Best Buy to close 50 US stores, cut costs

[liberalmike27]

20. Underestimation of Lower Level Employees

is a regular Republican theme. They truly think people who work for others are worthless, and repeatedly they find they are wrong, and that often the best people are the MOST important people, as they are the folks that actually deal with the public, the customer.

If you pay people nothing, you get very little back. It's pretty clear what your employer thinks of you, if they don't pay you enough to even rent a small place for yourself.

The point made above is perfect. Part of the race to the bottom has ended up impoverishing 50 percent of us, some working menial, low-paying jobs, while others are completely unemployed. The places that now build the stuff we use, do it more cheaply, but are often payed so little they can't buy the stuff they make. So no demand added, a bunch is removed because we lost the good jobs here. So you've ended up eliminating 50 percent of the people who buy stuff.

And all it would take is reasonably jiggering the compensation of the top earners. Adding a 90 percent tax on all dollars made by anything, including capital gains, would often have the result of employers not paying anyone more than that, since the government would eat it anyway. Then use that money to pay down debt, and to create jobs doing the many things we need doing, roads, bridges, solar arrays, windmills, and the grids to get the power where it needs to go. Companies could use the money they save, for more profits, and for paying employees more, plus add a living-wage amendment, then index it to any inflation. That's the fix, but it doesn't fit their uncle Miltie Friedman philosophies.