The big noise I hear from the Left is, trickle down economics don’t work. They cite a lot of stuff (Grok can give you a whole explanation, if you care to read it), mostly that cutting corporate tax rates doesn’t stimulate the economy because corporations then invest or spend the money on their executives, and that it “exacerbates inequality.” While I can agree with the idea that a good, effective fiscal policy should include incentives, fiscal sustainability, and broad opportunities rather than just trickle down, I don’t want to throw away the baby with the bathwater.
I look at the shenanigans going on in New York right now, and I can see that at least SOME trickle down works. It seems Mamdani was expecting the “rich folk” to stay and pay exorbitant taxes. When they left, their trickle stopped, and now Mamdani is upset. He ran on the idea of free childcare, free buses, and a bunch of other “free” stuff. The problem, of course, is that none of those things are free. They all require the work of other people, something socialists tend to forget about when they calculate how much to pay for things. Someone’s labor is worth dollars.
Now, please understand me… The person flipping your burgers is giving you labor, too, and that person is worth dollars. Right now, it appears that most people agree (and more importantly, the corporate overlords agree) that their worth is about $15 per hour. That appears, at least for now, to be sustainable for McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and the other burger conglomerates. This is (at least in my state, where the legal minimum wage is $7.25/hr) a decent wage for someone working in food service. Having worked at a McDonald’s in my youth, I can tell you that the training is excellent, the work is hard and exhausting, and the take home pay isn’t too bad. For a youth it’s excellent, and for a young adult it’s truly a living wage if you’re working full time.
One of the big issues I have with some capitalists is that they don’t appear to value the labor of those who are “below” them… the burger flippers, the guy who cleans the bed pans, the gal who greases the gears at the factory. Now, I’m not saying that low skill jobs should be paid the same as high skilled ones (whatever the skill may be). Making burgers is not nearly as complicated as making precision ball bearings (one of the local companies that hires young adults in my area of the world makes these, and provides training AND education to their workers, so that they can improve and better themselves while also doing a good job). Making precision ball bearings with a machine is not as complicated as making a plane engine. Making a plane engine isn’t even close to being as complex as making a rocket engine. And so on. There are tiers, and multiple factors do need to be taken into account… not the least of which is the idea of whether anyone would be anything but mildly inconvenienced by the disappearance of said job. If burgers stopped being made, people would eat at home, and probably gripe less and lose some weight. If precision ball bearings were to stop being made, planes would cease to fly in the sky, and many of our very important machines would stop working. And so on. Some jobs are worth more than others (which, I will also add, is not the same as saying the people in those jobs are worth more or less), simply due to their nature.
But I digress. We were talking about taxing the rich. Oh… no, taxing the ultra-rich. So here’s the thing: the rich (millionaires, for instance) are not the middle class they once were. Largely, they are not paying as much as they did. The ultra-rich (the billionaires, and our one trillionaire) are paying considerably more than their fair share of taxes in the world. Of course, that depends on what you consider fair. Some on the Left consider a 90% tax rate to be perfectly fair of a share. I do not.
In our country, the rich and the ultra-rich pay a lot. “High-income earners contribute the vast majority of U.S. federal income taxes. The top 10% of earners pay roughly 71% of all individual income taxes, while the top 1% alone accounts for approximately 38%. Overall, the top 50% of taxpayers contribute over 96% of the total income tax burden.” (NTUF) A few years ago, Elon Musk paid over $11 BILLION dollars in taxes, which is equal to 0.15% of our country’s budget. A single man. I think that’s considerably more than his fair share.
Now go look at the image above. By making the numbers look incomprehensible (and yeah, they ARE incomprehensible except for a few math geniuses), they make it scary. That makes it easier to get their ideology across. They present it in such a way that it sounds like a) the super rich are not working people, b) that taxing the super rich doesn’t affect other working people, c) that not taxing the super rich means you’re not investing in working people, and that d), all of this means our democracy will die. Because we didn’t tax the ultra-rich.
Fear is a great motivator. Part of the problem we’re seeing now is that, even when people on the Left start to figure out that they’re being duped, the fear kicks in. It’s incredibly motivating. I still get caught in some of the fear traps the Left tosses out, until I go investigate. The problem, of course, is that a single human being simply cannot investigate all of these things. Even doing a few is exhausting and draining.
In the same way Trump overwhelmed the Left’s social media machine in the first few months of his Presidency, by simply being a few steps ahead and tossing out media land mines as he moved, he was able to make certain they were always hours or days behind. By the time they caught onto something, he was already three memes ahead. Well, they’re doing that with fear. They’re chumming the waters of social media with fear bombs. Yes, I can look some up and dismiss them. But I just don’t have TIME to look them all up. And just enough of them have the potential to be real (or have portions of them that are based in reality) that you can’t just write them all off. So what’s a girl to do?
I rely on media that I trust, which is hard, because I just went through the whole “the entire media is lying to me” lesson. But I … trust but verify. When I can. And when I can’t, I move on.
