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ORIGINAL: Hippiekinkster

Eat American!!!

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ORIGINAL: ALAstella
"... and it just seems viable to me to increase spending on welfare to work programs which take in self-employment and small businesses. This is rebuilding society from the bottom, and working to get many of the unemployed to become self-employed, ..."

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b
Well I looked at your chart and from what I can see every time the minimum wage went up there was an increase in unemployment some months later and when taxes were cut same thing.  Is it a perfect correlation?  Of course not but there are other things that can effect unemployment levels (population levels, mean age of the population, etc.).

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I believe I’ve already covered this.  Yes, people are hurting.  People have always been hurting and always will.  That’s life.  It sucks but that’s the way it is.  What do I propose to do?  Turn the economy around so the can find jobs.  You can frame this a moral situation all you want but if you continue to take more and more money out of the private sector you are only going to create more people who need assistance.  I fail to see the morality in that.

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How are low income workers helped if the products they are creating are selling less than they could be?

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Reread your previous paragraph.  Who is making perfect the enemy of the good?

I’m not trying to be condescending here but do you understand the concept? 

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This just brings us back to where we were before: Government policy screwing over one group of people to favor another group.  As far as I’m concerned the government should be as neutral in these things as it can be. 

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As for workers being consumers, well… people with a little money still have more to spend than people with no money.

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ORIGINAL: MstrPBK

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ORIGINAL: ALAstella
"... and it just seems viable to me to increase spending on welfare to work programs which take in self-employment and small businesses. This is rebuilding society from the bottom, and working to get many of the unemployed to become self-employed, ..."

Maybe I am out of touch with reality but ... as a person with 10 disabilities I have to ask: "How can you possibly get people off welfare when the regulations to get them off are so tight it is almost impossible to get a sustainable wage?" When the employment income reaches the welfare stipend the Welfare stipend is pulled - point blank. Employers seem to be willing to support persons UP TO that threshold but not beyond that. That is the first half of the problem for employment for persons with disabilities.

The second half is much more evil. It involves the insurance companies. When the employer WANTS to hire the person with disabilities the candidate employee is sent for the standard Health Care Insurance physical. (what I experienced and I must assume others have similar situations) is that one appears for the exam. you are told your denied for coverage, and the reviewer briskly walks out the room while your half naked so one CANNOT discuss the logic of a double standard insurance process where able bodied people get insurance and those who are disabled are told they cant.

And when the disabled person is granted Medical Insurance the insurance companies tells the hiring company they will take the person at a rate that is 2 to 4 times the value of the able bodied person in that office - which causes the company (many times) to say we can not afford this person so we can't hire them.

... and the person remains on welfare ... what is wrong with this picture?

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b

Three:  Eliminate the minimum wage.  Having a minimum wage only accomplishes two things.  First, to lock unskilled labor out of the job market.  Second, to allow people who support the minimum wage the ability to flatter themselves over what good people they are.

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b

One:  Cut taxes!  When the government doesn’t pilfer as much money from people, people have more money.  When people have more money, they spend more money (some of it may be saved but even save money is eventually spent).  When people spend more money, the demands for goods and services goes up.  When the demand for goods and services goes up, existing businesses expand and new businesses are created to meet the demand – hence, more jobs (with the added bonus of more tax payers).

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I think you'd better take another look.  That chart shows 17 occasions when increases to the minimum wage took effect.  If you take a look at the unemployment numbers a year later, for 10 of those increases the unemployment rate was lower a year after the increase.  6 times the unemployment rate went up, 1 time it stayed the same.  If what you've been saying about tax cuts is true, we'd expect to see a drop in unemployment after a tax cut.  We don't.  They list 8 tax reform/cut dates in there.  Unemployment was higher a year later after 4 of these and was lower after 4 of these. 

I choose to look at a 1-year time frame.  It was an arbitrary number.  Because you said "months", I looked at a 6 month time frame, too.  It works out pretty much the same.  If one wanted to draw conclusions from these numbers, it would seem that increasing the minimum wage is a more reliable way to lower unemployment than cutting taxes.  However, there are a lot of other things that affect the unemployment rate, as you say.  The conclusion I've drawn based on the evidence I have found is that neither cutting taxes nor raising the minimum wage have much/any effect on the unemployment rate.  I've heard a lot of folks proclaim their strong beliefs to the contrary, but none of them have presented any evidence that this is the case.  When I've looked for evidence, all I've found are annecdotes, hypothetical situations and strong beliefs.  That's really all you've offered, heavy on the hypotheticals.  Do you have any evidence to support your belief?

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You haven't covered this at all.  Your solution seems to be "Let them eat cake," despite abundant historical evidence that this sort of policy is a disaster.  There were 37 million people in the US living at or below the poverty line at the end of 2007.  That number has been growing.  There are currently more than 10 million unemployed people in the US.  That number is growing, too.  The number of people who meet the current income criteria for government assistance is growing.  Many of those programs were strained and trying to reduce their client rolls by tightening up income criteria when times were good, and they are really in tough shape now.  There are more folks drawing unemployment insurance than there are funds available in the program to pay them, and states are looking to the federal govt to pick up the slack.

