Re: Cut grandson's hair or put him in a dress
Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 11:26 am
I hope everyone's sitting down right now, because I agree with all of the major points Carl is making in his post just above.
There is some clarification that should be provided; no less an expert on Capitalism than Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations published in 1775, said that setting the legal framework, including the boundaries of the playing field, for commerce was one of a national government's responsibilities to make sure the whole enterprise didn't run off the rails. One of the major contributors to the 2009 Global Financial Crisis was Alan Greenspan's overreliance on the Invisible Hand of the Market to regulate the financial industry. Believe it or not, under his direction, the SEC allowed companies to police themselves. They were trusted to identify, report and assign the appropriate fines for their SEC violations. We all lived through how well that worked! Later Greenspan admitted that he'd had too much faith in the discipline of the marketplace.
My interest in reversing the Trump tax breaks for American corporations and the 1% and then doubling down by increasing the top tax brackets to the 90+% rates is not only to incentivize the companies and the uber-rich to reinvest in their businesses but also to decrease the runaway deficits and at some point pay for the needed social investments in our environment, our infrastructure and our people.
As to collusion amongst HR departments to depress wages, they haven't had to. There is plenty of public information available to tell them what a given job category is being paid. If other states are like Oregon, the state Employment Department has that data on their website in incredible detail. The problem is one of relative power. Starting with the Reagan Administration, the legal protections for workers attempting to unionize have been ratcheting downward and union membership and the relative prosperity of lower class, working class and middle class people along with it.
On the other hand, a few years ago the US Dept. of Labor determined that the CEO's of the top technology companies in Silicon Valley had conspired to not poach each others' software developers, hardware engineers, etc. so they could keep their wages down. It took several years to uncover, but it was there.
Raising the minimum wage on a national level has not significantly raised prices in the past and would be less likely now than then for the simple reason that direct labor is a smaller percentage of the selling price of products than it ever has. Thanks to competition and the fact that supply and demand determines prices, not costs, individual companies would probably first find other ways to make up the cost of higher wages than price increases. Part of the reason is that it takes a while for the ripple effect of a minimum wage increase to take hold. That is, just because the minimum wage increases on say July 1st doesn't mean that everyone who was making more than the old minimum wage is going to get a proportionate increase that same day. No, there's a time lag for those people to ask for, let alone get an increase. And those increases may or may not be proportionate.
Be that as it may, the University of Kansas Agricultural Economics Dept. did a study on what would happen at McDonalds if the minimum wage was raised to $15/hr. and all other salaries and wages were increased proportionately. To make the same amount of profit on their $1 hamburger (yes, they still have one) they would only have to increase the price to a $1.17. We all know that just doesn't have the same market appeal as a "Buck Hamburger," so they probably would just trim everything down enough to maintain the dollar price point. Kind of like what they do with candy bars and cereal. You know, to maintain the price point they don't change the size of the wrapper or the box, they just make the candy bar smaller or don't fill the box as full.
All of the political polling shows that the Republicans got no political mileage with the average voter for their tax cuts for the richest 10% and the major corporations. I guess us average schnucks in the lower 90% don't have much heart; we didn't feel the rich folks' tax time pain. How unfeeling of us! Consequently, when the electorate is shown that increasing the percentage and number of the top tax brackets isn't going to affect their taxes or at worst not by much, but will deliver some tangible benefits, I'd say the polling says that wouldn't be unpopular with too many voters and would probably gain some support.
Ditto with improving the ACA. While there are people who still hate Obamacare, most of them really like that Affordable Care Act! (I know and you know they are one in the same, there are too many people out there who don't know that and do feel exactly as I described!) At this point it's not at all clear what the American version of single-payer would look like. How could there be? We haven't even had that conversation as a country. If the Republicans would ever retire their "Socialism" bogeyman and actually discuss the issue, we could probably come up with something great! Thanks to the Republican suggestion of Cap and Trade, we solved the acid rain crisis faster and cheaper than anyone ever believed it could be done. So yeah, with a little government guidance our capitalist, free enterprise, market economy CAN produce wonders! (cf. Hoover Dam and the US economy as the WWII Arsenal of Democracy [including the Soviet Union])
I can't let it pass without comment that despite Carl's rock-ribbed belief in the US having morphed into an oligarchy, he still has enough faith in our governmental system to vote in every election.
As do I.
My only reason for calling out "Carl's rock-ribbed belief" was so that no one who has been voting regularly stops doing so. And so that those of you who haven't been voting don't use Carl's posts as yet another excuse to not do your civic duty of learning about the candidates and their positions and then exercising your hard-earned right to vote!
