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The president says
Posted: Feb 22, 2017
Part of what he says is tax cuts will help do that. We have seen through decades that this has not created jobs and merely put more money in the pockets of the wealthy. We have a wage gap that is out of this world. I understand businesses are in business to make money, but there was a time when employers shared the wealth with their employees while still making a good profit themselves, and those times seem to have disappeared.
What things could he do to ensure that the tax cuts would actually create good paying jobs in this country?
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My reply. - sm
[ In Reply To ..]1. You should reexamine your basic premise. There are a number of examples of tax cuts that proved very stimulative to the economy and to employment.
2. You seem to have a somewhat fanciful idea of "how things used to be" vis-a-vis employees and corporate profits. While it's true that you can find studies purporting to show a widening gap between employee wages and executive salaries, many of these are fairly selective in the periods they choose to examine (or not examine), the industries they choose to include (or omit), etc.
A bit of a glimpse in the mirror - say, to the years from around 1880 to 1940 or so - would be very enlightening for you. Think "robber barons" and "sweatshops."
3. All that any President can do is to implement policies and promote legislation by Congress that create an environment that's conducive to business expansion and investment. Beyond that, the ball is in the court of the business community as to how they respond.
If there's any single area of society where you want to resist making ANY blanket statements or drawing simplistic conclusions, it's economics. It's not called "the dismal science" for nothing, and the fact is that for any given hypothesis you care to put forward, there will always be a jillion studies proving it and a jillion more disproving it.
For instance, does a rise in the minimum wage benefit the poor or does it eliminate jobs for the poor? If you care to jump down that rabbit hole in search of "the answer", we'll never see you again in this lifetime.
There are no simplistic affirmations you can make when it comes to economics. Just don't do it.
I appreciate you answering - this question
[ In Reply To ..]I will agree with you that I long for the way it used to be. People went to work, earned a fair wage, businesses profited and grew. There have been many changes in our world, the biggest being the internet/technology, which increasingly opened the world up to international business. Since most of us on this board are MTs, we can definitely relate to what that has done to our industry, though not inclusive to MTs. Now technology is now having an even bigger impact than offshoring.
I do not believe that any one person, namely the president, can "fix" things, and can only do so much to stimulate our economy. I do believe, however, that the president/congress should look at more than just tax cuts. There need to be incentives to keep jobs here, penalties to send jobs offshore. President Obama talked about doing such but it never took off. I believe I heard President Trump talking about something similar. Though this is only a small part of our problem, it would be one piece of the puzzle that would help our economy. I do hope this administration gets that through on his tax plan.
You mentioned me longing for the way it used to be. I think Congress is also stuck on how it used to be. They believe tax cuts alone will fix things and they won't. There needs to be things in these tax cuts that make employers choose to stay in this country instead of taking jobs out of the country.
I think what is happening now is we are at a crossroad. Many of the employees in the workforce are from the old days who are having a hard time dealing with making career changes in the second half of their lives due to technology. Kids today are growing up with this stuff and are adapting better than the old folks so to speak. How do you think we can help the older generation so they are not left out in the cold because some young whipper snapper will get the job before they will? I'm not saying young people don't need jobs but how do you think we can help the older generation have better odds?
Bill Gates proposes a robot tax - to fund retraining
[ In Reply To ..]This makes a lot of sense to me. In our industry, we are hanging on to the few jobs left, and we all know they are terrible jobs. What happens when we get phased out completely by technology or offshoring?
It is incredibly difficult for MTs to get retraining in anything and who among us has the time and money to do it on their own dollar?
When you add those in other industries who also have been to some degree displaced or replaced by technology, what is out there to help people get better or even other jobs?
I feel too that pay has been depressed for this very reason. Doesn't matter how hard your job is or how good you are at it, you are paid the lowest they are able to pay you because they can get away with it and it's an employer's market.
Don't want to be a Luddite, but I would rather be an MT than a Mickey D worker, even if we do get the same pay! The question is, when all these lower level jobs are phased out probably more due to technology than offshoring, what are we all going to do then?
From this article, Europe does not want the robot tax, but Europe has a safety net whereby when you are unemployed you are able to get the "dole." In this country, not so much. If you are lucky you get unemployment for 6 months, and since our pay has been depressed so much and UI is only a percentage of that, how can you retrain yourself and also use UI to live for 6 months? Not happening.
Something to think about anyway. The funny thing is, if Trump came out to support something like this, it might actually happen, which it never ever would have with Obama because of the obstruction in congress.
I know Trump has talked bit about infrastructure projects, but I hear McConnell not committing to that too. I hope Trump gets his way and we get some infrastructure going.
"In an interview with Quartz, Gates argues that taxing worker robots would offset job losses by funding training for positions where humans are still needed, such as child and senior care. It could even slow automation to a more manageable rate, if necessary.
Gates is well aware of potential pitfalls -- he knows that taxation could ultimately slow innovation by making worker robots prohibitively expensive. However, he's convinced that governments should be "figuring [policy] out" so that they're ready when there's a sudden glut of unemployed workers."
That is something that could - be considered
[ In Reply To ..]I think there are many out there that do realize we have to adapt to technology whether we want to or not. Bill Gates possibly has something lawmakers could consider. There are so many things our country could be doing to keep workers while adapting to technology.
I also feel employers could look at ways to ease the damage technology is causing in our work force. I saw a news story recently about a bike company, I think it was BMX bikes. They were operating in China. They brought their company back from China, spent millions of dollars on robots. When all was said and done, they did not lay any employees off. They used the robots as basically coworkers which allowed them to triple their production from what it would have been with just employees. Basically, it seemed they merely increased production instead of laying people off. This improved their business and helped the employees.
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