- Joined
- Oct 14, 2015
- Messages
- 64,076
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- Massachusetts
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Burgers hardly cost more in European countries with similar wages.
Business will always tell you that forcing them to do anything will kill jobs. The GOP dutifully repeats this and its base parrots. Pay line workers more? Jobs. Don't poison the water? Jobs. Don't poison the air? Jobs. Install something that stops that car from blowing up? Jobs. They find fertile ground in people happy to say that all regulation is bad and government shouldn't tell them what to do. Whaddya get when it's a public safety issue? You get libertarian-right Texans shocked that power generators didn't bother weatherizing out of the goodness of their golden hearts. Idiots. Sometimes, things better for everyone in general and over time are worth 'jobs', assuming they cost them.
It's not even a categorical rule. There are many situations in which business passes costs on to consumers, but it can't pass them all on: at a certain point, people simply don't want to buy the thing.
There's slack to be drawn in. In the last several decades the average CEO:worker pay increased something like 15:1 to 475:1. Executive pay jumped. Add-ons like options and stock drove it through the roof. But modern corporations are not that much more profitable, efficient, productive - they haven't increased in any measure or set of measures commensurate with that executive:worker increase. And all along, rich-heavy GOP policies further drive the wage gap.
Trickle-down is a lie. It has mostly been repeated by people who do not understand or seek to understand anything about economics. In fact, they're happy to vote against their interest as long as someone says "guns, gays, abortion" to them.
Business will always tell you that forcing them to do anything will kill jobs. The GOP dutifully repeats this and its base parrots. Pay line workers more? Jobs. Don't poison the water? Jobs. Don't poison the air? Jobs. Install something that stops that car from blowing up? Jobs. They find fertile ground in people happy to say that all regulation is bad and government shouldn't tell them what to do. Whaddya get when it's a public safety issue? You get libertarian-right Texans shocked that power generators didn't bother weatherizing out of the goodness of their golden hearts. Idiots. Sometimes, things better for everyone in general and over time are worth 'jobs', assuming they cost them.
It's not even a categorical rule. There are many situations in which business passes costs on to consumers, but it can't pass them all on: at a certain point, people simply don't want to buy the thing.
There's slack to be drawn in. In the last several decades the average CEO:worker pay increased something like 15:1 to 475:1. Executive pay jumped. Add-ons like options and stock drove it through the roof. But modern corporations are not that much more profitable, efficient, productive - they haven't increased in any measure or set of measures commensurate with that executive:worker increase. And all along, rich-heavy GOP policies further drive the wage gap.
Trickle-down is a lie. It has mostly been repeated by people who do not understand or seek to understand anything about economics. In fact, they're happy to vote against their interest as long as someone says "guns, gays, abortion" to them.