Maybe I'm not understanding this graph. I'm sure you posted it for a reason. Can you explain it to me please?
CEO raises minimum wage to $70000, takes $70000 wage himself until profits are met.
Maybe I'm not understanding this graph. I'm sure you posted it for a reason. Can you explain it to me please?
Your first sentence has me a bit perplexed. Are you saying that if you come from an impoverished area and you're trying to better yourself, unless you're able to make some arbitrary amount yearly, you have no business going to college?
Adding cost of living is not disingenous since it still comes off the bottom line and if you're going to school, depending on load, there's an opportunity cost.
Also, remember, most degrees now-a-days take longer than 4 years as a result of class availability which happens far too often currently.
I was speaking about the population in general. Impoverished young adults already receive pell grants and such that are not available to even poor-ish kids not in poverty. There is opportunity for those who cannot work full time and go to college to essentially receive a full ride scholarship.
Reading this forum for as long as you have you should know I'm a promoter of targeting aid to impoverished communities. If we did that then America would not have much of a poverty problem. We have highly concentrated pockets that skew our #'s.
Those are very basic terms to agree or disagree to. I find the source of the statistical problem and target policy there. You prefer to write that off as "status quo" and prescribe complete overhauls that may or may not help anything. Essentially, you glorify the upsides while not paying attention to the downsides or even aware they exist.
You and dalamaintnuthin keep grinding that raise taxes axe. America spends just as much as a % of GDP as Canada and many other developed nations. Our GDP increases faster and we earn more per capita than most other nations, especially on a PPP basis. This extra income allows us to have a lower safety net, for the most part because most of us can afford our own. Denmark makes just 70% of what Americans do. That extra 30% here provides a lot, on our own and with dignity.
Japanese auto manufacturers are currently receiving an $11,000 per vehicle windfall due to their currency devaluation that started in 2012. What effect do you suppose that has on US auto manufacturers?
It works the same both ways, but in the end beggar thy neighbor policies are no good for anyone so the US carries the burden of the rest of the world engaging in trade wars.
"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the
whole taxes of the General Government are levied... Our revenues
liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus
applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see
his government supported, his children educated, and the face of
his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich
alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his
earnings." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.
whole taxes of the General Government are levied... Our revenues
liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus
applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see
his government supported, his children educated, and the face of
his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich
alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his
earnings." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.
Isn't emboldening your strengths and hiding your weakness something everyone, and everything does? Name me any business that's completely forthcoming with how bad their goods or services can be and I'll be a customer/subscriber for life.
You have two things wrong there.
1. I'm not so much a proponent of tax increases as you think. First we should address tax dodgers. We, the people, need to demonize that more than draft dodgers of the 40's and 50's were. Then, if that hasn't done anything, look at making the government more lean and effective(because yes, I believe the government is bloated as all hell, and ineffective in their efforts). Then, if we're still effed, increase taxes. I point at Norway, and their high tax rate as an example of something that's working, and by a quantifiable measure, yields a happier and more prosperous populace.
2. If everyone is paying into a system, and EXPECTS the government to pay for something, it's not a social faux pas to be using it. It's not something that only poor people do, and therefore there is no dignity lost, as it's something you've paid for as your plan, not something you're getting because you can't afford it otherwise.
I'll take this as Yes.
Which, in one way of thinking, makes us enslaved to the position we're in now.... enslaved by the rest of the world. Enslaved in one hell of a place, but still enslaved. I'm a jackass for complaining about it, I know, but slavery doesn't seem to be our forte. Don't we owe it to ourselves, and the rest of the world, to find an effective exit strategy?
Have you guys studied, for example, how Apple handles their offshore tax strategies? Mind-boggling how little they pay and the lengths they go through..
I believe in paying fair taxes. Hell, I even pay close to 25%.. but I won't pay a lot more than that. Some wealthy corps are paying less than 3% and the dollars they save/don't pay is difference-making.
I believe in paying fair taxes. Hell, I even pay close to 25%.. but I won't pay a lot more than that. Some wealthy corps are paying less than 3% and the dollars they save/don't pay is difference-making.
We do go after tax dodgers, our system is built for it. People will always innovate and find ways to dodge taxes. We should expect us to do as much. The job of government is to seek out the new methods and catch up to tax dodging. We will always have a tax dodging "problem" as Dr. Jones stated. It's an endless cycle of playing catch up.
It would actually help if the public ignored the issue a bit more. Politicizing it creates talking points and forces the two parties to fight against each other. If we ignored it then they would gather bipartisan support in committee and pass fixes quietly.
It's not exactly a one way street. We export inflation, for example.
Our export strategy is to lift the world out of poverty and allow natural adjustments to equalize things out. Export dependent nations do not stay that way forever nor do import nations. It takes decades for things to reverse, however.
