Where are your facts to back up the assumption that the poor pay more in taxes to make up the tax revenue lost by lowering the MTR?
You claimed that when the rich have a lower tax rate, the fed collects the same % of GDP.. The Laffer curve claims that raising taxes slows the economy resulting in the same 'total' tax revenue collected. But that differs from Hauser who claims the % of GDP collected is constant. I'm just doing the math, if the rich pay less and one isn't factoring in changes of GDP as an effect of tax changes, and the fed collects the same %, then who is making up the difference? If your argument is purely the rich get more creative with tax dodges, then I don't believe that is impossible to address. Are you claiming that no matter the tax rates the rich just find ways not to pay and somehow no one can do anything about that? Or are you just blindly telling us, look the % of GDP that goes to taxes stays the same in which case, whose making up the shortfall when the rich pay less? I'm just asking you to explain your claim. If it's a constant % of GDP rather than a constant total tax collected, the decrease on one end means an increase on the other. It's the math, the statistics, I'm not making a new claim, I'm asking you to explain the math in yours.
Worked at a paper mill in an EHS group of seven. Two quit and nobody wanted the pager...It was the pager from hell. I volunteered since my call-week was the furthest away. Turned into 110 hour week, emergency shut-down. There was a cot but never slept, just laid there until a page came. Pretty tired come Monday morning and knew my lab reports would not be processed until late afternoon, most likely the next day so I went in 2 hours late. Boss wanted to see me on Mahogany Row, where big guys sit behind big mahogany desks. Thought I would receive an "atta-boy" but why I thought that with an EHS director who was the biggest dick-weed on site, I haven't a clue. Door closed and he laid into me, "God damn-it Mike! You are the most fucking irresponsible, undependable shit and I just want to fire your sorry ass! Typical paper mill talk behind closed doors when a jerk wants you to know just how much he respects you. But the man was full of shit and soon others enlightened his dumb ass, as much as the college room-mate of the executive vice-president of the international company could be enlightened. He had no qualifications to be in that position and soon he would be gone. Told me to take 500 gallons of a defoaming agent down to the outfall at the river and set the flow to ~ 10 gallons/hr. A plug of bad stuff was going to make it to the river and this was his idea of remediation to keep foam from building-up on the river. I did but locked everything, no chance of defoamer making its way in and told management engineers what he wanted me to do. Eyes got big, defoamer is about 80% kerosene. There would have been a kerosene slick on the Savannah River, a 500 gallon size slick and no doubt millions in fines. Next week the dick-weed was promoted out of the mill. As for me, paper mills are more dangerous than they are stinky. Didn't mind snake-pit creek where samples were collected, management bought us each a pair of snake chaps to show us they really cared. But after several close calls, acids leaks, 2lb bolts falling 14 stories and just missed. Once a 300lb fat man almost landed on me after he bounced down the man-lift hole about 50ft and lived. He was too fat to fit through with his ice chest, something he wasn't supposed to carry but had done so for years until he grew too fat to fit. A man-lift is a vertical conveyor belt that never stops, you just step on, hold on and step off on your floor. Before his fall, I asked why this mill still had one. The answer was, "grandfathered in." So I asked a follow-up, "how can something unsafe be grandfathered in?" Simple, "time is money" but after he fell it was replaced with something more safe. This place, the bottom line for safety turned legal very fast. "It's your fault you're dead/lost limb,fingers/got burned or your lawyer wins and gets you or your family a few bucks. Saw many workers on the paper machines with missing fingers. When I hired on, all seven co-workers were BS Science Majors. When I left, there were only high school graduates with a few years experience in those positions. Figured it was past time to move on.
Ok 2000 a month. when things are tight and bonus and commissions are not coming in i can live on that right now. that means no going out to bars or buying new suits but its something i can do if something goes wrong. i also don't get the thing about people expecting to only work 40 hours a week. what is that, coming in for a few hours on Thursday and not coming in again until Monday? also having just graduated, the job market did not seem crazy. i picked among a few different job offers the one that i liked, as did my girlfriend. a lot of the classmates i had that are unemployed where very lazy about finding jobs. they sent out a resume every few days instead of actively pressuring a position.
