Donald Trump: wages are 'too high'

[Benton]

(11-14-2015, 09:07 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: 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.

I'll defer to you and matt and others for this kind of finance/tax issue.

for me, and its just my opinion based mostly off anecdotal information, goes back to the tax issue. I see a lot of state and federal intervention in big business. From tax incentives to land grants to reduced utility costs. The idea is is creates jobs and that in turn creates taxes.

but there's no nearly that kind of support for small businesses. Self employed or guys with 10-15 employees. And I think that's part of the difference between our economy now and our economies in the past. Outside of governments, there were very few "large employers" through history. Instead, there were mostly small employers, whether it was a trade or agriculture. They helped dictate the market and in turn markets generally didn't have massive disruptions outside of natural disasters or wars.

now it's the opposite of that. We've got a significant amount (about half if I remember right) large employers and markets can be significantly effected when one of the big players has a problem.

and I realize this is a simplified view of things. But basically, I think more small businesses would make stronger economies overall, albeit harder on the individual business.