“…but how much should we pay a dishwasher or a burger flipper?”

Pay should be commensurate with productivity. In the middle class world, pay generally is roughly commensurate wqith productivity: higher productivity brings higher compensation.

In the minimum wage world, producivity sets a ceiling but not a floor for compensation. In the minimum wage world, higher productivity DOES NOT bring a significant increase in compensation.

In my last job I worked for a small local convenience store chain (several stores under common ownership). All employees (approx two dozen) were paid within 20 cents of minimum wage.

Some had worked there over ten years, a few were recent hires. Most were very good employees, and some were more productive than others. But the pay vatied by only 20 cents per hour, so there was apparently no meaningful relationship between productivity and pay.

The owner’s net profit from the stores was approx $2 million the last year I worked there, and the total payroll was maybe $400,000.

Yes, people should NOT be all paid the same – I think we can agree that they should be paid based on productivity.

But that’s not happening in the minimum wage world.

You can spin this however you want but the reality is the super rich pay most of the taxes. The top 1% of wage earners pay about 25% of the taxes and the bottom 50% pay 3%. The bottom 40% pay no taxes. Until they have skin in the game they are not allowed to participate.

How can anyone think it is OK to take 91% of what people earn?

And we are talking income taxes here, not SS or Medicare. These are called taxes but they are supposed to be premiums we pay in for the insurance later in life. They are scams and money is wasted but these are not taxes, they are premiums.

We should eliminate the income tax and go to a consumption tax. Everyone pays a tax on the things they buy not on what they make. This will force everyone to have skin in the game and will allow us to keep our money. It will tax consumption and not production.

Then the rich and poor alike have skin in the game.

The wealthy will always find ways to lower their taxes. The members of Congress are wealthy and they write the tax laws and leave the loopholes. Taxes are unpopular which is why so many politicians scream about needing to raise them while finding ways to lower or avoind their own taxes.

It needs to be fair.

And I do not care about CEO pay. They are private companies and can pay what they want. Worry about the pay and pension of public sector workers because they suckle at the teat of the taxpayer at both state and federal level. A private company makes its own money and can spend it on how they want.

No one is worth 10 million a year to throw or hit a baseball but if that is what the private employer wants to pay it is his business (though unions screwed that up along the way).

By failing to tax the bottom 40% we are losing revenue and raising generations of people who think that the government should provide for them and that the money is “free.” We can stop this by letting everyone have skin in the game.

DAR
Interesting article. Perhaps of interest.

Why Are We Afraid to Tax the Super-Rich?.

Excerpts:

“In the 1950s the marginal tax rate on those earning more than $3 million a year (in today’s dollars) was 91 percent. By 1990 it was 28 percent. The IRS says that the top 400 richest tax filers actually paid a rate of just 16 percent in 2007 (the latest numbers we have). Yep, the richest earners — people who took in an average of $343 million each — probably paid a lower rate than you did.

…During the post-WWII boom we had one of the fairest income distributions in the world. Not anymore. Today the gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time in U.S. history. Here’s a telling statistic: In 1970 the compensation ratio of the top 100 CEOs compared to the average worker was 45 to one. By 2008 it was 1,071 to one. You think they got that much smarter?

…By failing to tax the super-rich, we’re burrowing even deeper into a billionaire bailout society in which the rich keep on gambling away our money, knowing that we will bail them out if they lose.”

Why Are We Afraid to Tax the Super-Rich?.

Obama never said anything like “I will sign no bill with earmarks.” He said wanted a stimulus bill with earmarks and the stimulus had very few so he basically kept his word.

It was the omnibus spending bill which was pretty much 100% earmarks that had the 9000 count. Obama did not campaigned ever on removing earmarks but seeks reform is all.

Plenty of examples of these kinds of lies.

But then again, you would have to prove that there was an intentional act to deceive in order to show someone lied. So please, show that.

Prove it.