So here’s the thing I keep reminding myself of. Our parents and grandparents and greats, they didn’t have access to the news we have. They lived very different lives, and in some ways, very much happier lives. The problems they had, they didn’t have to do with Iran or Iraq, or mass shootings, or kids eating Tide pods. The reason was, they didn’t KNOW about those things. They only knew what they read in the paper, and unlike the internet, the paper only has so much space. Only the most interesting and useful news goes into them. All the petty stuff? You might occasionally get a special edition on a Sunday that dealt with it, but not everyone read the Sunday paper for just that reason.
So I limit how much “news” I read. I can’t vet it all, so I only read what I can vet. I don’t stress out if I don’t know everything. I share interesting news at breakfast with the family, and they share their interesting stuff. Each of us likes different things, so we get a nice cross-section of the available news of the hour. It’s enough.
And when people ask why I’m not outraged over the fact that the ultra-rich aren’t being taxed until they decide to play Gatsby and stop working altogether? I tell them I don’t know those things, because I’m reenacting or sewing or working in my garden. M’kay, thanks.
the top “richest” people in the Country pay 50% of the taxes collected. Im so fukkin sick and tired of these ignorant morons screaming tax the rich! tax the rich!
its just petty jealousy.
look at that young moron congress idjit from new york-photographed wearing a dress that says “tax the rich”.. well THATfukkin dress cost 30THOUSAND dollars. and IF the “rich” woke up one day and stopped funding the democrats then the democrats would run out of money.
corporations (owned by rich people) don’t pay taxes! taxes are part of the cost of doing business, its a business expense. so people who buy thier products pay for the taxes. soo if ignorant politicians tax rich people more the rich people will CHARGE more for their products to cover the cost of the increase.
when ever I hear “tax the rich” its just more division class warfare and ignorance looking to pacify their political base who also have no clue that THEY will end up paying more for everything they buy. rant over
“…then the democrats would run out of money.”
Not if ActBlue still exists.
“And just enough of them have the potential to be real (or have portions of them that are based in reality) that you can’t just write them all off. ”
.
Sure you can. I do. The Left lies so often, so blatantly, and so remorselessly, that I now take pretty much anything they say as false. Or, if not false, then at the very least not the whole truth; or perhaps outright irrelevant.
.
At this point, if the Lefty media want me to believe something, I want to see the evidence … and as far as I’m concerned it’s on them to provide it. They’re the ones who broke trust with the American people, not me; so the burden’s on them to prove they can be trusted again, not on me to find out they can’t every single time.
I am of the “minimum wage should be set to $0.” school of thought. I am not necessarily against a set minimum wage, but to think it should equate to a “living wage” is delusional. Minimum wage jobs go to unskilled workers with zero experience. Why should a business owner pay them $15 an hour? Because some politician that wants to get votes says so?
.
Economics 101: If you are paying someone more than they bring to your business, you are losing money. An unskilled, inexperienced worker does not bring minimum wage level revenue to your business.
Another Economics 101: Supply and demand. There are billions of people capable of flipping burgers or mopping floors. There are only a handful of people capable of successfully running a multi-national corporation.
.
But, I digress.
.
The problem these “the rich are stealing from you” people have is a belief that wealth is somehow limited. That in order for me to have more wealth, I had to take it from someone. That is a very colonial way of thinking, when land was your measure of wealth, and there is only so much land to go around. Money on the other hand…
.
I saw a sign about how Musk was stealing your 401(k). That one made me laugh out loud, as Musk’s net worth is almost 100% in stocks. If his net worth goes up, so does your retirement account. But… why let reality get in the way of your envy.
.
Socialism sells on that envy, and it fails for exactly the same reason. I want, but I do not want to work for it. If I can get enough to get by without working, why would I take a job cleaning bed pans?
Some years ago, I received a call from my workplace’s union (full disclosure: I’m not a member), wanting to know if they had my support for their “Fight for 15” initiative pushing for a $15/hr minimum wage. At the time, the state’s legal minimum wage was (IIRC) $9/hr.
.
Rather than give a simple “No” and hang up, I engaged the guy. I started with all the normal talking points — “minimum wage” is not meant to be “living wage,” intended for low-skill/zero-experience workers, etc. — but I think I actually got him thinking when I asked him, how long had he been working professionally before he figured he was earning the equivalent of what is now $15/hr. (He was several years older, so the minimum wage of his early-adulthood was different from the minimum wage in mine.)
.
He said he’d probably been at his job for 7 or 8 years before he was earning the adjusted equivalent of $15/hr. Late 20s, probably.
.
And I replied, exactly. Same for me, and I’m in a white-collar office position, with a college degree. I’ve been the $6/hr minimum wage new guy with no work experience, back when I was a teenager, but I worked and gained experience, worked and earned a degree, and now I was making more because I’m more valuable as an employee than someone with no education or experience.
.
He then lowered the ask (a.k.a. moved the goalposts) and asked if I could split the difference and support a $12/hr minimum. And I replied, with the then-current minimum being $9/hr, that’s basically a (rounded) 30% increase, which WILL drive prices up. Will he and I be getting a 30% increase to match? And the answer, obviously, was no. So my answer was also no.
.
I’m not sure we ended up agreeing at the end of this, but I ended with the sense it really got him thinking about the whole thing.
