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

Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 354 posts

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#221

Post by westmeal »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #216
Tadpole9181 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, importantly, tariffs are payed by the importing party. This means they affect the base price of the product and cannot be made progressive. You could set up a deduction system... But that's retroactive (poor people still don't have that money for a whole year) and dramatically complicates their tax filing burden and financial record keeping requirements. The rich can afford lawyers and accountants, so the IRS ha…

And, importantly, tariffs are payed by the importing party. This means they affect the base price of the product and cannot be made progressive Yes. But that cost can be absorbed across the board. The manufacturer can lower their margins. The importer / distributor / wholesaler can do the same. The B2B / B2C seller can do the same. It doesn’t all necessarily get directly passed to the buyer. Another question that few…

But why would the manufacturer or distributor lower their margins? Charity?

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#222

Post by amanaplanacanal »

WalterBright wrote: post #66
agent_turtle wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decades of worsening conditions for the commoner is Ron Wyden's idea of a booming economy. Democrats are useful idiots. I can't anymore, folks. Republicans passed the largest tax cuts for billionaires, increased the deficit by trillions, and kicked millions of people of medicaid. Meanwhile, Trump is out there creating the most regressive tax system via tariffs we've ever seen which affect the poorest the most. Yet…

> Republicans passed the largest tax cuts for billionaires There were no tax cuts for billionaires in the BBB. (Not increasing the tax is not a "cut".)

They made a temporary cut permanent. Come on, you already know this. And you know why.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#223

Post by ben_w »

WalterBright wrote: post #104
anigbrowl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deliberately underpaying people and then telling them their work has low value is one of the most disgusting aspects of capitalists. There's lots of CEOs who are not especially productive, they just have leverage.

The government tries hard to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, but so far has failed 100% of the time. The government can implement wage and price controls, but those still do not set the actual value. For example, in the USSR, the price of bread was fixed by the state. But the real price of bread was how long you were willing to wait in line for it. BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay yo…

Governments are on both sides of supply and demand: their powers to tax and spend mean they can put their metaphorical foot on the metaphorical scales to tip the balances whichever way they want, to a large degree, with rapid effect.

Central planning is only one of many ways to do this, it can also be managed more locally; and Soviet-style central planning is only one many ways to do central planning, most large businesses even in capitalist nations are also somewhat-centrally planned by the C-suite.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#224

Post by TimorousBestie »

nickpp wrote: post #161
tpxl wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but so far has failed 100% of the time Labor rights have been a raging success. 40 hour work weeks, minimum wage, sick leave, vacation leave (in non-shithole countries). >BTW, in the US, you are free to set up a company and then pay your workers whatever you want to. What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion? Free market is a free market only when there is competition based on…

> What happens when competition with deeper pockets price dumps you into oblivion? Funny you should ask. There was a famous case from the beginning of the last century where German bromide producers price-dumped it the U.S. in an effort to undermine Dow's efforts in the same direction. The result? They failed miserably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Chemical_Company > your apologism of capitalists is disgusting F…

> Free market capitalism is the only system proven to work, over and over again.

Name a country that in 2025 practices free market capitalism.

> If you find that disgusting - I am guessing you are a big fan of poverty.

An aggressively rude misreading of the GP.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#225

Post by reliabilityguy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #198
reliabilityguy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …we are currently in the future of the previous tariffs. Which ones? > Also, come on, you’re yourself arguing these tariffs aren’t worth betting on. What do you think investing in a factory is? I can’t bet on negotiation tactic, only on the outcomes and formal agreements. As soon as those would be finalized we would know. Now we do not know how the trade policy would look like. I would assume that investment banker…

> Which ones? Liberation Day. > can’t bet on negotiation tactic, only on the outcomes and formal agreements How about money actually invested [1][2]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RX1Q020SBEA [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RX1Q020SBEA

> Liberation Day.

From four months ago?

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#226

Post by amanaplanacanal »

shmerl wrote: post #6
koolba wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, he wants someone at the top who will create an organization that does not have to repeatedly restate massively incorrect numbers.

Or rather not mention them at all. He'd rather not bring attention to the topic to begin with.

Nah, if the numbers make him look great he'd be all over it.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#227

Post by Gareth321 »

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #195
actionfromafar wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including tariffs. (Blanket) tariffs are almost like a special tax on poor people. Explanation: to a well off person, 25% higher gas or food prices is just an annoyance. Nothing in their day to day life will change because of that. To a poor person it's brutal.

And, importantly, tariffs are payed by the importing party. This means they affect the base price of the product and cannot be made progressive. You could set up a deduction system... But that's retroactive (poor people still don't have that money for a whole year) and dramatically complicates their tax filing burden and financial record keeping requirements. The rich can afford lawyers and accountants, so the IRS ha…

> And, importantly, tariffs are payed by the importing party. This means they affect the base price of the product and cannot be made progressive.

This is not correct. The cost of tariffs are shared by the distributor and customer. The proportion is determined by the elasticity of demand. By this I mean that for goods and services which people rely on, like gas, they will pay almost all of the cost of the tariff because they need the gas to survive. For luxury goods and services, like Louboutin shoes, most of the cost of tariffs is paid by the distributor. This is because customers are willing to substitute for other options, or simply not buy that item. They don't need it.

The downstream effects are quite complex to calculate. For this reason, neoliberals prefer to avoid any tariffs at all. For example, the U.S. is a net gas exporter, meaning that total net local consumption can be satisfied without imports. In a perfect market, there would be no change to the cost of gas. However gas is a commodity, and there is the risk that cartels abuse their market positions to exploit the fact that locals must buy gas from them if they wish to avoid the tariff. For other goods like imported food, locals can substitute. They don't have to buy imported avocados. There are plenty of other affordable and nutritious foods available locally. However, the loss of avocados is, by some metric, a loss of quality of life. This isn't generally captured in economic data. Further still, some of these additional costs are offset by the fact that local businesses become more profitable thanks to said tariffs, and this ends up in the pockets of consumers. Because so much menial labour is currently offshored, the primary benefactor of tariffs is expected to be the poor and working classes.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#229

Post by AnthonyMouse »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #194
reliabilityguy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first is that Americans often refuse to work those jobs (and for good reason, they pay incredibly poorly, have no benefits etc. It is generally a financial loss to do said jobs). Would Americans work those jobs if those jobs paid well?

Those jobs can not pay well, because the basic living goods have to be artificially price dumped to remain affordable for the working poor. Otherwise all prices would have to be raised to include this, which will never happen.

That seems to be inconsistent with the continued negligence with respect to housing prices. Maybe it would be fine if food cost more because agricultural workers got paid better but housing cost less because we stopped artificially constraining supply.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#230

Post by refurb »

rester324 wrote: post #211
refurb wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s not. The error people make all the time is assuming these groups are static and always have the same people in them over time. They don’t. A great example were the people in the 0.1% percentile of income. Evil rich people! Turns out people who end up in that group, only do so for a single year in their entire life . Things like selling a company or getting a large windfall propels them into the 0.1%, then af…

Sorry but I don't understand your comment. Are you sure you are responding to the right message? The OP specifically called out trickle-down economics. Which is a myth, a false belief that somehow not taxing rich companies and not redistributing a country's wealth through taxes and other means, companies will do the right thing eventually, and they will raise the wages instead by their own incentives. Which they neve…

That’s not what “trickle down economics” is. It’s basically the Laffer curve which argues that tax receipts can actually go down with higher taxes rates as tax’s can discourage growth if high enough.

Thus if you lower taxes, economics growth increases (overall tax receipts go up, not down).

Post reply on HN