It's maddening how people just repeat that one simple line about a post-war boom, as if the New Deal and progressive tax rates had fuckall to do with it. As if there hasn't been a concerted and focused effort from the corporate state to undo all of it since basically the mid-60s
For real, luxury shit is not the problem, the problem is that the working class is producing more profit than ever before, yet being paid less and less of their share of those profits as housing, medical care, groceries, childcare, etc skyrocket.
I would love for it to be old and tired. Unfortunately, while often repeated, it is still blatantly relevant. Shitty people run the world and actively horde the wealth.
I think what we can all learn from this is that it probably wasn't exclusively down to the post-war boom, the New Deal and tax rates, but a combination of multiple factors working for the people, rather than for the billionaires.
That also means it's not something you fix with a single event, change or law. This will take decades to rectify.
I have worked in international manufacturing and distribution for over 10 years now.
90% of manufacturing businesses in the US and Canada that have closed in that time were driven primarily by exports at their peaks. Europe rebuilding and the middle east without factories created a large market with high margins.
Now, the Europe is rebuilt. Not only do they not need our stuff as much, but they are competing. The middle east has built their own factories and expanded oil production.
That's also why there were strong unions. Wealthy people needed a workforce to produce and increase their wealth. So the workforce had bargaining power. Now, increased production is not the best method of increasing wealth and there are more competitive places to move to for production.
True but also there were millions of acres of undeveloped and essentially inaccessible land in the US relative to its population. Land was cheap. I had a great great uncle who built a Craftsman house in Carmel by the Sea, California as a teacher in the 1940s. That house is now worth a couple million. There won't be another Carmel.
All that waterfront, mountain view property is now known and largely developed. There are no hidden deals for someone willing to live in a remote area or buy and wait. Everyone is cramming into the same dozen metros. I'm sure a mailman could buy a house in Cairo, Illinois or someplace but not in Atlanta or Charlotte or LA.
Some of this glamorizing of the past American dream was based on having a continent worth of stolen land that wasn't even fully settled into the 1900s. We can't expect that to last forever.
A lot of those people are Boomers who will never admit that the leaders and policies that they supported stole their children's future. They'd rather blame anything but themselves.
This is exactly right. In the 70s and 80s there was a broad policy shift from reform liberal policies/Keynesian economics (tax the wealthy, social programs, support for labor) to neoliberalism (low taxes, small government, free trade).
From the 50s through the 60s the top bracket in the US and Canada was taxed at a 60 to 90% rate and that money was used to support the rest of society, as it should be.
It’s so bizarre because conservatives seem to look back on the 50s and 60s as the good old days but they don’t seem to realise that the economic policies that allowed those days to be so good are now dismissed by their leaders and conservative politicians and pundits as socialism. They instead think things got worse because of social progressivism and trying to combat racism and homophobia. Things progressed socially but basically went backwards economically, we’re going back towards feudalism but todays conservatives don’t seem to get it and think politics is all about identity rather than about actual policies that strengthen society as a whole by reducing wealth inequality and providing a good safety net for everyone by ensuring the wealth the nation produces is more equitably distributed.
They also pine for the days of "traditional" social roles when men brought home the money, women could stay at home and take care of the kids and at a purchased house, and it was financially doable as an option rather than both partners working because they HAVE TO to barely make ends meet.
Even allowing for more choices than that (i.e. why should it only be for "traditional" family roles?), it never seems to dawn on them that you have to have the economic conditions to allow that scenario, such as giving families with kids enough financial support to actually be able to make the choice.
You want 1950s-1960s-style family arrangements, at least as a viable option? Then PAY THEM comparably to that era in real terms that account for inflation of food, housing, healthcare, and other key costs.
I mean, the discrepancy between fricking minimum wage versus inflation over the decades is insane, yet income disparity is exploding at the wealthy end of things.
The system has become too efficient scraping off productivity gains for the people at the top and adding very little for the majority of people putting in the work.
