From tax breaks, through GMI, to FULL COMMUNISM - poverty elimination station

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > From tax breaks, through GMI, to FULL COMMUNISM - poverty elimination station

«‹›5 »

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

ITT people in the top 20% of the world by income, who'd probably see their living standards halved if income were distributed equally globally, complain about how unfair the world is to them

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:14

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 15:41

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

*in bizarro world where college is free in the US*

left-wing goons: It's so unfair how free education is a subsidy to corporations who don't have to spend money on training employees

*in another bizarro world where corporations pay students' tuition fees*

left-wing goons: It's so unfair that I didn't get into college because no company wanted to pay for my arts degree

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:24

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

paranoid randroid posted:

do one about the bizarro world where the machines have thrown down their human overlords and installed robocommunism, i love that one

uhh yeah in that one the machines decided to put the guys who started businesses in medium income countries first against the wall and have installed people who were unable to get rewarding jobs after college as their new politburo (the robots know their limits and need human rulers)

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:28

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Effectronica posted:

What is the ROI on having children in the modern age? Human extinction now!

Member Since
May 31, 2011
Post Count
18945
Post Rate
13.19 per day

pretty good ROI for your parents there

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:39

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Effectronica posted:

Agreed, no more care for the disabled. No more children. Nothing will be done that doesn't give you at least as much money as you spend on it.

maybe there's a middle ground, a middle ground where we pay for things like education for kids and care for the disabled, but where we don't give you your disability checks just so you can post on the forums for 20 hours per day

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:48

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

QuarkJets posted:

is this actually said in places where college is free? I really doubt it

it's said in this thread about welfare benefits

(see: "welfare benefits are a subsidy to walmart because they keep their workers alive")

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:49

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

down with slavery posted:

its cheaper to house the "useless" and give them internet connections, food, water, medical care, etc than it is to deal with them when you push them on to the streets

I'm not seeing why they need an internet connection

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:51

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

down with slavery posted:

to keep them entertained

cheaper than cable

plus its pretty much required if you want to join the workforce, might as well make it available

social welfare would probably actually be maximized if we created a bot that posted on a forum and gave effectronica access to the internet, but only to that forum

serious edit: as for the internet connection, I agree it should be available, but not necessarily in their homes, maybe in places like libraries

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:53

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Effectronica posted:

What's the ROI on Europe? Basically zero? Wouldja look at that.

In all seriousness, the guy who said investment in mental health resources is right. If only you had access to proper care, who knows where you might be? Addiction can be hard, even if it is just to posting on a forum.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 18:58

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

euphronius posted:

you know what else would incentivize poor people? Debtor's prisons.

Not having free internet is just like being in a debtor's prison

# ¿ May 6, 2015 19:10

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

QuarkJets posted:

I'm glad that you believe that knowledge is as essential to basic survival as food and shelter, but that's really not the case. I don't think that you'll find any progressives who argue that free education is an unfair corporate subsidy, so you're really just poorly trying to strawman

Ok, got you. So using tax money to give people a thing they need for survival and their job (food) is an unfair subsidy to companies, but giving people something they don't really need to survive but need for their job is not. Makes so much sense.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 19:14

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

QuarkJets posted:

Which McDonalds franchise hires only college graduates? How many Walmart greeters are required to have Master's degrees?

You're really bad at this strawman thing

Oh, so it's ok to subsidize Microsoft and Apple but not Walmart or McDonald's.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 19:18

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

twodot posted:

Right, companies are expecting to pay enough money for people to survive while working at their job, but society is expected to pay for basic education costs, because any given individual will use those skills at potentially many companies. Training for skills specific to an individual company need to be paid by the company.

