Right now in America we have 1 million legal immigrants 'in country', what is being proposed today, as it was twice before in recent memory, is a change to limit legal immigration to people with a skill, that can speak the language, and not rely on public assistance. What a revolutionary idea! Oh wait, it's the same policy Australia and Canada have in place...
It's bad enough we are forced at gunpoint to pay for public schools.
Landowners are forced to fund free public education (K-12) for every resident up to age 18. The state does not want to charge parents for educating their children - first off, they (the families in the community) couldn't afford it, at what $10-16K/year per student/child, second, the world would be populated imbecile children, incapable of hold anything but the most menial of manual jobs.
I don't know many families of four with 2 school age children that have $20K+ per year to spend on education.
That 15% raise had to come from somewhere - it didn't increase the size of the economy, it simply shifted money from one part of the economy to another.
General Motors is perhaps the most extreme: It now holds nearly half its value in cash. Apple holds more than a third. These numbers are maddening on their face. If the companies spent their savings, rather than hoarding them, the economy would instantly grow, and we would most likely see more jobs with better pay.
You apparently imagine that money is simply sitting in a drawer somewhere, instead of invested in the foreign economy.
Apple has a half billion dollars of US Treasuries, for example - that money is currently working elsewhere, being loaned out in foreign economies. Clawing that money back into the US economy comes at an equal cost to the foreign economies that money is clawed out of.
There is income taxes on wages, there is not an equivalent tax deduction for corporations for worker pay.
A dollar increase in wages costs the employer more than a dollar - many of the deductions itemized on you pay stub are MATCHED by employer contributions, turning that $1 increase into a $1.20 cost to the employer.
SS is matched, state and federal income taxes are matched, and so on...
If I lose one $50k worker and save $10 million a year then yes, there's $10 million in the economy.
That $10M was in the economy before you cut the $50K employee, once you cut the $50K employee that $10M was shifted from the greater economy to your personal economy. You may choose to reduce the cost of your goods and return some of that $10M to the general economy, but you haven't increased the size of the economy.
Enron employees by and large invested the vast majority of their retirement funds in their employer's stock. That's a mistake. Your retirement savings are a cushion for when you are no longer employed, be it retirement or unemployment.
Florida and Arizona (and a few other states) are full of happy retirees cashing pension checks from their former employers.
There is no getting around the fact that increased automation will eventually require universal basic income. The alternative is to vastly increase the size of the welfare system. Interestingly, as Friedman points out, the universal basic income would actually shrink the welfare system.
That is cost-shifting, not cost reduction - what is the difference between artificially inflating someone's paycheck beyond the value of the work performed and paying them what their work is worth and handing them money to make up the difference?
Your cushy job wouldn't exist without lobbying from unions to establish baseline workplace conditions.
Really? EVERY 'cushy' job owes it's existence to unions?
Uh, no.
Capitalists would rather work people to death than treat them with any sense of respect
Where do you live, in one-dimensional cartoon land? Most small business owners I've met value their employees and put their needs before their own. Ever watch a struggling small business owner scramble to make payroll? Of course not.
even though they are who make the business what it is.
Workers deliver on vision of the business owner, financed by the owner - without the owner, risking their own money, businesses don't get created. No matter how many 'workers' you have, until someone comes along and finds them, they don't have a business.
Will the workers that benefit from the extra $1/hour (in this example) pay enough in increased taxes to offset the assistance and support provided by gov't to those displaced (now unemployed) workers?
That your neighbor now earns $1/hr more than they previously did is little comfort as you find yourself applying for unemployment.
The request from the DOJ demands that DreamHost hand over 1.3 million visitor IP addresses -- in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people -- in an effort to determine who simply visited the website," the company said in its blog post.
As the web hosting company for the (suspected) criminal website for the group 'Resistance' where are they going to get visitor's pictures?
I think dreamhost is trying to fan the flames around this issue. If this were a suspected white supremacist group, or a suspected child porn ring, would they mount the same principled court battle? The Feds have reason to believe the site was used to plan violence at numerous public events, which is a crime.
