2020 Democratic Primary Thread: Focus on House & Senate races

[Dusty Bake Activate]

See, this is the type of M4A debate I was hoping we'd see. I would be thrilled if we moved on from disingenuous attacks to a payroll tax vs head tax discussion that normalizes the concept of M4A and shifts the Overton Window. One is a disincentive to low-wage hiring while the other is a disincentive to worker wage increases. Hearing about why Bernie and Liz have chosen one option over the other might be interesting. Bernie is also advocating for an additional direct tax on workers' income, so I would be interested to hear him robustly spell out why now that a non-direct option is on the table. I think he has a righteous claim in trying to reframe taxes from something most people think about in a negative way to something positive, but it's an exponentially more difficult route than the one Liz has taken to get to the same outcome. I will say, it's funny to see Bernie turn into a pro-business booster in that quote, don't think I've ever heard him say he's concerned about job creators before



Payroll tax vs Head tax was never a real issue except to Bernie stans desperately grasping for reasons to get Liz out the paint. Both are employer-side taxes, and I even said yesterday that you can make a case for either one. Plus, it's only 1/3 of the funding in Liz's plan.

The right-wing talking point is saying there's a 1-to-1 correlation between employer-side taxes and employee-side taxes, a conflation you still seem committed to making just so you can hold onto the delusion that Bernie didn't get outworked by Liz here. This employer-employee distinction is important because Bernie seems to be committed to also levying an employee-side direct tax on workers, which is the real battleground between his plan's and Liz's plan. Bernie stans have been disingenuously trying to conflate the two because doing so negates a strength of Liz's plan. The reason I prefer Liz's employer-side tax is because any potential negative impact on workers can be diffused through worker power and collective action, which she has heavily incentivized in her plan...damn she's good . A direct tax on workers doesn't present that opportunity. I sincerely hope he doesn't, but if Bernie starts parroting Matt Breunig's dumbass article about how there's no difference between taxing workers and taxing companies, then yes, he'll be pushing a right-wing talking point. And it would be a special type of irony because it's literally the same line of attack the right has been using against his call for minimum wage increases and unionization.

Why do you think employers won’t just contract away workers to avoid the head tax, leading to raising the head tax to make up for lost revenue, increasing contracting and so forth?

Bernie plan is better because you can’t evade payroll taxes.

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

 

[King Kreole]

Why do you think employers won’t just contract away workers to avoid the head tax, leading to raising the head tax to make up for lost revenue, increasing contracting and so forth?

Bernie plan is better you can’t evade payroll taxes.

1) There is the exact same incentive to do this under the current health care system right now, Obamacare and the employer mandate. The same conservative economics voices said it would cause mass spin-offs and corporate down-sizing and chaos and destruction, and we haven't seen these massive corporate spin-offs...in fact, if anything, we've seen the opposite. There has been massive corporate consolidation in this era.

2) Gig economy style redefinition of workers to IC is an issue throughout much of the economy, and it's an issue regardless of M4A is passed or not. Liz has stated she plans on expanding the definition of workers, like California is doing with Dynamex, and a joint employer NLRB rule.

3) By enshrining incentives towards unionization and worker power into her plan, she has made it much more difficult for corporations to pull this type of fukkery.

4) There is no difference between and employer-side payroll tax and an employer-side head tax when it comes to evasion. You're either paying the government the taxes its due or you're not and subject to IRS (which Liz has injected with steroids in this plan as well) action.

 

[King Kreole]

I've pointed out this lie multiple times before, but she did not vote to increase Trump's military budget three times. She voted yea only once (HR 2810). Cheers.

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

I've pointed out this lie multiple times before, but she did not vote to increase Trump's military budget three times. She voted yea only once (HR 2810). Cheers.

The point is that the media is propaganda.

 

[Pressure]

How bout felons, brothers just getting outta prison, homeless and the people that can't get a job? Yang would help em get on they feet... and if you already have a job add another 1000$ a month and the common man would have much more in general.

They can't vote.

 

[King Kreole]

The point is that the media is propaganda.

On that, I completely agree. SNL is dreck.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

I've pointed out this lie multiple times before, but she did not vote to increase Trump's military budget three times. She voted yea only once (HR 2810). Cheers.

Actually she voted for yes:

• NDAA 2014
• NDAA 2018

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

Actually she voted for yes:

• NDAA 2014
• NDAA 2018

Yeah but Trump wasn't president in 2014.

I think. It's hard to remember in this hell world.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

1) There is the exact same incentive to do this under the current health care system right now, Obamacare and the employer mandate. The same conservative economics voices said it would cause mass spin-offs and corporate down-sizing and chaos and destruction, and we haven't seen these massive corporate spin-offs...in fact, if anything, we've seen the opposite. There has been massive corporate consolidation in this era.

2) Gig economy style redefinition of workers to IC is an issue throughout much of the economy, and it's an issue regardless of M4A is passed or not. Liz has stated she plans on expanding the definition of workers, like California is doing with Dynamex, and a joint employer NLRB rule.

3) By enshrining incentives towards unionization and worker power into her plan, she has made it much more difficult for corporations to pull this type of fukkery.

4) There is no difference between and employer-side payroll tax and an employer-side head tax when it comes to evasion. You're either paying the government the taxes its due or you're not and subject to IRS (which Liz has injected with steroids in this plan as well) action.

1. What? We have seen a massive increase in contracting out work in the last decade and they make up an increasing part of the work force.

