I just discovered an interesting gotcha for folks giving money to their children, If the gift results in more than 2150 in total unearned income it is now taxed at estate and trust rates which top out at 38% at 12,500 taxable income. this applies to kids in school until age 24, trying to limit parents shifting income to lower taxed kids. note 12,500 implies a principle amount of over 150k depending on the rate of return.
“And after it leaves they are lucky to make \$12 or \$15 an hour.”
If most jobs paid $20/hr — we can have universal health care; we can have decent SS retirement if workers pay in more because paid more — everything should be fine and dandy.
Rebuilding labor union density — restoring a genuine free labor market — the only possible way.
If fast food can pay $15/hr with 33% labor costs — most retail, for instance, can pay $20/hr with 10-15% labor costs — Walmart can pay $25/hr with (God bless it) 7% labor costs.
Once labor takes over the country we can jack up confiscatory taxes on the 1% to reset their income share back to 10% from 22.5% — replenishing middle and upper middle class pocket books so they wont even feel the squeeze of upward jacking lower income labor costs — as the lower income squeeze consumers to find out what they are really worth to them.
Simple painless answer to outsourcing for unskilled labor (most of us).
* * * * * *
Just as everybody seem to forget that labor cost is a price within a price (a curve within a curve) when talking minimum wage — everybody seems to forget while wringing hands over outsourcing that all this inequality (I prefer something less policy wonkish for Joe Six Pack like “disparity”) is a result of drastic loss of market power. Just reset labor bargaining power and we will make Walgreen’s pay $20/hr: prosperous life reset: “minimum bargained wage.”
* * * * * *
Super easy way back? When Democrats take over Congress, we have to institute mandatory union certification and re-certification elections at every work place (stealing a page from the Republican’s anti-union playbook — see Wisconsin gov workers). I would add the wrinkle of making the cycle one, three or five years — plurality rules — take a lot of potential rancor out of first time votes in some workplaces.
Since the 1990’s to present (2015): Violent Crime, % of 1990’s (by reading off the small chart)
The rates dropped most steeply from mid-1990’s to 2000, with the rates dropping at approx. half the prior rates since (by eyeballing), and still on the downward trend.
Maybe we just got more efficient at building incarceration facilities and putting more violent crime offenders behind bars as we privatized the industry, though I doubt it since most of the incarcerated aren’t for violent crimes.
25% Urban
32% Suburban
33% Rural & small towns
33% Overall
Urban violent crime has dropped by more than Suburban & Rural even though Urban populations have increased by a greater proportion.
All violent crime rates in all the above venues are now between 20 and 25 per 1000, still not as low as Europe’s rates, but a lot better than 100 & 75 per 1000. Taking away guns might help a lot.
” When the Supreme Court decided, in the 1954 case of Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, Tennessee-born economist James McGill Buchanan was horrified. Over the course of the next few decades, the libertarian thinker found comfortable homes at a series of research universities and spent his time articulating a new grand vision of American society, a country in which government would be close to nonexistent, and would have no obligation to provide education—or health care, or old-age support, or food, or housing—to anyone.
This radical vision has become the playbook for a network of people looking to override democracy in order to shift more money to the wealthiest few, historian and professor at Duke University Nancy MacLean argues in her new book, an intellectual biography of James Buchanan called Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.* Buchanan’s life story, she writes, is “the true origin story of today’s well-heeled radical right….
Did his ideas change over time?
The core ideas kind of stayed the same. What did change over time was his own outlook. It became much darker over the years. His first big book in his field, which is called public choice economics, was titled The Calculus of Consent, and it came out in 1962 and was co-authored with Gordon Tullock. It was the work for which Buchanan was most recognized in his Nobel citation. In that work, he seemed to believe that somehow people of good will could come to something close to unanimity on the basic rules of how to govern our society, on things like taxation and government spending and so forth.
And by the mid-1970s he concluded that that was impossible, and that there was no way that poor people would ever agree … there was no way that people who were not wealthy, who were not large property owners, would agree to the kind of rules he was proposing. So that was a very dark work. It was called The Limits of Liberty. He actually said in that work that the only hope might be despotism.
And he went from writing that to advising the Pinochet junta in Chile on how to craft their constitution. This document was later called a “constitution of locks and bolts,” [and was designed] to make it so that the majority couldn’t make its will felt in the political system, unless it was a huge supermajority.
So yeah, it’s pretty dark….
ell me more about the relationship between Koch and Buchanan.
I think too many people on the left have really underestimated Koch’s intelligence and his drive, and also misunderstood his motives. There’s been brilliant work by journalists, really good digging on the money trail and the Koch operations, but much of that writing seems to assume that he is doing this just because it’s going to lower his tax bill or because he wants to evade regulations, personally. I think that really misgauges the man. He is deeply ideological and has been reading almost fanatically for a very long time. I see him as someone who’s quite messianic. He’s compared himself to Martin Luther and his effort being like the Protestant Reformation. When he invested in Buchanan’s center at George Mason University, he said he wanted to “unleash the kind of force that propelled Columbus.”
