Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

cbsnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 186 posts

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#151

Post by Godel_unicode »

roganartu wrote: post #133
seibelj wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has the most progressive tax system in the world - far more than Europe. The middle and lower classes pay basically 0 tax, or even get refunds (negative taxes), while the rich pay basically all taxes https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-... The middle and lower classes in Europe pay very high tax rates, but get a lot in return. The left in America is promising European-style safety nets…

> The middle and lower classes pay basically 0 tax, or even get refunds (negative taxes) This is a common misunderstanding of how taxes work, or specifically what refunds mean. Getting a refund does not mean you paid zero or negative tax. Getting a refund simply means that you had more tax withheld than you should have. The tax withheld from your regular paycheck is not authoritative, it's just a prepayment of your e…

This is absolutely not true, many people get refunds in excess of their payments, and many people in this category pay no taxes and still get refunds as a result. This is by design.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#152

Post by lowlevellimbo »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #149
seibelj wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because social security isn’t a “tax” - it’s funding pensions, and you pay into it now to get a pension later, which is capped at maximum payout, which is why you don’t have to pay above a salary amount because above which you won’t increase your income in retirement. However to reform social security so it can actually be maintained, I agree we should increase the limits or remove them entirely. But keep in m…

They are absolutely not pensions, and you are not paying into it now to fund payment later. It's a tax. You pay it now to cover those taking it now, and the social contract says future generations will do the same. This is a very important distinction, so I'll repeat it. Social security in the United States is not a pension, it's just a government program. We're told it will continue, but that's only because the curr…

You're right that it's not a pension, it's a tax, and the more one contributes the less they see in returned benefit.

> A future government could just decide to stop payments

A future government could just decide to go to war with Canada and the recourse for citizens would be the same.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#153

Post by matthewmacleod »

sokoloff wrote: post #128
matthewmacleod wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it’s not a dichotomy. It’s possible to implement temporary restrictions while providing support to help people remain employed. Your attitude kind of glosses over the fact that the current unfolding catastrophe in the US is a result of a series of deliberate policy decisions and does not have to be like it is.

What would be measures to help bartenders remain employed while closing down bars? I’m struggling to imagine what you have in mind here.

In many other developed countries there is some kind of furlough scheme in place. Like here in the UK - businesses which can’t remain open (or have to temporarily downscale) can opt to place their staff on furlough and have their wages paid by the government through to the end of this year.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#154

Post by nickthemagicman »

tyre wrote: post #39
nickthemagicman wrote: post #11

What is that almost a 100 million people? Seems like a lot. I wonder how many have families and kids. Such a bummer. At least Granny is safe!

One in eight nursing home residents in Massachusetts has so far died of COVID-19. Let’s be careful with flippant remarks about people dying when the measures we _have_ put in place have still left us with hundreds of thousands of people dead. There are reasonable debates about how we handle the response to a pandemic in America. Let’s stick to those.

A hundred million in poverty vs a 2 hundred thousand dead.

The balance doesnt seem out of whack to you?

Would you put 100 million people into poverty to save 1 life?

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#155

Post by nickthemagicman »

kmonsen wrote: post #42
nickthemagicman wrote: post #11

What is that almost a 100 million people? Seems like a lot. I wonder how many have families and kids. Such a bummer. At least Granny is safe!

Norway (partial lockdown, schools still mostly open) compared to Sweden (little lockdown and talks of herd immunity): https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1327230581143465984 Note that Norway has seen less economic damage than Sweden.

Whats funny is that once they lifted the partial lockdown they had very similar restrictions as Sweden which is minimal.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#156

Post by nickthemagicman »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #16
nickthemagicman wrote: post #11

What is that almost a 100 million people? Seems like a lot. I wonder how many have families and kids. Such a bummer. At least Granny is safe!

You know, it’s not a dichotomy. It’s possible to implement temporary restrictions while providing support to help people remain employed. Your attitude kind of glosses over the fact that the current unfolding catastrophe in the US is a result of a series of deliberate policy decisions and does not have to be like it is.

Agreed the policies that destroyed the economy and put 100 million people into poverty should be lifted?

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#157

Post by nickthemagicman »

seibelj wrote: post #100
llamataboot wrote: post #75

Some things are already starting to give way pretty loudly, and others are yet to come. You simply cannot maintain a democratic society (for whatever nominal value of democracy you want) with these levels on inequality and non-shared misery. I’m not sure what the next decade holds for the US, but it’s either gonna be some major-scale reinvestment and redistribution or it’s gonna get pretty damn unstable.

The US has the most progressive tax system in the world - far more than Europe. The middle and lower classes pay basically 0 tax, or even get refunds (negative taxes), while the rich pay basically all taxes https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-... The middle and lower classes in Europe pay very high tax rates, but get a lot in return. The left in America is promising European-style safety nets…

I pay 30% of my paycheck in taxes. Where do I go for free taxes?

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#158

Post by Fnoord »

seibelj wrote: post #100
llamataboot wrote: post #75

Some things are already starting to give way pretty loudly, and others are yet to come. You simply cannot maintain a democratic society (for whatever nominal value of democracy you want) with these levels on inequality and non-shared misery. I’m not sure what the next decade holds for the US, but it’s either gonna be some major-scale reinvestment and redistribution or it’s gonna get pretty damn unstable.

The US has the most progressive tax system in the world - far more than Europe. The middle and lower classes pay basically 0 tax, or even get refunds (negative taxes), while the rich pay basically all taxes https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/23/american-... The middle and lower classes in Europe pay very high tax rates, but get a lot in return. The left in America is promising European-style safety nets…

> Edit: HN is hilarious because people downvote facts they don’t like. At least admit reality to yourself - or post a comment that refutes the statistics.

The HN guidelines [1] mention:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#159

Post by _qulr »

donw wrote: post #141
_qulr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need that historical baseline to assess the current situation. But what if the historical baseline has always been misleading, and undercounting a problem? > Simply redefine "murder" to mean "persons killed by a woman wearing a blue hat on the third Tuesday of February". This isn't a useful example, because the point of redefining unemployment is to get a more accurate view of it, whereas this redefinition of m…

> But what if the historical baseline has always been misleading, and undercounting a problem? Then you create a new metric, but keep the old one around for historical baselines. By the way, this is what the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is doing with the various unemployment metrics. > The point of redefining unemployment is to get a more accurate view of it, whereas this redefinition of murder gives a less accur…

> I see you are new to politics.

Please refrain from violating the Hacker News Guidelines. Your comment is neither accurate nor appropriate.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans are jobless or earning poverty-level wages, new study finds

#160

Post by matthewmacleod »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #156
matthewmacleod wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it’s not a dichotomy. It’s possible to implement temporary restrictions while providing support to help people remain employed. Your attitude kind of glosses over the fact that the current unfolding catastrophe in the US is a result of a series of deliberate policy decisions and does not have to be like it is.

Agreed the policies that destroyed the economy and put 100 million people into poverty should be lifted?

As you are fully aware, that is not what I said. Pretending otherwise doesn't make you smart.
Post reply on HN