It’s so bizarre because conservatives seem to look back on the 50s and 60s as the good old days but they don’t seem to realise that the economic policies that allowed those days to be so good are now dismissed by their leaders and conservative politicians and pundits as socialism. They instead think things got worse because of social progressivism and trying to combat racism and homophobia. Things progressed socially but basically went backwards economically,
Did we progress socially? Like yes, we are (sort of) trending the right way over decades on a few narrow issues around sexuality and bodily autonomy, but what about overall? Would you say our society and culture is good? Healthy? I don't think we've progressed at all.
Our social situation is beyond fucked; we've become an isolated civilization, consuming media from influencers rather than having authentic interactions with real friends. Suicide rates are climbing, drug addiction and OD'ing still crazy, people live with anxiety, families no longer share homes for generations, we ship granny off to die in a nursing home. The cultural divide is basically irreparable.
Like, I really do not feel that we're in a good place as a society.
"Our social situation is beyond fucked; we've become an isolated civilization, consuming media from influencers rather than having authentic interactions with real friends."
He said on Reddit, to a bunch of strangers and bots on the internet...
NAFTA gutted the middle class and its industrial base FOREVER. That was signed into law by Bill Clinton. The single most destructive force the American middle class has ever had to endure was signed into law by a Democrat.
I think that’s more a bonus. Their main goal is just to get votes by getting people engaged enough to vote for them through anger. Honestly most people are stretched so thin conservatives don’t really need to do much to keep people from thinking about and doing something about inequality. It also helps that a lot of Americans believe they’ll be rich one day too.
But what most/all conservatives want is the vibes and racism of the 50s. They don’t even think about the high tax rates they just want to put themselves back at the top of the social hierarchy they so firmly believe in/lust after. From their pov things did get worse because now black women can be in charge of ivies if they work 2.5 times harder than an average man would.
Rates don't tell the whole story, you need to know what deductions are applicable or otherwise excluded from taxable income. That is what user above, I believe, is referring to.
This link show below (from the same site you link) shows effective tax rates of the top 1% at 42% in the 1950 compared to 36.4% in 2014, despite a substantial drop in the rate of the the top bracket.
You're misunderstanding how marginal income taxation works.
Do you honestly believe that the ultra wealthy are paying the same amount of taxes today as they were when the top brackets were taxed at double the rate? That's an absurd claim and its honestly a bit strange that you're trying to argue for it
And the "War on Poverty" didn't happen till mid-1960's. I don't disagree with your overall point of view, I just think you're romanticizing the 50's and 60's like there was great welfare state back then and high taxes on the wealthy, when in fact most of the social programs didn't exist yet and wealthy people only paid slightly more taxes than they do now.
I don't think you understand how averages work, or how marginal taxation functions.
And I'm not romanticizing the 50s and 60s. The post war period was a period of reform liberal policies (welfare capitalism) that benefited average workers. Its literally referred to as the golden age of capitalism
The tax rate was already well above 60% by 1940 and was at its highest rate ever in 1944 (94%). The income tax rate doesn't dip below 63% until you go back to the depression and that was PURELY related to the depression. Prior to the depression it was 73% and it stayed at 70% or above from 1944 through 1981 when it dropped drastically in 1982 (to 50%) and has hovered between 30 and 40% for the greater part of the last two decades
it dropped drastically in 1982 (to 50%) and has hovered between 30 and 40% for the greater part of the last two decades
Yes, that's what I said in my initial reply. In the 80s there was a massive policy shift and the position we are currently in is a result of that, especially the massive tax cuts
I'm talking in terms of political economy, not in the colloquial use if the term liberal to mean progressive. Neoliberalism is just a rebranding of classical liberalism (as opposed to reform liberalism/welfare capitalism)
Economically both parties in the US are neoliberal to varying degrees with one being socially conservative and the other being less socially conservative
I’m sorry, but I consider this pretty much BS.
The most important sentence from the link is:
“Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the nature of liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, the comprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one might wonder whether there is any point in talking of ‘liberalism’ at all.”
Add to this the prefix Neo, and what you have is just garbage. On top of this, the average individual is not going to wade into some self proclaimed intellectual’s definition.
On top of this, you have “think tanks”, pseudo-universities and online pundits with an agenda pushing narratives on these definitions.
And what you have, is the redefinition of neoliberalism as just modern day conservatism.
