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Income tax; Flat tax; National Sales tax; No tax

Which do you prefer:

  • Total voters
    133
Harry Guerrilla said:
Not entirely true, the tax rates for middle and lower income brackets are less than for higher earners.
Not to mention a lot of the deductions and refundable credits they get.
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How does that equal to no contribution which was what your previous claim was?
You'd be 100% right in comparison to the rich that earn all their money from long term capital gains though.

One is on Income and the other is on consumption, the fair tax isn't good in my mind because there is still a lot of bureaucracy involved.
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The FairTax is a consumption tax in the form of a national retail sales tax on new goods and services.

An income tax and a consumption tax can have different effects.
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Exactly, consumption tax would be less onerous on the wealthy and more onerous on the middle class.
Not entirely no, Medicare which is underfunded....
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That is one of the things the health care reform will address by reducing Medicare/Medicaid waste and fraud.

And don't forget about the taxpayers trillion dollar transfer of wealth to the rich during the bailouts.
 
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Harry Guerrilla said:
The social engineering I'm referring to is doing stuff to and for people.

Giving them things like no cost medical benefits, food stamps etc.
It can change a person from productive to dependent.
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Oh, we are speaking of the poor now rather than the middle class? OK, I suggest we start by paying a living wage to full time workers, so working people do not have to rely on the government for subsistence.
 
Catawba said:
Oh, we are speaking of the poor now rather than the middle class? OK, I suggest we start by paying a living wage to full time workers, so working people do not have to rely on the government for subsistence.
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That would be smart with 10%+ unemployment.
JC-LOL.gif
 
ptif219 said:
That would be smart with 10%+ unemployment.
JC-LOL.gif
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living wages are probably the smartest thing to do in a recession. its to make sure that people have the means to achieve a decent standard of living when the economic climate for traditionally lower strata jobs is poor.
 
Sure. Slap on another disincentive to hiring. That'll help unemployment.
 
Harshaw said:
Sure. Slap on another disincentive to hiring. That'll help unemployment.
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money is a small price to pay for the welfare of the poor
 
Z3n said:
money is a small price to pay for the welfare of the poor
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You suppress hiring, and there going to be a lot more poor.
 
Z3n said:
explain to me how a living wage surpresses hiring.
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:confused:

You raise the cost of employing people, employers do less of it. Simple math. You buy less of anything that gets more expensive.
 
Harshaw said:
Sure. Slap on another disincentive to hiring. That'll help unemployment.
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Its never been shown to be a disincentive to hiring. But it has been shown that the Bush tax cuts led to a greater disparity between the upper and lower classes.
 
Catawba said:
Its never been shown to be a disincentive to hiring.
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As someone who hires people, I can tell you for a fact that it does. And these are extraordinary times where every cent of the bottom line matters. If you can eke out a budget to hire two people and then suddenly the cost for both go up and outside your budget, you end up hiring one.

As I said above -- simple math. Not to mention all the other stressors and uncertainty hindering hiring right now.


But it has been shown that the Bush tax cuts led to a greater disparity between the upper and lower classes.
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Good for you. Has nothing to do with anything I said.
 
Harshaw said:
:confused:

You raise the cost of employing people, employers do less of it. Simple math. You buy less of anything that gets more expensive.
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Workers are NOT a commodity to be bought and sold.
 
Z3n said:
explain to me how a living wage surpresses hiring.
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Say I run a store. I need people to work the cash register and the floor. In order to turn a profit, I can only afford to spend $28/hour on employees. If I pay minimum wage, which is $7/hour, I can hire 4 people to work fulltime. If the minimum wage is set at $14/hour because that's a "living wage," then I can only hire 2 people to work fulltime. Thus, two people who I would have gladly paid and who gladly would have worked for me are unemployed.
 
Z3n said:
Workers are NOT a commodity to be bought and sold.
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Labor is absolutely a commodity that's bought and sold.
 
Harshaw said:
:confused:

You raise the cost of employing people, employers do less of it. Simple math. You buy less of anything that gets more expensive.
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"That argument, however, rests on the simplistic observation that some of the states with high minimum wages also have high unemployment rates. Without more examination, this observation is as useful in understanding state job markets as noting that joblessness has been on the rise in New York since the last time the Yankees won the World Series. It might be true, but it doesn't mean one is causing the other."

"recent studies with improved methodologies have reached the opposite conclusion. In general, there is no valid, research-based rationale for believing that state minimum wages cause measurable job losses. Making the extreme case that the job losses are severe enough to show up in a noticeably elevated state unemployment rate is a wild extension of a largely unfounded theory."

The national perspective

"The connection between minimum wages and unemployment looks even weaker when all 12 states with minimum wages above the federal level are considered (see Table 1):

* Many states without minimum wages set above the federal level (including Michigan, Illinois, South Carolina, and Texas) also had high unemployment rates in December 2003.
* Hawaii, Delaware, and Vermont, three states with higher minimum wages, were among the 15 states with unemployment rates less than 5% (the national average was 5.7%).
* Of the 12 states with higher minimum wages, eight saw a smaller increase in unemployment between 2000 and 2003 than the national average."

Employment and the Minimum Wage—Evidence from Recent State Labor Market Trends
 
Catawba said:
"That argument, however, rests on the simplistic observation that some of the states with high minimum wages also have high unemployment rates. Without more examination, this observation is as useful in understanding state job markets as noting that joblessness has been on the rise in New York since the last time the Yankees won the World Series. It might be true, but it doesn't mean one is causing the other."

