Mostly middle class or lower class workers, and scientists/engineers who see little return from what they create.
Soon ? The wealthy/Right already does, and has for a long time. You’ll note I don’t deny your side being evil.
Hardly garbage, and I didn’t expect a thoughtful response from someone pro-upper class anyway. I was simply pointing out that a better education doesn’t mean you’ll get paid well; we’ll have better educated poor workers because if current trends continue there won’t be a middle class; just a few rich in a sea of poverty.
My own personal experiences with entrepreneurship and those of some people I know leads me to believe a chimp with money would fail rapidly.
A middle class is important, keeping people above the poverty line is important, but don’t diminish the financial risks taken by those that invent products and start businesses.
Before we get into a pissing contest about the MW, let’s keep in mind that most people live in states where the State MW > the Federal MW. A few big states like Texas and Ohio are notable exceptions, but even if the feds raise the MW to $6.50/hour, how many people will actually be affected and how different would the data look? Let’s assume, for the sake of arguement, that there is would be no job loss due to this wage hike. For example, no one in CA, NY, FL, MI, NJ, or IL would be affected by such a wage hike.
And why is it a global economy, John? Do you regard that as a fact of nature, or could it have been a political decision to assimilate local and national economies into a Borg-like global economy?
I don’t recall anybody giving me a chance to vote on it.
Perhaps the left should stop and ask themselves why so many white working-class Americans find the left so unattractive. Hint: It’s not because they’ve been brainwashed by Republican propaganda.
Well, yeah, it is pretty much a fact of nature. The US is but a small part of this planet. We can withdraw from the global economy, but we can’t eliminate it.
The minimum wage is now at one of it’s lowest levels (in constant dollars) in history. It is not at all clear that raising the miniumum wage will have negative macro-economic effects, but it will certainly help close the wage gap between rich and poor.
Outsourcing is tougher. One thing to do is make sure that there are no govt incentives to outsource. We also may need to have some limited protectionism. No other country in the world would accept the enormous trade defecits and outsourcing that we do without some sort of govt strategy to address it.
I’m an economic middle of the roader; let the market do what it does well and let the govt do what it does well. So much of our economoc success has been because of enlightened govt intrusion. Encouraging the building of railroads, rural electrication, the clount Extensions program, Land Grant Colleges, the Interstate Highway system, universal education, subsidizing research which led to the the Internet and other high-tech advances.
We also need to strengthen our checks and balance on corporations to make sure there is transparency in their finances and to make sure that we don’t have “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” scenarios determining executive compensation.
No, globalization was a political decision, and what’s more it was a political decision that largely excluded people like me from the process. You don’t have to be an anarchist or an Islamic fascist to question the wisdom of globalization.
I think that the measures they’ve introduced target the middle classes more. After all, there are very few rich people and there are many more middle class people. Fuel duty is an excellent example. We pay approx US$8 per gallon, and the difference is fuel duty. I used to spend £2500 on fuel every year; £2000 of that was fuel duty. Out of my already taxed income. Why are we taxing the means of making money rather than the profits of made money?
My views as regards the rich have mellowed, over time, I no longer think it necessary to render them into tallow to make candles. But a more useless, pampered class of beings is difficult to imagine. Junkies are just about as productive.
But its not really the rich who do these things that progressives object to, its those who serve wealth who have the most pernicious influence. How many middle class people have tax lawyers? Estate planners? Other professionals whose livelihood is to assist people who have money to keep it?
I’ve only known one truly rich person in my life, and a miserable sod he was, too. He knew he didn’t deserve it, but if he gave it away he wouldn’t have it, and it was all that gave him any identity. He couldn’t begin to cope with not having money, not having “people”. And he couldn’t really trust anyone who wasn’t at least as rich as he, because he could never trust thier motives. He accomplished at least one thing: he taught me a valuable lesson.
I am again shocked at John Mace’s naïveté. How in the world could the wealthy have amassed their wealth apart from good old honest work and business smarts?
How about using their wealth to buy influence and game the system?
Is it just happenstance that the wealthy support regressive tax proposals? Is it just happenstance that Social Security has turned into a system where the middle class pays more than its share to create a surplus, only to see that surplus sucked dry to fund other government programs, while regressive taxation throws money back to the wealthy?
It isn’t by chance that the IRS experiences cuts and manipulations that end up restricting its ability to make sure that the incredibly wealthy pay what they are supposed to in taxes (see “Ultra-wealthy cheat IRS out of $70 Billion per year”), while at the same time beefing up its efforts to go after people who make use of the earned income tax credit.
http://www.thinkingpeace.com/Lib/lib056.html]Here’s a nice long piece about David Cay Johnson’s Perfectly Legal, which made me long for a populist party to fight for the middle class, working class and poor.
They rich are indeed making their money the old fashioned way. They’re screwing everyone else over. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is selling you something.
This has nothing to do with marginal income tax rates!