Re: Warren Buffett Don't raise the minimum wage
Getting back to Buffett's comments for a moment, just as businesses large and small don't plan their productivity, marketing and sales efforts around the taxes they pay, neither do working-class households based their budgets or living standards around the Earned Income Tax Credit. We're talking day-to-day/paycheck-to-paycheck/week-to-week/biweekly payday-to-biweekly payday versus a once a year payout (or once a month as he proposes). I'm quite confident in saying that people don't sit around waiting for that annual tax refund before deciding how they're going to have their living needs met. Life just doesn't work that way, folks. That said, I understand what Buffett was trying to get at. Quite simply:
If we're not going to raise the minimum wage, then at least provide a better tax reward for the working poor so that they'll have some form of financial gain where they can invest in their own future.
Because today, fewer and fewer working-class households are earning enough money to conduct similar investments in education, retirement or improving their quality of life even when they do "work hard" and perform meaningful work. Unions have been demonized to the point where few exist today that give voice to the needs of the working-class to keep pace with changes in economic trends. While not a big fan of unions myself, I do understand that they did (and do) serve a purpose where fairness and equality in the workforce is concerned. I understand the concept behind pulling one's self up by his own boot straps, but that concept only works when the common working man has opportunities to invest in having a share of greater success, in obtaining the American Dream - whatever that means to him. Fewer and fewer people are having such opportunities today and that's due in large part because incomes haven't kept pace with the overall cost working-class families were able to make decades ago to invest in their own futures.
* 401k plans have been siphoned off by employers who were suppose to properly manage those funds for their employees as much as themselves. Instead, market risks were taken - sometimes recklessly and working men paid for it.
* Social Security has been raided for so long it's highly doubtful that which the working man has paid into over the course of his working life -- 20-30 years -- won't be their throughout his golden years and even if it is, the payout likely won't keep up with inflation.
And these are just two examples of how direct investments made by the working man have been eroded. Add to that salaries having remained flat for nearly four decades (statistically), and it's no wonder working-class households can't afford to pay for a college education for their child(dren)...or themselves to get retrained to obtain that better paying job so that they can do better for themselves and their family.
I wonder, how many of you watched the
President's conversation on poverty from about a week ago held at Georgetown University? While I took issue with some of President Obama's cynical comments and his purposeful skirting of "truthiness" on one or two issues, I thought the panel hit the mark on so many levels when they addressed not only how so many Americans have fallen into poverty over the years, but why the investments in "people" are no longer their (due in large part to a lack of connectivity one to another) and solutions to resolve the problem. If you haven't watched the video, I'd encourage you to do so, but in so doing please take off the partisan blinders and just listen with an open mind to what's being said.