People might also use the skill of being alive at potentially many companies

# ¿ May 6, 2015 19:20

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

twodot posted:

What? Your strawman has become to bizarre for me to parse anymore. Instead, you should go ahead and find someone who thinks that education subsidies are bad corporate welfare and argue with them.
edit:
I'm also not opposed to making food free if that helps you.

it's not a strawman, people in this thread actually argued that welfare benefits are a subsidy to walmart because the government helps feed their workers

i'm failing to see how these same people wouldn't complain about free education being a subsidy to microsoft because the government helps educate their workers

# ¿ May 6, 2015 19:27

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

twodot posted:

Right, and I explained that basic education skills are something that is transferable so why should we expect the first company that happens to hire them to pay that cost up front?
edit:
I mean where does this reasoning lead? Should the first company that hires someone be forced to back pay for their k-12 education? Obviously not.

I'm not the one that actually agrees with it (or with food stamps being an unfair subsidy to walmart), so I can't tell you how the minds of left wingers here work

Seems a bit strange to say something is not a subsidy because you can't accurately charge that subsidy to any specific company though. All companies that hire the guy benefit from his skills, so they all benefit from something tax payers have done.

# ¿ May 6, 2015 19:36

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

archangelwar posted:

Must ensure a lower class exists to look down upon, how else could I look at myself in the mirror?

im pretty sure that just by looking at the average chilean, or south american in general, he'd see someone who gets by on less money than an american living below the poverty line

# ¿ May 6, 2015 19:41

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Unseen posted:

I'm very progressive and I think the minimum wage should be $30 an hour. That would kickem right in their rich cis privileged balls. loving intellectual children.

hmmm I think youre correct, $30 is closer to $11 than $100 therefore what could go wrong?

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:04

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Effectronica posted:

How much time have you spent living on American minimum wage, honky?

Member Since
May 31, 2011
Post Count
19041
Post Rate
13.24 per day

Man must be tough working a minimum wage job (like 3% of Americans) and posting so much, how do you manage?

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:14

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Effectronica posted:

I know it takes you ten minutes to write a sentence, but I spend probably half an hour a day posting, maybe an hour if I'm closely following a thread.

youve posted on this thread roughly every half an hour for the past 4 hours, and thats not counting all your posts elsewhere

edit: youve posted about 200 times since I last posted your post count (yesterday or the day before)

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:26

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Raskolnikov38 posted:

oh no post counts, our arguments are instantly invalid!

curses foiled again

Just pointing out that "you don't know what it's like living on the minimum wage" kind of loses its impact when its coming from shutins who are making enough money on disability/from their parents/trading stocks online/from their jobs that they can afford to post all day and spend money buying pictures for their forum accounts

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:36

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Leroy Diplowski posted:

I've been thinking about minimum wage change to $15/ hr quite a lot because I own a small business with 4 employees who make from $9-$12/hr.

if the minimum wage went to $15 tomorrow we probably wouldn't go out of business, and we probably wouldn't lay anyone off. I hire the number of people I need to make the business work, not a number of people based on some arbitrary spending limit for labor. I don't have any superfluous employees because whether they are getting $8 or $15 if I'm paying someone I don't need then that's less money in my pocket.

If min wage did go to $15 then I would probably have to raise prices, but then so would my competition, so it would be pretty much a zero sum game for me. Since my customers are mostly very high earners, a min wage increase would be a (clumsy) method of wealth redistribution which I feel is a really good thing.

The only major concern I have is that the market will be slow to adjust and I find myself raising prices before a broad range of companies also raise prices thus changing consumer expectations. I don't think anyone is suggesting raising the min wage to $15 in one immediate step, however.

Whenever his discussion comes up I am always amused at the vitriol of the $14/ hr earners pissed off that the people they think they are better than will make the same as them. It reminds of the biblical parable of the workers' wages in matt 20:1-16. Jesus would have been for the $15 min wage.

