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Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

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Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#331

Post by fzeroracer »

reliabilityguy wrote: post #177
fzeroracer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, for two reasons. 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). We've tried multiple times to try and get Americans to work in the fields: it never works [1]. The second is that a large amount of our economy is heavily subsidized by said cheap immigrant labor and if you just stra…

> 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?

You should define what 'paid well' means if you're going to ask that question, and then compare it to the current cost of labor.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#332

Post by WalterBright »

ben_w wrote: post #223
WalterBright wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 busi…

Corporations do do central planning, but they do so at the high risk of becoming unmanageable and then they fall, and a competitor replaces them. Government central planning just raises taxes to cover the inefficiencies, until eventually the economy collapses.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#333

Post by WalterBright »

9rx wrote: post #242
nickpp wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an on/off switch, of course, but rather a sliding scale. The free-er your markets are, the better the results. Till recently, USA was in top with both, in sharp contrast to, say, the EU who pro-regulation and anti-business. But the tariffs are an interesting experiment, with some non-economical geopolitical goals thrown in, so we'll see how it goes.

> It's not an on/off switch, of course Not as it is usually defined. Many places take inspiration from free market capitalism, like Javascript takes inspiration from C, but have developed their own systems. The US model is usually referred to as mixed-market capitalism and the EU model is generally thought of as a social market economy. Of course, that's just semantics. While there is value in using shared terminolog…

Making up one's own definition for words is a losing argument.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#334

Post by WalterBright »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #224
nickpp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are countries that are more free market, and countries that are less free market.

The more free market ones are noticeably more prosperous.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#335

Post by WalterBright »

kyralis wrote: post #299
WalterBright wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framing it as not increasing taxes being a cut is misleading. It's just as disingenuous as scaling back a proposed budget increase and calling it a "cut". The FTC wouldn't let businesses get away with such language, why should the government get a pass?

No. The total tax bill over the next five years was X, given the current laws. Then a bill was passed that reduced that total tax bill over the next five years. This is a tax cut. It's a little absurd to try to claim otherwise.

Failing to increase taxes is not a tax cut.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#336

Post by WalterBright »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #222
WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I understand why some people try to frame not raising taxes as a tax cut.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#337

Post by slater »

jordanb wrote: post #291
fluxkernel wrote: post #4

Poorest workers are hit hardest by pretty much anything related to money.

In the middle of last century you saw the opposite where the lower you went on the income distribution the faster your income was increasing, relativy speaking.

Yup. And then:

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#338

Post by quantified »

magentaworker wrote: post #296
quantified wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we in the USA got our money's worth from taxes, we feel rich. But we truly don't.

You got it, that huge army is not free, that militarized police is not free, the CIA is not free, FBI, NSA, and all that huge security related organizations that nobody else in the world has except maybe Israel and not at the same scale.

That too. We need our security organizations, there are lots of unpatriotic profiteers in there, we could get a lot more value for our moeny on those. (Littoral battleships? F-35s? Let's just get actual spent-uranium-tipped unicorns.) The way we do infrastructure and social services leaves a lot of room for improvement. I'd pay 50% tax gladly if I got half my income in value back.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#339

Post by closewith »

somenameforme wrote: post #330
closewith wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drop in demand for staples you're talking about is quite literally the poorest people eating less, using fewer basics, lowering their quality of life further.

As of 2016 (first search result) 90% of food/beverage is domestically produced = no tariffs. [1] The big goal with the tariffs, outside of gaining leverage on other countries, is to motivate domestic production and alternatives. Without tariffs it simply isn't realistically possible to compete in many industries because other countries have cheaper labor and less costly regulations. Of course the practical problem wi…

Domestic food supply is still subject to tariffs because many of the inputs are. Agricultural machinery, parts, chemical feedstocks.

Not to mention that tariffs on directly imported goods reduce the lowest earners' ability to pay for domestic products.

If the goal was onshoring too benefit the population, it would be coupled with a strong wealth redistribution to the least wealthy to allow them to buy domestic goods. But that's not the goal.

Re: Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth

#340

Post by Hikikomori »

guywithahat wrote: post #326
Hikikomori wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serfs got slightly more after the Brits killed most of them? Sounds great.

Technically most of the Irish population emigrated Ireland, and I'm not sure I'd blame the brits for a famine but ok. Really what I'm looking at is the economic effect of decreasing population when it's not replaced by immigrants

Still killed a million. It is clearly the fault of Britain as Ireland produced much more food than it needed itself but peasants mostly only got to eat potatoes as most of all good food was exported because Brits owned most of the land so peasants didn't own what they produced. When they didn't have acces to potatoes anymore they had no food, and free market advocates in Britain argued that they shouldn't even try to help them.
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