http://www.epi.org/publication/unde...-workers-pay-why-it-matters-and-why-its-real/ Policies passed since the 70’s have caused the shift. CEO’s have still made their bonuses and had their raises, but the average worker has not. This is unsustainable.
I'm not sure where you get your information but it is even more socialistic than Obamacare. If CA couldn't afford single payer (same as Medicare for all) how do you think a country as large as the US would fund it and sustain it without going broke? The Mandate is the real joke. Make young healthy people pay for old people who never saved? Doesn't make any sense and why Obamacare will be further dismantled and repealed sooner rather than later. If you think the care would be better, go to the UK or Canada. It's crap and most of them admit it.
Well tell me how its unsustainable. What is the connection between productivity and the needs of wage increases? It sounds like you're saying "we're making more stuff and so because of that people should get more money". While on the individual employee to employer negotiation process I would say that's a strong case to make, I'm not seeing how you can apply that to the entirety of the US labor force. And the simplest way I can substantiate that is to point out that a measure of increased or decreased overall productivity for the country doesn't mean that every business within is increasing or decreasing its own productivity. So if we simply sat down and told every business they had to give their employees a 25% raise simply because "productivity is up" then countless business would go out of business because national productivity isn't driving their bottom line.
The gap is in large part due to increased regulatory expense burdens, high corporate taxes, and the expense of fighting the trial lawyers. Those costs are real money and have to be covered somehow. The easiest way cover it is to take it from the employees hides. It's a jungle out there.
I’m not really referring to small businesses and start ups. Don’t see how this has anything to do with what I’m talking about. Most benefits go to corporations. ie not small businesses.
Obamacare is not socialism. If it was, insurance companies and big pharma wouldn’t have written the law. I spent a great part of my childhood in Canada and have many friends there. I also have family in France. I’ve personally experienced a single payer system. Not one person I know would give up that system for what we have in the US. Your comment is completely out of touch with reality.
Take an AFL-CIO journeymen union member. He is paid union scale the same as all other journeymen. The company that employs him could pay him more if he's an exceptional worker and they want to retain him, but most don't. So the question is always has been, what incentive does any journeyman have to work harder, smarter or more productive than any other union member making the exact same wage? The fact that some unions still impose quotas on how much a worker can produce in a day such as the union saying a brick mason can only lay a max. of 80 concrete blocks/per day is a pretty good hint.
It’s unsustaible because at some point, the inequality will get so extreme, that no one except a handful of people will be able to afford anything. Nearly 80% of full time workers live paycheck to paycheck. They’re not all bad with their money. How are we going to have a functioning society when everyone is broke? I’m suggesting we go back to the way it was before the decoupling of productivity and wages. It’s not a radical idea. We were doing great in those days so it’s not like the country would suffer. Why is it ok for the executives to make more money when the people who are doing the actual work don’t?
Neither insurance companies or pharma wrote the law. Rahm Emanuel's brother did. Dr. Jerk. If Canada or France appeals to you so much, by all means, please go there. Reality is Socialism does NOT work.
I don't waste my time with idealistic socialists that don't know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. Welfare, Medicaid for all is what you advocate.
On average, every year that Obama was president the day when the Social Security Trust fund would be bust, lost a year. Trump hasn't been president even a year, and already, the Trust fund has gained a year. If Trump can keep this up over two terms and Pence can do the same, the Trust fund will remain solvent through the peak of the Baby Boomers and that is the bulge in the python that has caused all the worry, all these years.
I have a good job and make good money. And I clearly have more experience in the real “world” than you because I’ve actually lived in other places and talked to people outside of my bubble. You continue to speak nonesense and have distracted from the issues at hand. Btw, what happened to not wasting your time with someone like me?
The GOP does not answer to the people...they answer to the lobbyists of the elite and there cannot be a democracy in this current voodoo trickle down crap economic climate and system. This is a tax scam just as Trump University was a scam to screw folks out of their money by promising them the voodoo of snake oil.
