This will do for now: http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/100-years-of-consumer-spending/
First of all, even if we accept your premise, why is it that the arithmetic difference is what needs to be maintained? Why not the percent? Why not redistribute so the % difference is what is maintained?
But beyond that, no, people generally don’t do as much to benefit “society as a whole” as they do to benefit themselves, their families, or even their own communities. And your analogy isn’t a very good one. 1) Just giving someone money doesn’t mean they’ll spend it on keeping up their lawns instead of hookers and blow. 2) If I suddenly earn $50k more, that doesn’t mean my neighbor needs $25k to keep up his lawn.
A social safety net is necessary for a functioning society. Most of us agree on that. It’s all about how big the net is. Your net seems to be sized by some arbitrary measure so that it looks neat on paper.
I think you skipped a step or two. The 2nd sentence does not follow, necessarily, from the first one. And your 3rd sentence is a logical contradiction since everyone does get a raise.
Yes, I think that is indicative of something being wrong. Whether that “something” is wrong with the economy or with the government or with both or something else is a point of debate. I think there is one thing that all of us here can agree on, and that is that “carried interest” tax rates for hedge fund managers is bad tax policy. That’s only a small part of the problem, but it’s there.
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The problem is that we do have a standard of living in this country that if not provided by employers, are supplemented by the public.
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I’m not sure I see the problem. Either you are going to artificially inflate wages beyond their market value or you are going to have to supplement on the back end via taxes…either way, assuming you have to support some baseline standard of living that is artificial itself it’s gong to have to be done. If you want those people to actually have a job next year then the best way to do that is on the back end via taxes, and not artificially inflate their salaries which will make the companies doing that less competitive.
So, your idea is that companies should be unprofitable and employees make more? How would that work out in your mind? If a company is, say profitable this year and gives raises, is it cool next year to lay off or give massive pay cuts when they aren’t?
They have to conform to the minimum wage laws on the books. Other than that, they are free to offer whatever wage they can with the proviso that they need to attract enough employees to do the work needed. No one is putting a gun to the peoples heads in Wisconsin to work at Walmart, they are choosing to do so for the wage offered. If there was better work for them in the area then they would be working there for more money or better benefits or both if they could get it.
The fact that Walmart’s wage might necessitate employees going on welfare isn’t Walmart’s fault, it’s society that sets some minimum standard of living that we want to ensure people stay above. Put another way, if Walmart raised up all it’s employees salaries then they would be less competitive in their chose niche, and if they were less competitive then they might be forced to close marginal stores, such as that one you mentioned in Wisconsin…which could mean that those workers would lose their jobs and instead of being supplemented by welfare they would have to be fully supported by it.
I think this view overstates the role of the open market/private sector in the overall economy. The market is ultimately subservient to the overall goals of a nations economy.
The purpose of the market is efficient and equitable distribution of resources. This system works pretty well in some instances, but market failures are numerous and abundant and are mitigated through law as well as political action; and have been for at least the the last century in every single developed country in the world.
This ideal that some people have that the purpose of the economy is to make sure that the winners in the market system are allowed to do whatever it is that makes them profitable is complete nonsensical woo which can only be based on never having taken an economics course and knowing next to nothing about economic history.
We have laws on the books for things like minimum wage. That sets the lower bar. Walmart et al aren’t required nor should they be to do more than that. If this is ‘complete nonsensical woo’ then I guess it is…I’m not seeing it that way. If I’m missing something because I didn’t MAJOR in economics (I have had an economics course or two) or missed something in economic history here then feel free to point it out…I’m all ears. To me, you aren’t really saying anything that counters what I wrote above. I’m not saying that companies like Walmart should be able to do whatever so that their stock holders can get richer, I’m saying that if they can’t compete they will go out of business, and they compete based on the market distortions we, the people have set on them, such as minimum wage and other labor laws, regulations and such. Going beyond that, unless it makes some sort of market sense would be kind of stupid, but then I’m not an economic major so I’m surely missing something which I’d be grateful to you to point out. Perhaps the large drop in manufacturing jobs, once the backbone of the middle class, was because our labor was paid too little and maybe my dad and his bunch are right…we just need to bring them back by fiat and pay those workers more than market rates in order to be successful?
Inequality shouldn’t be evaluated that way, therefore. And the one you are arbitrarily taxing isn’t going to be happy.
