Minimum wages and why there should not be one....

What are you proposing, then?

 

Did I propose something? Please remind me!

I've defended the concept of minimum wage as being justified.

There may be better ways of solving the problem, but I haven't seen one here.

 

What on earth do you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about? I am not a Georgist and have not mentioned Georgism. Georgism is essentially the Single Tax idea that was originally floated by the French physiocrats ~250 years ago ("l'impot unique"). Geoism is much more than that, and justice is more than geoism.

I already proved there has never been any such thing as free market capitalism, and never can be, so it doesn't need replacing.

I am not a Georgist and haven't mentioned or advocated Georgism, and I proved that free market capitalism is an oxymoron.

But without reading any further, I am willing to give long odds that I understand Georgism incomparably better than you do.

No it isn't. See? You are already flat, outright wrong, and egregiously so. Henry George proposed and advocated his Single Tax at a time when there WAS no federal income tax in the USA, and very few states or cities had income taxes either. Contrary to your baldly false claim, the Georgist Single Tax was to remove the property tax on fixed improvements, as well as tariffs and sales and excise taxes, which bore on economic activity, and replace them with an ad valorem tax on the unimproved value of land -- which does not bear on anything but the landowner -- NOT an increased rate of property tax.

No. He pitched what he actually pitched -- recovery of the publicly created unimproved rental value of land for public purposes and benefit -- as benefiting pretty much everyone but the largest landowners, whose unearned rent incomes were larger than their earned incomes. And he was certainly correct about that.

They all are. Despite its flaws, the property tax is inherently progressive because it mostly bears on those who own the property, who thus have greater ability to pay.

They certainly are. Just as one example, Detroit has the highest property tax rates in the country, and low-income individuals consequently can buy houses there, they are so cheap.

And (to the very modest extent that it is true) that is a good thing. Those who are not working do not need access to job opportunities, and should certainly not be depriving those who do need them of ready access to them. You are essentially saying that those who own desirable land close to employment and are not using it productively should have their wasteful dog-in-the-manger idleness subsidized by productive working people who must consequently live farther away from their workplaces. You are obviously one of the legion of apologists for evil who think everyone else should rightly be sacrificed on the altar of landowner greed, privilege and parasitism.

Because they are greedily and stupidly wasting a valuable public resource that others would use more productively, so driving them away is what a really free market would rightly do.

OK, so we can add real estate economics to the rapidly growing list of things you do not understand. High property taxes reduce the acquisition cost of land, which also reduces mortgage interest costs. Only when the property tax rate is high enough to be comparable to the discount rate does it start to negatively affect the affordability of construction.

It has nothing to do with Georgism, that is just a bald fabrication on your part, as proved above.

One thing that has been 100% reliable since the day "Progress and Poverty" was published over 140 years ago is the anti-Georgists' invariable practice of just makin' $#!+ up about it. It seems to be a physical law of the universe. There has never been an exception to that law, and there never will be.

No it isn't. That is just another bald fabrication on your part. They are pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in unearned (and largely untaxed) capital gains that the community has shoveled into their pockets in return for nothing. The notion that we should somehow feel sorry for people who are stealing that much from the community is grotesque.

George opposed the property tax, as it bears on improvements as well as land. In fact, at high rates (as in Detroit), it pushes land value so low that it bears almost exclusively on improvements.

No, that is just another fabrication on your part, as I proved above.

No, that is just two more fabrications on your part: it is not a "disaster" for them -- indeed, they are greatly and unjustly enriched by pocketing the publicly created land value increases on their homes -- and George never advocated the property tax, nor did he ever claim benefits for it.

As I knew would be the case, everything you have said bout Georgism is false -- and Georgism is not even what I advocate. Like every other apologist for landowner greed, privilege and parasitism, you have disgraced yourself.

 

Do you believe there should be any involvement for the government on the employer / employee relationship? In theory an individual and employer should be able to negotiate all aspects of employment without the government getting involved. It has been done for centuries if not millennia in the past. Should there be minimums on age of employees or are children fair game? Should there me mandatory days off for statuary holidays? Should there be mandates for the employer to pay into SS? Should there be workplace safety standards? Should there be penalties on employers who fail to provide health insurance?

The minimum wage is just one example of how government tries to regulate the workplace? Are you in favor of the others?

 

History of Federal Minimum Wage Rates Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938 - 2009
Min
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart

...
Min wage has been around for a long time. Yet the economy has grown since its inception

 

Geoism IS Georgism. Geo is short for George.