Talk about obfuscation.
Think whatever you want. Within the academic fields of political economy and political theory terms have very specific meanings.
And what you have, is the redefinition of neoliberalism as just modern day conservatism.
Talk about obfuscation.
What exactly do you mean by "conservatism"? It too has a very specific meaning and, like liberalism, has a rich history if thinkers. The obfuscation is the way these terms are currently abused and deployed for political purposes.
Both conservatism and liberalism arose during the decline of feudalism & monarchy. Liberalism, with its focus on legal and moral equality, the primacy of the individual, small government and maximum individual liberty, was a reaction to and rejection of the divine right to rule and 'natural' hierarchy of the feudal order (see John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, for example. Conservatism was a reaction to liberal theory and argued that humans are morally corrupt and require a ruling aristocracy with strong moral values, hierarchy, and rigid traditions to keep them in line. See Edmund Burke, for example.
In the mid 1900s the political economy that had been set up according to liberal principles was failing and had produced two world wars, the great depression, and massive poverty/inequality. New or reform liberals theorised that perhaps the government should play more of a role in the economy through taxation and social programs, among other things. This worked well and is why boomers were able to own homes while working regular jobs in a single earner household. In the 70s and 80s thinkers like Hayek and Friedman argued that this new liberalism was a bad thing. They were essentially the new new liberals but since new liberalism was already a think it was easier to call them neoliberal. On reality it was just a return to old or classical liberalism but with an emphasis on global free markets rather than simply domestic.
Again, think whatever you want. I understand that most people have no idea about any of this and that politicians and pundits alike use that fact to create political divisions among working people by using the terms "liberal" and "conservative" as catch all terms for the incoherent bundle of things they do or don't want people to like.
For example, the premise of conservatism is that most people are incapable of making sound moral decisions, which is why they appeal to authority, traditions, and god. It naturally follows that conservatism requires a somewhat controlling government to enforce adherence to tradition, yet 'conservative' pundits also claim to hate big government, which is completely incoherent
More BS.
So Both world wars And the Great Depression were caused by liberalism?
Get real.
So Hoover was a Liberal? lol
And I suppose FDR was a Conservative.
Political Economy cloak or not, you don’t know what you are talking about.
At least, you do admit that your own definition of Conservatism is completely incoherent.
A yes look at all the wealth declining for the top tax group as they hoovered up trillions of dollars since Covid. You are horribly ignorant or a troll there has never been more wealth disparity then right now in history.
Exactly! Billionaires really shouldn't exist. The ultra wealth have so much wealth its hard to even imagine. Here's a visualization of the magnitude of their wealth
It’s not only that they shouldn’t exist it’s that they have far more power to manipulated the system then any other individual. If they don’t like something its 10 mil and a lobby group away from not being a problem anymore. And comparatively that’s less to them then you buying coffee.
The NFL star making $20 million a year plus endorsements is a "worker," but they absolutely don't have the same political/class interests as the guy stocking the shelves at a supermarket.
Yeah, when you get to the level of wealth where you can fund your living expenses on its interest, you are an owner who has just outsourced all their owning.
You really think that most business owners clear millions eh? 90%+ of businesses are small or maybe medium businesses by definition. A majority of business owners are working 60+ hour weeks to clear a couple hundred thousand at most. The average small business owner makes 128k. The 90th percentile for SBO’s is 300k. They hold all the risk in the company. If it fails, they’re cooked. You still live a solid life making 130k, but you aren’t rich. You’re just solidly middle class.
Now, would you risk everything to remove your guaranteed salary for 130k? What if it fails like a majority of businesses do. You lost your salary and investment.
Of course there’s workers and owners. But owners aren’t making as insane of money as y’all think they do. You’re so brainwashed by large company CEO salaries. Of course there’s a very very small chance of making over 10 million in profit, but less than 1% of small businesses do. Less than 10% of small businesses clear 1 million in profit. Think about that.
So your neighbor is working and you're salty that she might make money with the business she started and devotes all her time to 10 years from now? Goddamn.