The main argument there is she was dodging FOIA and other requests, even though we pretty much know she turned over pretty much everything.
She "turned over pretty much everything" TWO YEARS after leaving office, which kept her official gov't emails unavailable for FOIA requests for up to six years. She also, through her attorneys, hand-picked which emails she would deign to share with the public...
She tried to paint herself as being the 'most transparent' Secretary of state for turning over 30K emails, but she hopes you forget she was also the most opaque Secretary of state having never turned over any official emails for six years.
Dictatorship? Because there aren't 10,000 other companies that will register your website domain for you?
That argument didn't work for wedding cake bakers or wedding photographers in the US that didn't want to participate in gay weddings, why does it work here?
Not sure you understand what net neutrality means. It would mean that if said neo-nazi's paid a premium, their message would be more accessible than those with more sensible messages, but with shallow pockets.
It means their message (web page, content) would download faster - kinda like priority mail versus first class mail.
I am heterosexual, white, college educated, earn a salary high enough to disqualify me from using the many tax breaks available to those with a lower income but not high enough to take advantage of the tax breaks afforded the wealthy
Exactly what tax breaks are you missing? Can't you deduct the interest on your mortgage? Are your investments taxed at a higher rate than 'the wealthy' pay? Is your income taxes at a higher rate than 'the wealthy'?
I think you imagine tax breaks that don't exist, the disparity you perceive in the current tax code is based on the disparity of the sources/types of income you enjoy vs 'the wealthy' - I imagine the bulk of your income is from a salary (based on your comments), and 'the wealthy' have investments as the bulk of their income.
You aren't missing any tax breaks, no matter the source of the income, tax rates only go up as the income increases.
Wait a minute, if a baker can be forced to bake a wedding cake, a pizza shop forced to make pizzas, and a photographer forced to photograph weddings they find offensive, why can't a DNS provider be forced to provide DNS services for a group they dislike?
Is it because Google has 'Terms of Services' that says they don't have to provide services to people and groups they find offensive?
That's BS, under the public accommodation laws that hit bakeries, pizza parlors, and photographers, how can Google (or GoDaddy) get away with this?
Basically the local politicians can use public money to buy 'jobs' (at obviously stupid prices, as ITS NOT THEIR MONEY, so they dont care).
They aren't 'buying jobs' inthe conventional sense, but there is some validity to your argument.
First off, the state of Wisconsin is not handing billions of taxpayer dollars to a corporation, they are letting the employer keep money that otherwise would go to the state. But why are they doing that? Well, at a minimum it creates 3,000/jobs paying a 'living wage', so that's upwards of 10,000 of Wisconsin families that can provide for themselves (once spouses and children are included).
What does it really cost Wisconsin?
Maybe the state pays for some road improvements leading to the factory, perhaps they build a fire house/police station near the factory as houses for the workers go up, and so on - in the big picture they turn an idle plot of land, currently paying minimal/no real property taxes, into something supporting 10,000 or more Wisconsin residents.
Compare this to the other way of 'buying jobs' where make work projects are invented and workers paid directly from government treasury,
With the jobs Foxconn is creating, the state can, at some point in time 'break even', throwing money at workers will never lead to 'breaking even'.
I would rather write and essay and get severance than spend another day at Google HQ.
He was fired 'for cause' - that almost always prevents one from collecting severance pay or unemployment insurance... Then again, it is California, anything is possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now in America we have 1 million legal immigrants 'in country', what is being proposed today, as it was twice before in recent memory, is a change to limit legal immigration to people with a skill, that can speak the language, and not rely on public assistance. What a revolutionary idea! Oh wait, it's the same policy Australia and Canada have in place...
It's bad enough we are forced at gunpoint to pay for public schools.
Landowners are forced to fund free public education (K-12) for every resident up to age 18. The state does not want to charge parents for educating their children - first off, they (the families in the community) couldn't afford it, at what $10-16K/year per student/child, second, the world would be populated imbecile children, incapable of hold anything but the most menial of manual jobs.
