While discussing Billie Sutton’s economic development plan yesterday, I mentioned that government can’t reach into the private sector and raise everybody’s wages.
But maybe government can. Maybe instead of trying to impose more counterproductive requirements on poor people (which Republicans threatened in the Farm Bill that collapsed today), we could go after the real freeloaders, the corporations exploiting labor with low pay, and tax those corporations who fail to give their workers steady hours and living wages.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown threw such a proposal into last year’s tax debate; he has recycled it for discussion in response to the cuts Republicans want to make in food stamps. Here are the basics:
- Companies would be fined based on the percentage of their workers who make 200 percent of the federal poverty level or less (about $41,000 for a family of three), a rough approximation of the percentage of workers who rely on some kind of federal assistance.
- The starting point would be a 0.25 percent tax on total payroll for companies with 25 percent or less of workers making an income below that threshold.
- The fee would increase for companies with a higher share of workers: 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent for businesses with 50 percent of workers below the threshold, increasing to a full 1 percent for a business with more than 75 percent of workers making less than 200 percent of the poverty level.
- Companies could reduce their freeloader fee by offering health benefits or by contributing to their workers’ retirement savings
- It would apply only to companies that pay at least $100,000 in payroll every day, thereby exempting many smaller businesses [Dylan Scott, “Who Is the Freeloader: the Working Poor on Food Stamps—or Corporations That Don’t Pay Them Enough?” Vox, 2018.05.18].
“We don’t have a pandemic of lazy welfare recipients in this country,” Scott writes. He points to United Way data showing that in every state, there are more people in the ALICE category—Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed—working but not able to afford basic necessities with their paychecks.
South Dakota’s in better shape than most states, with 34% of its residents living below the ALICE threshold (lowest county is Sully at 21%; highest is Oglala Lakota at 81%). But by this measure, a third of South Dakotans can’t make ends meet. Many working South Dakotans are in that fix because their bosses won’t give them steady hours and decent pay. Senator Brown’s plan would push some of those cheapskate employers to raise their wages and get their workers out of such dire need… or, failing that, provide the state with more revenue to meet the needs that employers aren’t.
More on ALICE : “The figure includes the 16.1 million households living in poverty, as well as the 34.7 million families that the United Way has dubbed ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. This group makes less than what’s needed “to survive in the modern economy.”
“Despite seemingly positive economic signs, the ALICE data shows that financial hardship is still a pervasive problem,” said Stephanie Hoopes, the project’s director.” http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html?sr=twmoney051718economy1104AMStory
The numbers are there, almost half of US families cannot afford food and rent. We have gone full circle back to the days of lords and peasants. Sometimes that “let them eat cake” thingy, goes to far.
There is a simple way for these people to raise their own wages. Work harder.
OMG! Sherrod is an idiot. $ Fines if you pay less than $41K (for 3). Brilliant. You all should jump on that wagon now. . .
Jerry, there are no poor in America.
“The following are facts about persons defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
*Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
*Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
*Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
*The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
*Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
*Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
*Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.” https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/how-poor-are-americas-poor-examining-the-plague-poverty-america
There are no poor in America.
South Dakota and other plains states fair better in this evaluation only because the cost of living is less here; and to the degree any jobs pay decent in South Dakota, or other plains states, is only because of a national wage scale standard established by national employers or companies. I would like to see what this map illustration would look like, if we only compared small business employees and their pay between all of the states. My guess is that South Dakota would be more purple as would other plains states… Oh, the thought of the plains states being “more purple”… ;-)
There are only rich people in America. We all have a VCR so we can watch stuff on our tee vees,
We all own our own homes, we just pay that mortgage, until it is foreclosed and we do not have to pay property tax on the ownership of that bank’s house either. Someone else will pay that back property tax at the tax lien sale. “There are no poor in America.”
The poor have have housing for as big of refrigerator box as they can carry. The site you quote from:
*The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)”
The flats of these cities are sometimes smaller than the sprawl of American homes for sure. One of the reasons is that the folks in these cities (large American counterparts as well) tend to not have as much crap as we accumulate. In short, they have living space and not storage space, no garage and no basement. You can go to IKEA and get the idea of how modulated European living demands are. Now that does not mean that a flat in Paris, London, Lisbon or Madrid, as well as the others, are cheap. No way for that. Housing costs in Europe is on par with American cities for sure. Added bonus:
Healthcare and family leave time, as well as the best public transportation in the world! All affordable. A family of 4, here in America, with 2 teens, last year paid $27,000.00 a year for their health insurance. They had an income of $64,000.00 and were aged 63 and 61 for the adults and 18 and 16 for the teens. $27,000.00 a year would buy you a nice house in the United States a nice flat in Paris, and one in London as well.