Too much to reply to, so I’m choosing to reply here. 😉
.
I also believe the minimum wage is $0. Not should be. Is. So here’s the thing… A Federal minimum wage is never going to work. $7.25/hr is a true living wage in Alabama in places, and isn’t even enough money to get a cardboard box under a bridge in California. Our country is so huge and so diverse that a single minimum wage is just ridiculous. If a city or a county want to enact one… eh, that’s their business. I can think they’re wrong, but it doesn’t bother me, so let them do it. But not Federal. It’s just not doable.
.
I worked for a friend for a while, helping with her second hand store. I accepted what amounted to about $5 an hour. Why so low? Because it’s what she could afford, and at the time, it got me some fun money and allowed me to sit and work on my writing while earning it. The times she could pay me more, she did, and I accepted but also did a lot more around the store. I accepted that because it worked for me. None of it was on the books, of course, because that’s not enough per the Feds. She couldn’t afford to hire someone at the Federal minimum wage. Lots of places can’t.
.
An awful big group of people don’t realize that when you force companies to pay a minimum wage, you reduce their ability to pay for other things. So it means prices go up. Bonuses go down or disappear. Hours are longer. They hire less people for full time, and just hire a bunch of uneducated folk to do the scut work as part timers, thereby avoiding paying insurance and all the other mandatory stuff. I see this all the time.
.
Let people negotiate their worth and you’ll find some people like me will work part time jobs happily, for less, because it gets us out of the house for a bit and gives us money for a dinner out once in a while. That clears some of those full time jobs for the people who need them.
.
Of course, some places don’t like it when we negotiate our own worth. 😉 I work for about $50 an hour these days, when I’m doing talks on historical cooking. That’s what I believe I’m worth. Or rather, it’s what I was worth until this year. Next year, the price is going up to about $75 an hour. I’m letting my clients know in advance. So far no one’s blinked. And that’s good, because if I lose clients, I’ll be sad but I’ll send them a thank you note for being a client, past tense. I don’t have any desire to lower my worth. I have chosen to keep my prices what they are for a long time, and to raise them now because I am very behind the industry standard at the moment. If that loses me clients, oh well. Maybe I’ll get to spend some weekends at home for a change.
the ones “fighting” for more minimum wage have zero idea how businesses work. the city of Portland Maine city council all “voted” to raise the minimum wage inside city limits.
so one week I went to Wendys and got a meal for around 8 bucks..
the next week it was 12 bucks.. payroll is a business expense- business expense goes up, what business charges goes up.. also a lot of businesses in the city limits closed up and moved out of the city limits.
if you aren’t making “a living wage” you used to better yourself and/or got a better job! and if minimum wage goes up should skilled wages go up an equal amount?? because the closer minimum wage moves to skilled wages the less valuable skilled pay becomes… this is just a continuation of obammys class war-“see that rich guy? he TOOK your money” says the guy living in a 19 MILLION dollar house..
I’m gonna start reminding people who say Elon Musk needs to “pay his fair share” both that he paid $11 BILLION in TAXES in ONE recent year, and that government taxes INCOME and ACCOUNTS, not cash holdings. (And also that he is worth a trillion dollars because he’s been working non-stop for a couple decades; he didn’t bring in a trillion dollars in the last year alone.)
.
IOW, Elon now has enough wealth, that he could take his ball (in the form of a MASSIVE pile of cash), go home, and never work or earn again for the rest of his life. And his kids’ lives. And his grand-kids’ lives.
.
But that would reduce his income to ZERO. Zero income and zero traceable holdings, means zero owed in taxes. $11 BILLION in government revenue just … *poof* … gone…
.
… and not a damn thing you could do about it.
.
It also means zero internet for rural and disaster-struck communities around the globe (Starlink). It also means zero innovation for electric vehicles the enviro-weenies claim are our only salvation from ecological disaster (Tesla). It also means zero innovation and cost reduction* for space exploration and transport (SpaceX).
.
And zero investment in whatever else his brain decides to hyper-focus** on over the next 40-ish years. What could we as a society accomplish over the next decades — including items ostensibly on the Left’s wish list (like electric cars, pre-DOGE) — that we wouldn’t if he bowed out and stayed home?
.
———
* – Before SpaceX, some reports say it costed NASA about $50-100,000 per pound to send supplies to low Earth orbit. After SpaceX, it costs about $18-20,000 per pound. Part of it is more efficient engines that are constantly being refined and improved, part of it is reusable vehicles, part of it is private-sector cost-sourcing for parts and fuel … it all adds up.
** — I’ve heard him criticized that none of his accomplishments are his idea, that he didn’t come up with anything original. The concepts of reusable rockets, of all-electric cars, of satellite telecommunications on a consumer level, or any of the things his companies have made common-place … none of those were originally his. I side with the people who counter: it doesn’t matter because nobody who had the original ideas could make them work and be commercially viable. Elon did. Another example: Igor Sikorsky built the first reliable helicopter less than a century ago; does he deserve less credit because Leonardo da Vinci “invented” the concept four centuries earlier, but couldn’t make it work?