I don't know many families of four with 2 school age children that have $20K+ per year to spend on education.
I thought immigrants WERE Americans, by virtue of setting foot on US soil?
... regarding so-called 'paper-less offices':
The paper-less office is just as likely as the paper-less bathroom
What jobs are lost, what jobs are created?
Losing burger-flipping jobs and replacing them with software engineers (for example) hides the impact to the burger-flipper.
The lost jobs are definitely lost, they are off-set by new, higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs.
That 15% raise had to come from somewhere - it didn't increase the size of the economy, it simply shifted money from one part of the economy to another.
Norway nationalized the North Sea oil fields, their economy is atypical.
Norway has a very aggressive personal income tax rate, approaching 40%.
The average US worker pays 0% personal income tax, over 40% of tax filers actually get refunds in excess of all monies paid in.
https://tradingeconomics.com/n...
General Motors is perhaps the most extreme: It now holds nearly half its value in cash. Apple holds more than a third. These numbers are maddening on their face. If the companies spent their savings, rather than hoarding them, the economy would instantly grow, and we would most likely see more jobs with better pay.
You apparently imagine that money is simply sitting in a drawer somewhere, instead of invested in the foreign economy.
Apple has a half billion dollars of US Treasuries, for example - that money is currently working elsewhere, being loaned out in foreign economies. Clawing that money back into the US economy comes at an equal cost to the foreign economies that money is clawed out of.
There is income taxes on wages, there is not an equivalent tax deduction for corporations for worker pay.
A dollar increase in wages costs the employer more than a dollar - many of the deductions itemized on you pay stub are MATCHED by employer contributions, turning that $1 increase into a $1.20 cost to the employer.
SS is matched, state and federal income taxes are matched, and so on...
If I lose one $50k worker and save $10 million a year then yes, there's $10 million in the economy.
That $10M was in the economy before you cut the $50K employee, once you cut the $50K employee that $10M was shifted from the greater economy to your personal economy. You may choose to reduce the cost of your goods and return some of that $10M to the general economy, but you haven't increased the size of the economy.
Enron employees by and large invested the vast majority of their retirement funds in their employer's stock. That's a mistake. Your retirement savings are a cushion for when you are no longer employed, be it retirement or unemployment.
Florida and Arizona (and a few other states) are full of happy retirees cashing pension checks from their former employers.
There is no getting around the fact that increased automation will eventually require universal basic income. The alternative is to vastly increase the size of the welfare system. Interestingly, as Friedman points out, the universal basic income would actually shrink the welfare system.
That is cost-shifting, not cost reduction - what is the difference between artificially inflating someone's paycheck beyond the value of the work performed and paying them what their work is worth and handing them money to make up the difference?
Your cushy job wouldn't exist without lobbying from unions to establish baseline workplace conditions.
Really? EVERY 'cushy' job owes it's existence to unions?
Uh, no.
Capitalists would rather work people to death than treat them with any sense of respect
Where do you live, in one-dimensional cartoon land? Most small business owners I've met value their employees and put their needs before their own. Ever watch a struggling small business owner scramble to make payroll? Of course not.
even though they are who make the business what it is.
Workers deliver on vision of the business owner, financed by the owner - without the owner, risking their own money, businesses don't get created. No matter how many 'workers' you have, until someone comes along and finds them, they don't have a business.
Executives are a dime a dozen.
So are warehouse workers, burger flippers, etc.
And yet, you believe government should protect your job by stopping H1-B visas.
H1-B visas are an exception to current immigration rules... yes, they should be eliminated.
Will the workers that benefit from the extra $1/hour (in this example) pay enough in increased taxes to offset the assistance and support provided by gov't to those displaced (now unemployed) workers?
That your neighbor now earns $1/hr more than they previously did is little comfort as you find yourself applying for unemployment.
The request from the DOJ demands that DreamHost hand over 1.3 million visitor IP addresses -- in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people -- in an effort to determine who simply visited the website," the company said in its blog post.
