dagblog - Comments for "The War on Work"

Thanks, AWJ. Come back again;

Doctor Cleveland — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 21:09:22 +0000

Thanks, AWJ. Come back again; the other bloggers here are, in my humble opinion, pretty rocking.

Excellent piece. When you

AWJ — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 01:22:56 +0000

Excellent piece. When you mentioned Republicans "doubling down", I was reminded of right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin's quip about Romney supporters being the people who sign the front of paychecks and Obama supporters being the people who sign the back of them--with the implication that the latter were a contemptible canaille whose interests and votes shouldn't count. The right-wing blogosphere loved it and quoted it endlessly, while progressive sites (even ones dedicated to publicizing gaffes by conservatives) made remarkably little fuss over what was really a horrifyingly antidemocratic sentiment.

If you check him out today,

Michael Maiello — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:10:52 +0000

In reply to Friedman is basically the

If you check him out today, he's arguing that people need "lifelong learning" and a "passion quotient," to match their "skills quotient," and he does all this without ever once acknowledging how easy it is to have a "passion quotient" if you're Thomas Friedman and basically enjoy an elevated status in society. For everyone else, it's the equivalent of Subway hiring "sandwich artists." Have we done anything to guide our economy in a direction that Americans are actually and genuinely passionate about?

Friedman is basically the

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 01:38:00 +0000

In reply to This seems pretty

Friedman is basically the living personification of the world view I'm talking about. Virtually everything he writes is an expression of that ideology.

Well I do not blame you. How

Richard Day — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:38:54 +0000

In reply to /1952: tax table Adjusted

Well I do not blame you.

How doest one add to the TRUTH.

Well done Flavius!

This seems pretty

Michael Maiello — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:04:31 +0000

In reply to The War on Work

This seems pretty undeniable:

"The last three decades of our public life have been dedicated to the proposition that people should be paid less for their work."

A lot of employers view compensation as their most controllable input. Meanwhile, our capital has no boundaries while our workers are forced to remain at least somewhat local. As you say, we somewhat prefer the small business owner to the employee, though we're inconsistent in that. Most small business owners have more in common with employees than they would anyone else. Our problem is that we make policy with the big, well connected players in mind. We make policies that allows for Boeing to spend years hiring more than 50 outsourced firms to design a plane that was grounded worldwide just a few years after its debut. At least they saved a buck building the thing.

And, of course, on top of all of this, we have forces on the corporate left and corporate right who would like to do to our public programs what large employers have done to their people. This is why I get so angry when Thomas Friedman writes that our next generation of leaders will have to take things away from people, rather than provide them. Surely, they (and we) can do better than that?

/1952: tax table Adjusted

Flavius — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:59:34 +0000

In reply to The War on Work

/1952: tax table Adjusted for inflation

Marginal Tax Rate:

22.2% up to $16.9K

24.6% up to $33.9K

29.0% up to $50.8K

34.0% up to $67.6K

38.0% up to $84.7K

42.0% up to $101.6K

48.0% up to $118.5K

53.0% up to $135.5K

56.0% up to $152.4K

59.0% up to $169.3K

62.0% up to $186.2K

66.0% up to $220.1K

67.0% up to $270.9K

68.0% up to $321.8K

72.0% up to $372.6K

75.0% up to $423.4K

77.0% up to $508.0K

80.0% up to $592.7K

83.0% up to $677.4K

85.0% up to $762.0K

88.0% up to $846.7K

90.0% up to $1,270.1K

91.0% up to $1,693.4K

92.0% from $1,693.4K up

Now compare to the rates until the fiscal cliff:

2011

Married Filing Separately

.

Marginal Tax Rate:

10% up to $8.5K

15% up to $34.5K

25% up to $69.7K

28% up to $106.2K

33% up to $189.6K

35% from 189.6K up

I have no particular comment to add.

Excellent points. The NYT had

NCD — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:32:44 +0000

In reply to The War on Work

Excellent points. The NYT had an excellent article The Rise of the Permanent Temporary, which now includes professors, architects and other professionals, as well as the traditional temp office worker, and skilled and unskilled laborers of all kind. No stability in employment or pay, little or no benefits, and no future for advancement.

Robert Reich pointed out another problem with the wealth in our country being concentrated at the top 5 or 1%.

For the middle class, the home is often the biggest financial asset in their portfolio. Their net worth depends on it. Yet it is taxed every year, basically a tax on their wealth.

For the rich, the home is a small, often insignificant portion of their wealth. Their actual wealth is not taxed at all, as in some nations. Why tax the value of a home, but not the stock portfolio? All these factors taken together, this is not a route to prosperity for a nation.

Robert Reich:

.....homes are subject to the only major tax on wealth — property taxes. Yale Professor Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott have proposed a 2 percent surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent of Americans owning more than $7.2 million of assets.

They figure it would generate $70 billion a year, or $750 billion over the decade. That’s more than the fiscal cliff deal raises from high-income Americans..