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[Max™]

The whole thing is rather silly, is there anyone who really thinks the existence of a middle class is the biggest problem in this country today?

[Zangi]

The whole thing is rather silly, is there anyone who really thinks the existence of a middle class is the biggest problem in this country today?

They are a problem if they are the ones voting against you. 

[Max™]

Now, I'm not talking about how they vote, I mean the idea that there is a middle class at all.

I know there are rich fuckbags who like to encourage middle class folks to view themselves as "temporarily broke rich people" and push to get them to vote for shit that possibly or definitely ends up fucking the poor and middle class via the justification that "you'll want it this way when you are rich too" which ignores that a healthy middle class is a key sign of financial mobility.

[Sheb]

Technically, there is voodoo applied to the published unemployment rate.  But I reckon this ain't really much to say of it.

The main issue with that figure is that it doesn't include people who have given up looking for work. Labor force participation is relatively low in the US, although it's improving now (there was a nice article in the Economist about it, but basically now that wages are picking up lots of people, especially women are going back to work). But that just make the minimum wage argument more absurd: you'd have to thing that there is a vast number of people who aren't willing to look for work at whatever the current minimum wage is, but would look for work for less.

[Frumple]

Think the concept there isn't so much that they want it, but that there's a chunk that are so low skill and/or otherwise undesirable they can't get hired at minimum wage and have given up trying. If you get rid of minimum wage, why, suddenly they're able to get hired! Even further below a living wage than the minimum was.

I'm... not entirely sure exactly what good that would do, especially considering it's usually pushed alongside gutting welfare and turning the clock on healthcare back to jesus fuck time (I.e. pre-ACA. Post being merely Jesus or fuck depending on preference), though. Like... congrats. You brought pennies on the hour out of for profit prisons and back to our shores. Enjoy back breaking labor and the new slum life/homelessness, dying young, and a degree of social mobility that is existence laughing at you even harder than it does now.

More people are hired, maybe, but it doesn't much help them... or the nation, for that matter, what with the "nice" infusion of desperate underclass and everything that means for places that are already screwed over when they're just screwed rather than being actively sodomized by companies taking advantage of people trying not to starve. Voodoo economics, as they say. Get people hired and magically all problems will be solved! Living wage? What's that? Can you eat it? Please, god, tell me you can eat it.

[Sheb]

Think the concept there isn't so much that they want it, but that there's a chunk that are so low skill and/or otherwise undesirable they can't get hired at minimum wage and have given up trying. If you get rid of minimum wage, why, suddenly they're able to get hired! Even further below a living wage than the minimum was.

I'm... not entirely sure exactly what good that would do, especially considering it's usually pushed alongside gutting welfare and turning the clock on healthcare back to jesus fuck time (I.e. pre-ACA. Post being merely Jesus or fuck depending on preference), though. Like... congrats. You brought pennies on the hour out of for profit prisons and back to our shores. Enjoy back breaking labor and the new slum life/homelessness, dying young, and a degree of social mobility that is existence laughing at you even harder than it does now.

More people are hired, maybe, but it doesn't much help them... or the nation, for that matter, what with the "nice" infusion of desperate underclass and everything that means for places that are already screwed over when they're just screwed rather than being actively sodomized by companies taking advantage of people trying not to starve. Voodoo economics, as they say. Get people hired and magically all problems will be solved! Living wage? What's that? Can you eat it? Please, god, tell me you can eat it.

Well, you could test that. For exemple, it follows from that assumption that raising wages shouldn't lead to an uptick in labor force participation. Which is exactly what we're not observing.

[Frumple]

Gods, if only it was that easy. Supposedly higher wages, while it may increase overall participation, also pushes some folks out of the market, or something along those lines. Either by out pricing their skillset or forcing the businesses to hire fewer, more efficient workers (because they're only a per worker cap from being willing to hire more people, rather than, y'know, see fewer more efficient workers as the base state of hiring heuristics or somethin').

