71–80 of 487 posts
I would like to see negative income tax. You have to insert the fresh printed money into the economy some place. Why not have people work for it?
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/earned-income...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need to apply marginal thinking here. They are better off with welfare benefits, which means it's a good thing that they have them. If you gave them more benefits, they would have more negotiating power and be able to become even more employed[0], and then would you complain more? [0] assuming that's what they want to do
Giving benefits to employees, instead of forcing the company to pay a living wage, is effectively a subsidy for corporate profits.
Is it not also possible that the government benefits make low-wage work less appealing, thus lowering the supply, and increasing the compensation?
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
But importantly only the lowest of the low wages
There is a huge swath of workers that can't get benefits like food stamps or medicaid because they don't qualify via the means testing formula and they can't really afford to live where they live, afford medical insurance etc.
Its those folks that have it the worst, IMO. Cost of living keeps you from building any wealth, even in the form of cash savings, but the government has arbitrarily decided you make too much or some other form of disqualification[0].
To add insult to injury, means testing[2] often costs more than the cost of fraud in social benefit programs! Not to mention, the biggest fraudsters with Medicaid are providers not recipients.
EDIT: To those whom have questions on the fact that means test cost more than the fraud of social benefit programs, Last Week Tonight did a break down on Medicaid[3] (linked to below) that explains all this better than I can.
[0]: often by declaring some aspect of the filing paperwork invalid or the beneficiary unresponsive, more often than not due to errors by the agency rather than the individual(s)[1]
[1]: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2024/04/12/vulnerable-f...
[2]: How an applicant/recipient is screened and continually screened for eligibility
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
Supposing that fulfillment industry in general went without these labor subsidies - the industry would pass the costs on in some proportion p and 1-p to dividends and customer prices, resulting in lower investment and smaller sales volumes. Sounds alright, but then you have noticeably less unskilled and semi-skilled labor demand (possibly as much as 1-4%) in an environment where: * the long struggle of delegitimising…
There have been lots of empirical studies of UBI and the evidence from them is pretty clear that… they don't actually affect employment much either way.
Which I don't think is an answer that advocates or opponents like, as seemingly everyone thinks it would cause people to retire and write a book or something.
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
Who bears the blame for this though? If social programs are cut then voters freak. If the price of goods increase then voters freak. If taxes increase then voters freak. It seems that we get exactly what we vote for.
In this case, these are Amazon government subsidies by way of the disadvantaged. "Why are consumers receiving low prices and shareholder profits more important than workers receiving a wage they can survive on?" seems to be a question no one wants to answer.
As Galloway showed, we don't love our children, or even fellow humans in this context. We love line goes up more. At least we're making progress with the fertility rate going off the cliff, less humans to suffer under this regime in the future.
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_galloway_how_the_us_is_destr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
Who bears the blame for this though? If social programs are cut then voters freak. If the price of goods increase then voters freak. If taxes increase then voters freak. It seems that we get exactly what we vote for.
Those who refuse to question the legitimacy of our so-called democracy, even more so those who engage in deceitful (even if well-intended!!) rhetoric or other actions[1] to present any such discussions from taking place.
> It seems that we get exactly what we vote for.
Consider what voting (or "democracy") is actually(!) composed of. Do we have any good reason to expect other than what we get?
[1] which can come in many forms
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would other…
Who bears the blame for this though? If social programs are cut then voters freak. If the price of goods increase then voters freak. If taxes increase then voters freak. It seems that we get exactly what we vote for.
If workers need government aid to make basic ends meet, it is the employer, not the employee, that is on welfare, subsidized by taxpayers and government borrowing.
That is not correct - a person with no skills who has 10 kids will never be able to support themselves via a job. It is welfare for them.
And I suppose that's ultimately the problem: through a combination of technological advances, which automate much unskilled labor, and a broken incentive structure in many social welfare programs, which disincentivize investment in human capital (because of the "benefit cliff"), a larger and larger underclass of unemployable[0] people grows.
[0]: meaning, the economic value of their labor output is less than the minimum cost to employ them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For anyone curious about the math: The Amazon CEO pay was $212 million in 2021. There are 700k warehouse workers. If the CEO put 99% of their pay to the warehouse workers, each would get an about $300/year, or $25/month more.
Jeff Bezos founded Amazon 30 years ago and is now worth more than $200 billion. So he has personally gained about $7 billion per year on average, heavily loaded toward more recent years. If you expand consideration from just him to all of Amazon's major shareholders, top management, board members, etc., and then compare to the warehouse workers, "contractor" delivery drivers, etc., it's plain to see that a large grou…
He was paid that by Amazon investors, who basically want to give him money because he's Jeff Bezos. If the warehouse workers owned the shares, those investors would have to want to give just as much money to them, but it doesn't seem like they do.
(Clearer case is Elon, who is pretty obviously super rich entirely because a lot of people want to specifically give him money. They're investor celebrities.)