WalMart skins workers for $25 billion in wages -- but benefits consumers to tune of $263 billion? Mmm; doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure out that means WalMart could pay out those $5 billion in wages AND $238 BILLION WOULD STILL BE LEFT TO BENEFIT CONSUMERS. :-)
I wonder if Furman even thought of that (cab driver cynic me).
In supposedly socialist Europe they don't have an EITC (as far as I know) -- because in Europe the PAY people enough to live (or should I say: in Europe, wide awake labor makes sure it gets paid enough to live). I don't know why economists here -- well meaning progressives -- always act as if we were in the middle of the Great Depression or something and see things like the EITC as a permanent -- even normal -- way for Americans in the lower wage levels to get by. Add 50% to LBJ's 10/hr minimum wage level -- 40 years and double the average income later -- and we would have a normal lower wage way to live.
Late add: EITC transfers all of 1/2 of one percent of income in a labor market where 45% of employees earn less than a reasonable $15 an hour minimum wage.
Posted by: Denis Drew | Link to comment | June 12, 2008 at 03:46 PM
1 comment:
dennis
off thread but i followed your link here from thoma's site
i arrived at your point two
labor day elections about three years ago
three staggered cycle
odd years on labor day
point one has its hazards
unions become so entangled
they become labor fronts
as in
back to the thousand year sham
but with a choice
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