And poor people in other countries that are willing to make and sell things for less will lose that competitive advantage. Sorry, I'm pro-human being, not pro-American (besides, this raises costs for American consumers). If you aren't willing or able to work for as little as someone else, that's a you problem. Work should go to the person that wants/needs it most, in this country or elsewhere. It's not up to the state to decide what's worth producing. Prices tell people where to go to make money, not the state.
The idea of capitalism offers a simple and straightforward, even charming, model of the operations of the world. Unfortunately, the model does not reflect reality in any sense.
We had a policy that effectively capped salaries for high level executives, raised salaries for front-line workers, and accomplished it without government mandates. Once upon a time, we had prohibitive tax rates for obscene salaries, which caused the people running the companies to pay their workers more and limit their own salaries so as to avoid excessive taxation. Those tax rates ended with Reagan, at which point we saw the wealth disparity begin to increase dramatically.
Let them go live in India if they want. If they want to enjoy the kind of lifestyle you can ONLY have in America, let them pay for the privilege.
1. A constitutional amendment defining human life as beginning at conception. More people are killed every year by abortion in the United States than any other single cause of death. 2. Return to a common sense reading of the interstate commerce and necessary and proper clauses of the constitution. Running a restaurant located within a single state is not interstate. Growing your own plants is not commerce. It is not necessary to enforce standards of behavior between private citizens to ensure that the government conforms to those standards. It is not proper for the government to enact legislation determining what an individual citizen can consume. This would involve the Court invalidating a massive amount of legislation that is currently on the books. 3. Get off of the Federal Reserve system and have a monetary system under which the government issues currency that is backed by tangible assets, assets that can be redeemed for the currency at the request of the bearer. 4. A constitutional amendment that would require service for citizenship. Everyone that wants to be a citizen would need to participate in the military or some limited set of alternate national services (for those who have some moral opposition to serving in the military) for at least 3 years. All of the benefits of citizenship would not accrue until such time as this service was completed. 5. Completely get rid of Social Security and Medicare. As part of the required national service, basic care can be provided by the government for those in need. Those would probably be a good start.
I live just outside of Boston, actually. One of the areas you mentioned as being far too expensive for a family of four to both live comfortably and save for retirement making "only" 100k per year. Not too long ago, my wife and I were living in a really expensive apartment and not making anywhere near 100k and we were doing fine (no kids) and saving plenty.
Changes I would like to see. 1) a complete nationalization of all of the means of production and a dictatorship of the proletariat. Just kidding. I would like to see: 1) 24 hour per day weekend voting or even a national holiday for voting so as many Americans as possible could vote. Easy steps to register all Americans to vote do away with various schmes to suppress the vote which probably have support by incumbents of both parties. 2) Overturn Citizen's United and have government funding of elections with strict limits for individual contributions. Let's have a competition of ideas not just elections and therefore politicians bought by wealthy individuals and corporations. 3) Overturn the extraordinarily undemocratic Senate working rule requring 60 votes to do almost anything. 4) Have congress have to vote to start wars. 5) Enforce existing and strengthen existing laws that make it illegal to fire workers and harass them for trying to form unions, so that we can start returning to a more middle class society 5) return the tax rates to those in the past to increase the middle class 6)let hedge fund managers be taxed like other workers 7) national health care for all 8) free daycare for all so that we don't have to encarecerate kids whose parents can't afford to take off work or pay for private afteschool care. In short, start acting like a first world nation instead of merely the richest of the third world style nations.
I don't know your situation, but here is some factual data about the DC area which I have linked. They say a house should responsibly be three times your annual salary. For someone making $100k this would be a house at $300k. In DC that gets you this modest but nice 1400 square foot townhouse (pictured below) with no garage or yard, attending a high school with a 5 out of 10 rating and a 50 minute one-way commute to downtown DC in traffic (if you're lucky). Yeah, that person is living the high life! Also, it's nice that you don't have kids and can share a 1BR apartment with just you and your wife...just multiply your current spending by two and that should be your new cost of living...not a big deal. And don't forget the $14k average annual infant childcare cost, or the the $8k for toddlers (and this is in all of Maryland, no way it's this cheap in the more expensive dc metro area). Seriously, this strictly middle class existence is someone who is living beyond their means in your opinion? You either are living the life of a monk or are seriously underestimating how much things cost or how much you should be saving for retirement.
if you're pro-human, why don't you move to... different points of view to be sure. i believe in taking care of your own first, and help others with what you have left. we have many needy and poor here that could use the work. the form of a higher tax revenue for the fed could in turn be put to use as foreign aid if they so decide.
Very few of us in the tea parties are opposed to regulation -- just over regulation, especially when the playing field is made uneven by selective enforcement. Setting up broad rules for corporate pay is not unheard of or even unrealistic. I have always found that productivity soars when everybody wins. In my example, the CEO is not constrained regarding income. Employees would be delighted to see him get a raise because they would get a commensurate one themselves. The gulf between the super-rich and the super-poor would be reduced because of the win-win corporate relationships. BTW, I arbitrarily chose 250 times. It could be 300 times or 200 times -- whatever works best. BTW: There are no rules about how much an employee can make. Promotions among the pay scales would be possible, and the board of directors could set the CEO pay at $20M. The bottom rung employee would be delighted because he or she just got a huge raise. In my example the lowest $25,000 salary would suddenly jump to $80,000. Now, the serious hitch in the gitalong -- which you did not address -- is the temptation by corporations to move jobs overseas as contract work. However, that could be solved by declaring that out of country must be paid at the same rate as company workers in the U.S. Fewer jobs would leave the country because distance would more than eliminate the advantage of outsourcing.
I'm being overly simplistic but you need some way to inform lawmakers of potential benefits and downsides of proposed and passed legislation. I'm not knowledgable enough about it to really propose another way but you can't just ban business from speaking to government officials. The "lobbying" I am talking about doesn't mean campaign contributions or any money changing hands. When new ideas come about like tax credit programs or the build america bonds one really knows how the public, market, business will react exactly. Once business dives into these programs then people begin to see the good and bad and what might need to be changed to make them better. Without some input and education lawmakers can't do their job properly. Do you want Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell handling billions of dollars of tax credit programs without some input from people who aren't complete idiots?
I understand a lot of what you're saying here. Honestly, I think that's not a bad existence these people have making $100k per year, even in DC, Boston, etc. I also understand that these people are nowhere near being rich. Keep in mind I'm not the one who originally said taxes should be raised on people making over $100k. I would set that threshold somewhere in the range $200-250k per year.
You know this sort of thing is kinda like peeing into the snow in a dark night. it might make a difference, but is hard to tell.
I would like to see the election process reformed as follows - 1. Federal funding for all elections, from President on down to dog catcher. All of the candidates in each individual election in this country have the exact same amount of money to spend. The total amount for each election depends on the election itself...President the most, then Senate, then House of Reps, then state elections, local elections on down. 2. The complete elimination of all $ donations to campaigns by anyone. The disasterous recent Supreme Court ruling that ramped up the massive non-traceable money infusion will kill whatever is left of the American political process. Discuss, and flame away......
Anyone who cares for democracy should support this. Conservatives and libertarians and their show their basic contempt for democracy by supporting Citizen's United and unlimited manipulation of elections by the wealthy and the corporate elite.
