I can see this.
There is no tax that penalizes people for working. If you are thinking maybe the income tax does that, I submit to you that income does not always represent the amount of work done.
I’ve helped out at the parish food bank for quite a few years…donations are up, the number of needy families is down, and some who needed help previously are now working and ‘paying it forward’ by donating time and money to help their neighbors.
A strawman argument is one in which the opponent’s position has been unfairly exaggerated or otherwise misstated, so as to make it an easier target. The statement to which I was responding suggested that a sales tax might be better than “penalizing people for working” which implies that some tax does that. The only assumption I made was that this is a reference to the income tax. I can’t think of any other tax that comes close. And then I pointed out that not even the income tax exactly represents penalizing work. That’s not a strawman.
Maybe. But I’ve seen some very rich people who don’t seem particularly smart. But they are willing to work. And I’ve seen some pretty smart people who don’t want to do the work it takes to get rich.
It’s not as though the military will take nearly anyone; lately they have been pretty selective. But I’ve also known people who were less intelligent than the median, but who learned to do a particular job well and made a living doing it.
I suspected that might be the case. When unemployment is low and wages are rising, people generally have enough goodness in their hearts to share from their blessings. Widely distributing wealth drawn from the 1% just doesn’t trickle down as efficiently as it does at the local level. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Unionization tends to be present largely at the low end, but where numbers are large. Certainly unionized labour contributed to growth or maintenance of labour’s share of national income in the past. Less so (in some jurisdictions at least) in the last 20 years or so.