"The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats"

[jamil]

So nobody wants to pay more taxes to give my lunch lady wife a $5 an hour raise?

Dude, I'd love to help out a fellow American, but I'm just taxed out. I pay a huge chunk of my earnings to the federal government in income, Social Security and Medicare tax. I have to pay the State of Indiana income tax. I have to pay property tax to my county, as well as county income tax. I pay the City of Louisville tax for the privilege of working in that fine city, and I don't even live there. I pay Jeffersontown, KY income tax for the privilege of working there, which is really weird since I also have to pay Louisville income tax. I also have to pay tax on my vehicles every year. And of course there's sales tax. I even have to pay sales tax on Amazon orders now!

Man, I'm taxed out. I'm Taxed Enough Already.

 

[MisterChester]

Dude, I'd love to help out a fellow American, but I'm just taxed out. I pay a huge chunk of my earnings to the federal government in income, Social Security and Medicare tax. I have to pay the State of Indiana income tax. I have to pay property tax to my county, as well as county income tax. I pay the City of Louisville tax for the privilege of working in that fine city, and I don't even live there. I pay Jeffersontown, KY income tax for the privilege of working there, which is really weird since I also have to pay Louisville income tax. I also have to pay tax on my vehicles every year. And of course there's sales tax. I even have to pay sales tax on Amazon orders now!

Man, I'm taxed out. I'm Taxed Enough Already.

You know what makes it worse? We hardly see them using the money for our benefit. I always just assume they've been using my tax dollars to pay for the next freedom bomb they'll drop on some country that doesn't want our help.

 

[printcraft]

Hey guys, enough government can fix everything.
The minimum wage really is a fairness threshold.
In practice what they should be doing is setting a maximum wage that is allowed.
Nobody really needs to earn a million a year.
Although that in and of itself is unfair and prejudicial.
To get to true equality and fairness all wages for all work needs to be the same.
No more top and bottom, just a wonderful, all men are equal social group.
Now, wouldn't that be great?

 

[actaeon277]

Hey guys, enough government can fix everything.
The minimum wage really is a fairness threshold.
In practice what they should be doing is setting a maximum wage that is allowed.
Nobody really needs to earn a million a year.
Although that in and of itself is unfair and prejudicial.
To get to true equality and fairness all wages for all work needs to be the same.
No more top and bottom, just a wonderful, all men are equal social group.
Now, wouldn't that be great?

Go say that at the Democratic Underground. Bet you are elected king.

 

[Mr Evilwrench]

Hey guys, enough government can fix everything.
The minimum wage really is a fairness threshold.
In practice what they should be doing is setting a maximum wage that is allowed.
Nobody really needs to earn a million a year.
Although that in and of itself is unfair and prejudicial.
To get to true equality and fairness all wages for all work needs to be the same.
No more top and bottom, just a wonderful, all men are equal social group.
Now, wouldn't that be great?

And there ya go. I needed some wire hangers to hang some clothes. Where should I go? I went to the dumpster behind a local cleaners. Why? Because they won't untangle their hangers. Why won't they untangle their hangers? Because minimum wage makes untangling hangers uneconomical. It's literally cheaper to buy bundles of new hangers than to untangle the ones you already have. This was a revelation to me, that minimum wage prices labor beyond its value. So, I have a pantload of free hangers (and a pretty nice wall clock (different story)) and some business owner is out the expense of a pantload of hangers plus howmany*(the labor that would've untangled them). Doesn't make a goshdarn bit of sense, thinkin about it.

 

[jamil]

And there ya go. I needed some wire hangers to hang some clothes. Where should I go? I went to the dumpster behind a local cleaners. Why? Because they won't untangle their hangers. Why won't they untangle their hangers? Because minimum wage makes untangling hangers uneconomical. It's literally cheaper to buy bundles of new hangers than to untangle the ones you already have. This was a revelation to me, that minimum wage prices labor beyond its value. So, I have a pantload of free hangers (and a pretty nice wall clock (different story)) and some business owner is out the expense of a pantload of hangers plus howmany*(the labor that would've untangled them). Doesn't make a goshdarn bit of sense, thinkin about it.