I even had a discussion with an employee of mine who makes 11/hr and did not want the minimum wage to go to $15/hr because then he would be making the same as McDonald's employees. I was struck by the irony that he found making the same wage as a McDonald's employee more objectionable than I found writing bigger paychecks each week. When bought this up he asked if I would pay him $19/hr if min wage went to $15. At first I was like " lol no" but then I thought about it. If I can charge just a few % more for my products based on the increased demand from a rather large consumer base suddenly being able to afford more than just the bare nessecities to live them then I could pay him $19/hr. It might take a while because these causes and effects are always really elastic, but I think it would be a net win for my employees and I. Also, I've lost a couple of my best employees to jobs that paid more over the past year. If the min wage is $15 then employers are on a level playing field and low skilled workers won't be bouncing around From job to job chasing an extra $1 an hr. This will save money and time training etc.

The only real losers will be the high volume low margin retailers but they are already exploiting workers up their supply chain anyhow, and we are going need to wean our economy off of cheap consumer goods produced by our de facto colonies at some point.

I'm am not an economist so I might have made some really absurd conclusions, but I have started two small businesses and managed several, so that's how I see it.

So you think that if you and your competitors all increase prices, rich people will still buy the same amount of stuff? (not saying it necessarily isn't true, but it doesn't sound that plausible)

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:40

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Effectronica posted:

Spending five dollars on luxuries? N-nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....

Your half an hour is up by the way.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:41

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

euphronius posted:

Yes I can't imagine what a person making min wage would think on this topic.

Probably depends on whether they're one of the minimum wage workers who will see their wages increase or one of the minimum wage workers who gets fired

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:42

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Unseen posted:

I think creating a 15$ an hour minimum wage in China would undoubtedly be better for the US than boosting minimum wage in the US.

Yes because "betterness" should be measured by ARE JOBS IN ARE COUNTRY instead of how many things people can buy with the money they make from working

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:50

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

paranoid randroid posted:

its like this, you can make posts or you can make butter and

Well I mean you could make 13 posts per day complaining about how unfair the world is, or you could go out and volunteer or work and pay taxes but :effort:

it's easier to complain about the rich instead

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:57

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

I mean it's not like you'll ever make a difference. 19000 posts @ 1 minute per post, that's only 40 full working days spent posting. No charity could benefit from 40 days of volunteer work.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 17:58

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

paranoid randroid posted:

im going thru my post history like Oskar Schindler right now. this post here, "im gay", i could have fed an orphan with that time. "full communism ftw", that could have rehabilitated a homeless drug addict. how many more could i have saved.

You're right, the only thing that can ever make a difference is rich people paying more taxes and a higher minimum wage

Effectronica posted:

I know it takes you ten minutes to write a sentence, but I spend probably half an hour a day posting, maybe an hour if I'm closely following a thread.

You must really like this thread!

# ¿ May 8, 2015 18:03

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

LunarShadow posted:

Not to mention, not all min wage jobs are physical. Here I am posting on my phone from my min wage job on my lunch break. I am a substitute teacher.

Yeah but you're posting on your phone during a lunch break not posting on your computer all the time. Also, less than 5% of workers in the US make minimum wage, so I'm going to venture a guess that most of them probably do some sort of physical job, but I could be wrong about that.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 18:11

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

LunarShadow posted:

Missing my point. Was meant to show that you don't have to be on your comp all day to ppst a whopping 13 posts a day. I used to manage that on my bus ride home.Basically I am saying you are retarded for bringing up post counts and the like. Cause apperantly folks can't multitask.

And my point was that these guys aren't posting on their phones in their spare time, but instead refreshing threads for hours straight.

Voyager I posted:

Better idea; instead of pointing out how many posts Effectronica makes, point out how terrible they all are. It's not like you have to resort to some mastermind tactics to make fun of them and there is surely no lack of material.

I actually tried to argue with Effectronica once, he ended a long post with something in Italian or Latin that was too sophisticated for me, now I just post about his post count.

# ¿ May 8, 2015 18:28

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Voyager I posted:

[Your age + 9 months] too late.

That's because you're actually a worse poster than them, which is saying quite a bit.

Yet somehow, I see Effectronica on the "online users" list but not posting, so maybe I'm doing something correctly?

