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Good discussion, Aaron and FW!!
Aaron, you're right. The argument I was making went
--------------------->>>>
right over his head.
posted by
WriterofLight
on August 1, 2006 at 6:19 PM
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Conversely, if we raise the minimum wage to what the "living wage" crowd wants, every job will be outsourced. Check out the employment and economic growth figures for countries with a very high minimum wage, mandatory extensive benefits, and forced job security. Even check out the results of individual cities in the US that have enacted higher minimum wages. It's a death-knell for employment and economic development whenever it's tried, yet people still keep thinking it's a good idea.
Health care is a separate though related issue. The ultimate answer may be forcing everyone to have a health savings account, but there is no clean or easy solution. Just making employers provide health care, like the arguments for a high minimum wage, ignores the basic economic fact that money doesn't just appear out of thin air. It comes from somebody's wallet, and it always winds up being yours.
posted by
AaronB
on July 31, 2006 at 9:29 PM
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Aaron B - take a look around, pal ....
there are no more entry level jobs that you speak of. All the career starters have been outsourced. If we allow corporations to pay less than a living wage, taxpayers will have to subsidize their medical costs.
posted by
fwmystic
on July 31, 2006 at 8:45 PM
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Mystic, your argument is creative
but I think you missed Writer's point. Raising the minimum wage dries up entry level jobs, putting even more people on welfare. Raising the minimum wage helps those people on minimum wage who do keep their jobs, but it hurts everybody through the mechanisms that Writer described such as inflation and economic slowdown.
I probably differ with most conservatives on the estate tax, though. Here's the basic principle - any tax money taken out of the economy, hurts the economy. By extension, even if you are only soaking the rich, everybody gets wet. However, we need to get the taxes from somewhere, and I think an estate tax is preferable to higher income taxes. Ideally we'd move to the fair tax (consumption tax) or flat tax...but that day is probably still a ways off.
Trivia: how many of you know there was no income tax up until WW I? Our government was small enough to support itself purely on tarriffs. But once the income tax was implemented, supposedly just to pay for the war, we couldn't live without it.
posted by
AaronB
on July 31, 2006 at 3:23 PM
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You missed the point ...
by increasing the minimum wage, I believe the desired end result is to move people OFF welfare. Why should taxpayers have to subsidize Wal-Mart's (or any other multinationals) labor costs? As for the estate tax, well, that affects less than 5,000 individuals. Surely there are more pressing issues worthy of the Republican Congress' time and energy?
posted by
fwmystic
on July 31, 2006 at 7:48 AM
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