[MENTION=53651]Michael O[/MENTION]: the first paragraph of your comment sounds like my junior doctor year. Worst thing is, it never gets better, just when you become a consultant, you can dodge the more "menial" tasks (bloods, talking to patients etc). But the whole thing still functions on "underpaid and overworked" principle and it shows in the results. The problem is, shareholders and investors (who seem to be in everything these days) don't care about the product. They get the luxury version from somewhere else (whatever it is, medical care, food, education, clothing etc). Their interest starts and stops with a buck, and once they get it, they lose interest. I get shivers when I take a moment to realise how much those profit-chasing polices cost our environment, but also us personally. So much pollution, toxins is everything, all man-made, all preventable (at a cost, of course, so there's an excuse).
Wow, that's just... yeah, it's about same over here as well. At least a few years ago McDonald's paid around € 6/h, it's not quite that low anymore, but it's too low to entirely support oneself with it even if you work full week (37,5 h in Finland). Of course, if you work in the evenings, on weekends, or at nights, you pretty much double it, but still, even when doubled, it's the same as my hourly pay at my part-time job (and when I sub as a teacher which is my "real" future profession, I get thrice that, of course more when full-time), and it's an easy, nice dayjob (working for a German corporation). Say you work at McDonald's, live in the capital city, and are single: you're living from hand to mouth, so I'm not surprise this McDonalds-Visa budgeting fell flat on its ass even when applied to the US. It's a heated source of discussion over here as well, how people who work physically tasking jobs (let's say LEOs, firefighters, nurses, construction workers) earn comparatively little while the big money goes elsewhere. Corporations avoid taxes through Cyprus, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg etc. but unlike the government of Sweden, Finland does very little to hunt back the money that belongs here. There're monopolies and cartels (!), money's thrown into ridiculous places (like €1000 blankets for every MP in the government), huge bonuses to executives while people are being kicked out. Basically the more money you have, the less you need it because you get stuff for free (apartments, food discounts, transportation, electronics etc.). Still, despite the money, I couldn't see myself enter the corporate world, it seems like a cold, dark place. At least the doctors are paid well. I don't envy the job of a healthcare center doctor, actually, not even of those in the private sector. Seems very taxing with a lot of responsibility. Sorry, went a bit OT there.
[off topic]Just a quick note that would perhaps sit better in the conspiracy-thread: a few years back one of Finland's biggest corporations signed contracts with summer workers for the up-coming summer. Then, without any proper reasons given, they were sacked. Later it turned out the big shots had taken the money reserved for summer worker wages and divided it among themselves in the form of huge-ass bonuses. And not for any real achievements either, just for shits and giggles, for yachts and bigger summer houses. However, since the corporation is largely owned by the government, as far as I can recall, the whole scandal was eventually swept under the carpet and the summer workers just had to bend over and take it. How's that for a conspiracy theory proven right?[/off topic]
I would never argue with that, Jazzabel. It all boils down to companies dumping workers to save money and produce goods and services as cheaply as possible. That's been happening for centuries, and probably always will in a capitalist economy. I didn't mean to blame the current lack of well-paid jobs ALL on new technology replacing workers. However, it does figure in, most certainly. I've seen it in my own field, where electronically-generated appointments have resulted in fewer receptionists at the desk. It certainly filters down. And ...I'm not all that sure it results in an improved service either. Good luck solving a problem if a computerised mistake gets made or the entire system crashes.
Money is one good thing in this job, if you work like a fiend you can actually earn for most things you and your family need (and some of the wants too), it's the ethics that are compromised. It's one thing to prioritise blankets for MPs, and block out the consequences to, say, childcare or education, because they are remote, but when you have a patient in front of you and they are suffering, and you could cure them right there and then but you simply can't help them because of some bureaucratic or money-saving idiocy, and you are powerless against a bunch of uneducated, money-hungry morons (managers, ministers) who don't know and don't care about people's lives even though that's supposed to be their foremost consideration, then it royally sucks. [MENTION=53222]jannert[/MENTION]: Did you hear, David Cameron's government tried to limit the number of GP appointments each person is "allowed to have" per year. It's crazy.
[MENTION=35110]jazzabel[/MENTION]: I hear ya. And yeah, I meant they get paid well in my home country. As a doctor in a two-income house where the other person works a lower-salary job, you can afford a house instead of an apartment, two cars, vacations, a summer home, good hobbies for your children, etc. You can afford way more than e.g. a teacher. Bureaucracy, on the other hand, gets in the way everywhere; rules, regulations, forms, procedures, endless phone calls to The Social Insurance Institution. I can imagine that circus is awful for doctors, having your hands tied at the most inopportune moments.