The only reason it makes any business sense to buy more hangers instead of untangling them is that the hangers aren't expensive enough. If the hangers were just more expensive it would be worth it to start untangling them. But with the competition from cheap Chinese hangers, no clothes cleaning business will buy more expensive hangers. No companies want to manufacture them because there's not a profitable business model that can compete with China.

That's obviously unfair. The obvious "progressive" solution is to tariff the **** out of hanger imports so that hanger manufacturing companies here can develop profitable business models that allow them to pay the $15/hour minimum wage. Of course we'll also need to require that companies manufacture them with "green" manufacturing processes which add more cost. So the tariff needs to be very high.

Because the newly required organic soy based plastic hangers will be manufactured by companies paying $15.25/hour (it's not politically correct to pay exactly minimum wage) the cleaners will have to charge a $20 hanger surcharge. Now everything is fair but you won't find many hangers in the dumpster.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Now everything is fair but you won't find many hangers in the dumpster.

No it's not fair. Only the rich can afford hangers. The rest of us, stuck with this paltry $15/hour are barely getting by and now we can't even find necessities in the dumpsters any more. Some of us, the more fortunate that have the wherewithal, are able to make do by building shelves for our closets and like our great grandparents did, fold our clothes and stack them rather than hang them. Others just do with out...the poor disheveled children. When the minimum wage will not even allow a guy to be able to aford coat hangers, it's not fair...especially for the children.

 

[jamil]

No it's not fair. Only the rich can afford hangers. The rest of us, stuck with this paltry $15/hour are barely getting by and now we can't even find necessities in the dumpsters any more. Some of us, the more fortunate that have the wherewithal, are able to make do by building shelves for our closets and like our great grandparents did, fold our clothes and stack them rather than hang them. Others just do with out...the poor disheveled children. When the minimum wage will not even allow a guy to be able to aford coat hangers, it's not fair...especially for the children.

You're absolutly right. There are still two grave injustices that the government needs to fix.

First it's not fair that people with the wherewithal to make shelves have an unfair advantage over those who don't. We'll either have to pass a law requiring all people with shelf making skills to provide their services to those who can't, or we just ban shelfmaking.

Second, it's obviouse that $15 per hour isn't enough to provide the necessities of life. Everyone needs a place to put their clothes. We can raise the MW from $15/hour to $20 per hour. If businesses can't afford that, they obviously have a bad business model.

We must realize that may not be suffiicient for some families. For example families with sextuplet girls will require more organic soy based plastic hangers than the new MW can afford. Therfore the goverment should provide a new entitlement for hanger challenged families that provides an allowance of 20 hangers per month per dependent child over 3 children per family, with anextra stipend of 10 hangers per month for girls or "fasion conscience" bois.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

You're absolutly right. There are still two grave injustices that the government needs to fix.

First it's not fair that people with the wherewithal to make shelves have an unfair advantage over those who don't. We'll either have to pass a law requiring all people with shelf making skills to provide their services to those who can't, or we just ban shelfmaking.

Second, it's obviouse that $15 per hour isn't enough to provide the necessities of life. Everyone needs a place to put their clothes. We can raise the MW from $15/hour to $20 per hour. If businesses can't afford that, they obviously have a bad business model.

We must realize that may not be suffiicient for some families. For example families with sextuplet girls will require more organic soy based plastic hangers than the new MW can afford. Therfore the goverment should provide a new entitlement for hanger challenged families that provides an allowance of 20 hangers per month per dependent child over 3 children per family, with anextra stipend of 10 hangers per month for girls or "fasion conscience" bois.

Now your talking. But first, before we get to a single hanger provider, let's try an interim step: we can just mandate employers provide hangers. All people have the right to properly hung-up clothing. Who could deny that? Since it's not fair that some have jobs that allow them access to all the hangers they care for and since all people should have the same rights and since companies are public accommodations and since the greedy business owners are already making more money than they need, it's common sense that they should be required to provide adequate access to clothes hangers for their employers.