11-14-2015, 09:07 PM
(11-14-2015, 08:29 PM)Benton Wrote: It's the tax issue. Namely, companies that pay out millions to CEOs and upper management, but don't pay taxes the same way as smaller businesses.
That's fair, but it's a very mixed bag.
I'd like to see more done with the tax code to incentivize higher line wages. But nothing can really offset the forces I mentioned.
The top 1% earned like an average of $1.2M. Even if we confiscate their top 2/3 = $800,000 on average or about $1.1T (not quite sure how that works out if you look at the individuals, probably a little less).
But we have to be revenue neutral, so shave 22% off that....call it $900B. That's pretty healthy, about $5000 for everyone with a job. A healthy 14% raise or so (on average), but it's well short of where we'd want to be and barely covers the deficit, much less eliminate many welfare benefits. Keep in mind that $900B includes cap gains (which is why their effective rate averages only 22%), so that's where the money from your tax issues filters into.
Where should the average median household income be? It's more or less stalled the past 30 years (although it looks much better when including benefits and wealth transfers)....BUT you're talking primarily two-income households vs. one. So my $5000 above is a only fraction of what we've lost.
The last time we had real excess demand to drive up wages was 2004-2006 or so, but that was largely built on the financial house of cards. There are real structural issues with the US and global economy driving all this. And Japan was probably the first developed economy to start feeling it 25 years ago and they still haven't figured it out.