Tie up your seatbelt for this one In 1958, Ireland's govt sold off all of our oil rights for £500 - yes not 500 million pounds, just five hundred pounds. It' s passed hands a few tince since fr hundreds of millions and is now owned by Shell (of course). Lawyers have since found a clause buried in the initial contracts something along the lines of an environmental study, should Ireland's sea life be disturbed etc we have the right to take back the oil as our own. Do you think our stupid govt will even entertain the idea? Even after we went bankrupt and had to hand over our grandchildren's future wages to the IMF tey wouldn't even talk about in the Dáil (our parliament). My blood boils at govts. http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/sale-of-the-centurythe-500-deal-for-irelands-gas-and-oil/
Yes. Fortunately, the outcry was such that they've discreetly dropped this idea (for now), but it shows the way this 'government' thinks. Protect errant bankers and big business, keep the fat cats fat, and decide that sick people can only visit their GPs a few times a year before getting charged for it. I do hope Scotland votes "Yes" to the independence referendum in 2014 and gets rid of this self-interested, idiotic shower of nobs. Once and for all.
When that happens I want to be living in Scotland. It's my ancestor home, and it's where I spent part of my childhood. I make no secret of the fact I just don't like England very much.
I wish the rest of us in the UK could also declare independence from these nobs. I hope you guys succeed!
so adjusting for inflation that's 12200 USD or 7993 GBP now (GDP deflator). yeah i whould buy a nations oil rights at that price, its probably a speculation at that point with no proven reserves but could pay of huge.
Who wouldn't speculate $12k on the oil rights for any country? More to the point - what dickhead PM would sell at that price? Sorry - way off topic.
i know seriously. i don't see why someone did not bid higher. even i got more money that that personally invested in oil and oil companies
Not that nurses earn CEO bucks here but we did have a wage revolution when the advances in technology in medical care (primarily hospital care) made it no longer possible for the hospital wage-monopoly to operate. For decades they conspired to keep wages low (all hospitals paid nurses the same wages). The result was supply and demand forces did not work, we had constant nursing shortages which should have resulted in higher wages but didn't because of the hospitals agreement with each other to pay the same. Eventually the shortages became a crisis and nursing staffing agencies began competing with hospitals for nurses. They could provide staff, at a cost. Nurses flocked to the agencies, the hospitals became more desperate, the rates went up, more nurses quit the hospitals and joined the agencies. Eventually the hospitals began raising wages to compete with the agencies and what used to be an underpaid, under appreciated skill changed for the better. [soapbox] But what we still don't have, and what your comment immediately brought to mind, is recognition that nursing is a highly technical occupation. The idea nurses perform physically tasking jobs, so do surgeons. I know you didn't mean to say the job was hard work, but not highly skilled. But the underlying stereotype is pervasive. Very few people, including few nurses, recognize nursing as a separate profession that is part of a team. Instead people think of nurses as mostly carrying out medical orders. Some of what nurses do is carrying out medical orders, but the majority of what they do is nursing, something invisible to most people not familiar with it. Here are things nurses diagnose and prescribe nursing treatments for, separate from or in addition to medical interventions also prescribed: The Complete list of NANDA Nursing Diagnosis for 2012-2014 Take something simple like, "Impaired swallowing". A physician might address any correctable causes, while nursing care addresses adapting to and living with the condition. It's not the doctor that prescribes the position a patient who can't swallow well needs to be in when drinking liquids, for example. [/soapbox]
nothing mean about it - just truth nurses are wonderful, they do amazing jobs. Just wondering how this thread went from Ronald McDelusional to how great you are. While we're at it, I was hoping someone actually from Detroit could tell us what's going on and how it affects the man on the street, in another thread of course.
[MENTION=53143]GingerCoffee[/MENTION] : Thanks for sharing that info, I didn't know you were a nurse -- that's amazing I know that right now nurses are paid less than they deserve even though, was it 2 years ago, the wages were raised. Unfortunately the raises don't keep up with the constantly rising living expenses, especially in the capital city area (even though the McDelusionals of the world would like us to believe that). Being, say a practical nurse, is tough, especially if you don't work in the private sector. Still, surprisingly many of my friends have become nurses; some practical nurses, while some seek a higher education and become something like specialized nurses (the salary is better too), not sure what's the English equivalent (Wikipedia suggests Gesundheits- und Krankenpfleger, health- and sickness carer ), so maybe it's a calling, plus the job market is good. It is still possible to support one's family as a nurse (I think at least in a two-income household), so it's definitely better finance-wise than flipping burgers. And why not study when education is free.