What are these people - we're talking tens of millions of people here - supposed to do until the economy turns around if we cut funding for these programs?  This isn't a moral question, it's a practical one, and one that I expect you have an answer for since you're proposing cuts.  These folks aren't looking to be economically stimulated right now, they want to pay the rent and utilities and buy groceries.  No one knows how long this depression is going to last.  It's not like we can freeze these folks and thaw them out when things get better - at a minimum they need food and shelter every day, and those things cost money.  Some may have savings or family and friends who can help them out, but many don't - their family and friends are tapped out, too, or will be soon.  What do you imagine they'd do when the money runs out and they can't feed their kids?  I'm guessing they're not going to wait patiently for the economy to turn around.
What do you suppose will happen if we tell millions of people who are already feeling pretty fucking stressed that, although we've handed out $350 Billion in taxpayer money already and are preparing to put taxpayers in debt for several times that much more in order to stimulate the economy and assure that businesses can remain profitable, we can't afford to fund unemployment and food stamp programs?  "Sorry, folks, but we really need the tax breaks.  Here's a case of Spam and a tent.  Good luck!"

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You've about worn me out, so I don't much care whether I sound condescending or not.  It's obvious that you don't understand the concept, and that you really don't grok the disconnects between these things that you believe.  Did you read the paragraph that I was referring to?  "Where’s the magic line that creates a perfect balance?  The answer is: there is no such line because people are different."  That's your justification for discounting any call for a living wage.  I'm saying let's take the low-end figure and see how things shake out.  Which of us is looking for perfection?

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It would be wonderful if government could be neutral in these matters, but at least a third of all workers in the US receive benefits from wage subsidies like the EIC and programs for the working poor.  That kind of outlay makes it impossible for government to be neutral - they have to account for how and why that money is spent.  These wage subsidy programs favor business, not labor.  They enable businesses to pay less than the actual cost of labor and thus pocket more profits by subsidizing low wages with programs like food stamps, medicaid and the EIC.  There's a social stigma attached to using food stamps or medicaid, but none attached to paying one's employees so little that they qualify for food stamps or medicaid.  There's something very wrong with that.

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You're really thick on this point, but I'll try again.  We can't create more wealth by creating more poverty.  We can't cut the national tax burden by creating jobs that put more demand on wage subsidy programs - that take more tax dollars out than they're putting in.  We can't do away with wage subsidy programs unless business steps up and pays the actual cost of the labor they're relying on to run their businesses.  It is not an option to let these folks fall through the cracks.  We're talking about tens of millions of people here.  I would think that as a group, they would qualify as "too big to fail" in the whole govt bail-out scheme.  The consequences for letting them fail would be worse than what we tried to buy
Ourselves.

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b

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I am curious Marc, what do you think the solutions are?

 
You’ve already asked that question and I’ve already given my answer.  If you don’t agree, then you don’t agree.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

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So Marc2b's solution is to give more money to the speculators?

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See, I don't buy into the right-wing BS of the Government being the enemy.

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How much is really being pissed away by DOD, DHS, DOE, FBI, etc.?

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Including the interest on the Nat'l Debt, the "military" sucks up about 1/4 of Federal Spending.

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Stopping Bush's idiot wars would be a good start.  Corporate welfare costs about 150 billion a year. Stop that shit, too. ADM does not need subsidies for high-fructose corn syrup.

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And I want a living wage. If that means the Walton family makes a couple billion bucks less a year, fine. A living wage lets people buy stuff. It allows people to get to their jobs. It helps them get ahead.

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ORIGINAL: Coldwarrior57

Cut the payroll taxes by 50 %. kill the cap gain tax for the next 2 -5 years.

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I have looked in vain for any evidence that raising the minimum wage would result in higher inflation, Marc. Do you have any?

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Supporters of the minimum wage say that it prevents the exploitation of workers. Opponents say that if it is high enough to be effective, it destroys jobs, particularly for workers with very low productivity due to inexperience or handicap. They also argue that it causes inflation.[1]
Until the 1990s, economists generally agreed that raising the minimum wage reduced employment, but this consensus was weakened based on work by David Card and Alan Krueger in the mid-1990s.[2]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mininum_wage (this article has a good list of pros and cons. )

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b

Do you have to pay for that counseling or is that covered under your national health care plan? 

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b

I’ve already said this.  Lower taxes means people have more money in their pocket (perhaps I should make it clear that when I say cut taxes, I mean for everybody, not just corporations).  People with more money in their pocket spend more money.  The demand for goods and services goes up resulting in job creation to meet that demand. 

Cutting taxes will turn around a recession (if you cut enough).  It won’t be instantaneous.  It never is but that’s because people move at the speed of life, not the speed of theory. 

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So raising the minimum wage may not cause an across the board inflation (it would depend on how much you raise it) but clearly it has negative effects on people and clearly it can result in price increases in sectors of the economy.