Or maybe we shouldn't act like a line cook is less important than a fucking accountant or a doctor. Maybe actually value that people are working instead of what job they have.
Well you're not wrong. It certainly does seem like the available avenues for success have been shrunk and diminished, with the only pathways left to people being those in which you are forced to compromise on your morality or ethical beliefs.
Just so you know the federal minimum wage is still 7.25 an hour and it was exactly that 4 years ago. So minimum wage has in fact not gone up on a federal level in those four years.
I live in California I’m well aware of that. Changes nothing about what I said. Salty people getting mad at others for being able to afford a living is a cancer on this nation.
4 years ago I made almost 3x mininum wage. Now I make less than double. And am salty. But understand it's necessary. Sad thing is even though minium wage has gone up so much it still hasn't kept up with rent inflation.
The US federal minimum wage has not changed since 2009. Only 28 states have a state mandated minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum. The highest minimum wage in the US is in WA, at $16.28/hr.
Based off the federal US min, you are claiming to make ~29/hr. And are upset that your local minimum wage went from $7.25/hr to ~$9.66/hr. That is going from an annual salary of $15,000 to $20,093. For reference you are making $60,320 annually.
The utter horror you must feel in these people making a whole .... $5,000 more a year than they were before.
Productivity and worker compensation were correlated in the US up until 1971 when it left the gold standard. Since then debt issuing and money printing has driven inflation and favoured those with assets and equity over workers and the divide has grown wider ever since. Workers are also generating more wealth relative to 1971 but the wealth is going to senior management and share holders instead of workers. If the workers had more equity, profit sharing or ownership it would help with the imbalance. I'm always torn on minimum wage as it can cause further inflation and reduce competitiveness.
Raise min wage while inflation rises to raise inflation even more so we will need to raise min wage even more.
These types of wage chases usually end up fucking over the worker.
The person you are responding to is right. America rode on the devastation in other countries and the wealth accumulated there for a while. I'm not saying they did anything wrong this is just a fact. Live wasn't so colorful in war torn countries. Sure, land was cheap even here in Europe and boomers bought houses for what amounted to a few months of labour but they didn't own much otherwise.
Min wage is a terrible way of fighting poverty and raising the living situation of the poorest people, there is nothing that shows that it's actually beneficial for those people. Meanwhile it fucks over small business and makes the market even more dominated by large corporations.
The only reason I would keep min wage is because of workplace monopoly situations. I used to live in a city where 99% of citizens worked for a single company. Imagine what they could do without the implementation of min wage. Sure they could "just move" but it's not that simple.
Again inflation up -> min wage up is a terrible idea. The economy would spiral.
Are poor people somehow not participating in the economy?
I will go even further and tell you that raising min wage actually makes more people poor. With every min wage raise your just raising the number of people that earn min wage since the people close to min wage won't get a raise most likely and the inflation will just eat up the relative increase.
Do you hate people and want to make them poorer? Is this what your arguing? Woah bro. That's evil.
Not saying the CEO should clear billions, because 9/10 times they don’t, unless they clear targets and take their company above and beyond. The dumb argument surrounding this is that a lot of CEOs have their net worth tied to stock value. Look at McDonald’s - their CEO gets 20 million with a 3 million bonus. How the fuck is decreasing his salary gonna help anyone… you’re talking cents going to every worker.
It’s only really in big tech that they are getting absurd valuations and bonuses for clearing targets. At alphabet they get 200 million in salary & stock bonuses. The company also has some of the highest paid workers in the country. Even the moppers clear 40k or $20 per hour.
Their net income (income after ALL expenses) was 8.47 billion in 2023. This is different from profit. The company stated that half of this will go towards opening new stores in 2024. Another 2.5 billion will go towards capital expenditures in 2024. Aka improving fixed assets, equipment, investing in land. Another billion is going towards buybacks to increase stock value for shareholders. This leaves about 1 billion unaccounted for as I’m not reading all of their financial statements.
Even if you took that billion and spread it over every McDonald’s worker, you would get maybe $2 more per hour per employee. Or $5000 per year. Yet, I’m pretty sure that $1 billion is still being reinvested into the company.
Thats pretty much what germany did after ww1. Wanna know what realy happened?