Maybe you need to rethink your ideas.

Geoism IS slightly different than property tax as implemented in most places today, but it is pretty close, and it does show the problems that arise with such systems. While Geoism doesn't tax the improvements, the fact of the location, including the improvements and the improvements on adjacent land, absolutely does affect the value of the land.

There certainly are places that go to the extreme of ignoring the property and just taxing the improvements. Those would be poor surrogates for testing out the effects of Georgism.

For property tax today, there is usually an agency that considers recent sales prices of the property and other similar property - such as adjoining lots, etc. Then there are laws in some places that determine when it is that a new valuation of property must be taken into account in calculating taxes. This is a way to preserve retirees, for example, as if their property is constantly changing due to increased value of surrounding property, they can be forced by taxes to leave at once.

You were claiming that georgism must replace free trade capitalism. But, georgism is ONLY a strategy for taxation. It doesn't suggest how work product should be valued. In fact, it doesn't even suggest how the value of a piece of land should be set. And, georgism certainly does recognize the increasing value of land. The fact that the improvements are not taxed doesn't mean that the value of the land is stagnant. The taxed value of my land will increase or decrease regardless of whether I improve my house or allow it to crumble.

As per earlier, my experience with property tax schemes is that it does not help low income individuals in any way and is an impediment in logical city planning, especially due to its effect on revenue.

As for the confusion about who bears property tax, please remember that renters pay the property tax for the building they live in.

 

Overall, let's remember that corporations can easily go out of business by caring about the lives of their employees - and, about people just living in the same location, for that matter.

Regulation, collective bargaining, etc., allow corporations to compete while protecting the very human necessities of employees, cities, natural resources, etc.

 

You said something like "unable to live on their wages", which suggests you're not factoring in individual choices. This indicates you're looking for some sort of Govt solution.

 

The question is did the economy grow in spite of the min wage burden or was it helped by it.

imho there are more problems than solutions w/ the min wage, yet given today's political climate I don't see it being rescinded any time soon.

 

IMO, it has very little effect on overall economy.
It's always playing catchup to the real world wages.

Minimum wage in America: How many people are earning $7.25 an hour? (usafacts.org)

 

Wrong again. Georgism is specifically the teaching of Henry George, especially the Single Tax on the unimproved value of land, and geo is the Greek word for "Earth." Geoism is a more general term than Georgism, and encompasses any system that asserts the equal individual liberty rights of all to use and benefit from what nature provides (the earth).

Maybe you need to rethink your ideas.

It is entirely different.

No it isn't.

Nope. It's too different.

Wrong again. Nearby improvements do affect land value, but all improvements on that parcel are ignored. That's what "unimproved land value" means.

They are the opposite of Georgism.

I know far more about how property taxes work than you do, thanks.

Many jurisdictions allow seniors to defer property taxes, but it would be better if they quickly yielded the location to someone able to make better use of it, and sought a location more appropriate to their needs and means.

No. I stated the fact that geoism would be a far better system than capitalism, which has very little to do with free trade, and is incompatible with a free market.

Which might be why I specifically advocated geoism, not Georgism as a substitute for capitalism. Marx himself called the Georgist Single Tax "capitalism's last ditch (i.e., defense)."

The implication of private property in the fruits of one's labor is that the market will value it.

Sure it does: by the market.

Correct: you would only be required to repay the community the value of what you are taking from everyone else by depriving them of the location's advantages.

But of course, you are wrong. There is a clear, direct relationship between property tax rate and affordability: the higher the property tax rate, the more affordable the housing.

No, that is false. The burden of a tax -- which economists call its "incidence" -- is shared according to the elasticities of supply and demand:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tax_incidence.asp

Please remember that you do not know any economics, while I do.

 

Interesting, in two ways.

First, you said "it has very little effect on overall economy", sounds like ur saying that abolishing the min wage wouldn't make any difference.

Secondly, ur saying that today's min. wage is "playing catchup to the real world wages". Are u saying that the min wage should be set at the median wage level? That would in turn raise the question of whether next year u'd want to raise the min. wage yet again to a new even higher median.

 

The main effect is to transfer land value from commercial and industrial land to residential land. It has almost no effect on making low-wage workers better off, because their landlords just charge them that much more rent.

 

From the link I provided, it affect about 5% of the workforce at present.
So, it makes a difference to that 5%, but not much overall.