This is the one that made me laugh “*Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher” Wow, a microwave oven! I can get those all day long at thrift centers for 10 bucks or less. A stereo? Wow again. What the hell is a stereo grandpa? An automatic dishwasher, indeed. Is there any other kind? Once again, go to ReStore or some other recycle place and pick on up for little or nothing.
There are no poor in America is like saying there are no rich in America. Both of these classes grow each day to the detriment of the poor.
And “color television” I’ll bet you still have your Admiral from 1973, the one your parents gave to you while you were in the basement. Ask a young guy about a “color television” and they will laugh at you for being such an old geezer that has not kept up. Then they will tell you that “only the poor have color televisions, everyone else has a flat screen that you can buy for under a hundred bucks new or get one for 10 bucks at the Good Will.” Having cable or satellite availability is great, affording it is another matter.
I think that Cory’s report from ALICE is reality while you live in Fox universe.
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-new-gop-style-segregation.html
This is interesting, but, needs fleshed out.
After a time on the fleshing beam there is this: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/discriminatory-medicaid-work-requirements-spread-to-3-states.html
Or, rather than the complex Rube Goldberg approach we could—hear me out—raise the minimum wage.
And higher minimum wage is mentioned as an alternative in the Vox article. They cite another author who notes exactly that simpler nature, with the minimum wage putting the money directly into workers’ pockets instead of government having to reprocess the dough. But both policies address the same fundamental problem: corporations are freeloading, exploiting labor, reaping profits, and not rewarding workers for their contribution to those profits.
I have a color TV and a stereo. I don’t listen to records on the stereo much any more because I can get music over the TV. We do indeed live in a new time.
“There are no poor in America”
There are far too many poor in America, if you haven’t seen them or listened to their experiences you have removed yourself from society.
Microwaves, TV’s, stereos, computers and other luxuries are impossible for a homeless person to pack around. Ask a homeless veteran where he keeps his stuff.
As Jerry pointed out, there are many ways for poor people to acquire some luxury items, as he pointed out Re-Store serves as outlet for not only the poor, but middle income and even the well-to-do.
On any given weekend in Rapid City you will find plenty of church rummage sales, garage sales, and newspaper ads for used merchandise. This is how poor people survive by finding used merchandise.
republicans are fond of saying the poor need to work harder (and longer) to get ahead, but fail to realize a large segment of our society are either physically or mentally disabled, they are a another segment of poor people.
There are poor people in this country and it’s a damn shame that self-righteous republicans judge and condemn them.
What these goofy frauds need to do is check out the food banks to see who is coming for food. There is even access to food help at Ellsworth Air Force Base. I just don’t know why they feel they want to punish the hungry for being hungry and not being able to afford food. The whine that some use SNAP to purchase chips or pop, but sometimes that is all you can afford. Food is not cheap and the cost of living in South Dakota is not cheap either.
Jerry, I call it “The Totem Pole of Self Esteem”. When your opinion of yourself is so low and you can push a poor person down, somehow it makes you feel better. Sick, huh?
Grudz, you are from South somewhere so I make exceptions for you. However, if you have and do not use stereo to get the finest sounds of music, you are indeed a poorer person.
extraordinary in-depth article, long, difficult to digest in a single sitting. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
“The working classes get riled up when they see someone at the grocery store flipping out their food stamps to buy a T-bone. They have no idea that a nice family on the other side of town is walking away with $100,000 for flipping their house….We’re leaving the 90 percent and their offspring far behind in a cloud of debts and bad life choices that they somehow can’t stop themselves from making. We tend to overlook the fact that parenting is more expensive and motherhood more hazardous in the United States than in any other developed country, that campaigns against family planning and reproductive rights are an assault on the families of the bottom 90 percent, and that law-and-order politics serves to keep even more of them down….when educated people with excellent credentials band together to advance their collective interest, it’s all part of serving the public good by ensuring a high quality of service, establishing fair working conditions, and giving merit its due. That’s why we do it through “associations,” and with the assistance of fellow professionals. When working-class people do it—through unions—it’s a violation of the sacred principles of the free market. It’s thuggish and anti-modern….In our unbalanced system, education has been reduced to a private good, justifiable only by the increments in graduates’ paychecks. Instead of uniting and enriching us, it divides and impoverishes….If the secrets of a nation’s soul may be read from its tax code, then our nation must be in love with the children of rich people. The 2017 tax law raises the amount of money that married couples can pass along to their heirs tax-free from a very generous $11 million to a magnificent $22 million. Correction: It’s not merely tax-free; it’s tax-subsidized.”
historian Walter Scheidel makes a disturbingly good case that inequality has reliably ended only in catastrophic violence: wars, revolutions, the collapse of states, or plagues and other disasters. As long as inequality rules, reason will be absent from our politics; without reason, none of our other issues can be solved. It’s a world-historical problem.
https://slate.com/business/2018/05/forget-the-atlantics-9-9-percent-the-1-percent-are-still-the-problem.html
Great info Leslie. Thanks so much.
