Ask the wealthy to pay a little more

I have people on Facebook that countdown how many days until Friday.... Come Friday at 5pm, they are done for the week.

I hate weekends. Weekends mean I have to try to work based around my family's needs and desires.

so lets say someone earns $15/hr now, works 40 hours, earns $600/week...

under your plan, they will work lets say 20 hours? how much will they earn?

People will soon be counting down to Thursday... or alternating days, etc...

You need to elect 12clicks as your president.

That is the issue that has to be solved, and it won't be a simple one line answer. People who work 9-5 and have no interest in 'climbing up' aren't trying to get a new lambo... but they do need to be able to eat, have access to transportation, see doctors, etc... Earning less dollars isn't that much of a problem, if basic healthcare is provided by the government rather than as out of pocket expenses. We *could* provide canned vegetables for free to people at a very low cost as another example and the impact of people actually eating them would reduce the cost of healthcare overall.

What we are headed for is a system that subsidizes the bottom of the society by providing basic healthcare, housing, food, etc... for free or so cheaply it may as well be free, and requires them to save their income if they want to buy iphones, flat screen televisions, new cars and the like. Going to see a doctor of your choice and getting a private hospital room or things of that sort will cost cash (or be possible with private supplemental insurance paid for by consumers), but going to a free clinic for basic wellness and emergency care will be free for the masses of people who choose not to pay for private care and needs to be a truly functional system which it presently is not.

A system like what I have seen proposed allows society to choose what basic things should be provided to everyone, no matter how lazy incompetent or dim witted you happen to be. Nobody is 'living large' on a free can of string beans. Nobody is ballin' because they got to have their pregnant wife seen by doctors during prenatal visits. You won't see subsidized housing units on MTV Cribs any time soon. If people want more than that they can scratch and work for it. Those that work 4 days a week will have plenty of time off to enjoy public parks, days at the beach, long afternoons with friends in clean safe neighborhoods etc... those who work 8 days a week can live in nicer houses and drive lambos. That is the way it should (and will) be eventually.

What we can't have is 1/2 the population out of work, hopeless, poorly fed, without preventative health care, uneducated and with zero chance of improving their lot due to lack of aptitude and opportunity while .01% of our population bleeds billions out of the economy while creating no jobs and voids their citizenship to take the money overseas by cashing out at the end like our country is a 2bit casino in the back of a whorehouse.

Rather than giving 16B in subsidies to Exxon, we might want to think about providing free canned vegetables to every American who wants them. Instead of burning crops to stabilize price, we might make them available at food pantries across the country. Instead of denigrating poor people for being dim... we ought to understand they are often poor BECAUSE they are dim, and we can help them enough for them to reach their potential because that is what society is all about. Helping each American reach their potential pushes our nation forward, whether they are capable of buying a fleet of private jets or working 20 tedious hours a week in a call center or staying home to raise their children. Instead of helping people reach their potential, we stamp them as 'the problem' and act like we are better than them... even as more and more of our population becomes part of that ever-growing category.

You have provided nothing to this discussion. Congrats?

Incidentally, you might call it 'trickle up economics.' A hard floor that nobody can fall below and everyone can use if they choose... It will only be a transitional phase for decades. Centuries from now, do you really think more than 10% of us will be needed to keep everything running? I'd be shocked if more than 1% of us have a job by then. Considering the fact that people on this board are webmasters automating massive amounts of work every day, I find it ironic that most have not considered the fact that we will eventually produce more than we need with very few of us working.

In some way they have to. Except it needs to be reworded.

Relentless has some great points, except as an employer I can't run my business on people working 4 days a week. And very few can. MacDonalds can and for those type of jobs it's great. Minte can't and fr him its disaster.

The West has to accept that countries who were once very poor are now rich. There has been little new wealth created, it's meant that wealth that was the exclusive preserve of the West now isn't. It's in the Middle East, Asia. Far East and S. America. It's left the US and Europe. So expecting to enjoy the same standard of living as we had before is delusional.