There is some clarification that should be provided; no less an expert on Capitalism than Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations published in 1775, said that setting the legal framework, including the boundaries of the playing field, for commerce was one of a national government's responsibilities to make sure the whole enterprise didn't run off the rails. One of the major contributors to the 2009 Global Financial Crisis was Alan Greenspan's overreliance on the Invisible Hand of the Market to regulate the financial industry. Believe it or not, under his direction, the SEC allowed companies to police themselves. They were trusted to identify, report and assign the appropriate fines for their SEC violations. We all lived through how well that worked! Later Greenspan admitted that he'd had too much faith in the discipline of the marketplace.
My interest in reversing the Trump tax breaks for American corporations and the 1% and then doubling down by increasing the top tax brackets to the 90+% rates is not only to incentivize the companies and the uber-rich to reinvest in their businesses but also to decrease the runaway deficits and at some point pay for the needed social investments in our environment, our infrastructure and our people.
As to collusion amongst HR departments to depress wages, they haven't had to. There is plenty of public information available to tell them what a given job category is being paid. If other states are like Oregon, the state Employment Department has that data on their website in incredible detail. The problem is one of relative power. Starting with the Reagan Administration, the legal protections for workers attempting to unionize have been ratcheting downward and union membership and the relative prosperity of lower class, working class and middle class people along with it.
On the other hand, a few years ago the US Dept. of Labor determined that the CEO's of the top technology companies in Silicon Valley had conspired to not poach each others' software developers, hardware engineers, etc. so they could keep their wages down. It took several years to uncover, but it was there.
Raising the minimum wage on a national level has not significantly raised prices in the past and would be less likely now than then for the simple reason that direct labor is a smaller percentage of the selling price of products than it ever has. Thanks to competition and the fact that supply and demand determines prices, not costs, individual companies would probably first find other ways to make up the cost of higher wages than price increases. Part of the reason is that it takes a while for the ripple effect of a minimum wage increase to take hold. That is, just because the minimum wage increases on say July 1st doesn't mean that everyone who was making more than the old minimum wage is going to get a proportionate increase that same day. No, there's a time lag for those people to ask for, let alone get an increase. And those increases may or may not be proportionate.
Be that as it may, the University of Kansas Agricultural Economics Dept. did a study on what would happen at McDonalds if the minimum wage was raised to $15/hr. and all other salaries and wages were increased proportionately. To make the same amount of profit on their $1 hamburger (yes, they still have one) they would only have to increase the price to a $1.17. We all know that just doesn't have the same market appeal as a "Buck Hamburger," so they probably would just trim everything down enough to maintain the dollar price point. Kind of like what they do with candy bars and cereal. You know, to maintain the price point they don't change the size of the wrapper or the box, they just make the candy bar smaller or don't fill the box as full.
All of the political polling shows that the Republicans got no political mileage with the average voter for their tax cuts for the richest 10% and the major corporations. I guess us average schnucks in the lower 90% don't have much heart; we didn't feel the rich folks' tax time pain. How unfeeling of us! Consequently, when the electorate is shown that increasing the percentage and number of the top tax brackets isn't going to affect their taxes or at worst not by much, but will deliver some tangible benefits, I'd say the polling says that wouldn't be unpopular with too many voters and would probably gain some support.
Ditto with improving the ACA. While there are people who still hate Obamacare, most of them really like that Affordable Care Act! (I know and you know they are one in the same, there are too many people out there who don't know that and do feel exactly as I described!) At this point it's not at all clear what the American version of single-payer would look like. How could there be? We haven't even had that conversation as a country. If the Republicans would ever retire their "Socialism" bogeyman and actually discuss the issue, we could probably come up with something great! Thanks to the Republican suggestion of Cap and Trade, we solved the acid rain crisis faster and cheaper than anyone ever believed it could be done. So yeah, with a little government guidance our capitalist, free enterprise, market economy CAN produce wonders! (cf. Hoover Dam and the US economy as the WWII Arsenal of Democracy [including the Soviet Union])
I can't let it pass without comment that despite Carl's rock-ribbed belief in the US having morphed into an oligarchy, he still has enough faith in our governmental system to vote in every election.
As do I.
My only reason for calling out "Carl's rock-ribbed belief" was so that no one who has been voting regularly stops doing so. And so that those of you who haven't been voting don't use Carl's posts as yet another excuse to not do your civic duty of learning about the candidates and their positions and then exercising your hard-earned right to vote!