Meet the CEO Who Cut Worker Pay in Half While Pulling in $21 Million Last Year

[hfojvt]

81. swing some more?

There's a lot of verbiage flying around.

In my own post as well, including some words I clearly forgot to say.

I said, first, that GREED is part of the problem.

So it has nothing to do with income. It's not about the $80,000 a year or the $19 an hour.

MY perspective is 1) that $19 is very good money.

Many other DUers seem to be much richer, so from where they sit $19 is practically a poverty wage.

To me, it sounds like greed to say that a $19 an hour worker needs to, or should, make more money.

The vet is another fairly obvious case in point. Her income comes at least partly from the $54 she charged me for the last ten minute visit. It's pretty obvious that if she charges me more that hurts me and helps her, income wise. If her income drops from $80,000 to $60,000 because of lower prices then her customers are collectively $20,000 better off.

It is trickle down theory to claim that increasing the income of somebody who makes $60,000 a year to $80,000 is somehow gonna benefit those in the community who make $20,000 a year. That we, in the working class, should somehow be upset if a moderately rich person ends up making less money, because that somehow hurts us all. Because if they suddenly make more money that just won't allow them to buy more and better stuff. It will somehow trickle down to that guy making $20,000 a year.

As for making policy, yes, that $80,000 to $200,000 group is very influential, because collectively they make a lot of donations. They certainly provide more campaign money than the group of households who make less than $40,000 a year.

And it is no accident when policies benefit them a whole lot. Like the Backstreet Boys, they want it that way.

See, if it was up to me, taxes would go up a little bit on the group making $60,000 to $200,000, and then maybe that tax revenue could be used to provide more money for people who need TANF. Because I read somewhere that TANF benefits have not at all kept up with inflation and that many fewer poor people are getting TANF benefits, thanks in part to the NEW Democrats.

And complaining about the taxes that those rich people pay? Where have I heard that before? Seriously? California has one of the most progressive state income taxes around, but even in California the tax rates by quintiles are - 10.6%, 9.2%, 8.2%, 7.6%, 7.4% http://www.itep.org/pdf/ca.pdf As for Federal Taxes, even those in the top 25% are only paying an average rate of 9.29% http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/169 So I don't see how people are paying 40%, much less 65% in taxes. 9.29 + 7.65 + 8.2 is only about 25%. Granted that is an average and some people may be far about the average, but Chebyshev says it is not very many.