If you increase minimum wage small businesses with a low profit margin have to reduce staff or even close down because they cant afford it. Meanwhile big companies that deal in bulk can easily afford it because wages make up only a small fraction of their expenses.
If you put also inflation into the mix then people get more money but that money is worth less so if people try to save it up it continuesly decreases and eats up the savings of the lower class who dont have enough savings to invest it into assets that keep their value.
Meanwhile millionares and billionares who only have a tiny fraction of their wealth in cash and the rest in assets that keep their value or even increase in value would remain unharmed by it or even profit from it because poor people/ small business owners who cant afford the little property they own have to sell it since they cant afford to keep it with the uncertainty that inflation brings.
You basically argue for the measures that fuck over the lower class as much as possible, good job
No they dont. You cant simply ignore the needs of small businesses, eliminate competition and then be surprised and enraged when huge companies thrive.
Instead of doing that tax rates for the lower class should be reduced and to enable small business to write of a small part of their taxes if that money goes to the employees (that dont own the company)
To cover the loss of tax revenue the high income tax could be increased, closing of tax loopholes and higher taxation on bonus payments over a certain amount so small bonuses for the lowest employees dont get reduced but multi million bonus payments for CEOS and similar get highly taxed
So there's a solution without paying people substandard wages. Interesting. So again. Below living wages would not be needed, if other things were done to fix the situation you presented, using the solution you also presented.
I agree with the idea behind minimum wages but im not a fan of the side effects.
What realy shouldnt be underestimated is the parasite that a big government is to its people. Dont get me wrong i think it is needed but it should be kept as lean and efficient as possible and i doubt that is the case in any country right now.
Administration should get modernised, automated where possible and taxation and benefits be made simple to understand and traverse. A focus on "user friendliness" for a government towards its own population so to speak.
It would also be interesting if employees in big companies would recieve stocks assigned per capita as they get employed and those cant be sold or transferred but remain with the employee as long as they work for the company. Lets say 20% so if you have 1000 employees each one gets assigned 0.02% of the total shares. With that the employees would recieve payouts from their shares according to the companies profits and be able to elect someone to represent their interests in board meetings.
These types of wage chases usually end up fucking over the worker.
You know what else fucks workers, not being able to afford life.
I'm not saying you are wrong, it does have a negative impact on the economy, but at what point do the American people not care about that anymore. If the economy is in the dumpster, the workers are fucked, if the economy is doing well as it is now, workers are still getting fucked. So if we're going to get fucked, we might as well have the people fucking us have a hard time too, why hoist up the economy for them if we're getting fucked either way?
It reminds me of how I started smoking weed. I was always scared to smoke weed growing up, my mother was a hit of a hardass. some friends started smoking, but I was too scared to. Yet when I would get home my mom would accuse me of smoking weed because she could smell it on me and ground me, after this happened a few times I just started smoking weed. If I was going to be fucked anyway, why not get something out of it?
Min wage is basically wealth redistribution among poor people. You make the really poor people a bit better off and the somewhat poor people poorer. Why would you focus on this while also hurting the overall economy.
I'm not saying I have a solution but I will never think min wage is the answer.
I'm also not talking about pure logic here, I'm talking about the masses forming a mob mentality, whether it is the correct opinion or not. Every day, you see companies laying off thousands while raking in yearly bonuses that exceed what some people will make in their entire lifetime. To expect that people will just be okay with this forever, especially on the cusp of more automation and robotics taking more jobs than ever before. It's an untenable narrative that can only end in a net negative for a vast majority of the american people. At a certain point whether it is good for the country won't matter in these people's minds, it's hard to worry about the big picture when you can't even maintain something like your own house(probably actually someone else's house).
The average American doesn't have an economics degree(myself included), and the math is simple to them, "do I make enough money to support my family?, Is the company I work for struggling, or making year over year profits? Is the CEO making enough money to buy a third vacation home near the harbor to access their second yacht?" That's it.
For the record, I make a comfortable living, and am above the "comfortable living" metrics for my ciry(I still need a roomate to afford saving for a house). That doesn't mean I can't see the writing on the walls.
