No one working 40 hours a week should be living in poverty. Any economic policy should be focused on alleviating this.
None of this has anything to do with the goal of people just living on the government tit or being paid the same wage regardless of work. It’s about making a capitalistic economy more egalitarian. This is done by limiting - not ELIMINATING - the extremes of poverty and wealth. Republicans can’t seem to grasp the basic, obvious nuance between this and communism for some bizarre reason.
Here are some examples of solutions:
1) Investing in education
2) Investing in infrastructure
3) Raising the minimum wage
4) Socialized healthcare
5) Socialized childcare
1. So we already spend more money on education, than any other country on the face of the Earth.
Literally there is no country anywhere, that spends as much as we do on education.
Yet our schools pump out dumb as brick students. Apparently spending more money on education has not fixed this. So, not a solution. Simply isn't a solution.
Typical left-wing empty headed "throw money at it" ideology, that bankrupts countries. Not a win.
2. Infrastructure is only useful when it creates value. Greece famously poured billions into infrastructure, and it resulted in bankrupting the country.
Building a bridge that goes nowhere, does not create value for the economy. Again, this is just mindless "Throw money at it" problem solving.
3. Raising the minimum wage, has never caused economic growth in the history of the world.
Moreover, in the past everyone understood that a minimum wage destroys jobs. That is in fact why the first minimum wage laws were created, to destroy the jobs of Chinese, that were taking "white jobs" by being willing to work for less money. By creating the minimum wage, they prevented Chinese from getting white jobs.
And the same is true today. There is not a single city in the United States today, that has jacked up the minimum wage, and has not found that it reduced employment. Not one.
4. Right now, we already have Medicaid, and Medicare, and VA Hospitals, and government funded clinics.
Today, our government has over $200 Trillion in unfunded liabilities that we can't pay for, and you want to socialize the rest of health care? With what? Bankrupting the entire country?
5. Socialized Childcare? Why yes of course. We have trillions in debt, have unfunded liabilities that are in the hundreds of Trillions, why not give out more free stuff?
1) Property taxes pay for public schools and if property value is in the toilet, so are schools. Also, other countries have free tuition for higher education and their economies do quite well. Their national poverty rates are better than ours.
2) Only if it builds value? Bridges to nowhere? What the fuck are you talking about? You’re just parroting talking points clearly. You can’t even be an adult and say “yeah I think we can all agree improving our decaying power grid would be a good idea.” You’re just a lameass partisan.
3) There might be an initial shock to raising the minimum wage, but overall the economy stabilizes because if people have bigger paychecks, they are spending more money. That helps the economy. This is a consumer based economy after all. Republicans are apparently too stupid to realize economic growth doesn’t happen if all you do is stimulate supply. There must be demand to meet that supply. Do you notice how all the states who have raised their minimum wages aren’t shitholes like the red states that don’t?
4) Uh well right now not everyone qualifies for those programs so your point is stupid. Many other people are underinsured which means they can’t afford out of pocket expenses for critical health treatment. Are you just pretending our Heathcare system is great with or without ACA?
5) Do you realize how much we spend on defense? These programs can be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes and reducing defense spending. We waste billions on that shit.
1. Not one of those economies is doing better than our economy. And their people are not doing as well as our people.
I've been to Europe. You can't convince me that life there is better, when I see a family of four, living in a smaller apartment, than my college apartment. You can't tell me they have it better off, when they lose 50% of their entire pay, and earn less than US people to begin with.
And while they may have cheap education, there is a reason why 1.1 Million students come to the US, to pay for education every single year.... even though they have "free" education in their home countries.
The Trump administration said on Monday that foreign university students will have to leave the country if their classes are all taught online - clouding the future of tens of thousands of enrollees and potentially straining budgets at schools struggling to reopen during...
www.reuters.com
2. Obama passed a Trillion dollar stimulus package. If we really needed all this infrastructure spending you claim, they why didn't they do it?
Obama had the House, the Senate, and he was the president. He could have passed absolutely anything at all, and no one could have even attempted to stop him.
If infrastructure was in such dire condition, then why did he spend billions on the Unions, and cash for clunkers? Why didn't he fund all this 'oh so important' infrastructure spending?
It's because he uses small-minded parrots like you, to support endless spending, using infrastructure as a political football. But as soon as the goal is scored, they spend it on political favors and supporters and special interest, and never fix the mythical infrastructure problem. That way in just a few years, they can convinced another crowd of mindless lemmings, that we need more infrastructure spending.
3. Not true. If it was, then Greece should have been the leading economy in Europe. They had a minimum wage indexed to inflation for years. At one point over 1/4th of the entire population of Greece, was unemployed. 25%+ unemployment rate.
Why didn't it stabilize the economy because those Greeks should have had bigger paychecks, and stimulate growth like you claim?
Equally, Germany until 2015 should have had a terrible economy, or Denmark. Because neither had a minimum wage at all.
Do you notice how all the states who have raised their minimum wages aren’t shitholes like the red states that don’t?
Um... no, because that's not true. People are leaving NYC and California. Those places that have the highest minimum wage, are sh!tholes. That's why people are leaving. People are going to Texas. Not leaving Texas.
4. Again... there are free clinics across the entire country. You can go to the hospital and get treatment, without a penny, or insurance.
5. Defense is one of the fundamental duties of the Federal government.
Further, the Defense budget is only $650 Billion. The US collected $3.7 Trillion dollars in taxes last year.
The DOD is 17% of the budget. At least 2/3rds of the entire budget is just entitlements.
Moreover, you claim that increasing the corporate tax, would result in us having all this money to fund your programs.... that seems rather dumb, since before 2017, the corporate tax was significantly higher, and we didn't have all this money for all your programs.
