[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

No, no, and no (at least not through government directive or intervention).

And why exactly is this? Because from what I can see, if those low wage earners are suddenly making enough to survive--and even to afford some luxuries in their lives, that also means that those low wage earners who once paid no federal income taxes are then paying into it, thus less of the burden is on someone who, such as yourself, is making more money. Then your tax dollars aren't going to help those people. The pooled tax dollars from yourself and those others can now go to paying off the debt, into research and development for curing diseases and grants to increase our technology, that money goes into infrastructure so we all have safe roads and bridges.

(Though most of that money will continue to go into bloated contracts to for the Department of Defense, but that's a whole other can of worms.)

As of now companies have less than no incentive to better pay their workers. The executives and shareholders take home the lion's sum of profits, while leaving workers making such small sums that the rest of us get to pay for them via SNAP, subsidized housing, etc. You're not paying welfare for poor people--you're paying welfare to Walmart so they can leave their employees on a starvation wage.

No, not every one "deserves" to own a home, and not everyone "deserves" to have children.

There is no state in the US where one can afford a two bedroom apartment on minimum wage. Not even for rent, let alone home ownership. So you think some people just deserve to be homeless? Even if they're working class people?

So how much more in federal income taxes should I pay to sufficiently evidence that I respect others as human beings?

Did you miss the whole section where I mentioned raising wages? The part about keeping CEOs from taking obscene bonuses while giving their lowest paid workers a 50 cent raise once a year? I didn't say anything about raising taxes, I said that these jobs are still essential jobs, and thus they should be compensated as such. Those people getting paid more doesn't mean you'd pay more federal income tax--hell, you might get a tax cut if enough low wage earners suddenly were making 40, 50, 60k a year rather than the 15,080 dollars a year that someone working 40 hrs a week on minimum wage makes now (assuming 40 hrs a week, every week, no time off for illness, for vacation, etc).

This isn't about raising taxes. This is about stopping corporations from taking advantage of government programs by paying their employees obscenely, inhumanely low wages. Companies aren't going to magically pay employees well out of the goodness of their hearts, so without some kind of cap on CEO/executive pay, these companies are going to just keep shoving low wage workers farther and farther into poverty, more and more low wage workers are going to depend on the government to cover their basic needs, and then people like you and me get to pay the difference.

But if we make these multinational corporations pay decent wages, then that takes a lot of pressure off of the government and taxpayers. Let Walmart pay their own workers, they've got the money. Because when Walmart pays their employees properly--those employees have more money and can afford to shop somewhere other than Walmart. Those employees now have spending power to buy new cars, new homes, to go on vacation. Those employees now have disposable income that goes back into the economy, and when they spend those extra dollars, they also pay sales tax on those dollars, which increases overall tax revenue, which decreases the amount that higher wage earners need to pay.

Trickle down economics is a disgusting, blatant failure. The economy grows from the bottom and the middle up, and political policy needs to encourage that.