Profits vs. Wages

[kpete]

[djean111]

1. and - anyone who believe the TTP/TTIP will change this chart at all just is not paying attention.

Lowest bidder, lowest cost to manufacture. We will be competing with countries that pay less than our minimum wage, methinks.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Outrage has it's place, it hi-lights the problem; fair taxes on wealth and capital accumulation is the simple solution.

Raise minimum wages, restore the tax structure to meet the current unequal wealth distribution.

The rich folk and corporations (family gross income over 400K per annum, net worth over $2 million - the 1%; corporate rich in proportion to individual definition) have a little sad, everyone else has a party.

Restore the 1950's macroeconomic structure.

[Basic LA]

3. Nicely said.

Now if only we could reverse this country's worship of the super-rich & hatred for the poor.

[FrodosPet]

4. Including all the loopholes and tax shelters?

If you dig a little deeper, the situation of the 1950s is not the same as the current era. The United States' industrial capabilities were built up, not bombed out, during World War II, which gave us a virtual monopoly on manufacturing. Even then, there were 3 major recessions during the era. And the wide proliferation of shelters and loopholes meant that no one actually paid those top rates, unless their tax advisor was the most incompetent one in America.

One idea may be to bring back those rates while crafting the shelters and loopholes such that they are economically useful. But what I suspect you have in mind - enormous taxes without reductive loopholes - would be a disaster that would end up lowering tax revenues enormously right after the big spike.

America needs to find the Goldilocks tax rate. Not too high, not too low.