Better Than Raising the Minimum Wage: Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit

31 点作者 snowy将近 10 年前

11 条评论

lumberjack将近 10 年前

Yeah, let's subsidize Walmart employees with tax payer money instead of letting the poor guys pay their employees themselves. It's not like they are billionaires or anything.What should rather happen is the exact opposite! If you work for Walmart you shouldn't be able to receive any government assistance at all because you are already working and the point of working 8 hours a day is to be able to feed and cloth yourself and if you cannot do that with that job then that job is of no use to you or anyone and should therefore stop existing.But if it turns out that the employer or whoever benefits from that job desperately needs it, they will have to pay the employees a livable wage.What should definitely not happen is that the tax payer ends up subsidizing privately owned businesses without getting anything in return.And if it doesn't sit well with anyone that people get money for nothing (which is the argument pushed for EITC) then let the government employ them to do something that is at least remotely useful to the taxpayer that is footing the bill. Even just sweeping leafs off porches is better use of money.

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dpweb将近 10 年前

Partially true, but ignores the fact the economy and one's rewards from it, is a game. Your success is largely based on your talent in playing, and some will inevitably do better than others. But, that game also has rules that bias those already advantaged.Politicians are the public face of this, and people realize that those who make the laws can be bought by powerful interests - they know - but believe they can't do anyting about it.There is some unfair hatred of rich and the elite - that does exist - but there is also a resentment that comes from the realization that the promise of the "American dream" and the level playing field is not exactly that.That's not a concern to be waived away in the press by the world's richest men, but directly addressed which will be difficult, because you have to acknowledge the problem of the bias (not level field) while simultaneously trying to get rid of the victim mentality which also plays a factor with those who are losing.

midnitewarrior将近 10 年前

Everybody complains that the poor don't pay taxes. If they raised the minimum wage, everybody else wouldn't be stuck paying the extra tax burden of the poor because they could pay it themselves.If any thing, we need to raise minimum wage and lower the Earned Income Tax Credit. The EITC was created by businesses lobbying the government to low wage earners a tax break in exchange for not raising the minimum wage. It has been disastrous to tax revenues and wages. Millions of Americans get to hear how they are not carrying their tax burden as well and then are attacked by the Republicans for living on government handouts.

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analog31将近 10 年前

In essence, the EITC rewards work and provides an incentive for workers to improve their skills. Equally important, it does not distort market forces, thereby maximizing employment.I wonder about this. In a perfect market system, it's impossible to pay below-subsistence wages, because you can't work if you've starved to death. I think Adam Smith pointed this out. So, any public support for wage earners distorts the market by driving wages downward.It's arguable that the government should subsidize wage earners, so that wages can be lower. Low wage earners receive a lot of things that they don't pay for out of their own pockets, such as education, which I support. But it should not be offered as a protection of the free market.

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PaulHoule将近 10 年前

Republicans like Means Testing because they know many people won't fill out the paperwork to get benefits and Congressional Democrats like it too because they are almost all lawyers and paperwork is the center of their universe.I don't like the idea of picking certain people as being "needier" than others because it is a moving target. For instance, you might say that families need it more because they are raising kids, but one of the most troubled segments of the population are poor young men; if these guys get on their feet they are going to be in a position to raise a family and do it right.

dang将近 10 年前

Url changed from <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/warren-buffett-thinks-that-the-poor-need-to-stop-blaming-inequality-on-the-rich-10271780.html?icn=puff-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/warren-buffett-thin...</a>, which points to this. Title changed from "Warren Buffett thinks the poor should stop blaming inequality on the rich".

NPMaxwell将近 10 年前

Is there a reason why a $15/hour minimum wage would not function something like a helicopter money drop (<a href="http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5937/economics/helicopter-money-drop/" rel="nofollow">http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5937/economics/helicopter-...</a>) and be helpful in times of low inflation (e.g., now)?

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heimatau将近 10 年前

I swear, most of this is PR. How about these mega rich people give their average worker a pay raise? Nope, even though that is within their power, they don't. But...instead they petition the public to do something not within their power. Come on. This is all PR. I wish all the mega rich would just DO something instead of these endless PR 'battles'.

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sudioStudio64将近 10 年前

Raising minimum wage would stimulate consumption. Poor people spend their money. Rich people sit on theirs.

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graycat将近 10 年前

There are rich people and there are powerful people, and there is a lot of overlap between the two.Some of the rich people sometimes do relatively a lot to help the poor people. E.g., there are Bill and Melinda Gates, and they also got Warren Buffett to allocate nearly all of his fortune. And little Melinda, sweetheart, got lots of other rich people to sign up for her 50% or so 'giving pledge'<a href="http://givingpledge.org/" rel="nofollow">http://givingpledge.org/</a>Net, apparently Melinda has, via Bill, Warren, and others, moved well over $100 billion into philanthropy. Andrew Carnegie? Lots of libraries, especially good for poor people. Andrew Mellon? The US National Gallery of Art -- free for everyone. Michael Bloomberg -- $1+ billion to The Johns Hopkins University, especially to its medical school for progress in medicine that helps lots of people, including poor people. And we could construct a much longer list.From all I can tell, if the poor people have a valid gripe, then it is with some of the power of the powerful people and not much with the money of the rich people, and here is why:Shockingly, in simple terms, for the most direct purposes of the poor people, the rich people don't have much money!Sure, each of the 1000 richest people could buy a new Ferrari for themselves, but they definitely can't buy a new Ferrari for each poor person -- even if Ferrari could make that many cars.Or let's consider 'wealth redistribution' and do a little arithmetic:Let's look a little at the wealthiest people in the US; for some data, let's look, say, at the 2014 Forbes 400 as at<a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/</a>There we see that the 400 people on that list are worth in total$2.29 trillion.The least wealthy person on that list is worth$1.55 billion.Oh, let's be generous: Let's take the 1000 richest US citizens and assume that each of the 600 least wealthy are also each worth$1.55 billion.Then the total wealth of the 1000 wealthiest US citizens would be<pre><code> 2.29 * 10**12 + 600 * 1.55 * 10**9 = 3,220,000,000,000 </code></pre> dollars, that is, about 3.2 trillion dollars.Suppose we outright 'confiscate' and 'redistribute' all this wealth across all US citizens. So, from Google search"US population"we see that the US population in 2014 was318.9 millionpeople.If we were just to confiscate the full$3,220,000,000,000and redistribute it among the318.9 millionpeople, then from the 'redistribution' each person would get<pre><code> 3,220,000,000,000 / ( 318.9 * 10**6 ) = 10,097.21 </code></pre> dollars, that is about 10 thousand dollars.So, that's what each person would get if we were to do a 'full redistribution' of the wealth of the 1000 wealthiest US citizens.So, right, $10,097.21 per person is not enough for a yacht, a house, a new car, or one year of college.And that $10,097.21 would be a one-time thing, not each year.So, where is the real 'wealth' for individuals in the US? Sure, just where it long has been: In (1) Social Security obligations, (2) the rest of the US 'social safety net', and (3) employee pension funds.So, if want US citizens, including the poorest, to be much richer, which is a terrific goal, then, rather than confiscate the wealth of the 1000 wealthiest, find a ways for more of the318.9 millionpeople to have good jobs. Just how to do that is more complicated than the simple arithmetic used here.

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emp_zealoth将近 10 年前

Right, because Soros, that paid less than 1000 Euro of tax last year and is due anywhere from 7 BILLION to 14 BILLION is obviously a valuable part of community and clearly deserving the tax break. SARCASM.