# ¿ May 8, 2015 18:39

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

QuarkJets posted:

Yes, there are a number of studies that have examined the link between minimum wage and demand. But it's kind of an obvious result anyway. Minimum wage workers tend to have an MPC of 1. Demand is defined in terms of dollars spent on goods. If you're spending every dollar that you earn, then every additional dollar that you earn is an additional dollar of demand generated, and that's before you even start thinking about the velocity of money.

[citation needed]

# ¿ May 10, 2015 12:11

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

LorrdErnie posted:

You want a citation on poor people not saving their money? Seriously? You do realize that under capitalism it is required that you exchange money to gain goods and services right? And that certain goods and services are required for a functional life in a modern society as well as life at all?

The pro-$15 minimum wage people seemed to be crying for a citation that minimum wage will either lower employment or raise prices which are just as obvious.

But yes, a citation that minimum wage workers have a high MPC relative to other groups that could be helped. Not poor people in general, minimum wage workers. Maybe in addition to that, something showing how the increase in demand for minimum wage workers will offset the decrease in demand for unemployed people or other people hurt by inflation.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 12:21

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Great idea! The US should also have no minimum wage, just like Denmark. Let wages reflect economic conditions instead of an arbitrary government set amount.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 13:12

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

VitalSigns posted:

Lucky you, we're actually practically there already! The US minimum wage is currently set somewhere between gently caress-you and crime-against-humanity so really all we'd have to do to be like Denmark is have the large collective bargaining agreements that they have which set even fast food jobs at almost 3 times what we make here in the USA.

I take it then you support the recent fast food worker strikes here in the USA that strive to attain the Denmark collective bargaining model for us?

Why are you attributing the Danish McWage to their unions instead of market conditions? Why do (unionized) software engineers in Denmark make less money than un-unionized software engineers in California?

GlyphGryph posted:

Yes, I'd like to see a citation, as the arguments that it will lower employment at the rate being discussed seems to be completely illogical. I'd also like to see a citation about the price raise actually being a bad one.

Sure, they're easy to find, this one just came out in one of the top 4 economics journals.

Here's the WSJ condensed version of it, though if you want to read the whole paper: MaCurdy, Thomas, 2015, How Effective Is the Minimum Wage at Supporting the Poor?, Journal of Political Economy.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/thomas-macurdy-the-minimum-wage-stealth-tax-on-the-poor-1424644567

quote:

In a peer-reviewed study, �How Effective Is the Minimum Wage at Supporting the Poor?� (forthcoming in the Journal of Political Economy), I analyzed who won and who lost after Congress raised the minimum wage in 1996 to $5.15 from $4.25, a raise that occurred in phases over the period 1996-97. That would be comparable to raising the current minimum wage of $7.25 to nearly $8.80. The results show the failure of minimum-wage hikes as an antipoverty policy.

To be sure, companies on their own�such as Wal-Mart last week�do raise the wages of their lowest-paid workers, typically when it is necessary to retain a stable, productive workforce. But this isn�t the same as a government-mandated, economy wide raise. Still, most Americans favor such mandated increases because they believe it helps poor workers support their families.

One problem is that only about 5% of families have children and are supported by low-wage earnings; another is that higher minimum wages cause some workers to lose their jobs. Advocates of a higher minimum wage argue that the number of workers who gain far exceeds those who lose. Whatever the credibility of this calculus, there is yet another problem: If someone�s income is arbitrarily increased thanks to a legislatively mandated wage increase, someone else must pay for it.

Since economic evidence indicates that higher minimum wages don�t significantly affect employers� profit rates, advocates instead say that employers will pass on these increased labor costs by raising the prices of their goods and services�and that �society,� or more affluent consumers, will pay these costs.

But will low-income families earn more from an increase in the minimum wage than they will pay as consumers of the now higher-priced goods? My research strongly suggests that they won�t.