This is not someone who’s just trying to lower his tax bill. He wants to bring in a totally new vision of society and government, that’s different from anything that exists anywhere in the world or has existed because he is so certain that he is right. I think it’s more chilling because it doesn’t correspond to the ideas we have about politics….
And then Koch funded Buchanan’s center, as well as other projects, at George Mason University. One of Buchanan’s ideas that Koch liked was the concept of making a flurry of changes all at once so that people have a hard time opposing them.
Yes, and in the same year that Koch invested all this money in George Mason, [economist] Tyler Cowen got a commission by the Institute for Humane Studies to produce this review of places where economic liberty has made big advances. Cowen advocates what he calls a “Big Bang.”
Interestingly it’s that same phrase that gets used by Civitas, the Koch-affiliated organization in North Carolina, after they take over the state legislature here in 2011. I actually have to give the North Carolina Republican-led General Assembly some credit for this book because I was struggling through Buchanan’s ideas, trying to understand the implications, because he did write in a somewhat abstract manner. And then the General Assembly came in in North Carolina and just made it all so clear. I saw the practical measures being taken and was like, “Oh, this is what he’s talking about! That’s what this is!” I should have put them in the acknowledgements.”
The right wing academics have been blasting MacLean since her book was released, and elevating Buchanan’s legacy.
I read his 1962 utopian vision of what I determined was actually his version of “gov’t by the elites”. opposed to a central gov’t…. e.g. classic southern aristocracy anti-federalism in modern prose by an academic. I couldn’t believe the Nobel Committee gave him the time of day. It seriously diminished my opinion of how the Committee decides things.
I just discovered an interesting gotcha for folks giving money to their children, If the gift results in more than 2150 in total unearned income it is now taxed at estate and trust rates which top out at 38% at 12,500 taxable income. this applies to kids in school until age 24, trying to limit parents shifting income to lower taxed kids. note 12,500 implies a principle amount of over 150k depending on the rate of return.
CROSS POSTED FROM
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/01/determining-bargaining-power-in-the-platform-economy-reinvent-full-transcript.html#tpe-action-posted-6a00e551f08003883401b7c942e64f970b
“And after it leaves they are lucky to make \$12 or \$15 an hour.”
If most jobs paid $20/hr — we can have universal health care; we can have decent SS retirement if workers pay in more because paid more — everything should be fine and dandy.
Rebuilding labor union density — restoring a genuine free labor market — the only possible way.
If fast food can pay $15/hr with 33% labor costs — most retail, for instance, can pay $20/hr with 10-15% labor costs — Walmart can pay $25/hr with (God bless it) 7% labor costs.
Once labor takes over the country we can jack up confiscatory taxes on the 1% to reset their income share back to 10% from 22.5% — replenishing middle and upper middle class pocket books so they wont even feel the squeeze of upward jacking lower income labor costs — as the lower income squeeze consumers to find out what they are really worth to them.
Simple painless answer to outsourcing for unskilled labor (most of us).
* * * * * *
Just as everybody seem to forget that labor cost is a price within a price (a curve within a curve) when talking minimum wage — everybody seems to forget while wringing hands over outsourcing that all this inequality (I prefer something less policy wonkish for Joe Six Pack like “disparity”) is a result of drastic loss of market power. Just reset labor bargaining power and we will make Walgreen’s pay $20/hr: prosperous life reset: “minimum bargained wage.”
* * * * * *
Super easy way back? When Democrats take over Congress, we have to institute mandatory union certification and re-certification elections at every work place (stealing a page from the Republican’s anti-union playbook — see Wisconsin gov workers). I would add the wrinkle of making the cycle one, three or five years — plurality rules — take a lot of potential rancor out of first time votes in some workplaces.
Why Not Hold Union Representation Elections on a Regular Schedule?
November 1st, 2017 – Andrew Strom
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/
Something that may interest Mr. Kimel’s “crusade against crime” in many of his posts.
A chart by WSJ of violent crimes by ages 12 and older in urban, suburban, rural, and total US:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/6/1729941/-This-week-at-progressive-state-blogs-Sessions-harshes-marijuana-mellow-Merkley-pushes-for-green
Sorry but the WSJ article itself is pay-walled.
Since the 1990’s to present (2015): Violent Crime, % of 1990’s (by reading off the small chart)
The rates dropped most steeply from mid-1990’s to 2000, with the rates dropping at approx. half the prior rates since (by eyeballing), and still on the downward trend.