The thing is, it’s not the middle v. the bottom. It’s the richest hurting Everyone Who Is Not Them. But they set up these false conflicts among lower income people, including immigrants, while they go on about their way, screwing everyone else over as they buy yet another representative or senator.
So don’t waste your time picking at the pittance of help a family on the lower rungs gets. Look at the billions and even trillions of dollars worth of Entitlements those greedy bastards at the top skim from Our Taxes.
Debbo,
How has a “rich” person hurt you?
How have they affected your education and income?
There are needs for some rich people for sure. Guilt has them giving endowments to the arts so that all of us can have a chance to see the art the wealth was able to generate through their patronage. The fine tapestry, cabinet making, musical instruments and so many other things that were bequeathed by the wealthy for tax purposes or having the estate fall into financial ruin due to wars or political upheaval.
While I harbor no hatred for the wealthy that have gotten that wealth through being in the right place at the right time, I do harbor a sense of betrayal by many of them as well. The idea that you could tolerate a government that would literally steal the bread from the poor’s mouth is not only barbaric, it is unforgivable.
The rich, that have stolen that bread, have denied me their education and therefore, my well being. I may sound selfish on this, but I think of the mind’s wasted, by not being able to further themselves in education and therefore advancement of our civilization as whole, are a detriment to the income of all. I think the rich do that to eliminate competition. One thing Capitalism cannot stand is competition. If you do not believe me, check out the mega mergers that are taking place to further erode our society.
One should not harbor animosity for the rich who got rich through working harder than most. You may envy them, and feel pangs of jealousy in your knotted little hearts, and you may wish you, too, had worked harder. Be happy with what you have and stop whining about what others have.
People like Drumpf and vulture capitalists deserve every bad thing that happens to them because of who they are and what they do/have done to others.
And to hell with 10 Commandments.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/20/investing/stocks-week-ahead-buybacks-tax-cuts/index.html
Record setting 178 billion buck buy back of stock sure does wonders for 99% of America, doughnut?
The Russians have won! They have beaten us with our own greed and our commitment to our newest motto, “Out of many, One”. Very good link mfi, all goes to show that competition no longer exists in the United States, something that ranchers in South Dakota have known for at least 40 years.
“Russia tried to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election — and Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to do so.
That’s according to an official statement from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee released on Wednesday. The committee conducted months of interviews with current and former intelligence officials to verify if American spies correctly assessed last year that Russia favored Trump and tried to sway the 2016 presidential election. It turns out the Senate panel agrees with the US intelligence community.
“Our staff concluded that the [intelligence community’s] conclusions were accurate and on point,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said in a joint statement with the panel’s chair, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). “The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton.”
Think of those words and the fact that the 2nd Amendment didn’t do a damn thing to prevent the hostile takeover of America. We are armed to the teeth to protect ourselves from the only ones we now war on, women and their bodies. We have no enemies now, only more buy out and buy up options while the pretender still resides in our house.
Grudz you cannot possibly be that ignorant. ThereAre millions of hard-working people In this country that are working Their asses off every dayfor low wages And they are not getting ahead. Always the same old song and dance with Republicans that these people are just lazy. It’s the wages dummy. It’s the people that get sick and lose everything because of healthcare bills. That doesn’t happen in countries that have a universal healthcare system.
The Republicans want a traditional family. They want it so bad but are not in reality when it comes to families struggling just to stay ahead of the bills. It’s all about the bottom line in this country where corporations run the show. All about the bottom line nothing else just money money money.
Jenny,
The Hispanics are the ones that voted against gay marriage in California.
Jenny, tell me which Fortune 500 corporations are run by Republicans and not Democrats?
Traditional families include all races and genders….by law
What is the percentage of stockholders political party’s that are Democrats and Republicans that vote for the CEO’s to run Fortune 500 corporations?
Does Billie Sutton really think this crap will fly in South Dakota? He is going to lose by double digits!
Chris S. nailed it. If the goal is to force employers to pay employees more, increasing the minimum wage is much more straightforward and practical than a convoluted and impossible-to-administer penalty system like this.
I wonder if grudz is the same in-person as on this blog. I hope so. People don’t get you, but that is their problem. Nobody does satire, irony, and sarcasm better than grudz. People taking you too literally, too often, only makes it funnier.