Tax Overhaul and why it's actually yummy
In a post the other day I sort of fired back against a random, emotionally charged rant that I stumbled into on Facebook.
The main topic there was Disney setting aside money to pay for education for their employees.
And it seems other companies taking care of their people are falling like dominoes. It's hard to go on Facebook without noticing a story on the sidebar about some corporation raising their pay or giving some sort of benefit to their employees:
Starbucks and Home Depot are two that I happened to notice.
Large corporations usually get plenty of unfair benefits handed to them by the government (it's really no secret how it works -- those with the most money lobby and bribe the politicians, who have a legal monopoly to pass whatever rules they want, and so ensues a vicious cycle of consolidating wealth and influence into fewer and fewer hands -- until it bursts).
But it's important to think critically about things. If you don't like Donald Trump, it doesn't mean everything he does is bad. If something helps a corporation, it doesn't mean it necessarily hurts you.
In my other post, @rasamuel asked some good questions. And rather than try to whip it up again, I'll show what I said:
Cliffs: Bad that the world right now is slanted to favor the large multinational corporations. Good that they be as effective as possible at distributing the jobs and products that we need.
It's not random or magic that these companies are giving more to their employees.
It's not a bribe to try to make the tax cuts look good.
They're not even thinking about that. They're making rational decisions based on the variables in play and what seems best for their viability. That's how it works. Businesses don't wake up in the morning and start making decisions based on trying to troll your political feelings.
What happens is when all these companies now have more money to work with, the price of labor effectively goes up.
Just imagine you're in a bubble and there are 20 companies. They all just got a trillion dollars air dropped on them. If you're company C, even if you want to be a scrooge and don't care one bit about your employees, you know that company Q has all this money to work with and can outbid you, and that you have to raise your price if you want anybody to choose you instead.
So since there's no way for everybody to collude to keep the price of labor fixed at what it was before, it has to rise now that everyone is sitting on more to work with.
There are these people who talk about "companies should pay the workers more!!"
And then when this policy comes up -- when you put up the nuts and bolts that make it so workers are paid more -- they're against it!
Should I cry myself to sleep laughing about this?
I suppose the big wrinkle is that you have to let it happen on its own (you have to let it emerge naturally out of the incentive structure that's in play) rather than try to force and micro-manage other peoples' decisions, which is probably all they actually wanted in the first place.
Obviously! You can criticize them as much you want to, but there's no denying these are pretty serious people who didn't get where they are through petty chicanery. Say what you may, they make rational well-reasoned decisions.
Like I said during our discussion, I really hope this works out for the best. And reading your analysis it's obvious there's good reason to be optimistic about it.
Oh and, it was a huge honor to be mentioned in your post, brother.
Great post. And I don't even think the companies have to be that HUGE (or YUUUGE) to get the tax cuts. The company I work at probably has 1000 employees. Our monthly performance based bonus pool went up for everybody a couple hundred dollars (and it's not that difficult to hit the bonuses. Look at all the time I spend on Steemit at work). Then on top of that, there is still a tax cut for the middle class, even though it's not as great. I'm an anarchist and I believe that government is inherently corrupt, but I think it's reasonable to support someone who is going to lower taxes since you spend so much of your life working. I know a lot of anarchists disagree with that and that's OK with me. If anarchy ever becomes a reality it will be through technical innovations that make government obsolete, rather than a political movement IMO. In the meantime, my life got a little better thanks to the tax cuts.
OK cool, ya, I'm glad it's also helping smaller companies.
Lollllll
Right, I think it makes perfect sense to at least intellectually support whatever ideas are good. Rolling back a layer of government or lessening the amount of taxation is an improvement, even tho not perfect. I would never use my life's energy to help someone get elected, particularly because it's an "all in one" thing and no way to reduce it to strictly "lower taxes". You'd be supporting him in general and I guess also the idea of him having power. But I'm fine supporting specific actions that a politician does and trying to judge it as fairly as possible.
And ya, it'll happen through technology and through the spread of ideas. Not from using the system to eliminate itself somehow.
Right!
Yeah when companies are getting more money it's only natural that employees have to get payed more, because another company can do it as well and nobody will choose your company if you don't.
yup, exactly!!
Nice write up
It is great that people that might be able to afford extra education giving by their employer or the fact that due to tax cuts others are looking to get a raise of one time bonus. It is just to bad money of these muitl billion dollar corporations did not do this already.
I mean I think the likes of Home Depot or Disney could have been doing these things for years now. The more then make the more they make.
And the liberal democrats in CA want to take advantage of this and take back 50% of whatever break the companies got.
Incredible ... Salute me with you my friend ...
I do. I salute us all.
Thanks
great politics
that's great reflection.