So we have to forget the dream of the good old days returning and get on with the future without building horrendous debts.

The West still produces a nice chunk of cash that needs to be shared better. Not by letting people sit at home, by creating jobs for them that make the society they live in a better place.

And if you don't. 12 million is 12 million less potential customers. The one thing the Capitalist and Consumer system needs is consumers. Cut them out of being consumers and you have less buyers.

Will cutting taxes, cut jobs? YES.
Will more unemployed lead to more spending? NO.

All it will do is mean, a few can buy a better model car, better pair of jeans, better mobile phone. Romney is lying to you when he says it will create more spending. Well it will for him and the 1%. For the rest it won't.

Yes you're going to have to pay more tax, you're going to have to invest in your retirement and yes you're going to need customers to buy memberships. And if anyone thinks they can do that by putting people out of work or getting them behind the counter in Wal Mart, so they can shop at Neiman Marcus. They shouldn't be posting in this thread.

"a lot of money" is very subjective, $50k/year is a lot to someone who makes $5k/year, someone making $50k/year thinks people that make $500k/year is a lot, etc... it's always a lot when it's a lot more than you...

bottom line is, many people do not work, they do not contribute anything to society, and yet they have to be supported by those that do work... obviously it's a problem, but it's not a problem of who do we tax more to support them... but a problem of how can we make them contribute their fair share so they can support themselves...

Paul/Relentless what percentage of your income did you donate to help the poor when you were working? (I mean, in addition to any taxes you were required by law to pay)

Paul you are so out of touch with the U.S.

Did you know that since the "War On Poverty" started in 1965 by President Johnson, we have spent over 13 TRILLION dollars to eradicate poverty in the U.S.?

Read this:
"All together, the federal government spent more than $591 billion in 2009 on means-tested or anti-poverty programs, and will undoubtedly spend even more this year. That amounts to $14,849 for every poor man, woman and child in America. Given that the poverty line is just $10,830, we could have mailed every poor person in America a check big enough to lift them out of poverty ? and still saved money. "

I worked all weekend. I can sleep well tonight knowing that my hard-earned money will help those out there who partied weekend.

It is a glorious feeling. Hoorah!

I don't necessarily agree with your claim, over the past decade, unemployment was always <10%... I don't see any reason why next decade would be much different...

You pointed out earlier in the thread that some jobs are now gone...

sure, we no longer have bank tellers, but now we have webmasters, we no longer have "Street Light / Exterior Electrician", but now we have satelite dish installers... we have fewer check out clerks, but we have more computer repairmen... etc

Those that are willing to retrain, have a job now and will have a job in the future...

Sad that all the "solutions" for the future don't include the obvious ..... "Stop shitting out kids you can't afford or don't intend to stick around and take care of"

Actually it was down around 5% and less the whole time. Which is the definition of full employment.
Relentless is way off base.

That stuff was predicted when I was in highschool in the 1970's and never happened.
Matter of fact we were supposed to be out of oil by the 1980's, driving around in flying cars, robots would replace everyone at work, the Earth was on it's way to an Ice Age because of fossil fuels, etc.

Reality is...once the housing market stabilizes, the economy will turn back around and we will be back at around 5% unemployment again.

It's only been since the end of 2008/start of 2009 that all this came down and unemployment shot up. And none of that was caused by automation or anything else except the housing market fucking the economy.

As usual, you are incorrect. Union tradesman have had furlough programs and split shifts in place for decades. They can work very well if implemented correctly. Production actually increases when people with mundane jobs they dislike get time off. It won't work for most managerial roles where continuity is essential, like the foreman on a major job site with 50 men working under his supervision... but using 75 men instead of 50 and splitting the work among them turns out to be more efficient in most cases. It also keeps many more people employed.

The same holds true for many 9-5 jobs.