Pick one

You can’t have it both ways

 

Why not?

 

Yes. False dichotomy I thought, but decided that you should have fun with the thread.

I like both!

 

People having more money in their paycheck is not going to fix the potholes or the broken down Bridges for the broken down transit systems or the dying cities

 

Except if the workers pay more taxes. Ah, problem solved!

 

that's funny.

I guess the taxes then.

 

Either way, we as the consumer will wind up paying more for goods and services

 

C'est la vie. Problem is that whatever we might like in principle, it won't happen in practice without incentives. I say, tax the corporations, cuz otherwise they won't have an incentive to pay their workers.

 

Not unless the higher taxes cause the corporations to deduct their losses by paying the workers less. Otherwise they could jack up the prices of goods and services for the consumer.

 

Looks like a good old catch 22 to me.

 

Down with capitalism!

 

Hell yeah! Let’s go back to the Stone Age

 

man, how do i pick one of those options? they're both unacceptable. corporations shouldn't pay any taxes, and their workers don't deserve anywhere near what they're currently paid. and if you disagree, don't tell me about it, just GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY COUNTRY!!!

 

Trump supporters...GDP is at an all time high! Unemployment is at an all time low! The economy is the strongest it's ever been

Also Trump supporters...Whoa whoa whoa, slow down socialist. We can do either this OR that. We can't do both. It's not like we're swimming in money here

 

Nah. There are plenty of functioning social democracies which are hardly stone age societies.

Tsk, tsk! The Stone Age? There have been and are plenty of Socialist societies in the world that weren't very good but not exactly Stone Age, and lots of social democracies with mixed economies that are some of the most advanced in the world in terms of health care, technology, and social benefits.

Really, the poll you've given us is a sham, or as they say in the logic textbooks, the fallacy known as a false dilemma. We appear to be caught on the "horns" of a classic "heads I win, tails you lose" dilemma. But it's basically an illusion, requiring us to ignore basic economics and assume that workers' pay is mainly a function of corporate largess and government tax rates, instead of a reflection of broader supply-demand considerations in the labor market--of which taxes are only one factor. The trick with a dilemma is usually to seize it by one of its horns: Take "corporations should pay their workers more". Regardless of what corporations "should' do, corporations are ordinarily beholden to their shareholders, not their workers. Corporations will pay their workers more if it serves their bottom line.

When Bill Clinton took office, he raised the corporate tax rate, the economy continued to boom, the deficit turned into a surplus (to the point that economists began to fret about that). Workers were in demand, and corporations were happy to pay their workers.good wages in order to keep them. President Clinton won a 90-cent per hour increase in the minimum wage for 10 million workers--then the largest single-year increase ever. The Trump administration promised that its corporate tax cuts would increase the average household income in the United States by $4,000. That didn't happen. Instead, companies spent 37 times as much on stock buybacks than they did on bonuses and increased wages for workers . Some 433 corporations out of the Fortune 500 announced no plans to share their tax cuts with employees.
Trump's tax cuts didn't benefit American workers, just made rich companies richer
Trump’s Corporate Tax Cut Is Not Trickling Down - Center for American Progress
Data Shows Trump Tax Cuts Did Not Raise Wages, Instead Went to Corporate Executives
What the Republican tax bill did — and didn’t — do, one year later
Workers barely benefited from Trump’s sweeping tax cut, investigation shows
Of course much depends on circumstances--the size of the tax increase, the state of the economy, etc., but posing this as a zero-sum game is a false dilemma.

 

Yeah... Nobody saw that coming.

 

He fooled me and now I can understand why it's not easy for corporations to pay taxes or their workers a living wage. It's so hard to say which will be more fruitful in the long run. We don't want corporations to pay tax and then find out they should have been paying their employees or vice versa. They'll have to choose eventually, though, I admit that.

 

I'm surprised "Corporations should pay more taxes" is taking the lead

I know they like both, but I would've thought the bleeding hearts preferred higher wages to higher taxes
Seems like they vote out of spite, wealth envy, and hatred toward entrepreneurship.

 

Bet you can't name me a society that welfared their way out of the Stone Age via government coercion and forced redistribution.

Capitalism has been the blueprint for the ascent of humanity. One demonstrate their skills by making a product, or providing a good or service for a fellow human being, in exchange for another item. Not necessarily money, but an equal and opposite trade agreement.

Do a tour of Prague or any Eastern European town, and the people will tell you about how evil socialism is, and how many people died. I lived in Prague for 6 months, and my students and neighbors had plenty of nasty stories to tell.

 

What a load of B.S. Capitalism, as ordinarily defined, is a relatively recent development in the 5,000 years of recorded human history. Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, the Hittite Empire, the Indus Valley civilization, China, Persia, Greece, Rome, etc., all managed to achieve flourishing civilizations without much of a middle class or capitalism to speak of. Power was in the hands of monarchs, aristocrats, bureaucrats, and priests. Religion also played a part, as unfortunately did slavery. Civilization was spread by conquest and commerce, with warriors priests, and bureaucrats in the drivers seat. Statism--despotism--was the norm, except in Athens. I think most historians would agree that capitalism emerged in the 16th century c.e., with the rise of an entrepreneurial middle class.

Are we talking evil now, or are we talking about your false claim that it's capitalism or the Stone Age? The version of socialism you're talking about is Communism, and you'll get no argument from me that it was evil. I feel for your students and neighbors in Prague. They were a Soviet satellite under a brutal dictatorship. A key element of that dictatorship, run from its command center in Moscow, was the secret police: NKVD, KGB, FSB, which gave us such monstrosities as Vald Putin, whom you seem to so admire. He's still evil, even tho he's now officially a capitalist instead of a commie. As we all know, that's a particular kind of Socialism: the terrible kind. All but the densest among us will recognize that you've done your usual sleight of hand and presented an extreme case as typical. There are lots of other socialist countries I could mention that are not that bad. The UK under Clement Atlee, for example; or Uruguay which is under a Socialist government, or lots of African countries which lack an indigenous entrepreneurial class, so the State has to take over that role. They aren't places I'd want to live in, but it would be extreme hyperbole to say they're Stone Age or "evil". And then there are the Social Democracies of Western Europe, with mixed economies--still capitalist, but with high tax rates on wealth and extensive regulation of the economy. Not too shabby!

I personally prefer the United States pretty much as it is, with more social programs like medical insurance, welfare assistance, public support for college tuition, environmental regulation, etc, but no extensive redistribution or budget breaking spending measures. When Elizabeth gets to talking about lots of structural change, I get nervous. But the forced dichotomies you present to us--unbridled capitalism or the Stone Age--make no sense.