[rhino369]

Passing costs on the client isn't something you can just do. Many products and services have elastic demand. Fast food, for example, has been has found it very hard to raise away from their dollar menu pricing.

Businesses don't have to cut jobs either. They just have to move them.

Edit2: Costumers can also shift to lower cost alternatives. Online retailers have less overhead and lower labor costs. If you make Walmart more expensive than Amazon, Walmart will shutter stores laying massive numbers of people off.

Edit: Some economists have argued that past raises in min wage have not made noticeable impacts in employment. But this is way outsides of a normal rise in minimum wage. Going to 9 or 10 makes a lot sense. 15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work.

[dragonwriter]

> Costumers can also shift to lower cost alternatives. Online retailers have less overhead and lower labor costs. If you make Walmart more expensive than Amazon, Walmart will shutter stores laying massive numbers of people off.

Yes, that's a good reason why we shouldn't subsidize capital intensive businesses over labor intensive business by taxing capital income less than "normal" income and then adopting additional taxes on labor income on top of normal income taxes, but should instead treat all income alike for tax purposes without regard to source (and also, therefore, for benefit-eligibility purposes for past-income-qualified benefits for which dedicated taxes on income are taken to fund benefits.)

> But this is way outsides of a normal rise in minimum wage.

Not really. The article claims that $12 in 2020 would bring it above its 1968 peak level in inflation adjusted terms (the 1968 peak level, $1.60, is about $10.97 now, so $12 now would be a little bit ahead of it, with 2% annual inflation from now to 2020, $12 would be almost exactly the 1968 peak level.) So, a $15/hr. federal minimum wage in 2020 would be a higher-than-historical minimum wage, but not by a large margin.

And a little-over-doubling from 2009 to 2020 wouldn't be an unprecedented jump over an 11 year period, either (from 1945 to 1956 it got a 2.5 multiple from $0.40 to $1.00 -- and over 12 years, from 1938 to 1950 -- it tripled from $0.25 to $0.75.)

[crdoconnor]

>15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work.

Like it did in Australia?

[rhino369]

But you also have to compare PPP, cost of living, and unemployment rates.

Australia's PPP adjusted minimum wage is 10.50 USD.

It's very possible that Australia's min doesn't hurt employment and it would in the USA.

It's also plausible that Australia's recent increase in employment (while US is hitting post 2008 lows) is partially caused by too high of a minimum wage.

[crdoconnor]

>It's very possible that Australia's min doesn't hurt employment and it would in the USA.

Much as the National Restaurant Association, Cato and American Enterprise Institute would love for us to believe this, it just isn't true.

It would hurt profits, though, and a lot of those restaurants paying minimum wage would go out of business (and be replaced by other restaurants).

[toomuchtodo]

>15 dollars will put people in most of the country out of work.

So be it. Can't find a job that offers a living wage? We provide a social safety net and increase taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.

Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate. Tax rates are the lowest they've been in the history of the US, and all we've seen is a disgusting level of income equality.

[rhino369]

>Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate.

That is just a bad plan. You are essentially outlawing income over a million.

If you didn't apply it to capital gains, you are just fucking over lawyers, bankers, consultants, and CEOs. It would actually lower tax revenue. Because all that money that is getting taxed over a million a year would disappear. And the truly mega rich would actually be better off. No more having to pay high priced lawyers, bankers, and CEOs.

If you tried to place that restriction on capital gains, everyone ounce of capital in the this country would flee.

[toomuchtodo]

I intend to tax capital gains just as high as well, unless its in a retirement account.

> If you tried to place that restriction on capital gains, everyone ounce of capital in the this country would flee.

Feel free to take your capital out of the country. It'll be taxed with an expatriation tax. Attempting to evade the tax will allow the IRS to confiscate assets anywhere in the world the US has a tax treaty with (ie everywhere).

[rhino369]

You realize what would happen right? The rich would divest from all their investments permanently. They'd sell all their assets foreigners[1] who aren't subject to the tax. There is no point risking losing your investment if taxes will take any gain. It fucks the expected value of investment.

Would you take a bet on a coin flip, if when you lost you paid a dollar, but when you won you'd get a nickle.

Banks would implode. The credit market would stop. Any business survive on a line of credit would just fail immediately.

Best case scenario, you'd just replace American rich for foreign rich.

[1] if you tried to tax foreign capital gains on American assets, you'd just destroy the entire economy. There would be huge lack of capital.

Your plan is insanity.

Edit: And some country would be creative and end tax treaties with the US just to get a couple trillion of capital flowing through their economy.

[JonFish85]

"Make more than a million dollars a year? 95% marginal tax rate."

Great. Then what? Everyone currently making over $1m a year will cut their salary to $1m. Then you gotta start taxing the upper middle class -- what rate do you want to tax people making over $500k? $250k? $100k? Those are the ones that will pay for this program.

