Trickle down is bullshit

[L.T. Fan]

There is a place.

They can use those record profits to pay their employees more, raise their profit sharing plans.

Do you dole out your paycheck to your friends? Why should owners pay out their incomes and profits to employees over and above their paycheck they have already paid? If you had a business would you split the profits with your employees after you paid them a wage?

 

[Jiggyfly]

Do you dole out your paycheck to your friends? Why should owners pay out their incomes and profits to employees over and above their paycheck they have already paid? If you had a business would you split the profits with your employees after you paid them a wage?

If a was swimming in cash yes I would.

Who is actually generating these profits it's the employees if you are setting profit records why not spread it to the people that are working for you.

 

[Jiggyfly]

No it's not. That's like the last place they go. And they don't cut salaries, they cut employees. It's usually because they don't have enough work to justify that many employees.

I have a better idea though, why don't we just remove all the bullshit regulation that prevents employees from having the opportunity to become an employer themselves. Then they can just become the boss and sit on easy street like you think.

We already had this convo and I showed you how wages have been suppressed and profits have gone up.

 

[L.T. Fan]

If a was swimming in cash yes I would.

Who is actually generating these profits it's the employees if you are setting profit records why not spread it to the people that are working for you.

They are getting paid but it is sheer madness to think they are entitled to something that belongs to someone else. Might as well do away with ownership discretion if things went like you wanted them to. Invite your neighbors down and tell them to take what ever they want. They deserve it for being good neighbors.

 

[Smitty]

I don't know if "trickle down" works as the writer in this article is trying to define it, but try running a city/state/country with prohibitive taxes where all the businesses leave. You can't.

Rising tide raises all boats.

 

[townsend]

I don't know if "trickle down" works as the writer in this article is trying to define it, but try running a city/state/country with prohibitive taxes where all the businesses leave. You can't.

Rising tide raises all boats.

The problem is we have very high taxes, unless you can afford a lobbyist to get you loopholes. Our current model allows companies like Verizon to pay virtually no taxes. While a moderately successful small corporation has to deal with a 34-35% tax rates.

 

[Jiggyfly]

They are getting paid but it is sheer madness to think they are entitled to something that belongs to someone else. Might as well do away with ownership discretion if things went like you wanted them to. Invite your neighbors down and tell them to take what ever they want. They deserve it for being good neighbors.

That has nothing to do with what I am advocating.

I am not saying give away all of your profits to employees just share more of the record profits, what are shareholders doing to benefit the business.

You are going to extremes to make a point my neighbors are doing nothing to expand my coffers, unlike the employees of these businesses.

That analogy is plain stupid.

 

[Jiggyfly]

I don't know if "trickle down" works as the writer in this article is trying to define it, but try running a city/state/country with prohibitive taxes where all the businesses leave. You can't.

Rising tide raises all boats.

Except in these cases all boats are not rising and its the reason salaries have been flat for over 20 years.

 

[L.T. Fan]

That has nothing to do with what I am advocating.

I am not saying give away all of your profits to employees just share more of the record profits, what are shareholders doing to benefit the business.

You are going to extremes to make a point my neighbors are doing nothing to expand my coffers, unlike the employees of these businesses.

That analogy is plain stupid.

How do you know that some companies aren't already doing this? The example isn't stupid. It's intent is to show that there is no entitlement due an employee other than what is agreed to by the employer. You seem to think that it's proper to share profits to non owners just because a company may make high profits. It not sensible in a capitalist economic structure to even entertain that idea as being reasonable because that is invalid to entrepreneurship. The determination of how profits are handled is strictly the owners decison. There is no "they should" in the equation.

What is ownership doing to enhance profits? How about risking capital.

 

[Jiggyfly]

How do you know that some companies aren't already doing this? The example isn't stupid. It's intent is to show that there is no entitlement due an employee other than what is agreed to by the employer. You seem to think that it's proper to share profits to non owners just because a company may make high profits. It not sensible in a capitalist economic structure to even entertain that idea as being reasonable because that is invalid to entrepreneurship. The determination of how profits are handled is strictly the owners decison. There is no "they should" in the equation.

What is ownership doing to enhance profits? How about risking capital.

There are companies that do this and they still have good profit margins.

I am saying this should be the norm instead of outliers.

All that other stuff you are spouting is bullshit, Capitalism and entrepreneurship is not based on having the largest profit margins.

This is what one of the greatest Capitalist and entrepreneurs in history said.

This was Ford’s theory: Companies had an interest in ensuring that their employees could afford the products they produced. Put another way, employers had a role to play in boosting consumption. While paying higher wages than you absolutely needed to might lower profits temporarily, it would lead to a more sustainable business and economy over time.

And his example led to this

Ford’s heretical proclamation was the first in a series of acts of individual and collective action, from the private and public sectors, that improved the lot of the typical worker in America and helped pave the way for the broad-based prosperity of the second half of the 20th century. In the 1920s, acting out of a mixture of paternalism and self-interest, many large companies started pensions, began offering health-care benefits and clinics, and boosted wages.

I guess Henry Ford had no sense?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...aising-wages-would-bring-him-more-profit.html

This what is has been happening to wages since 1975.

Until 1975, wages generally amounted to 50 percent of gross domestic product. Labor essentially held its own through the 1980s and 1990s; in 2001, wages still constituted 49 percent of GDP. But by 2012 they were 43.5 percent—a modern-day low. Median household income fell in both 2010 and 2011, and the median income for working-age households fell 12.4 percent from 2000 to 2011, to $55,640, a period in which the U.S. economy grew by 18 percent.

What should be done about that?

 

[Jiggyfly]

I guess this ok to do as long as profits are rolling in.

