With proposed laws like these we can all be happy that the US Congress is at a productivity low.
Internet Sales Tax
In New York they want to tax Internet sales. They say it's because brick and mortar stores are at a disadvantage unless they tax online sales too.
When was the last time the liberals stood up for businesses?
Why not just get rid of the sales tax all together? This would benefit most businesses and would particularly benefit low-wage earners (and the rest of us); those who the liberals pretend to represent. In addition, sales tax is essentially double-taxation.
The real reason is that they just want more tax revenue and bigger government controlling our lives; the sympathy for business is feigned.
Carbon Tax
As if Al Gore has not already been discredited, the president is bringing back the idea of a carbon tax.
The world may be warming but the cause is probably not carbon dioxide.
- We pump 5 ppm of Earth's atmosphere full of carbon dioxide every year but the actual concentration only increases by 2 ppm/year. This fact correlates well with the following fact;
- Ice cores show that temperatures rise before carbon dioxide, allowing the air to dissolve/absorb more carbon dioxide.
- Water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and there's a lot more of it; and it also increases with increasing temperature.
- Carbon dioxide does not appear to be the main culprit to anybody but the liberals; they even tried to reinterpret the ice core data to fit their theory so they can justify this tax.
I'm not saying pollution is good, I'm just saying that the liberals are lying as a means to increase their efforts at redistributing wealth.
The oil companies favor the tax as a means to boost sales of all the natural gas they've found by fracking. Also, they won't have to pay the tax, we will. Those who support a given tax are rarely subjected to it; like the congressional democrat-liberals who gave us Obamacare.
It also shows that liberals favor tax revenue over the environment; why else would they try to reward the frackers that they profess to hate otherwise?
Pushback on Common Core Standards
We were 23rd in science, 26th in math and 15th in reading in 2009.
These rankings dropped to 23rd, 31st and 17th respectively in 2012.
This year the U.S. was 21st in science, 26th in math and 17th in reading. Except for reading, this would be good news were it not for the fact that the results are still pathetic overall.
Parents are pushing back because the new standards are making their kids look more uneducated than they looked with more liberal standards (even though they publicly rant about the testing as the issue). However, the international rankings suggest a different tune; our kids are undereducated.
It could be a fluke but it's encouraging. Stay tuned. We need to undo the dumbing down of America.
Now, if we can only reduce the bureaucratic bloat and reduce the costs of publicly funded education back to where they should be, I'd be ecstatic; $6,660/student in CT. We spend more than any country but we get lackluster results.
Minimum Wage IncreaseThe protests to pay $15/hr in fast food restaurants are totally absurd.
The president is looking for $10.10, just enough to realign the minimum wage growth to the growth of inflation. While it sounds more reasonable than $15, the last time we tried that in 1980 we got a 50% increase in unemployment (see second chart below). In addition, it's a death spiral caused by government policies in the first place (explained below).
They're talking about fast food workers for $15 now but this is just the camel's nose under the tent. Seattle just did it for airport workers while, at the same time, the state of Washington (and its unions) rejected an offer by Boeing to build more jets there. Say what!?
Proponents argue that it doesn't increase prices. Remember this graph of minimum wage and inflation normalized to 1968?
You can clearly see that the rate of rise of inflation was the greatest when the increases in the minimum wage were most frequent (1973-1980). You can also see that it took a while for industry to catch on to the lost-profit problems of the early years. You can also see that the inflation rate decreases a little (in 1982) after the last minimum wage increase in 1980.
Proponents argue that raising the minimum wage does not reduce employment.
Of interest here is the correlation between increases to the minimum wage and increases in unemployment; 1975, 1982, 1991 and 2007. We all know what happened in 2001.
A 2% increase in unemployment is about 2.8 million workers. Throw in a liberal president and congress and you get 4%.
At a time when most of the world is seeing that these policies don't work, the President is doubling down; anything to distract from the Obamacare chaos.
Do we really want more unemployment? Granted that the rate just dropped to 7% but the meaning is not what you'd think because of the way it's measured; actual employment of the workforce has been flat for the 5 years since the (last) meltdown.
Since 1968, US GDP is up by a factor of 16 but population is up 60% so GDP is really up by a factor of 7, matching the inflation factor.
So why does the cost of living keep going up with GDP? Here's why.
However, we've also made payments on the debt in the amount of $9 trillion since 1988. Those debt payments have averaged 5.5% of GDP whereas inflation has averaged 4.5% since 1968; inflation would be the same as debt burden if we counted food and energy.
I think the case can be made that government largesse (with our money) is the root cause of inflation. Prior to 1965, inflation was fairly tame (increased by a factor of 3 over 51 years). After the start of the War on Poverty, it takes off like a rocket; growing by the same factor of seven as inflation aka the cost of living.
The cost of living applies especially to taxpayers since they pay the cost of everyone else's living.
Jacking up the minimum wage is just a backhanded way of increasing taxes since those earning the minimum wage pay the least in taxes but those earning more will pay more tax due to the upward pressure on all wages. This is exacerbated by the progressive, redistributive tax system loved by liberals.
The caveat is that the new taxes, like the inflated wages, are actually worthless since they are exactly cancelled by the inflation that generated them; this is obviously true since no new wealth was actually created; only the costs increase which is the definition of inflation.
The government giveth with its left hand while takething away with its other left hand. I suggest putting them both elsewhere.
In addition, my old friend Leo says that additionally, minimum wage laws:
- interferes with the right to contract
- subverts the employers right to private property
- distorts the invisible hand of the market for labor candidates for hire
- hides discernment of "good" jobs from "bad" jobs based on price (wages)
- eliminates the employer's choice to be virtuous at the point where forced cost of labor removes the employer's flexibility, they cannot choose to do good
- makes for Bad Karma or No Chance for Heaven
The objective should be to increase non-government-subsidized employment, not to provide a baseless wage increase.
For example, after we deport the 11 million illegal aliens, lots of jobs in the agriculture, restaurant and hotel businesses (among others) will become available.
As another example, after we finally fire all government employee unions, lots of the cost of government can be shaved by hiring individuals on an at-will basis with lower pay and ordinary benefits like high-deductible health plans, Social Security and Medicare.
For a third; bring back apprenticeships. These should be in jobs that can't be exported; plumbing, electrical, HVAC, landscaping, engine mechanics and so on. These jobs should not have minimum wage restrictions since they also supply training at the employer's expense.
The idea is to close the income gap but I just heard an interesting and plausible explanation for the gap; our population is aging and older workers make a lot more than younger workers. This makes sense to me since my own income increased by a factor of 20 since my apprenticeship.
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