As much as you want to tax "the wealthy", there really aren't enough wealthy people to pay for everything, and it comes down to how much you want to tax the moderately successful person who is trying to pay for their 2 kids' college expenses while saving to have a retirement.

[toomuchtodo]

> Great. Then what? Everyone currently making over $1m a year will cut their salary to $1m.

Do wealthy individuals in other countries with a heavier tax burden (Europe, Scandinavia to be specific) do this? Would be nice to see evidence of this behavior before outright dismissing raising taxes.

[caseysoftware]

Yes. Google "millionaires leaving X" and see what the autosuggestions are for X and choose one. While some are US states - NY, Maryland, etc - most are countries.

Here's the top couple using France: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/07/23/flight-o...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-75...

[toomuchtodo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expatriation_tax

[JonFish85]

If the tax rate is 95%, a company would have to pay someone a $21 million dollar salary to pay that person $2m. I suspect that no company would do such a thing, as it's just throwing money away.

[bryanlarsen]

5% of a very large number is still a large number. Very few people are going to say "don't give me that extra $20 million because the government will take $19 million." $1 million is still a lot of money.

And of course, there are lots of deductions. You could give that $20 million to a charity and the government would get none of it. You wouldn't get any either, but you could certainly get a lot of indirect value out of giving away $20M.

[JonFish85]

What company is going to pay that? It's just silly. If you felt that a CEO/athlete/whatever was worth $30m a year, you'd have to pay that person $581 million dollars. They'd find some other way, that money wouldn't go to the government.

[crdoconnor]

>As much as you want to tax "the wealthy", there really aren't enough wealthy people to pay for everything,

The point isn't to make them pay for everything. The point of taxing them is to mute the inflationary effect of letting them keep their money.

The primary noticeable effect of taxing the wealthy on the rest of us would be to make property more affordable once again.

[yummyfajitas]

This is completely backwards. The wealthy primarily invest their money; it is mainly spent on non-consumer goods (servers, backhoes, research, etc). If we redistribute to people with a higher propensity to spend, then we are shifting wealth from investment to consumption. This will raise demand for consumer goods, hence raising prices, and causing inflation.

Note that an increase in the speculative value of real estate is NOT inflation - inflation incorporates the cost of housing (rent or owner-equivalent rent), not the speculative value of land. Similarly, it's not inflation if FB or MS goes up.

By the way, if you believe that money going into the hands of the wealthy is the best way to cause inflation, it therefore follows that the best economic stimulus is tax cuts for the wealthy. Do you favor such cuts during times of recession?

[toomuchtodo]

> By the way, if you believe that money going into the hands of the wealthy is the best way to cause inflation, it therefore follows that the best economic stimulus is tax cuts for the wealthy. Do you favor such cuts during times of recession?

In a recession, you want to stoke demand. Inflation isn't a worry, deflation is. You therefore give tax cuts to the people who are going to spend (ie not the wealthy).

"Overall, tax cuts for the bottom 90% tend to result in more output, employment, consumption, and investment growth than equivalently sized tax cuts for the top 10% over a business cycle frequency."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2015/04/24/tax-cuts-...

[yummyfajitas]

Yes, that's the point I'm making - I'm disagreeing with this: "The point of taxing them is to mute the inflationary effect of letting them keep their money."

But if crdoconnor disagrees and also is logically consistent, he should also disagree with you. Somehow I suspect he won't.

Also, your understanding of Keynesian economics is slightly confused; the goal is to cause inflation in order to reduce real wages.

[crdoconnor]

>This is completely backwards. The wealthy primarily invest their money; it is mainly spent on non-consumer goods

Have you not noticed that these goods have experienced a considerable degree of price inflation over the last decade? Did houses get cheaper?

>Note that an increase in the speculative value of real estate is NOT inflation

Bullshit. If I'm spending more on rent or mortgage (which I will if property prices increase), I've experienced inflation just as much as if I'm spending more on milk, eggs and bread.

>By the way, if you believe that money going into the hands of the wealthy is the best way to cause inflation, it therefore follows that the best economic stimulus is tax cuts for the wealthy.

Depends on whose economy you are stimulating. If you just want to stimulate the price of property and stock prices, sure, tax cuts for the wealthy all round. If you want to stimulate employment for the middle classes, not so much.

If you want to stimulate general economic growth, tax cuts for the rich are awful because there is a very minimal multiplier effect. The money goes into real estate and the stock market and largely stays there.

The best way to do that is to offer a job guarantee like FDR did in the 30s or increasing the minimum wage. The spending multiplier on both of those is about 3-5.

>Do you favor such cuts during times of recession?

Clearly not.

[yummyfajitas]

Rent increases are inflation, house price increases are not. Similarly, burrito price increases are inflation but chipotle share price is not. Please, understand inflation and cpi before opining on it. Also google it - inflation has been very low over the past decade.