Strawman argument. Never said I want elderly poverty rates over 50%. Saying "that won't make it sound" is also not a valid argument. It's contradiction. So you got a better idea let's hear it.
Ok so your question is a variation on the classic question of "why do better than I am, provided I could if I don't feel justified in doing so". And typically that answer would mirror the character, ambition, and/or desire of the individual but in this case its mirroring the greed of the union and the will of the politicians who see unions as a powerful tool to stifle capitalism and champion socialism. The only thing an employer can do to influence the answer in a way that benefits them is to provide incentive, which employers do in a variety of ways. ^That is provided they want to, some positions either have such a high turnover or a low skill entry requisite that there is no incentive for the employer. Performance reviews, bonuses, scheduled raises, milestone rewards, and as you mentioned quotas, these things exist and have existed for a long time. For the individual, there is no one-sized-fits-all answer because every employee will have different desires/exceptions and every employer will have different ranges of compensation that they are willing to offer. And I also think the nature of this questios invoke the very sense of entitlement that has created so many problems for our country. Thanks to rampant political pandering to the lowest common denominator, and the destruction of personal responsibility, people have traded in their ambition to succeed for some false sense of satisfaction in believing that "someone cares" even though the someone in question is just after votes. So I'll give you my personal answer to your question. I'll work harder because I WANT to succeed. And if my employer doesn't recognize that or cares to reward me, guess what? I move on, I seek out better opportunity. People who are content with remaining where they are must also learn to be content with whatever standards that choice affords them. One of the greatest scams of the modern age has been convincing people that having to take what you want is no longer the way things work.
Ok well wealth inequality is its own issue, yes. I personally don't believe the doomsday scenario you're predicting would happen without some catalyst such as a large war, dramatic changes to our energy consumption (/cough global warming regulations), or if radical progressive-ism obtain complete power at the federal level and just tried to **** social/communism on us. But is it a threat? Yea, economic collapse is always a threat and America isn't immune simply because we're the best. However wealth redistribution isn't what we should be doing because a simple lack of money isn't the only reason why some people are poor and others live paycheck to paycheck. (just to get this out there, wealth redistribution buys votes because the concept appeals to the envy and greed within us all not because its a good solution) Before we go down that route we need to address social issues surrounding the responsibility of living in a capitalist society. Some people are bad with money, some people stupid and live beyond their means, some people are arrogant and believe they deserve a thing because they desire it, some people crap out five kids with no ability to support even one, some people cant understand the moronic decision in financing a $20,000 car for a $45,000 net cost, and so on. We devote countless hundreds of millions of dollars and man-hours to "educating" people about things like "how not to be racist" and "how to use the correct gender pronoun". Why cant we ditch that nonsense and teach people how credit cards work? Bring the quality of personal responsibility back to a healthy level and then lets see how many of those paycheck-to-paycheck people are still in that situation. Then we can see what we'll have to do next. Simple, because that's how capitalism works. If you start or own a business its yours, you can pay yourself whatever you want. If you're higher up in the chain of command you're worth more than those under you, you can demand more than they can. Businesses belong to the people that own them, not to the people that are employed by then. This isn't a socialist or communist nation.
Again you’re assuming people are just bad with their money. When cost of living goes up but wages don’t, what do you expect to happen? How are people supposed to be educated when the cost of that education keeps skyrocketing? How are people supposed to own a home when home prices keep skyrocketing? I’m all for hard work and earning what you get. But at what point is that exploited? At what point do you stop blaming the poor and realize that they are being taken advantage of? I am not speaking for myself either. I have a job, I make good money, I have a college degree with my loans paid off. I realize that I had certain advantages that others may not. Now all we’re doing with policies like this tax plan and previous ones is making it even more difficult for lower income people to get ahead. How is that right? Capitalism isn’t flawless. Neither is socialism. That’s why they need to coexist to balance each other out. Our balance is completely off and has been for a while. Do you believe in having streets, police, military, public schools, etc? If you said yes to any of those then you believe in socialism too.