Think it's something like an assumption we're already at or near peak employment so far as higher wages go (or the ones being hired are assumed by dint of their clear higher paying job superiority to have been able to obtain the position anyway), but have this weird low wage lot that isn't tapped, and will surely show up if you lower standards (and consequently wages) enough. Probably some of that fundamental attribution error thing going on, heh. Some kind of base assumption that not having work means you're unskilled to the points companies need to lower standards to be able to afford hiring you, something along those lines.

... and yeah, sure. Most observations, base understanding of economics, and so on, and so forth, signal pretty insistently that that shit ain't gon' work. Stuff gets labeled voodoo economics for a reason, heh.

[WealthyRadish]

I don't think the OP is a troll. Judging from things like the use of the phrase "moderate socialist" (presumably to set a strongly negative tone of condemnation that obviously wouldn't land on first reading here), they've probably just come to the wrong swamp.

[Tellemurius]

Trump is what I like to call shock value. While he may not be able to adjust our policies instantly he sure makes a huge fuss to anyone that listens to him. If he can't get support from his own party he's more than useless at this point. I'd say for a 1st presidential term theres been a whole lot of smoke but no fire other than his followers bailing out of the office.

[Frumple]

... yeah, no fire. EPA isn't in the process of being gutted, FCC hasn't unleashed the hounds, state department isn't in barely functioning shambles, gods don't know what ICE & co. are getting up to, POTUS hasn't been working to cut healthcare subsidies for low income americans, all the other ways the executive isn't burning itself down while the legislative doesn't do its usual with an extra dose of internecine conflict and the judicial just kinda' avoids looking at everyone and going, "What the blue hell are you people making me rule on."

Fwoosh.

Dunno how much of the memo you caught, but the better part of a decade of GOP obstructionism in the legislative branch has managed to point fairly enthusiastically to a lot of stuff the POTUS can do even without congress or party support. Trump's lot has been giving it a pretty decent go, considering how badly they've been sabotaging themselves at the same time.

[JohnnyYuma]

I definitely didn't want to troll here. I just believe that not that much will change and some folks around here got my drift. I do not support Trump in general, I do not like his acceptance of most of the policies currently in place, I'm just sayin' that if he is just willing to change less than 1% of the policies, I do net get what the fuss is all about. America will remain the same, rather left-wing country. Not as socialist as Europe, but still.

Whenever you have a progressive taxation, forcing the rich to pay higher taxes than the middle class, then you have a left-wing country. Trump is not addressing that at all so for me he is left-wing too. A moderate left-wing, unlike Sanders or Obama, but still.

[Max™]

...so on top of all this other nonsense you're favoring what, a flat or even regressive tax plan?

Who did you get this stuff from, I mean, really, who told you this, can you get a refund?

[smjjames]

Trump hasn't filled in most of the Presidentially appointed positions that are open, and both previous Presidents have filled in way more at this point in their first terms. So, the federal government is just moving under it's own inertia.

For the tax stuff, they (Congress and the WH that is) haven't gotten around to it yet, supposed to start when they get back from summer vacation. Though theres also that bunch of must-pass deadlines like funding the government and kicking the oil barrel that is the debt ceiling down the road at the end of September.

re Trump being left wing: No surprise there, some of his views in the past (before he went Republican and also flipped all over) were actually pretty liberal, and he's donated to Democrats. Even attended Chelsea Clintons marriage!

[JohnnyYuma]

...so on top of all this other nonsense you're favoring what, a flat or even regressive tax plan?

Who did you get this stuff from, I mean, really, who told you this, can you get a refund?

I am a libertarian and I believe that some taxes might be necessary, but never other than a flat one and definitely not income-based. A property tax would be adequate if we didn't have to fund all that military. America worked quite well before income taxes.

[smjjames]

...so on top of all this other nonsense you're favoring what, a flat or even regressive tax plan?

Who did you get this stuff from, I mean, really, who told you this, can you get a refund?

I am a libertarian and I believe that some taxes might be necessary, but never other than a flat one and definitely not income-based. A property tax would be adequate if we didn't have to fund all that military. America worked quite well before income taxes.

When did we start income taxes? Just wondering from a historical starting point.