth much in the marketplace.

Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes.

There are people who do come from a bad background. Having a job and earning an income for oneself is the best way to get out of that situation.

Despite the pure intentions of our communist friends in this thread, the effects of minimum wage simply makes everyone who cannot provide more than the minimum wage's worth of value to an employer unemployed. This is why minimum wages were strongly pushed by other racists in history:

Similarly, white supremacist groups in South Africa under apartheid pushed for minimum wage laws as a way to reduce black participation in the labor force. The overtly racist Mine Workers Union, for example, demanded a minimum wage to protect their dominance in the workplace and openly stated: ‘The real point on is that whites have been ousted by coloured labour. It is not because a man is white or coloured, but owing to the fact that the latter is cheap … when that [minimum wage] is introduced we believe that most of the difficulties in regard to the coloured question will automatically drop out.’ Similarly, the South African Wage Board, which set minimum wages in different sectors of that country’s economy beginning in 1925, ‘concentrated its wage determinations only on those areas of industry where nonwhites were in competition with whites, and made no wage determinations in areas where there was no such competition.’

https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-minimum-wages-encourage-discrimination

 

[Brenden_E]

No. Just no.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/09_Effects_Income_Tax_Changes_Economic_Growth_Gale_Samwick.pdf

You post a link with an academic claiming one thing, and I can post 10 more that claim the opposite.

Whereas it's exceptionally easy to answer the question. Will you keep working past a certain point if the government annexes all your gains past point x?

And would you stay in a country that takes an unusually large chunk of your wealth when there are countries that do not?

Both of these are obvious, and it's why wealth consistently moves toward countries where taxes are fair across the board. You live in South Africa, right? You have way more than the rest and are exceptionally wealthy in comparison. How does an 80-90% tax rate sound? How about you share some of that privilege?

SA is a great example of wealth exodus when taxes are unfairly high.

 

[buka001]

Raising taxes has almost universally resulted in lower economic growth and making everyone poorer. You don't tax people into prosperity, doesn't work. Unless you have a specific argument for why "this time it'll be different" as you say.

Highest marginal tax rate in the USA from 1944 to 1951 was 91%.

Over that time the GDP in the US was growing at over 8%.

It seems that this fact contradicts your statement.

 

[buka001]

Think about why fast-food workers had one of the highest covid-19 rates (HINT: very little to do with being "mistreated" by bosses).

Proximity.

Did their bosses look at ways of improving the work conditions to mitigate this? Or was the cost of implementation a barrier for them?

Did customers respect the health and wellbeing of the fast food workers by wearing masks?

Geeeeee I wonder why they are fed up. A true mystery of our age!

 

[greg0205]

You post a link with an academic claiming one thing, and I can post 10 more that claim the opposite.

Whereas it's exceptionally easy to answer the question. Will you keep working past a certain point if the government annexes all your gains past point x?

And would you stay in a country that takes an unusually large chunk of your wealth when there are countries that do not?

Both of these are obvious, and it's why wealth consistently moves toward countries where taxes are fair across the board. You live in South Africa, right? You have way more than the rest and are exceptionally wealthy in comparison. How does an 80-90% tax rate sound? How about you share some of that privilege?

SA is a great example of wealth exodus when taxes are unfairly high.

Don't let that dissonance get you down then, Brenden.

The holy-capitalist machine need more devout meat to grind, so as you were, pal.

 

[buka001]

People don't do crap jobs because they have a choice. These people are usually poor at organizing themselves and as a result, have poor skills that aren't worth much in the marketplace.

Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes.

A full living embodiment of this meme.

 

[lumeer]

The Republican Party seems to have no direction. I don't understand their fealty to a one-term president with unprecedented low job approval ratings who lost the popular vote twice and under whose leadership they lost both the House and Senate.

 

[Brenden_E]

Don't let that dissonance get you down then, Brenden.

The holy-capitalist machine need more devout meat to grind, so as you were, pal.

So do you disagree that 80-90% tax on you is too high? I mean you max 100x more than the rest of the 90% in the country. Why not?

I suspect you are for high taxes as long as you aren't the one being taxed to death.

 

[lumeer]

Everything that a person does is motivated by either love or fear. Those who oppose minimum wage are reacting through fear.

 

[buka001]

So do you disagree that 80-90% tax on you is too high? I mean you max 100x more than the rest of the 90% in the country. Why not?

I suspect you are for high taxes as long as you aren't the one being taxed to death.

In 1950, the statutory tax rate was 42%. The highest marginal tax rate was 91%.

The GDP grew at 8.4% that year.

 

[AlmightyBender]

Hey Siri, what is privilege?

Hey Siri, what is supremacy (white, classist, pick you own flavour)?

Konfab of all people hinted at the true dynamics going on underneath here:

One of the better ways you can judge a society is how it treats people who it doesn't want in it.

My judgement based on what these folks have presented of themselves today: savage, unfeeling, uncaring neanderthals. A direct threat to the stability of the society I live in.

 

[greg0205]

Hey Siri, what is a marginal tax rate?

So do you disagree that 80-90% tax on you is too high? I mean you max 100x more than the rest of the 90% in the country. Why not?

I suspect you are for high taxes as long as you aren't the one being taxed to death.

This is a red herring.

Taxes aren't increasing on folks earning less than $400k and the marginal rate applies to income *over* $400k where the rate goes from 37% to 39,6%. A level not seen since...

/checks notes

2017

The absolute horror!!!

And no, I've been a taxpayer for 60% of my life and it's never bothered me.

 

[cerebus]

Beggars can't be choosers, as the saying goes.

Turns out they can. Or they can use a year off work to re-skill, or adjust the priorities in their lives. And just as it should happen in a capitalistic marketplace, companies will need to adapt to new employee requirements, or suffer the loss of their serfs.

The Republican Party seems to have no direction. I don't understand their fealty to a one-term president with unprecedented low job approval ratings who lost the popular vote twice and under whose leadership they lost both the House and Senate.

It's 100% a cult

GOP Leadership Reportedly Hid Trump's Weak Numbers At Recent Retreats

Internal data reveal that voters in "core districts" have unfavorable views of Trump — but rank-and-file Republicans don't want to hear it.

www.huffpost.com