I don't really care where the min wage gets set. Depends on the goal of the program.
History states it was to reduce those working below the poverty level.
Today, we have other welfare programs, Food stamps, heating assistance, and others, that subsidize low wage earners to bring them up to poverty level.
So, I guess, we either get them pay that they can live on or we as taxpayers subsidize them.

...
Early History of the Minimum Wage

In 1890 the annual wages of the average American were $380, well below the poverty line of $500 per year. [95] [96] “Progressivism,” a political movement, emerged at this time with the aim of improving American working conditions and wages. [97] Following the example of Australia and New Zealand, which enacted the world’s first minimum wage laws in the 1890s, the Progressives introduced the idea of a US minimum wage, arguing that it should be high enough to support an average employee’s needs. [98]
History of the Minimum Wage - ProCon.org

 

The murder rate in the U.S. is about 5 per 100,000 people. Before thinking that all the money for law enforcement, trials, and incarceration/punishment is only helping 0.005% of the population, we should consider how many murders would take place if we didn't enforce murder laws. The thinking is that just as murder law enforcement is helping more than 5 out of 100,000, the min. wage should be helping more than 5% of the work force.

That's the mantra but in real life what the min. wage law does is it makes it illegal to hire workers that produce less than average. Employers have to either replace marginal workers w/ over paid hotshots that can do the work in record time, replace workers w/ machinery, or the employers have to shut down operations. If an employer can't make a profit on a workforce then the employer himself is out of a job.

 

Yes, I've never disputed the difference between property tax as usually implemented today and Geoism/Georgism - the aspect of not taxing improvements. So, Trump's hotel in Manhattan would be taxed based on the footprint and its location, not on the hotel itself.

You talk about rights, but then you switch to talking about how the elderly should yield their property.

I see those two ideas in stark conflict.

Georgism/Geoism are not substitutes for capitalism. They are systems of taxation. Taxation and capitalism are two different things. Taxation is a requirement of EVERY system of government ever devised on Earth. Capitalism is an economic system.

The fact that Marx thought these methods were an improvement is not a credit that I respect.

It is true that under capitalism, property prices are controlled by supply and demand - that is how capitalism works. It is a demonstration of the FACT that Geoism/Georgism is not an economic system - it is a taxation system. Notice that Geoism/Georgism doesn't specify how the value of property is to be set.


How would you propose that land value should be set?

 

What do you think this will look like when people can't afford housing and food?

Are you also advocating we build more prisons (where taxpayers pay to house and feed criminals)?

Why not have a livable minimum wage and cut out that extra step of orange?

 

Most people can cope. They can work productively and feed themselves. Some people are impaired and they run themselves into debt, then they simply have less to spend on themselves while they pay interest charges. The few who cannot work to feed themselves are helped w/ welfare programs.

There is wide spread hunger when the government imposes poorly considered employer restrictions and makes it impossible to hire and make a profit..

 

There shouldn't be a federal minimum wage. I mean, the cost of living in Montana is a whole lot less than the cost of living in California.

 

But if there was no minimum wage employers would only be paying their employees a dollar a day because people would totally work for that.

Lol

 

If they did that then the business of consolidating debt and raping people for interest would disappear.

If they teach this kind of stuff people will live within their means mostly and then credit card companies won't be able to get rich.

 

those two things are contradictory.

People who underwrite insurance for used cars are going to have a lot more commerce than people who underwrite insurance for private jets.

It's why a company like Toyota or Chevrolet has a higher value than a company like Lamborghini or Maserati.

that depends on the product the price of it includes cost of manufacturer or production and markup (cost of marketing). This is why Walmart is a bigger company than Neiman Marcus. They survey broader range of clientele

yes who do you think the majority of people is that buy their product?

Making it lower cost is in their best interest because it means more units sold. More units sold with a smaller profit margin means some more income

If you price it past affordability and people won't afford it anymore and you won't make any money.

 

http://blog.lostsoulscorp.com/articles/economic-wargames/

Economic Wargames Opinion: https://john-holton.livejournal.com/187356.html

 

False.

Those car companies have shown no interest in serving those who are below the poverty line. It just doesn't pay.

That's backwards.

Companies examine the market place and design their product in a way that attracts enough people that they make a profit.

It's not like a company creates products and then tries to meet the price points of those living below the poverty line.

Toyota doesn't give a crap about those living below the poverty line, and they never will. That's not their market. Also, it isn't the market for any other auto manufacturer, either.

 

Are these your blogs?