The idea that I should be happy to have the money I earned taken away and given to someone who didn’t earn it isn’t going to fly. I am not going to be happy, if for no other reason that I have other people to spend the money on that I like better. I am not talking about letting people starve in the streets. I am saying that if I earn $100K and Joe Blow earns $50k, and $50K is enough for Joe to have some minimally decent standard of living, I would rather buy my wife a new car or nice Christmas presents for my kids. And I would also like to know that the part of my income that I donate to charity are doing more good than simply assuaging Joe’s envy of the fact that I earn more than him.
Income inequality is not a problem that needs to be fixed by taxing away my income. I have better things to spend it on than someone I never met who didn’t earn it, and better things to do with my time than worrying if he doesn’t like it.
Regards,
Shodan
I think wages are articially deflated. If adjusted for inflation, minimum wage should be about $12 a hour. I can see some small businesses having trouble paying that wage (maybe) but Wal-Mart absolutely would nor would they be less competitive. They would have to divert executive bonuses and upper management pay in some cases. I do agree that Wal-Mart should not be required to do anymore than pay the minimum wage, which is why it’s past time to raise it.
But the problem isn’t that Joe Blow earns enough for a minimally decent life. Joe Blow works 40 hours a week and has to rely on subsidies and food stamps to have a minimally decent standard. That being said, a firmly middle class salary of 100k shouldn’t be the group of people that are charged with supplementing Joe Blow’s pay. It should be upper class that have benefited from Joe Blow’s cheap labor by way more increased proportional income and bonuses paid out. If these employers are not going to pay a living wage, then their high salaries and large bonuses should be taxed so Joe Blow can be supplemented and affordable life.
Oof, sorry for the grammar errors. I’m replying on my phone through the Tapatalk app and it’s a bit of a pain in the button.
You may benefit from reflecting on the meaning that the word “articially” [sic] denotes.
How many Joe Blows are there? We need to quantify the problem if we want to solve it. I had a more than minimally decent standard making seven-something an hour. Recall that most MW earners are not living in poverty. And most people living in poverty don’t work full time, if they even work at all (most don’t.)
We have laws on the books to regulate every single aspect of Walmart’s business. To start with, minimum wage is just the tip of the iceberg for employment law. Workplace Safety is regulated by OSHA, FMLA regulates employee leave, numerous laws regulate against discrimination based upon race, gender sexual orientation etc. Age laws include things such as minimum age requirements for workers as well as wage discrimination protection for those over 40. Other legal requirements include unemployment insurance and the right to unionize. Moving on from the hundreds of regulations regarding employees, we can move to the thousands of regulations regarding other aspects of their business. The FDA regulates food safety, the CPSC regulate safety of dry goods, the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms regulates the sale of guns and tobacco, the SEC regulates corporate filings. To make a long story short, I see the situation as one where corporations (which are in fact legal entities themselves) exist within a highly structured legal environment where the safety and well being of their consumers and employees is generally given priority over what is most profitable.
Almost none of these things existed 150 years ago, and now they do. All of these agencies and regulations arose out of the value of making life better for the average citizen and are consistent with the principle that America is a country that wants to have a strong middle class with widespread prosperity.
Every time this minimum wage stuff comes up there is just so much hand wringing and pearl clutching about government making it just impossible for companies to make a profit and be competitive. I think in light of all the other things Walmart has to comply with and adapt to that that notion is patently absurd. Raising worker’s wages a few bucks is just a small drop in the bucket cost-wise compared to all the other costly requirements imposed upon Walmart which I mentioned above.
Of course I am not saying specifically that Walmart should or should not have any additional regulations placed upon them; a much more rigorous analysis would be needed to have any likelihood of a positive outcome. I am reacting to the knee jerk ideological view you present which is based on a foundation of faulty logic; IOW I am mostly making a normative argument. For the record, I also see the same ridiculousness on the other side of the debate - e.g. "if all those fat cat executives would take a pay cut . … "
No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. -FDR 1933
By your logic, XT we should still be operating on 1938 minimum wage, 25 cents per hour. So on keeping with your theme of only following laws on the books we should rewrite the law to stand for a longer period of time and follow it. By which i mean we should index MW to inflation. Then we don’t need to revisit this topic every 8 years.
Your argument ignores the leverage walmart has industry wide. When a mom and pop cannot compete with Walmart, and other companies have to play by the rules walmart sets then you end up with what is a form of monopolistic control. Instigating regulation that benefits established companies who are positioned for the regulation. Another way to put it, Walmart currently spends 10s of millions a year lobbying for more welfare. They do this because they win on all sides. Most SNAP users buy from Walmart because their prices are so cheap because they pay impoverishing wages and pressure manufactures to cut costs in order to have their products in their stores creating even more impoverishing waged jobs and more demand for cheapgoods to offset the cost of living struggles. This effectively gives Wal mart massive influence, not just in the realm of economics but in the realm of legislation. They essentially make themselves into a subsidized governing body setting wages and determining costs. That is communism.
