The part where you force others to give.
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Dracarys
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Well then it sounds like you in Europe are ready to finally pay your own way. The US can withdraw from NATO and withdraw all our troops from all European bases and put them to work defending us from the foreign invasion to the south.
When they confiscate more than half your income in taxes you don’t really have property rights.
Is that because you were learning your job or was it to pay off your college? This whole thing sounds suspiciously off. Why not just pay for college yourself or use student loans? Then it’s between you and the loan company.
As I pointed out before another flaw in your argument is that not every college grad majors in something worthwhile enough to actually pay off their free ride through college. You have not said what you do, but I am sure that just as in the US you have plenty of unskilled college graduates working as waiters. Had these people taken out student loans they MUST pay them back, and rightfully so. In the US student loans even follow you after bankruptcy.
Fine, but why do people who don’t go to college have to pay your way in the first place? Did you pay interest on your student loan from the government?
What is the difference? Someone only making 200 k should not have to pay nearly 50 % of their income to the state.
I have not read those directives, but if it is true they have done so out of total ignorance how economics works. They can be as ideological as they want, but if a worker does not contribute enough utility to the company to justfy his position he will create a deficit and will rightfully be fired. Again just because you exist is not sufficient reason for an employer to pay you.
Morality and church teaching have nothing to do with this. If a company is not viable and profitable for shareholders or private owners it will shut down and everyone will be laid off.
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Dracarys
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Going to college and certainly having a child are personal decisions. People who have made different decisions should not be forced to pay your way.
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Dracarys
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So now your the arbitor of which businesses should survive and how much the business owner should make. As I have been saying all along it is the responsibility of the employee to provide what is necessary to the employer to justify them being hired. It is comments like yours that make me glad to be American. Although we do have welfare stateist socialist currently in our congress.
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Elf01
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And comments like yours make me glad I’m not.
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Dracarys
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Wow, that is scary. You want to artifically circumvent the free market and dictate which businesses will survive. That sounds like something Stalin would do. In your world a Big Mac would cost $15. Good luck with that!
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Elf01
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I want full time work to pay for a basic standard of living regardless of what that work is.
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Dracarys
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Well I respect that. You can stay in your little European one bed apartment enjoying your socialist subsidies while I exercise my freedom to get rich. Now I think I’ll actually not just vote for President Trump again, but I am going to actively volunteer for his campaign!
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Dracarys
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I know, you want, you want. Problem is you want stuff regardless of what skills you bring to a prospective employer. You want to be paid because your you, and you are “special”. Your mommy even told you so.
By the way I heard there is a huge demand for AP programers and it pays well. Don’t worry if you can’t program using html5 they will hire you because…you are you.
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o_mlly
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I believe what this study does not acknowledge is that the living wage calculation must be dynamic. That is, the proposed new minimum wage must be used to recalculate the cost of living. On that next iteration, one would find that the new minimum wage is no longer sufficient to raise one above the new higher poverty level.
For instance, let’s assume that the living wage includes 60 hours of child care which cost $600 per week at the existing minimum wage of $10 per hour. The new minimum proposed is $15 per hour. If implemented, the weekly cost of child care increases to $900 per week.
Factor the same increase for all items in the basket of goods and services deemed necessary for a basic standard of living that are affected by the increase. The result will be a new basic standard of living cost that requires a still higher minimum wage. Subsequent iterations will continue to show that increasing the minimum wage has two unintended consequences – inflation and unemployment.
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Dracarys
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You are right. This is the kind of thing that happens when you try to artifically change market supply and demand.
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Elf01
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Actually it comes from a sense of human dignity, something you seem to lack.
I don’t want to be paid because I’m special. I want to work and earn enough to have at least a basic standard of living. I think others are entitled to that too.
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Dracarys
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You will earn according to what you bring to your employer. You are not “entitled” to one cent more than what you can contribute. Employers are not charities. If you have special needs there are more than enough government programs, but no US employer is going to pay you if you don’t add utility to the company. Why should they? I’ve taken the time to explain this to you, but you don’t appear to get it. These are not my rules, and I am not being mean. This is how free market for profit economies work.
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JimG
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It seems that there should be a guaranteed minimum profit!
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Socrates92
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Haha (10 characters)
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_Ruby
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Looking at comparative figures on tax rates and benefits in the UK and the US, American tax payers are being taken for absolute fools! You’re patting yourself on the back about ‘exercising your freedom’ to get rich when your citizens are paying taxes for absolutely zero in return!Elf01:
Well I respect that. You can stay in your little European one bed apartment enjoying your socialist subsidies while I exercise my freedom to get rich. Now I think I’ll actually not just vote for President Trump again, but I am going to actively volunteer for his campaign!
Lets take my yearly wage (minus yearly bonus) as an example:
UK:
£40k earning per year
£5.5K in Income Tax deductions
£3764k in National Insurance deductions
Resulting in 30581k as my final take home salary for the year (76%).
Total % tax paid was 24%
In the US, converting those figures to dollars:
$51628 yearly wage
$4,537 income tax deductions
$3950 in social security deductions
Resulting in $43,141as final take home salary for the year (84%)
Total tax paid is 16%
Now lets add in local tax.
It seems your ‘property tax’ seems largely similar to our ‘council tax’ aka it is used to fund local police, fire, education, libraries, rubbish collection etc.
My house in the UK is worth around £600,000. Due my area being fairly affluent and my house cost being relatively large, my husband and I are taxed at one of the higher banding for council tax - 0.4%
So per year, we pay £2600 in council tax
In the US, my house would be worth $774,393.
From what I gather, property tax ranges from 0%-4%, so lets say i’m living in a state with 2% property tax. Thats a payment of $15487 per year
So final figures for my UK salary:
£30581 - £2600 = £27981. A final take home total of 70%
So 30% total in national and local tax
US salary:
$43,141 - $15487 = $27654. A final take home total of 54%
So 46% in national and local tax.
On top of that, you have to pay for health insurance with co-pays and deductibles.
What on earth are you getting for your tax payments?!? You’re being robbed blind and patting yourself on the back for it - its honestly bizarre!
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Socrates92
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Well, for most people, it would be bizarre to own a house worth three quarters of a million USD, especially if their household wasn’t even making the median income (~61,000 currently I believe). Seeing as though that is by far the biggest factor in your comparative analysis, your implication that the UK is superior to the US in terms of tax competitiveness is called into question.
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Socrates92
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I’m on the fence about whether the bankruptcy rules should be as they are. Yes, there is a moral obligation to repay debts if at all possible. But if we were completely consistent, we wouldn’t have bankruptcy protection for anything. The fact that we do, provides an extra incentive for lenders in ordinary circumstances to properly vet their lendees. The crazy thing with student loans is their is no such responsibility placed on the lenders. They know that they’ll continue to collect payments ad infinitum regardless how irresponsible the risk is that they are taking on. Of course, this only bloats the whole postsecondary racket even more, further pushing up tuition, etc, etc…
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Socrates92
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Democracy isn’t necessarily always a good thing.
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Aquinas11
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Not to mention that the amount of student loans is bloated by Government subsidies to colleges. If you’re Dean of College and charging $20,000 per student and Govt gives $10,000 subsidy per student, now you’ll just charge $30,000 since you know student won’t have to pay the $10,000 subsidy (to the College, they will have to pay it back to Govt over 30 yrs, but won’t have to pay it out of pocket right away). And you’ll keep rising price as you get more and more Govt subsidies.
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