Caterpillar is thriving at its workers’ expense. Last year, as the company racked up a record $66 billion in sales, generating $5.7 billion in profits, it repeatedly landed in the news for clashing with production employees. In January 2012, Caterpillar locked out union workers at a locomotive factory in Ontario after they rejected a pay cut of about 50 percent; the company shuttered the plant and moved production to Muncie, Ind., where workers accepted lower wages. Last May, Caterpillar took a hard line during negotiations with employees at its Joliet (Ill.) hydraulic-parts factory, insisting on cuts to health care and other benefits. After striking for three months, employees caved at the end of the summer. Senior workers’ wages were frozen for six years. Caterpillar is currently battling union workers at its Milwaukee plant.

Last year, Caterpillar made $45,000 per employee, up from $12,000 in 2007. “The argument they make is, at a time when we’re very profitable, we can’t afford to more equitably distribute the wealth, because there may come a time when we won’t be,” says Robert Bruno, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s school of labor and employment relations. “So when is it appropriate to share the wealth?”

 

[Smitty]

The problem is we have very high taxes, unless you can afford a lobbyist to get you loopholes. Our current model allows companies like Verizon to pay virtually no taxes. While a moderately successful small corporation has to deal with a 34-35% tax rates.

Try to suggest a flat tax with no corporate loopholes to Democrats and watch the steam come out of their ears though. But the rich aren't paying a higher percent!!!!!!! BLASPHEMY!!!!!!

 

[Smitty]

Except in these cases all boats are not rising and its the reason salaries have been flat for over 20 years.

Well there has been no real growth of wealth in this country the last twenty years, just printed currency, inflation, and government-sponsored bubbles.

 

[townsend]

Try to suggest a flat tax with no corporate loopholes to Democrats and watch the steam come out of their ears though. But the rich aren't paying a higher percent!!!!!!! BLASPHEMY!!!!!!

No loopholes and flat tax shouldn't be joined at the hip, one's a good idea, and a one's bad idea. Progressive tax just makes more sense. I think everyone should be able to agree that the current tax code is ass, and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. I think damn good research needs to be done to build up an equivalent revenue. But emphasis should be kept on letting the working poor keep as much money as possible. They spend it all anyway.

 

[Smitty]

Progressive taxes make more sense to who? Speaking authoritatively on something you're not really qualified to speak authoritatively about again, I see.

Maybe progressive taxes make more sense if the low income levels pay 10% and the upper levels pay 15% or something. This "poor people pay nothing and rich people pay 50%" concept is bullshit.

 

[L.T. Fan]

There are companies that do this and they still have good profit margins.

I am saying this should be the norm instead of outliers.

All that other stuff you are spouting is bullshit, Capitalism and entrepreneurship is not based on having the largest profit margins.

This is what one of the greatest Capitalist and entrepreneurs in history said.


And his example led to this



I guess Henry Ford had no sense?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...aising-wages-would-bring-him-more-profit.html

This what is has been happening to wages since 1975.



What should be done about that?

I guess you didn't read the part where this addresses wages and benefits not profits. Why do you even bother to post things that are not relevant to the issue?

It also leaves the issue to the owner to decide not employees.

 

[L.T. Fan]

In addition I see I am going to have to go simplistic again to make the point.

First of all accounting principles prohibit profits being shared by anyone except ownership. If an owner pays profits to anyone other than ownership they will be paying the taxes as well and take a double hit.

Owners can declare benefits and wages with increases to employees and charge them as expenses to the business but they cannot share profits with employees unless the are part of ownership. If there were other owners or stockholders they could bring legal action for such an act as giving their profits to non ownership. Anything given to an employee must be done before profits are declared because once declared they are the sole property of ownership.

By accounting and by law profits cannot be distributed to anyone other than stockholders or owners without penalty of taxation or risk of civil litigation.

So simply stated owners are not allowed to share profits with employees. They are only allowed to pay wages and benefits before profits are declared. Profits belong to ownership.

 

[townsend]

Progressive taxes make more sense to who? Speaking authoritatively on something you're not really qualified to speak authoritatively about again, I see.

Maybe progressive taxes make more sense if the low income levels pay 10% and the upper levels pay 15% or something. This "poor people pay nothing and rich people pay 50%" concept is bullshit.

I doubt under our current (unreasonably inflated) budget we could ever afford just 15% from even the middle tier of taxpayers, but I agree in principle that the government shouldn't be permitted to ransack someone's earnings, just because they earn quite a bit.
As far as "progressive tax" makes sense. That doesn't take an economist to figure out. Poor people usually need all of the money they earn, a single emergency might lose them their livelihood (for instance if their car breaks down, and they can't go to work). Keeping them infused with as much of their own income as possible makes it more likely they won't become a burden of the state.

The larger a percentage of someone's earnings are devoted to necessities, the more they're going to feed that money directly back into the economy. The less they can afford to pay in taxes. Poor people spend close to 100% of their income on necessities. Rich people spend a fraction of theirs. They can afford to take up poor people's tax burden.

As an aside, this is where businesses and individuals are very different. A business that earns 2 mil a year should be treated as a "middle class" business, since they likely have a ton of expensive necessities.

 

[L.T. Fan]

How does they can afford equate to they should pick up someone else's obligation. That is such a lame ideology. Being able to afford doesn't in any way shape or form legitimize requiring some one to carry the load for someone else. It's a stupid way for some to try to deprive one from keeping what they have and giving up to another that should be carrying their own weight.

I guess I could go down to an expensive restaurant and tell them to charge my dinner to you because I am retired and you can afford to pick up my tab.

 

[Jiggyfly]

Well there has been no real growth of wealth in this country the last twenty years, just printed currency, inflation, and government-sponsored bubbles.

What?

I just showed you how profits have risen for Catapiller and that is actual currency for manufactured goods with a fair amount being foriegn money.

No economist would agree with you.