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Reviews:
 ·magicjack.com
| reply to Rob_
Re: Celebrating "Labor"...? said by Rob_:"MADE IN CHINA" is why were in trouble, as well as other third world nations where we used to have american made products, how can people afford stuff if they don't have jobs?! The problem is that the choice (buying American) isn't that swell either. CEOs earn on average 300 times the average worker, when just a few decades ago that number was 30 times. (In Europe today, 100 times would be considered high.).
When the choice is self-interested executives who offshore labor (or import labor through H1B/L1B visas), rewarding people who live in a tiny shack (and use their gutter as a sewer) looks just as appealing.
To me, this gets back to the "collective" versus "individual" topic (and "socialized capitalism" versus "free markets.").
Advocates of "free markets" defend excessive executive pay, and offshoring of labor as just a natural result of competition. They ignore that corporations are a direct result of social moderation (the creation of a corporate entity by state legislatures-- a legal, yet fictional "person" to alleviate officers and investors of their personal responsibility if they owned and operated a private business).
Free marketeers argue that offshoring is good because, eventually we all benefit. That's a collective, not libertarian argument. When it's suggested that we (the collective) have a responsibility to those who shoulder the greatest immediate burden (such as losing a job, forced to work at McDonalds), they switch gears and insist that is "socialism." Society doesn't owe them anything. They are suffering from their own individual choices within a "free market." (Ignoring how society forces them to pay for a higher standard of living, and then "allows" them to compete against those who don't.).
Mark | |
patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY
kudos:1
1 edit | said by amigo_boy:The problem is that the choice (buying American) isn't that swell either. CEOs earn on average 300 times the average worker, when just a few decades ago that number was 30 times. (In Europe today, 100 times would be considered high.). Create punitive top earners tax rates »www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts···ocid=213 . Then you will have the american dream, notice the tax rate during the 1950s/1960s, and then all hell breaks loose when the tax rate starts falling (1970s/1980s). When the 100% of the CEO's stock options and bonus will turn into income tax, whats the point of taking it? instead it will be returned as salaries to middle/lower class employees below. Also notice the very low rate right before the great depression. | | |
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Reviews:
·magicjack.com
1 edit | said by patcat88:notice the tax rate during the 1950s/1960s, and then all hell breaks loose when the tax rate starts falling (1970s/1980s). Also see this wikipedia article showing both top and bottom rates, and a graph depicting the amount of progressivity (levels) of rates.
Comparing taxation is difficult because these tables don't show the distribution of taxation. For example, what income level did the bottom rate apply to? (The first pre-16th amendment tax applied to only 10% of the population.). What income level did the top rate apply to? Also, how many loopholes existed to reduce the +90% top rate of the 1950s compared to the loopholes available to today's 35% top-rate payers?
This is an interesting table showing how global marginal rates dropped globally since 1979. But, it's still difficult to make a comparison without knowing the level of progressiveness of each nation, income exclusions, loopholes, etc.
Maybe the only thing that's easy to understand is America's growing disparity of income and wealth. A problem which was a concern going back to the Founding.
Example,
when the laws undertake... to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society... have a right to complain of the injustice to their Government. -- President Andrew Jackson, 1832, » www.gutenberg.org/etext/10858I believe and I say it is true Democratic feeling, that all the measures of the government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. -- President William Harrison, 1840, » home.att.net/~howington/whh.html | |
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