Comment on Bill to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour will be introduced in Senate
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Living wage, tied to gdp and inflation, otherwise quit wasting everyone’s time. We all know an employer will pay the least legally possible if they can get away with it.
That and I feel like it should also have some tie to each business. Like the top salary+benefits in your company can only be 10x the lowest or some ratio. 1,000,000,000 : 1 is WILD that we all just keep going along with that and it’s like, well yeah, the CEO works harder than you so he earns more.
He works a MILLION times harder than me? He works a BILLION times harder than me? Are you sure about that!? By what metrics?
For 401k there’s some sort of requirement preventing them from being too biased toward the most well off. I don’t know the details but it seems like a great place to start: apply similar to all forms of compensation and benefits
Would that be the $ cap of what you can contribute each year? I think it is like $5k per year now maybe? Something like that. I think it went up recently. 7k?
I’m curious as to how or why that would actually help though, because I think you can open multiple 401ks, right? So you could just open 10 of them.
But yes, any MATH that makes it so you can’t just exploit the hell out of the system by virtue of just having lots of money already.
The big issue is that there are tons of loopholes and exploitable things in all our systems (many are intentionally put in for the rich to use). Whatever laws or regulations or systems you don’t has to be fair and all that.
One glaring issue is that the billionaire class is so wealthy they aren’t even playing the same game as us anymore. They don’t pay taxes because they can stop “earning income” in the traditional sense and it’s all sorts of leveraged forecast market value stock and asset bullshit. I mean, “money” is made up too, but they are outside “money” and deal with “theoretical money” and thus escape all forms of taxes and fair share stuff.
I’ve always wondered if the answer is doing away with “income tax” entirely (it’s a racket anyway) and having a much higher “sales tax” on everything.
Let them have billions, but they pay the tax when they buy something like the rest of us do.
I dunno. I’m tired of overthinking it. Maybe the better option is to eat them.
I’ve always wondered if the answer is doing away with “income tax” entirely (it’s a racket anyway) and having a much higher “sales tax” on everything.
Counterexample is Elon musk. He’s the biggest example of wealth inequity, yet he’s not ostentatious. His sales tax would be small
The real answer is treating other forms of wealth and income the same as we do salary income. Why do they get to call some of their income as “not income” and pay less. If we have to pay a property tax on the assessed value of our house even when we haven’t”realized” any gains, why are they not paying any tax on stock or company’s, their “property”
The limit on 401k contributions is quite a bit higher than that, and it’s an overall limit enforced by the IRs. Each employer can provide plans, but can balance rules on vesting and matching contributions. There are tests and audits to ensure it doesn’t primarily benefit higher paid individuals, and fines on them if it does.
For example, matching contributions are a good tool to encourage more lower paid employees,
But yeah, this is irrelevant to the actual wealthy
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 week ago
“Bill introduced in Senate that will definitely fail, but makes people feel good” is classic election bait.
Admittedly, this is the Bezos Home Journal running these stories, so it’s going to be the worst spin you can imagine. Also, it’s $25/hr by 2039 (+$5/hr the first year and +$1/hr after that), which is probably better than linking it to GDP/Inflation in an economy that’s on the brink of an ugly recession but only marginally so.
There’s already something of a soft wage floor in the US that’s been created by the high cost of living. You can’t find people who will work for $7/hr, because where would they even live? How would they feed themselves? That’s sub-poverty wages.
The issue with labor right now isn’t legal allotment but availability and talent. Boomers are exiting the labor pool, immigrants are shut out of the labor market, and the Millennials/GenAs aren’t sufficient to close the gap. Tariffs are closing off the possibility of cheap imports and rising energy prices make bulk transportation increasingly expensive. AI continues to be a pipe dream.
Employers are being backed into a corner. Which means the only path out is… prison labor. Not coincidentally, the US is investing extensively in detention camps and police batallions.
almost_genocide@lemmy.world 1 week ago
What is this pro-corporate drivel?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Sure. And they’ve outsourced that process very successfully through the privatized college system.
But college isn’t the bottleneck. We have plenty of diploma mills and overflowing lecture halls.
What we lack, more often than not, is low income service sector workers. Janitors, retail employees, bus boys and line cooks. We’re in short supply of agriculture hands, which is why prison labor is becoming incredibly popular.
almost_genocide@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Buddy is simping for corporations your hobby?
This is you saying there’s a “shortage” of people willing to work for unlivable wages and then explaining that’s what makes “prison labor” AKA slave labor incredibly popular.
We get it bud. Corporations love human slaves. This comes as a surprise to nobody. You talking about it like this is a problem with workers instead of the horrifying reality of corporate greed is just gross.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Maybe, but it’s not a bad thing to make people go on record about these things.