Maybe we just got more efficient at building incarceration facilities and putting more violent crime offenders behind bars as we privatized the industry, though I doubt it since most of the incarcerated aren’t for violent crimes.
25% Urban
32% Suburban
33% Rural & small towns
33% Overall
Urban violent crime has dropped by more than Suburban & Rural even though Urban populations have increased by a greater proportion.
All violent crime rates in all the above venues are now between 20 and 25 per 1000, still not as low as Europe’s rates, but a lot better than 100 & 75 per 1000. Taking away guns might help a lot.
Wow. Just ordered this book.
” When the Supreme Court decided, in the 1954 case of Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, Tennessee-born economist James McGill Buchanan was horrified. Over the course of the next few decades, the libertarian thinker found comfortable homes at a series of research universities and spent his time articulating a new grand vision of American society, a country in which government would be close to nonexistent, and would have no obligation to provide education—or health care, or old-age support, or food, or housing—to anyone.
This radical vision has become the playbook for a network of people looking to override democracy in order to shift more money to the wealthiest few, historian and professor at Duke University Nancy MacLean argues in her new book, an intellectual biography of James Buchanan called Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.* Buchanan’s life story, she writes, is “the true origin story of today’s well-heeled radical right….
Did his ideas change over time?
The core ideas kind of stayed the same. What did change over time was his own outlook. It became much darker over the years. His first big book in his field, which is called public choice economics, was titled The Calculus of Consent, and it came out in 1962 and was co-authored with Gordon Tullock. It was the work for which Buchanan was most recognized in his Nobel citation. In that work, he seemed to believe that somehow people of good will could come to something close to unanimity on the basic rules of how to govern our society, on things like taxation and government spending and so forth.
And by the mid-1970s he concluded that that was impossible, and that there was no way that poor people would ever agree … there was no way that people who were not wealthy, who were not large property owners, would agree to the kind of rules he was proposing. So that was a very dark work. It was called The Limits of Liberty. He actually said in that work that the only hope might be despotism.
And he went from writing that to advising the Pinochet junta in Chile on how to craft their constitution. This document was later called a “constitution of locks and bolts,” [and was designed] to make it so that the majority couldn’t make its will felt in the political system, unless it was a huge supermajority.
So yeah, it’s pretty dark….
ell me more about the relationship between Koch and Buchanan.
I think too many people on the left have really underestimated Koch’s intelligence and his drive, and also misunderstood his motives. There’s been brilliant work by journalists, really good digging on the money trail and the Koch operations, but much of that writing seems to assume that he is doing this just because it’s going to lower his tax bill or because he wants to evade regulations, personally. I think that really misgauges the man. He is deeply ideological and has been reading almost fanatically for a very long time. I see him as someone who’s quite messianic. He’s compared himself to Martin Luther and his effort being like the Protestant Reformation. When he invested in Buchanan’s center at George Mason University, he said he wanted to “unleash the kind of force that propelled Columbus.”
This is not someone who’s just trying to lower his tax bill. He wants to bring in a totally new vision of society and government, that’s different from anything that exists anywhere in the world or has existed because he is so certain that he is right. I think it’s more chilling because it doesn’t correspond to the ideas we have about politics….
And then Koch funded Buchanan’s center, as well as other projects, at George Mason University. One of Buchanan’s ideas that Koch liked was the concept of making a flurry of changes all at once so that people have a hard time opposing them.
Yes, and in the same year that Koch invested all this money in George Mason, [economist] Tyler Cowen got a commission by the Institute for Humane Studies to produce this review of places where economic liberty has made big advances. Cowen advocates what he calls a “Big Bang.”
Interestingly it’s that same phrase that gets used by Civitas, the Koch-affiliated organization in North Carolina, after they take over the state legislature here in 2011. I actually have to give the North Carolina Republican-led General Assembly some credit for this book because I was struggling through Buchanan’s ideas, trying to understand the implications, because he did write in a somewhat abstract manner. And then the General Assembly came in in North Carolina and just made it all so clear. I saw the practical measures being taken and was like, “Oh, this is what he’s talking about! That’s what this is!” I should have put them in the acknowledgements.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2017/06/james_mcgill_buchanan_s_terrifying_vision_of_society_is_the_intellectual.html
Tellingly, I posted this comment over on Cowen’s blog this am.
It disappeared moments later.
The right wing academics have been blasting MacLean since her book was released, and elevating Buchanan’s legacy.
I read his 1962 utopian vision of what I determined was actually his version of “gov’t by the elites”. opposed to a central gov’t…. e.g. classic southern aristocracy anti-federalism in modern prose by an academic. I couldn’t believe the Nobel Committee gave him the time of day. It seriously diminished my opinion of how the Committee decides things.
Longtooth
I believe… not sure… the “Nobel in Economics” has nothing to do with the Nobel folks who give awards for physics, peace, literature…