NPR Choice page

Her plan incentivizes businesses to outsource and contract work to avoid paying a large tax per worker, and whenever they can they will do this. This is common sense, not right wing scaremongering. And when that happens the head tax will have be raised to make up for lost revenue which will have a multiplying effect on head tax evasion.

2. and 3. As it stands now her plan doesn’t require contractors to pay the head tax. Addressing this problem entails labor reform as well as immigration reform and tax reform making it all the more undoable unless a multiple of assumptions and predictive economics are fulfilled, and massive institutional legislative reforms are all passed through Congress including this. One of the many reasons why Bernie’s plan is superior.

4. You’re wrong. A payroll tax is a dollar earned, a dollar taxed. A head tax can be avoided easily by simple and easy labor reorganization practices by businesses.

 

[mastermind]

How bout felons, brothers just getting outta prison, homeless and the people that can't get a job? Yang would help em get on they feet... and if you already have a job add another 1000$ a month and the common man would have much more in general.

It’s like you didn’t read my post

 

[King Kreole]

1. What? We have seen a massive increase in contracting out work in the last decade and they make up an increasing part of the work force.

NPR Choice page

Her plan incentivizes businesses to outsource and contract work to avoid paying a large tax per worker, and whenever they can they will do this. This is common sense, not right wing scaremongering. And when that happens the head tax will have be raised to make up for lost revenue which will have a multiplying effect on head tax evasion.

The movement towards reclassifying workers as contractors is not a product of Obamacare, it's a decades-long project of corporatism working in tandem with right-wing political forces.

McKinsey & Company: Capital’s Willing Executioners | Current Affairs

"This belief in the superiority of the free market at the expense of government didn’t start with Romney (or Reagan or Goldwater). In 1958, McKinsey consulted on the organizing of America’s response to Sputnik, NASA. According to historian Christopher McKenna in The World’s Newest Profession:

“From NASA’s establishment, the organizational structure that Glennan and the consultants from McKinsey & Company devised for the space agency promoted the use of outside contractors over building internal expertise… Beyond the bare minimum of internal technical expertise, however, the McKinsey consultants argued that America’s ‘free enterprise society dictates that industry should be given as extensive a role as possible.’”​

This approach, “may have dismayed the agency’s engineers, but the response cheered NASA administrators.” By 1964, 90 percent of NASA’s $5 billion budget went to private companies and 350,000 contractors supported 32,500 NASA employees. Bill Clinton’s declaration of the end of big government in 1996 and George W. Bush’s pledge to substitute contractors for half of the remaining federal workforce in 2002 were influenced and made possible by the work that McKinsey did in establishing the contractor state. In an ironic twist, two months before the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov, McKinsey warned senior White House staff that, “the project lacked comprehensive testing, noted many functions were dependent on contractors and warned against taking risks to meet deadlines.”

The vast majority of acceleration of this process in our time is due to technological advances making it easier, hence the gig economy, not expanding the role of government in healthcare. Again, this stinks of right-wing thinking. Liz has already addressed this in her labor rights plan that includes ending the misclassification of workers that we're talking about here.

2. and 3. As it stands now her plan doesn’t require contractors to pay the head tax. Addressing this problem entails labor reform as well as immigration reform and tax reform making it all the more undoable unless a multiple of assumptions and predictive economics are fulfilled, and massive institutional legislative reforms are all passed through Congress including this. One of the many reasons why Bernie’s plan is superior.

See, this is what Liz talks about when she rails against a smallness of vision and political incrementalist cowardice, and I find it...interesting...that these objections are now coming from the "revolution, not reform" crowd.

It strikes me as naive to believe you can institute M4A without impacting the state of labor rights or tax structure or even immigration reform. Requiring contractors to pay a head tax is not a magic wand that will make these massive interconnected issues disappear. So yes, she has interlinked healthcare reform with reform in other areas of the social economy because they are already interlinked and she is a structural, intersectional thinker. This seems to be a big dividing line between pro-Liz and anti-Liz factions. If you don't see how all these massive social institutions are interrelated and how you can't make large alterations to one without impacting the other, then you're probably not going to find this plan, or Liz in general, particularly appealing. But those of us who think in structural terms can appreciate how Liz is connecting the dots. Which is one of the reasons we find her plan(s) superior. You seem to be advocating for a movement isolationist approach to social change, whereas Liz's vision is one where linking movements together increases their power and builds a large-scale change. Now immigration rights groups and labor rights groups and anti-War groups have a vested interest in getting M4A passed. All these groups pushing together in the same direction. Some might call that...a revolution.

4. You’re wrong. A payroll tax is a dollar earned, a dollar taxed. A head tax can be avoided easily by simple and easy labor reorganization practices by businesses.

So you're saying large corporations would go through the incredibly costly process of voluntarily self-breaking up (word to Mitt Romney) so as to avoid paying 2% less that they're currently paying in health care costs? Sounds like a backdoor path to antitrust to me

 

[FAH1223]

 

[Th3G3ntleman]

@King Kreole taking these niccas to church

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

@wire28 @Th3G3ntleman @ezrathegreat @Jello Biafra @humble forever @Darth Nubian @Dameon Farrow @Piff Perkins @BigMoneyGrip @Lucky_Lefty @johnedwarduado @Armchair Militant @panopticon @88m3 @Tres Leches @ADevilYouKhow @dtownreppin214 @A.R.$

what a goddamn loser