The first step in understanding why they won�t is to recognize that minimum-wage workers are typically not in low-income families; instead they are dispersed evenly among families rich, middle-class and poor. About one in five families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution had a minimum-wage worker affected by the 1996 increase, the same share as for families in the top fifth.

Virtually as much of the additional earnings of minimum-wage workers went to the highest-income families as to the lowest. Moreover, only about $1 in $5 of the addition went to families with children supported by low-wage earnings. As many economists already have noted, raising the minimum wage is at best a scattershot approach to raising the income of poor families.

The second step is to consider who actually bears the burden of higher labor costs that are passed on through higher prices of goods and services.

My analysis, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics� Consumer Expenditure Survey, showed that the 1996 minimum-wage hike raised prices on a broad variety of goods and services. Food purchased outside of the home bore the largest share of the increased consumption costs, accounting for 21% with an average price increase of slightly less than of 2%; the next highest shares were around 10% for such commodities as retail services, groceries and household personal services.

Overall, the extra costs attributable to higher prices equaled 0.63% of the nondurable goods purchased by the poorest fifth of families and 0.52% of the goods purchased by the top fifth�with the percentage falling as the income level rose.

The higher prices, in other words, resembled a regressive value-added, or sales, tax, with rates rising the lower a family�s income. This is sharply contrary to normal tax policy. A typical state sales tax has a uniform rate�but with necessities such as food excluded, and this exclusion (which exists as well in countries with a value-added tax) is adopted expressly to lower the effective tax rate on consumption by people with lower incomes.

My analysis concludes that more poor families were losers than winners from the 1996 hike in the minimum wage. Nearly one in five low-income families benefited, but all low-income families paid for the increase through higher prices.

Essentially what he did was he matched the price effects of a minimum wage increase with the consumption patterns of different income groups and found that companies responded to minimum wage increases by passing on costs, but most importantly, they passed on the costs to the poorest people in society. The really really big losers of an increase in the minimum wage were poor people who were not affected by the change.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 13:58

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 15:41

Geriatric Pirate: Apr 25, 2008; by Nyc_Tattoo

Mo_Steel posted:

Assuming the premise of that article for the moment, we should simply pair minimum wage increases with increased tax credits to the poor and leverage that cost by taxing top earners.

Bonus, we're giving workers more freedom to pick their employment with the tax credits which may drive wages higher naturally too, which is what you seem to want as well.

Why would you increase the minimum wage at all? Your post doesn't make any sense or you misunderstood the article (the point wasn't that minimum wage increases weren't big enough, it's that many poor people are not affected by them but see the rising costs because they shop at businesses that use minimum wage labor). The point was that the minimum wage is a policy that helps low wage workers, who are not necessarily all poor. In response, places employing them raise prices, and it turns out that a lot of these places are actually patronized by poor people. And these poor people for the most part don't benefit from minimum wage increases (because they don't work, or work at wages above the minimum wage but have other costs etc.) So it doesn't make sense to mix it with any policy. Especially with a policy that gives tax credits to low income working people, who are already the group that is presumed to benefit from minimum wage increases.

If you want to increase EITC, just vote Republican.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 15:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > From tax breaks, through GMI, to FULL COMMUNISM - poverty elimination station

«‹›5 »

paranoid randroid posted:

Effectronica posted:

Effectronica posted:

QuarkJets posted:

down with slavery posted:

down with slavery posted:

Effectronica posted:

euphronius posted:

QuarkJets posted:

QuarkJets posted:

twodot posted:

twodot posted:

twodot posted:

archangelwar posted:

Unseen posted:

Effectronica posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Effectronica posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Leroy Diplowski posted:

Effectronica posted:

euphronius posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Unseen posted:

paranoid randroid posted:

paranoid randroid posted:

Effectronica posted:

LunarShadow posted:

LunarShadow posted:

Voyager I posted:

Popular Thug Drink posted:

Voyager I posted:

QuarkJets posted:

LorrdErnie posted:

VitalSigns posted:

GlyphGryph posted:

quote:

Mo_Steel posted: