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July 20, 2015 06:39 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”

–Jim Hightower

Comments

21 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread

  1. Are 1%-ers more motivated to work harder than everyone else?

    Whenever the subject of tax rates comes up, we never lack for pundits (and politicians-ed.) to argue that raising taxes on the highest earners will remove their incentives for working hard. What we do lack is 1) an explanation for why the motivations of the 1% are such a fixation and, 2) evidence to support the assumption-packed “hard work” claim.

    For the poorest 1%-ers I have no doubt they are working hard towards the day that the money does the work.

    The first unsupported assumption is that top earners make more money because they work "harder." Harder how or harder than whom remains unspecified.

    CNN: "The fortunes of the top 1% are highly dependent on the stock market since much of their wealth comes from investments. It took more than $426,000 in adjusted gross income to make it into the top 1% in 2007. There were 1.35 million households that qualified for entry. They earned nearly 19% of the nation's income and paid roughly 37% of its income tax."

    A second assumption is that money is more powerful than all other incentives for working hard, including raw competitiveness, achieving a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose. You think what drove Steve Jobs most was money?

    Sure, but it was surely down the list.

    Raising top marginal tax rates, say pundits, will hurt the economy because top earners will stop working and creating jobs (a third unsupported assumption). In libertarian fantasy, maybe, but that’s not what real people do.

    Frank Luntz sure earned his money on that one: "Over the last two expansions, profits claimed more of the nation’s income than in any of the prior four expansions of comparable length. Yet both compensation and job growth did the worst. What’s going on? Why isn’t profitability creating jobs? Where art thou, job creators?"

    The "job creators" aren't creating jobs, they're creating profits.

    A final assumption is that working "hard" is a public good we should not discourage – if not explicitly encourage – through public policy. If so, why all the concern about the work ethic and compensation of a mere 1.4 million Americans when no matter how much worker productivity surged over the last 30 years, 240 million working-age Americans’ incomes remained flat.

    Shouldn’t incentivizing their hard work be of greater public concern than just the few at the top?

    Corporations are doing better than ever. The stock market is in record territory. Austerity has been the rule of the day.  So while profits soar and CEO's cash in, those more productive workers put in the hours and skip their vacations.

    Happy Monday, everyone! And don't work too hard….

      1. Well, what did you expect? Did you expect the supporters of the Witt 3 to just roll over and play dead? Would have been much better to hold collective noses and work to un-elect them next time they're up. Reminder that even solid blue state Wisconsin turned back the union-inspired recall of Scott Walker in that state; and then re-elected him for a second term. All that from the state that created the progressive movement. 

        1. Too much damage being done too quickly to let them remain (6 year terms?). Plus, unlike Wisconsin, and rhetoric notwithstanding, this isn't a union move — it's parents, although the union will surely benefit and will likely help out before it's all over. And finally, unlike Wisconsin, Colorado voters dislike out-of-state money pouring in from whichever side it happens to flow — left or right.

  2. Now for something more pleasant. With all the great publicity of the New Horizons flyby with Pluto last week, let us remember that today is the 46th anniversary of the 1st moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins circled overhead. No one knew if the lander would sink into a sea of dust, or if the return to orbit would work out. It all did and our society, at least for a moment, was all the better. Do you remember what you were doing; and where you were; on that date (if you were alive then)? 

    1. I watched the moon landing on an old wooden console black and white TV with "rabbit ears" antenna, and a wired "pusher" to mute commercials,  in the living room with my parents. I think that Walter Cronkite announced it. It was thrilling.

      There was no place for girls in any of this, but I decided at that point that I would learn to fly a jet-pack (as yet, an unfulfilled ambition).

       

        1. Watching. Natch. Everybody watched all of the launches in those days. And no one then would have believed what our space program has been reduced to now!

    2. I was not quite 17.  My brother and I had summer jobs working at a candy wholesaler earning a whopping $25 a week (where I learned that Wrigley's chewing gum has the density of lead when tightly packed in cardboard boxes stacked 5 high on a hand dolly that you had to push UP a wooden ramp into the warehouse).

      We watched the landing on a small black and white TV at my sister's house in Mableton Georgia late at night while her  three young kids slept.

      That's when I first thought about attending the Air Force Academy to become a test pilot.  Poor eyesight among other reasons ruled that out.  The closest I ever got was working for Martin-Marietta in the '80s in the Vertical Test Facility building as a software engineer. Got to watch Bruce McCandless use the Manned Manuevering Unit Simulator — sounded like a train was rolling through the building!

      1. Diogenesdemar: I was all of 19 years old at the time. So, really wasn't worrying about who was paying the bills in D.C. I was happy to be making $1.90 per hour in my summer job with the local gas utility. 

    3. I had just returned to base camp after a week-long YMCA canoe trip in the Canadian Boundary waters prior to eighth grade.  To get rid of our mosquito bites, we sat in a sauna on the pier, jumped into the icy lake, and listened to Walter Cronkite's commentary on a transistor radio.  The moon was shining above.  A surreal experience!

    4. I remember it vividly. I watched it sitting on my father's lap. I wasn't quite 4. Afterward, my mother took me outside and pointed up at the moon, saying "That's where they are." I was disappointed because I couldn't see them. Side note, today is my wedding anniversary, My wife (the uber-geek) never forgets it, because it's on Landing Day.

  3. Jared Polis is a "member" of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Michael Bennet is up for re-election next year. Why aren't their names associated with this kind of stuff more often?

    On Wednesday, members of Congress will introduce a national increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) along with Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison (MN), Raúl Grijalva (AZ), and other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will release details of the legislation after a morning event that day.

    A $15 minimum wage hike marks a significant increase from past Democratic bills to raise it. In his 2013 State of the Union, President Obama called for an increase to $9 an hour. Some lawmakers went further a month later with a bill that would have raised it to $10.10 an hour. Then earlier this year, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Robert Scott (D-VA) got closer to the $15 mark when they introduced a bill raising it to $12 an hour by 2020. Their bill also would phase out the lower minimum wage for tipped employees and automatically increase the wage as median wages rise. …

    As lawmakers were steadily increasing their target for a federal minimum wage hike, fast food workers began calling for a $15 minimum wage when they went on strike repeatedly in cities across the country. Those protests have since been joined by Walmart workers, home health aides, and adjunct professors. And some cities have heeded their call: San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles all passed minimum wage increases to $15 an hour, and Emeryville, California passed a $16 wage. It’s also expected that a wage board convened by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) will recommend a $15 minimum wage for the state’s fast food workers on Wednesday.

    Oh, I know: they don't want to seem too "progressive" so they can grab those undecided, middle-of-the-road, impenetrable voters. And they don't want to be called names by their Republican foes. And maybe some "job creators" told them this was a bad idea.

    I think it’s a bad idea not to support these bread and butter core principle issues.

  4. Scott Walker apparently thinks he should start a war with Iran the moment he gets the launch codes.  He don't need no stinkin' Cabinet, not even a Sec'y of Defense.  Just start blowin' stuff up as soon as you walk into the White House:

    Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said over the weekend that the next president of the United States needed to be prepared to take aggressive military action on their very first day in office, including against Iran.

     

    I believe that a president shouldn't wait to act until they put a cabinet together or an extended period of time, I believe they should be prepared to act on the very first day they take office," he said. "It's very possible, God forbid that this would happen, but very possible, that the next president could be called to take aggressive actions, including military actions, on their very first day in office."

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-walker-iran-deal_55acfd69e4b0d2ded39f57c2

    Somebody needs to take Walker aside and tell him the next time he tries to rattle his sabre, make sure it isn't just his skinny little pecker he's holding.

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