MSD

Minimum wage increases lead to layoffs of the workers on the low end of the pay scale, the very people you're trying to protect. Universal healthcare is a nice theory, but raising taxes to pay for it is not a good way to stimulate the economy. Regulating the industry leads to jobs being moved overseas. Once again, you end up hurting the people you want to help.
There are two issues at hand here. First, it makes sense to give a small break to someone who is required to pay half of their income to the government rather than someone who pays a third of theirs. I used to think that it was perfectly fine, but now I cannot ethically justify taking a higher percentage of income from someone who makes more money just because they can afford it. When I used to favor high taxes for the rich, I think it was due to a combination of envy and resentment. I suggest breaking down your opinion and asking yourself exactly why you feel this way and whether it makes sense logically or only on an emotional level. I suffered from cognitive dissonance for quite a while after I did that, but in the end, fair tax makes more sense to me. Second, tax cuts did not only help the rich, they were cuts across the board, and owners of small businesses have benefitted greatly from cuts to taxes that they really could not afford to pay.
In the end, inflation and unemployment rates are inversely related, and both cannot be kept down at the same time unless the country is in an economic golden age. Perhaps if we were able to overproduce to the point that we could flood the market with exports and cut imports to a minimal level, we could manage both, but it is highly unlikely, especially druing a negative global economic trend. In the end, low-tech, high-volume production will have to be outsourced and high-tech pproduction encouraged so that we can keep the cash flowing into the country rather than out. I'm not saying that we should be buying all of our food and basic manufactured goods from other countries, but if we want to stimulate the economy, we mainly need to eliminate trade deficits and outsourcing unskilled labor is the easiest way to do it.
The bottom line is that when foreign manufacturers are able to produce high-volume, low-cost goods (for example, entry-level cars,) that are consistently more reliable and more efficient than domestic versions, people are going to buy the superior product. Without sales volume, cuts have to happen in other places. Blaming a political party that you don't like can't change the fact that domestic manufacturers are fighitng an uphill battle in a free market economy.
GM is closing plants and laying off workers because profits cannot keep up with expenses. If you look at their lineup, it's a bunch of the same car with different badges. They shut down Oldsmobile last year and Buick is going out next year because they're failing to make a profit. Once again, they are fighitng an uphill battle in a free-market economy. Look at the product lines. Honda and Toyota have been making lightweight cars with small, efficient engines for a long time, while some American companies are still using ancient technology (Overhead cam and varible valve timing setups that make for more efficient, more powerful engines were available from Japanese manufacturers years before American manufacturers adopted the technology on the same scale. Many cars, especially from GM, are still using antiquated, inefficient pushrod techonology.) When competitors aren't on an equal playing field in a free marked, the one with the upper hand will obviously win. Our manufacturers are still working to overcome the stigma attached to American cars from the early '80s when we had almost nothing worth buying.

You claim that people will revolt, and give crime rates, drug abuse, and poverty as evidence. Who do you expect to do the revolting? Is it the addicts and impoverished who, depite their economic conditions, will somehow manage to arm themselves? Maybe it's the criminals who already have their illegal weapons and are despised by the rest of civilized society.

As I read over your post once more before I submitted mine, an inconsistency in your argument popped out where I had looked over it before. You insist that we should increase minimum wage and get universal healthcare. The majority of our tax money that would be increased to fund universal healthcare cone from large (multi-billion dollar) companies, and when added to an increased minimum wage, you seem to expect this to save jobs. Both of those are measures that cost the companies money, and you advocate their implementation to save jobs, which also cost the company money. Am I not seeing a source of income that you see, or is there a way to make this profitable and avoid job losses?



Speaking of cognitive dissonance, I'm not sure how to feel when I'm not only agreeing with you, but quoting a post of yours to agree with it completely.