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By your logic, XT we should still be operating on 1938 minimum wage, 25 cents per hour. So on keeping with your theme of only following laws on the books we should rewrite the law to stand for a longer period of time and follow it. By which i mean we should index MW to inflation. Then we don’t need to revisit this topic every 8 years.
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That’s not my theme, that’s your strawman. I never said nor implied anything of the kind to this ridiculous horseshit. But let me ask you something…let’s pretend, for a moment, that tomorrow minimum wage was set to .25/hour. Do you think that this would mean that tomorrow, Walmart et al would lower their pay to .25/hour? Who would work for them?
As to what you think MW should or shouldn’t be, that has zero to do with my point, which is that the current MW is WHAT IS ON THE FUCKING BOOKS AND WHAT WALMART AND THE REST HAVE TO USE. Whether it’s where it should be or shouldn’t be isn’t up to Walmart, they merely have to conform to it as well as all the other regulations and labor laws we set. They MIGHT choose to pay more than MW (and, in fact they do except for new employees) but that’s their choice. If MW isn’t where society thinks it should be then we, the people have the power to change it…just like we had the power to originally set it in the first place.
That’s nice. What businesses did FDR run according to this tenet? Or, put another way, why don’t you start a business of your own and run it based on this philosophy…perhaps you will do so well that you will capture a large percentage of the market share of people willing to pay a premium for products, goods and services over and above what your competitors lawfully pay.
Me thinks you dinna know what that word, ‘communism’ actually means. The rest of this is mostly a mix of ‘duh’ with horseshit. Walmart doesn’t have a monopoly. Yes, Walmart has influence. Not every company follows Walmart’s business model. Yes, of course Walmart lobbies for things in their best interest…that’s a feature in our system, not a bug. Other groups also lobby for their own interests…again, it’s a feature, not a bug. Walmart doesn’t set minimum wage, nor other labor laws or regulations in the US, however. I’m unsure why you think that SNAP users buying from Walmart is an issue because it’s cheaper (again, seems like a feature to me), but I’m sure it has to do with your antipathy towards them or something.
The whole ‘Walmart is subsidized by the government!’ thingy is just ridiculous. Again, they don’t set things like minimum wage, nor do they force employees to work for them at gun point. They are conforming to the laws and statutes set down by the government at the behest of We, The People, and further in line with their own business model, which seems to be pretty successful…meaning all of those 10’s of thousands of employees have jobs, instead of none. Most mom and pop shops couldn’t compete with them because they charged more, had lower selection and in most cases didn’t pay anymore in salaries or benefits to local people either.
Let me ask you something here. Do you think that Walmart et al should pay a wage such that their employees would be ‘middle class’, i.e. they would make over $42k/year for a family of 3? If not then I don’t see how it would make a difference to the OP of this thread, which is about the shrinking middle class in the US, except perhaps that the middle class in the US would have to pay more for goods and services that Walmart et al produce or provide…or, we’d be buying them from some other company who would sell them to us at a price point that conforms better to the actual labor market and the laws and regulations of this country.
(bolding mine)
No, he isn’t.
In reply to XT.
I’m using a phone so i can’t easily pick apart your entire premise in writing with quotes so I’m just going to try to explain communism in the abstract. What you have so eloquently debated with “horseshit”.
Marx identified two phases of communism that would follow the predicted overthrow of capitalism: the first would be a transitional system in which the working class would control the government and economy yet still find it necessary to pay people according to how long, hard, or well they worked; the second would be fully realized communism—a society without class divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
I would ask you to explain how government subsidies provided by society and lobbied for by Walmart, as not being “from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs”. How is a company who is half capitalist half socialist not be described by communism? They provide their employees with the means to live by direct pay and by government subsidies on an as needed basis. Its the equivalent of miners money.
Walmart spends $10 million a year to lobby for welfare programs to subsidize their own workers poor salary. They perpetuate low salaries throughout many industries and offset those low salaries with public welfare also. They are the biggest beneficiary of many if not all welfare programs. SNAP is the most obvious, but any government assistance provided by the government is benefiting walmart through indirect pay. “To each according to his needs”. We indirectly pay for impoverishing jobs through social welfare because companies are not held to the standard of doing it themselves. They produce poverty.
I find it rather astonishingly tone-deaf to suggest that a company that employs 1.4 million American workers produces poverty.
