Fight Poverty! Raise taxes?

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Socrates92 said:
Unionized labour has never had the capacity to bring about wage growth. It is a redistributive mechanism.
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Then to what do you attribute the growth in wages during the period of unionization?
Ideally we’d just get rid of both progessive tax rates and mandatory overtime pay. It’d be interesting to see how much incomes increased in different industries afterwards.
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You can do your social experiment by risking your own welfare, but not the welfare of others.
 
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Maybe they should move to where the jobs are?
Too much welfare short circuit’s a healthy market response

I want citizens to move for jobs, not illegal immigrants
 
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The idea sounds great, but it’s a little naive, gently stated.

First, poor people can’t move. Poverty radically limits one’s mobility. That 92 Geo Metro won’t make it very far and where do they land when they get “there”? The don’t have money for appartment deposits and so on…

Second, it’s a completely nationwide problem. The unemployment rate is only low because it doesn’t count these people.

If you took all the folks on some sort of benefit that don’t work, created a magic 8 ball to determine whether their claim was legitimate per some objective standard and decided it wasn’t, there simply are not enough jobs.

We forget what these social programs buy us, the working folk. What would happen if we booted them off anyway? As poverty is the mother of crime, vice would explode. Crime would explode.

We’d have to go back to the forgotten days where professional folks that made fairly good livings (not the ultra rich) would have to hire bodyguards for their kids as to avoid kidnapping ransoms. Gated communities wouldn’t be gated for aesthetic reasons.
 
Welshrabbit said:
I honestly don’t know either Peeps. I’m afraid I have nothing more of value to contribute unfortunately.
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I think that the Christian response is to care for them–provide them with basic needs and do it without resentment.

It’s probably also Christian to try to help them change their approach to life, but this is not going to be easy. IMO, the choice to avoid work (gainful employment) is probably the result of many years of mistakes that were made by parents and other close relatives, teachers (school, church, childhood clubs), doctors and health care providers, and various friends and acquaintances.

If a child is raised with no expectations and no responsibilities, and no rewards are given for good work, and non-working is taught through words and example as the best approach to living life—well, it’s going to be awfully hard for the child to grow up with a “work ethic.”

In fact, i would say that it’s probably a lost cause, and the best thing Christian people can do is just accept it and remember that Jesus said that we will always have the poor among us. Take care of them and pity them in their handicap that prevents them from knowing the joy of doing a job well and receiving recompense for the work.

Why work?! If someone is going to hand you food, a clean house, clean clothing, money for fun activities, and pass you through school even when you haven’t mastered grade-appropriate material, and health care professionals miss or ignore various medical conditions that should wave a red flag (e.g., flat feet that make it painful for a child/anyone to stand or walk for long periods of time), and parents never enroll you in any kind of extracurricular activity (4-H, scouting, church clubs and groups, music lessons, sports, museum classes, story-time at the library, etc.), and spiritual leaders (pastors, Sunday School teachers, religious ed instructors, etc.) are always uber-positive about the child’s “wonderfulness”, and all the child’s friends are the same laid-back, lounge-on-the-sofa and watch TV or play computer games-types—

–it’s no surprise that the child would grow up to be incapable of sustaining any kind of work beyond opening a bottle of beer or soda and nuking a frozen pizza, both of which were handed to him/her by someone else who worked to earn the money to pay for the food.

There is a part of me that wants to say, “let them starve.” But I think that we all need to remember that they were not raised well, and be grateful that, but for the grace of God, we would be in the same boat. And like i said, the Christian approach is to provide them with their needs.
 
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In a lot of cases the jobs didn’t move. They disappeared due to automation.

For those jobs that did move, they moved overseas. It’s no little thing to uproot yourself and move to another country. That is if the country will accept you.

We are in the midst of another Industrial Age, the fourth Industrial Age. A lot of people will get left behind. They need help and as Christians we are obliged to help them.
 
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You can move all you want but if the jobs you are qualified for was lost due to automation, no amount of moving will find you a job.

The Okies didn’t have to contend with that.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Ideally we’d just get rid of both progessive tax rates and mandatory overtime pay. It’d be interesting to see how much incomes increased in different industries afterwards.
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I’ve worked in overtime-exept industries. I found that I got more hours. Also I seemed to make slightly more (per hour) than I think I probably would have made doing comparable work in a overtime-protected industry (although that part is partly speculation). All I needed was flat tax and I would have been laughing.

I don’t understand the need for an experiment to understand my point though. A progressive income tax directly counteracts that fact that someone is making 50% more per hour for a very limited fraction of the hours he works. That’s just simple math.
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Crocus said:
Many people bristle at the suggestion, however 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics winners say it’s the way to go.
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Absolutely correct if done properly. When Sweden suffered economically in the early 1990’s, they instituted such an approach, and it helped bring them out of it. When asked what helped them to recover by the end of the 1990’s, the Swedish Economic Minister said “Higher taxes”.