(In fact, its my belief that we've had deflation for a while, since I believe cpi is considerably overstated. The biggest driver of inflation is health care, which is not hedonically adjusted.)

According to you, money in the hands of the poor has a higher multiplier (I.e. causes more inflation) than money in the hands of the rich. How does that not contradict your previous post? In whose hands does money cause the most inflation, the poor or the rich?

Also, your ideas about stimulating different parts of the economy are pretty explicitly not Keynesian.

[SamReidHughes]

Speculative property price increases won't cause an increase to rent, that's a function of what prices the market will pay for housing at particular levels of quality. It might cause somebody who'd buy a home to decide to rent instead, but remember that somebody else is currently occupying that home (or better yet, renting it out). In areas with room for development, speculative price increases on housing will make it profitable to build more housing, which will lower rents (i.e. make them rise less quickly).

Note that property price increases are often associated with increases in rent, but they don't cause the increases -- rent increases is caused by influxes of population, decreases in the population's price sensitivity, etc. Property price increases are caused by the same thing, and speculative property price increases are caused by (among other things) expectations of that sort of thing.

The big difference between houses and milk is that houses are durable goods which don't completely depreciate.

[JonFish85]

"The point of taxing them is to mute the inflationary effect of letting them keep their money."

What? How is it inflationary to let "the wealthy" keep their money vs. artificially raising the wages of the minimum wage workers?

"The primary noticeable effect of taxing the wealthy on the rest of us would be to make property more affordable once again."

Also--what? Being that we're on Hacker News, the majority of people here are probably making $100k+ a year and are solidly in the top 10% of wage-earners in the country. We're the ones driving up housing prices on a macro scale across the country, not the few people that have hundreds of millions to spend.

[crdoconnor]

>What? How is it inflationary to let "the wealthy" keep their money

Because they spend it.

>We're the ones driving up housing prices on a macro scale across the country, not the few people that have hundreds of millions to spend.

Both are. The few people with hundreds of millions of dollars will buy large properties in central locations in multiple cities, shrinking the available housing stock for the rest of us.

[JonFish85]

"Because they spend it."

So does everyone, they just spend it differently. Bill Gates' money isn't sitting in a checking account, it's in stock certificates. High net-worth people don't put money under their mattresses, they spend it, albeit in different ways. I don't know how to compare consumer spending vs. investments, so I can't say if one is "better" than another, but that money isn't just sitting in bank accounts.

Available housing stock on the whole is just fine in the US. Sure, you and I probably can't afford to live on Park Avenue or overlooking Central Park, but that's because those properties attract worldwide money. We're not there yet. San Francisco's housing problems aren't as simple as "some people have money". Taking money away from people isn't going to solve this.

[bko]

A job is not just a job to most people. It's their livelihood and purpose in life. It's very cruel to deny someone their an opportunity to be independent of the state

[littletimmy]

That is American/Japanese nonsense. You don't have to be defined by your work.

[toomuchtodo]

Therapy can be provided through universal healthcare if you'd like.

What work would you like to make up for people when technology has replaced everyone's work? Salespeople? Digging ditches and filling them back in?

[bko]

I don't know what work people will be doing when technology replaces everyone's work.

It's also true that were I around in 1880 I would not know what roughly half of the US population who were then farmers would be doing after automation.

For those new-age luddites who are generally afraid of technology destroying jobs, why stop at tomorrow's technologies? Why not outlaw washing machines? Surely elimination of washing machines would bring back a lot of jobs. Or let's outlaw productivity tools like spreadsheets. If people were forced to do everything by hand, surely this would create a lot of jobs.

Would you propose we eliminate any of today's technology? Why is it always that today's technologies are OK but not tomorrow's? Those will surely be our downfall.

Ironically, increasing the cost of human capital through a minimum wage will surely hasten the replacement of human capital by machines.

[TheGrimDerp1]

Or maybe just a fair flat tax on all new goods and all services at ~8%. Everybody always pays the same percentage: tourists, bajillionaires, hobos, you name it.

[toomuchtodo]

Flat taxes are regressive. They're simple, but they don't work.

You consider it "fair" because everyone pays the same. Not everyone should pay the same tax. Some people should pay more, some less.

[seanflyon]

Define "regressive" because when I google it I get "(of a tax) taking a proportionally greater amount from those on lower incomes". Are you talking about the wealthy having greater ability to find tax loopholes or do define "regressive" as everyone paying the same proportion of their income?

[jon-wood]

8% is going to hurt at different levels depending how much you have to spare - compare the pain caused by losing $8 of the $100 you have for the week to the $800 of $8000 for the week. One of those people is going to have to make real sacrifices, and it won't be the guy with $7200 left over.

[velik_m]

Going from 1000 USD to 900 USD hurts a lot more than going from 1 million to 900k.