GE Makes Apple look reasonable.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/top-10-corporate-tax-avoiders
Skewed, but you get the picture.
NAOS
Well-Known Member
I think the most productive turns in this conversation have come when people have shared their personal experiences, so here goes a dose of mine:
I was born to a single mother who came out of a very small mormon community. While her father had educated himself and chosen a career in pharmacy, both her parents were raised on farms and with the basic tenet that the church will do a huge part of raising your kids. They lived with tons of space and unsupervised time. There were six kids that basically got to do as they please, and figure things out on their own. Most of those lessons were good, but the sexual politics of the place were still suffocating, and when my mom came out the wrong end of those politics she was forced to leave. She moved to Salt Lake City and had me on her own.
We lived check-to-check for years. She was lucky to find steady work (without a day spent at college and without taking high school seriously) doing data entry. She had no pretension that her job contributed to some greater good; it didn't provide any rich meaning for her; but she also knew she couldn't move laterally somewhere else more meaningful and she was absolutely dependent on the amount she was making. Coming home and dealing with a kid after a day like that left little time for any other kind of community or resources for insight/meaning. It was day-to-day, like sitting at a loom.
Eventually she met the man she'd marry and have two more kids with. They met at work. This guy was a mild to moderate alcoholic, always teetering on a bad mood and really possessive of his space. But he was a dependable provider. All he valued was work (and then playing HARD). I mean it: ask him for one spec of insight and it all comes back to keeping your nose to the grindstone and picking yourself up by the bootstraps. He can't give you a single insight into human characters that doesn't quickly reduce itself into a strategy for selling them something. My mother's hardships had eventually turned her into a similar character. They meshed.
The house was like a training field for how to be a dependable laborer. If you strayed from the vision and their punctuality -- as I often did, out chasing pheasants, riding my bike, building forts... you know, kid things -- then you got spanked. When I was 5 they gave me a watch and made me check in with them every hour and on the hour. If I was 5 minutes late, then I had to stay in for the rest of the day and there was some other form of punishment that would happen before the day was through. Like punching a clock.
They were exceedingly proud when I bought my own nintendo with money I'd saved shoveling driveways all winter. I was seven. I'd pick up yard work jobs like this for the rest of my youth. My first job came in the summer of my 11th year: two dollars per hour watering plants at a nursery. I bought a bike. They were absolutely convinced they were teaching me all the values I needed to succeed. Of course, I wasn't really challenged by any of this ****. This was just work I was doing while my mind was on other things, and it always felt weird when we'd have some small "proud of ya" talk after I'd saved enough to purchase something. I mean, the rest of my life was far more interesting... you know, what I was doing/learning with these things. In their mind, they were keeping track of "the rest" by monitoring my grades at school. I received nothing but As until the last quarter of 4th grade. That quarter I had broken my right hand during recess and my teacher gave me an A- in handwriting. My step-dad saw the grade, flew into a rage, and hit me in the face for the first time. Not the last.
This all has a few points. Here's the first: the axes of reward and punishment were all derivative of wage labor. It was all work for work's sake. Nothing more needed to be said. And, here's the second point: the dramas of wage labor, which my parents were so thoroughly steeped in, conform very poorly to the experiences of childhood. I mean, it's sort of a magical thing that adults learn to conform to the values of wage labor, especially on the edge of solvency, but kids obviously have no intuitive grasp of this, nor should they. If kids have any intuitive sense for this stuff, that all comes to the fore when they ask "why?". They know that there is no such thing as a value in itself (no such thing as work for work's sake, end of discussion). The smartest moves I've made as a more mature person are paying attention to that intuitive sense, and valuing my labor and learning way more than I was taught.
***
I could go on and talk about how I paid my own way through college and yada yada yada. I have bootstrapping stories for days. But most of that would occlude my points. Instead, I'd like to let a different light into this discussion: what do we value besides work? and how does the day-to-day reality of work soak up our available time to perfect/deepen these values? what about finding new non-work values?
My parents made the mistake of living a polarized life: WORK VALUES, which then switched over to HOW-TO-RELAX-FROM-WORK-STRESS-BEFORE-GOING-BACK-TO-WORK VALUES. That polarity eventually became unipolar: WORK. There have been a few times in this thread when national pride has surfaced. I'd say if we want to be proud of something, then lets live rich lives outside the dramas of work. And if we can't, then let's do our damnedest to give this to our kids.
tl;dr
EDIT TO ADD:
I don't want this to read as a complaining about my childhood. While it was happening I always felt it was normal. And there were stretches of time when me and my sisters were absolutely spoiled with things.