How do you debate with such a perspective? Suggest that Walmart close all shops, put 1.4 million people out of work to alleviate poverty?
Or, perhaps more reasonably, suggest that the government mandate a floor of pay for these workers.
Oh wait, we have that already. It’s called the minimum wage, I think? Maybe we should have a reasonable debate on whether that should be raised, rather than moronically demonize the largest employer of American workers in the country.
Yes, he is. The 29% in the OP comes from PRC. Summary and links to full report are here*: The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground | Pew Research Center
**PastTense **writes that 29% have inadequate income. That 29% is based on a fraction of median income, and is thus absolutely “in relation to what other people have, not to what you have.”
*Can we please cite the actual work in OPs, and not CNN articles? Thanks.
Oh. Ya i guess so. “Live Better” they say. Take a look at these links though. Paints an interesting picture of your job creators over at Walmart.
http://walmart1percent.org/issues/top-reasons-the-walton-family-and-walmart-are-not-job-creators/
I agree that i am using Walmart as the example because it is one of the top offenders. But the problem isn’t isolated to Walmart. I’ve also not explained things as succinctly as I’d like to be able to. But the point is clear and in no way moronic or “astonishingly tone deaf” as you dramatically put it.
As for the rest of your mesmerizing post (dramatic isn’t it?) The debate is about classes, specifically the shrinking of the middle class along with the expanding of the upper and lower class. Of course this also includes wealth held by each class, which you’ll find using links in this thread. This line of debate naturally comes down to policies, fewer full time positions, less employer benefits and of course minimum wage.
I conceed that a new thread about minimum wage might have been better suited for that specific subject, but the meat of my argument is class inequality. Which i feel is very well suited for a thread on classes.
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Marx identified two phases of communism that would follow the predicted overthrow of capitalism: the first would be a transitional system in which the working class would control the government and economy yet still find it necessary to pay people according to how long, hard, or well they worked; the second would be fully realized communism—a society without class divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
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Yeah, just to save you some time I read Das Kapital as well as other assorting writings of the man. Of the many things he was wrong about, your points here are among the best examples.
Because it’s not Walmart that is setting the lower bar (a.k.a. minimum wage), and it’s not Walmart who defines what the bar is, where it’s set or why it’s set. It’s society that does that. So, your attempt to portray Walmart or other US companies who FOLLOW THE FUCKING LAW as being subsidized by the government is wrong and your attempt to couple this to communism is, as noted, horseshit. If you don’t like where the bar is set then lobby your local leaders for change. Understand that many will lobby against you, and they won’t all be the heirs of Sam Walton.
Do you have a cite for this? Moving on, however and IOW, they lobby for welfare programs that help many people other than their own employees. Hell, I’d think you’d be thrilled, along with many liberal 'dopers since I thought the goal was to GET more welfare programs in the US to help poor workers. Again, I don’t see this, assuming it’s true, as a bug but a feature. We, The People have set the baseline bar…Walmart et al are simply complying with the laws and regulations we’ve decided on collectively.
Do they? Do you have a cite for this? You’ve asserted it many times, and while I concede that their use of Chinese companies to make their goods and services is distasteful (to me…that’s one of the reasons I don’t shop there, voting with my pocketbook and all), it still brings a lot of jobs to the US that we wouldn’t otherwise have, as well as cheap goods and services that people obviously find a use for, since they are so successful in their niche.
I’d think that the recipients of the programs would be the biggest beneficiary. Not only do they get jobs but they also get assistance as well. Is your problem with Walmart or with social programs in general?? Have you considered why we HAVE social programs? If you are claiming it’s all because of Walmart, well…that sounds like Walmart is doing a lot. Did the mom and pop shops you bemoaned earlier losing out ever advocate for welfare benefits for their employees?? They didn’t pay anymore, or give any more benefits than Walmart does (probably less)…where were their advocates for this?
Marx was full of shit. You are equally full of shit for continuing to try and make this torturous claim. Again, I ask…is your problem with Walmart or with social democracy and social programs to help the poor? Seems like in actuality it’s with social programs themselves, since it’s US who sets the bar (or even if there is a bar at all), and US who decide what we will do or won’t do.
I disagree. I think that US labor is over priced and doesn’t have a large value add, which is why ‘middle class’ salaries outside of the tech industry have stagnated, and that we need social programs to address the gaps and bring people up to a standard of living we can set as a minimum. I think we should do more in fact, and I’d like to see more done through direct taxation to help the poor, to retrain those who really want to work in high tech fields or in ways that makes our labor have a value add so that it CAN charge more and get it.