"recent studies with improved methodologies have reached the opposite conclusion. In general, there is no valid, research-based rationale for believing that state minimum wages cause measurable job losses. Making the extreme case that the job losses are severe enough to show up in a noticeably elevated state unemployment rate is a wild extension of a largely unfounded theory."

The national perspective

"The connection between minimum wages and unemployment looks even weaker when all 12 states with minimum wages above the federal level are considered (see Table 1):

* Many states without minimum wages set above the federal level (including Michigan, Illinois, South Carolina, and Texas) also had high unemployment rates in December 2003.
* Hawaii, Delaware, and Vermont, three states with higher minimum wages, were among the 15 states with unemployment rates less than 5% (the national average was 5.7%).
* Of the 12 states with higher minimum wages, eight saw a smaller increase in unemployment between 2000 and 2003 than the national average."

Employment and the Minimum Wage—Evidence from Recent State Labor Market Trends
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A study which purports to show (looking only at correlation to unemployment rates and no other possible factors) that raising a minimum wage doesn't cause comapnies to fire people in good economic times (judging by unemployment rates stated) has what do with how it will affect companies' decisions to hire people in an uncertain economy?

You're responding to a different argument.
 
The effects of artificially increased wages on employment are manifestly obvious if you simply use your head.

Say I'm the CEO of a massive company. I have a budget that balances revenues against outlays. My outlays are divided among things like labor, parts, rent, electricity, etc. The passage of a "living wage" would increase my labor costs per employee, so I have to bring things back into balance. Short of magically cutting my rent or parts costs, there are only two ways I could do this.

First, I can balance for that increase in outlays by increasing revenues in tandem. This would be done by passing on the additional costs to consumers. Since any successful company already prices their products to achieve maximum profit, this will not work. Any artificial increase will result in reduced sales and further damage the company's balance sheet.

Since that won't work, the other way that I can balance that increase in per employee costs is by cutting my total number of employees. This would be done through layoffs or hiring freezes, with the extra work shifted to the retained employees. Given that we see this happen on a daily basis among companies that need to cut costs, this is the obvious result.
 
RightinNYC said:
The effects of artificially increased wages on employment are manifestly obvious if you simply use your head.

Say I'm the CEO of a massive company. I have a budget that balances revenues against outlays. My outlays are divided among things like labor, parts, rent, electricity, etc. The passage of a "living wage" would increase my labor costs per employee, so I have to bring things back into balance. Short of magically cutting my rent or parts costs, there are only two ways I could do this.

First, I can balance for that increase in outlays by increasing revenues in tandem. This would be done by passing on the additional costs to consumers. Since any successful company already prices their products to achieve maximum profit, this will not work. Any artificial increase will result in reduced sales and further damage the company's balance sheet.

Since that won't work, the other way that I can balance that increase in per employee costs is by cutting my total number of employees. This would be done through layoffs or hiring freezes, with the extra work shifted to the retained employees. Given that we see this happen on a daily basis among companies that need to cut costs, this is the obvious result.
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Yes, but you have to keep in mind -- companies (ALL companies) are limitless sources of cash for which no requirement, restriction, or tax could possibly have a deleterious effect or unintended consequence. And if it does, it's only because the tophat-wearing owners are hoarding more and more for themselves and their mustache wax.
 
Harshaw said:
Yes, but you have to keep in mind -- companies (ALL companies) are limitless sources of cash for which no requirement, restriction, or tax could possibly have a deleterious effect or unintended consequence. And if it does, it's only because the tophat-wearing owners are hoarding more and more for themselves and their mustache wax.
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And even if there is a negative effect on profits, that's okay. Companies should not be organized for the sole purpose of earning money for their shareholders, they should be organized for the purpose of achieving amorphous and ever-changing social goals.
 
RightinNYC said:
And even if there is a negative effect on profits, that's okay. Companies should not be organized for the sole purpose of earning money for their shareholders, they should be organized for the purpose of achieving amorphous and ever-changing social goals.
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Well of course -- the cost of all requirements, restrictions, taxes, assessments, etc., always come out of profit and profit only -- it never affects employment, consumer prices, or anything else.
 
RightinNYC said:
Yes it has.

The Employment Impact of a Comprehensive Living Wage Law, Evidence from California | EPI Study

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w9702.pdf

The Employment Effects of Living Wage Laws
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Your first link looks at one state, the research looked at one rate and did not consider other factors related to unemployment. The report I referenced studied 12 states and did consider the other factors.

Your second link shows the net effect is positive -

"We confirm our earlier findings that business assistance living wage laws boost wages of the lowest-wage workers, at the cost of some disemployment, but on net reduce urban poverty. Second, we expand the analysis of distributional effects beyond looking just at the poverty threshold. We do not find that living wages increase the depth of poverty among families that remain poor, and we find that families somewhat below and somewhat above the poverty line are also helped by living wages. Finally, we suggest that the poverty reductions generated by living wages may stem from income gains for individuals with higher wages or skills who are nonetheless in poor families, rather than for the lowest-wage or lowest-skill individuals. "

Your third link is an opinion piece.


Do you honestly prefer government assistance over a full-time worker earning a living wage?
 
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Catawba said:
Do you honestly prefer government assistance over a full-time worker earning a living wage?
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Total strawman. Has nothing to do with the point being made in all this.
 
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