I was born to a single mother who came out of a very small mormon community. While her father had educated himself and chosen a career in pharmacy, both her parents were raised on farms and with the basic tenet that the church will do a huge part of raising your kids. They lived with tons of space and unsupervised time. There were six kids that basically got to do as they please, and figure things out on their own. Most of those lessons were good, but the sexual politics of the place were still suffocating, and when my mom came out the wrong end of those politics she was forced to leave. She moved to Salt Lake City and had me on her own.
We lived check-to-check for years. She was lucky to find steady work (without a day spent at college and without taking high school seriously) doing data entry. She had no pretension that her job contributed to some greater good; it didn't provide any rich meaning for her; but she also knew she couldn't move laterally somewhere else more meaningful and she was absolutely dependent on the amount she was making. Coming home and dealing with a kid after a day like that left little time for any other kind of community or resources for insight/meaning. It was day-to-day, like sitting at a loom.
Eventually she met the man she'd marry and have two more kids with. They met at work. This guy was a mild to moderate alcoholic, always teetering on a bad mood and really possessive of his space. But he was a dependable provider. All he valued was work (and then playing HARD). I mean it: ask him for one spec of insight and it all comes back to keeping your nose to the grindstone and picking yourself up by the bootstraps. He can't give you a single insight into human characters that doesn't quickly reduce itself into a strategy for selling them something. My mother's hardships had eventually turned her into a similar character. They meshed.
The house was like a training field for how to be a dependable laborer. If you strayed from the vision and their punctuality -- as I often did, out chasing pheasants, riding my bike, building forts... you know, kid things -- then you got spanked. When I was 5 they gave me a watch and made me check in with them every hour and on the hour. If I was 5 minutes late, then I had to stay in for the rest of the day and there was some other form of punishment that would happen before the day was through. Like punching a clock.
They were exceedingly proud when I bought my own nintendo with money I'd saved shoveling driveways all winter. I was seven. I'd pick up yard work jobs like this for the rest of my youth. My first job came in the summer of my 11th year: two dollars per hour watering plants at a nursery. I bought a bike. They were absolutely convinced they were teaching me all the values I needed to succeed. Of course, I wasn't really challenged by any of this ****. This was just work I was doing while my mind was on other things, and it always felt weird when we'd have some small "proud of ya" talk after I'd saved enough to purchase something. I mean, the rest of my life was far more interesting... you know, what I was doing/learning with these things. In their mind, they were keeping track of "the rest" by monitoring my grades at school. I received nothing but As until the last quarter of 4th grade. That quarter I had broken my right hand during recess and my teacher gave me an A- in handwriting. My step-dad saw the grade, flew into a rage, and hit me in the face for the first time. Not the last.
This all has a few points. Here's the first: the axes of reward and punishment were all derivative of wage labor. It was all work for work's sake. Nothing more needed to be said. And, here's the second point: the dramas of wage labor, which my parents were so thoroughly steeped in, conform very poorly to the experiences of childhood. I mean, it's sort of a magical thing that adults learn to conform to the values of wage labor, especially on the edge of solvency, but kids obviously have no intuitive grasp of this, nor should they. If kids have any intuitive sense for this stuff, that all comes to the fore when they ask "why?". They know that there is no such thing as a value in itself (no such thing as work for work's sake, end of discussion). The smartest moves I've made as a more mature person are paying attention to that intuitive sense, and valuing my labor and learning way more than I was taught.
***
I could go on and talk about how I paid my own way through college and yada yada yada. I have bootstrapping stories for days. But most of that would occlude my points. Instead, I'd like to let a different light into this discussion: what do we value besides work? and how does the day-to-day reality of work soak up our available time to perfect/deepen these values? what about finding new non-work values?
My parents made the mistake of living a polarized life: WORK VALUES, which then switched over to HOW-TO-RELAX-FROM-WORK-STRESS-BEFORE-GOING-BACK-TO-WORK VALUES. That polarity eventually became unipolar: WORK. There have been a few times in this thread when national pride has surfaced. I'd say if we want to be proud of something, then lets live rich lives outside the dramas of work. And if we can't, then let's do our damnedest to give this to our kids.
tl;dr
EDIT TO ADD:
I don't want this to read as a complaining about my childhood. While it was happening I always felt it was normal. And there were stretches of time when me and my sisters were absolutely spoiled with things.
Last edited:
Hence demonizing it, not just having the government play catch up. Making it a bigger social gaffe than calling a bill a "black baby" (See Here. Not only make it illegal, and have the government catch them, but make it an unacceptable business practice.. like not hiring LGBT as a whole.
We will way, way, way agree to disagree on that. Compared to other topics, it's like seeing a running Pinto.
I don't doubt that this exists. I even looked the strategies up(still stingy on those links). But I'm not sure it's wise for us to sit at 18 trillion in debt. I also don't believe for a second we do it "because we're good guys".
But this line of thinking, and this action, still chains us somewhere. We've got to either end this cycle, or fully commit and Globalize.