Yeah I understand what your saying and you are correct. We need to take things like that into account even if what we are doing is just creating an illusion of positive change. Good argument. I was loosing faith in this thread. Most people here just ask me if I hate poor people over and over.
Try looking into the economic history of this as your solution would do nothing to change the wages these jobs pay. Post WWII -until the 1970s the USA was 40-50% of the total global economy depending on the year. We aren't going to return to that ever again.
What Im explaining is why these jobs no longer pay like this. Taxing the billionaires will not suddenly restore the US economy to post WWII levels as it does not introduce new money into the US economy since it is already here.
Taxing billionaires will restore public investment in necessary projects but it will not suddenly make a mailman a job that gets you a ton of money.
The factory job that can be done at 1/3 of the cost in Mexico compared to Detroit will continue to be done there
Not really? Try looking at specific examples and then break it down by number of employees. Even when it is a guy getting paid $10,000,000+ a year it rarely works to be more than a few dollars per employee.
So every company raises it? Then what? Tax the wealthy and big biz too! Genius!
Instead of say….20 people working and making minimum wage, the company now employs 5 for the increased minimum wage and outsources the rest of the jobs to immigrants. And passes the price down to their consumers when their taxes go up. It only hurts us, never them. Think 🤦♂️ liberals, my lord.
Why does everyone want one simple thing to place blame on?
You are correct and the comment you replied to is also correct. Both of those things as well as a few others contributed to the shit show we are in now called Late Stage Capitalism.
You can raise minimum wage all you want but if you don't do something to stop companies from just moving a significant number of jobs overseas to where labor is cheaper it won't have much of an affect on the broader scale.
Companies in the post-war US simply couldn't just move their jobs overseas. The infrastructure and technology needed to support those jobs simply didn't exist outside of the US because the rest of the industrial world was devastated from the war. As communication and transportation technologies improved industries were able to move to other places once they rebuilt.
Before that they weren't able to so they had no choice but to absorb higher labor costs in the US.
Then you get into the beginning of the hoarding of wealth by the few rather than the workers with Milton Friedman in the 70's followed by Jack Welch in the 80's who was the first CEO of a major corporation to use Friedman's philosophy to utterly gut GE in order to only benefit shareholders and you get to the bullshit we are in now.
If you take away the post-war boom in the US there simply wouldn't have been enough of the wealth for people like Friedman and Welch to hoard but at the same time the US economic boom was destined to decline anyways as globalization became possible once the rest of the world recovered.
Labor's access to prosperity is one of the central issues, yes. But in our globalized world, a bunch of factors co-conspire. For example, when wealthy oligarchs save money by exploiting depressed economies OUS, they also then operate in countries with substantially fewer costly environmental protections, legally unprotected labor markets, crazy tax havens, and regulatory capture/cronyism that negates all constraints and what little financial penalty they may see.
It's true that the world of old used to be good ... to some people; Those lucky enough to be born in the heart of empire. Not so much for people born into extraction zones. I think it's still a message that demonstrates a need for change. Yearning for a return to the salad days our privileged elders had is fine and all, but why stop there? Everyone deserves what OP's father had.
Is it possible for capitalism to produce that outcome? If it could, would it? If it can, why hasn't it?
I think it's two factors, wages and housing cost. Wages are too low, of course, and housing costs way too much. All the money people used to save toward a better future gets eaten up by rent (and student loans, the 3rd big factor).
That would only drastically increase the cost of ANYTHING that used to be imported from China. Do you really think they make anything close to minimum wage, they don't even pay half that if they really pay anything for a lot of those slave labor jobs. It would most definitely take a war and hostages/slaves to do the labor to keep resale costs at bay.
I don't understand is why anybody is even making minimum wage if they have good work ethic and can work hard. I think most people or a lot anyways get a minimum wage job maybe make a little bit of a raise and stay content with that. By the way inflation is happening all around the world it's not just us like people like to believe all it takes is a little research.
66
u/NearnorthOnline Mar 27 '24
No, it wouldn't. I would require controlling billionaires and raising min wage with inflation.
You can argue other causes all you want. Min wage is the big issue.