Monies that end up in the hands of lower-income families are more apt to be spent more locally and more completely, plus it gives more hope to the poor that can help them and the local economies get ahead, which is mostly where economists want that money spent.

IOW, it’s not “liberal economics” nor “conservative economics”-- it’s “economics” match with “basic psychology”.
 
Metis1 said:
Monies that end up in the hands of lower-income families are more apt to be spent more locally and more completely, plus it gives more hope to the poor that can help them and the local economies get ahead, which is mostly where economists want that money spent.
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👍 You get it!
 
I would like to see data that shows people are not better off today. My sense is that the standard of living is better for even poor people today compared to one or two generations ago!
 
Before my husband passed away, between his Medicare premium + supplement + my employer insurance premium + monthly prescriptions, almost 57% of our GROSS income went simply to medical. That did not include deductibles, co-pays, etc.

Now that he has passed, he had a serious medical condition, I still pay more than a quarter of my gross income to insurance and meds each month. I am facing surgeries and stay up nights worrying about my co-pays and deductibles, who is in network, what I will do if the specialist I need is out of network, etc.

Both when DH was alive and after his death, we are in the low end of the 12% tax bracket.

Is there even a question that I would gladly pay higher taxes for universal coverage?
 
Socrates92 said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Ideally we’d just get rid of both progessive tax rates and mandatory overtime pay. It’d be interesting to see how much incomes increased in different industries afterwards.
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I’ve worked in overtime-exept industries. I found that I got more hours. Also I seemed to make slightly more (per hour) than I think I probably would have made doing comparable work in a overtime-protected industry (although that part is partly speculation). All I needed was flat tax and I would have been laughing.

I don’t understand the need for an experiment to understand my point though. A progressive income tax directly counteracts that fact that someone is making 50% more per hour for a very limited fraction of the hours he works. That’s just simple math.
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That simple math assumes that nothing else will change if the progressive income tax is removed. The fact is the only practical way to move from to a flat tax would be to set tax rates much higher than they are now for probably 90 percent of the working population, so as to maintain the same revenue. The only ones that would see their take-home pay increase would be the top 10% of earners.

As for mandatory overtime, we only have your speculation that it seemed like it felt to you that you were getting more in the overtime-exempt job than if the job were suddenly not exempt. Besides, the purpose of mandatory overtime is not to increase anyone’s wages. It is to discourage the use of overtime in lieu of hiring more employees. Excessive overtime is bad for the people left unemployed and bad for those that sacrifice their quality of life in order to earn more through that excessive overtime.
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I really hope you are right and this fourth industrialization age will yield more opportunities to offset the jobs that are now being made obsolete.
 
Crocus said:
Many people bristle at the suggestion, however 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics winners say it’s the way to go.
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Many people have come to finally seriously question some Nobel Decisions -

Some see some of Nobel’s decisions as following the piping of a ideologically Leftist Horn.

… AS IN: Make those who are already financially squeezed even poorer and hungrier?

Historically, that economic condition becomes the catalyst for desperate people
to accept promises from a faux “savior”…
 
This is just ideological entrenchment. Without fail, always a poor practice
 
Crocus said:
I think the economic thesis was more focused on generating economic activity as a first priority through putting more money into the hands of lower income workers especially, as they will buy more products and services.
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so you would give people money? or cut the taxes for lower income? How would this increase jobs? Jobs will actually reduce poverty faster than tax cuts. Will lower taxes for the lower income increase jobs?

Will taking a bigger chunk of taxes out of the 1% increase jobs? Is it only the 1% you would tax higher? My family is not rich but we love the rich… do you know why? because they employ most of my family. My relatives are mostly self employed. They are artisans and craftsmen. Lower and middle income people don’t hire my relatives. The rich also fund our local symphony and art museum and other public works. They sponsor all kinds of charitable causes.

There are 3 causes of poverty:

lack of education
refusal to work
children out of wedlock or abandoned by a parent.

taxes won’t fix those problems. Anyone who works hard enough to amass a fortune, legally, deserves to keep their fortune and not have it stolen by the government or by a mob who vote to take their money.
 
John10 said:
There continues to be an ever expanding gap of ultra-rich and more poor people. We must start to close the gap
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why? we live in the richest country in the world. There is no reason for anyone to starve in the USA. Actually the gap was far greater in the 19th century. It only closed because of WWII. It closed because the USA had the only fully operating manufacturing infrastructure left in the world. The closing gap was an illusion based on a one time event. Once the rest of the world mechanized and recovered from the war the US had international competition.
 
Pai_Nosso said:
20 years ago the average price of a house down here in Melbourne was under $200,000, now it’s over $800,000. But while property inflation went up by 4 times in 20 years the median wage has basically stayed the same
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and what was the demand for houses 20 years ago? Prices are dictated by demand. If no one wants to live in Melbourne house prices will drop quickly. If there a large worker pool then wages don’t rise. If there are no new jobs created then wages don’t rise.

it has nothing to do with GREED. The market determines values.
 
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