As the web hosting company for the (suspected) criminal website for the group 'Resistance' where are they going to get visitor's pictures?
I think dreamhost is trying to fan the flames around this issue. If this were a suspected white supremacist group, or a suspected child porn ring, would they mount the same principled court battle? The Feds have reason to believe the site was used to plan violence at numerous public events, which is a crime.
You miss the point, the President can declare anything 'unclassified' and share it with whomever they choose.
The main argument there is she was dodging FOIA and other requests, even though we pretty much know she turned over pretty much everything.
She "turned over pretty much everything" TWO YEARS after leaving office, which kept her official gov't emails unavailable for FOIA requests for up to six years. She also, through her attorneys, hand-picked which emails she would deign to share with the public...
She tried to paint herself as being the 'most transparent' Secretary of state for turning over 30K emails, but she hopes you forget she was also the most opaque Secretary of state having never turned over any official emails for six years.
No. The moment you limit any speech, you jeopardize all speech.
Agreed - speech everyone agrees with doesn't need protection.
Dictatorship? Because there aren't 10,000 other companies that will register your website domain for you?
That argument didn't work for wedding cake bakers or wedding photographers in the US that didn't want to participate in gay weddings, why does it work here?
Not sure you understand net neutrality:
Not sure you understand what net neutrality means. It would mean that if said neo-nazi's paid a premium, their message would be more accessible than those with more sensible messages, but with shallow pockets.
It means their message (web page, content) would download faster - kinda like priority mail versus first class mail.
I am heterosexual, white, college educated, earn a salary high enough to disqualify me from using the many tax breaks available to those with a lower income but not high enough to take advantage of the tax breaks afforded the wealthy
Exactly what tax breaks are you missing? Can't you deduct the interest on your mortgage? Are your investments taxed at a higher rate than 'the wealthy' pay? Is your income taxes at a higher rate than 'the wealthy'?
I think you imagine tax breaks that don't exist, the disparity you perceive in the current tax code is based on the disparity of the sources/types of income you enjoy vs 'the wealthy' - I imagine the bulk of your income is from a salary (based on your comments), and 'the wealthy' have investments as the bulk of their income.
You aren't missing any tax breaks, no matter the source of the income, tax rates only go up as the income increases.
Wait a minute, if a baker can be forced to bake a wedding cake, a pizza shop forced to make pizzas, and a photographer forced to photograph weddings they find offensive, why can't a DNS provider be forced to provide DNS services for a group they dislike?
Is it because Google has 'Terms of Services' that says they don't have to provide services to people and groups they find offensive?
That's BS, under the public accommodation laws that hit bakeries, pizza parlors, and photographers, how can Google (or GoDaddy) get away with this?
Basically the local politicians can use public money to buy 'jobs' (at obviously stupid prices, as ITS NOT THEIR MONEY, so they dont care).
They aren't 'buying jobs' inthe conventional sense, but there is some validity to your argument.
First off, the state of Wisconsin is not handing billions of taxpayer dollars to a corporation, they are letting the employer keep money that otherwise would go to the state. But why are they doing that? Well, at a minimum it creates 3,000/jobs paying a 'living wage', so that's upwards of 10,000 of Wisconsin families that can provide for themselves (once spouses and children are included).
What does it really cost Wisconsin?
Maybe the state pays for some road improvements leading to the factory, perhaps they build a fire house/police station near the factory as houses for the workers go up, and so on - in the big picture they turn an idle plot of land, currently paying minimal/no real property taxes, into something supporting 10,000 or more Wisconsin residents.
Compare this to the other way of 'buying jobs' where make work projects are invented and workers paid directly from government treasury,
With the jobs Foxconn is creating, the state can, at some point in time 'break even', throwing money at workers will never lead to 'breaking even'.
I would rather write and essay and get severance than spend another day at Google HQ.
He was fired 'for cause' - that almost always prevents one from collecting severance pay or unemployment insurance... Then again, it is California, anything is possible.