Can’t you get around the paywall by opening an incognito window? It seems to work for most paywalls, except for WSJ.
The editorial summarize this OECD paper The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD | READ online
Eliminating special capital gains rates, rolling back the 2017 tax cuts, much higher inheritance taxes.
Details coming in part 3 of the editorial
Not really, since the paper does recommend wealth tax as an imperfect yet perhaps more practical tool when the other taxes are unfeasible.
Moreover, the paper does recommend a wealth tax in addition to progressive capital gain taxes, estate taxes and wealth transfer cases in countries with high levels of wealth inequality anyways. Last I checked the US inequality index was quite high.
And that’s not what the editorial is saying. The editorial is taking the paper on when it says there are other more effective (but harder to implement, politically) tax policies that can replace a wealth tax and be more effective long term, but it’s not acknowledging that the paper is indeed recommending a wealth tax under current economic conditions in the US.
One can disagree with the paper, but the editorial is not a neutral reading of it. the paper is saying that a wealth tax is not the end-all solution, but that it’s nonetheless an important useful tool in lieu of a comprehensive tax reform.
Teiman
3458
IMHO, about the death of the middle class and the creation of a society of lumpenproletariat and wealthy.
There are a few solutions to this:
a) Class conscience
b) Support unions
a - get people to understand that theres a class war and defend their place. No with weapons or shit, but by making choices that are better for them.
b - the fascist use to say: alone we are weak, in group we are strong. Poor people reluctance to support unions is bad for them. Only in organized group reactions individuals can support and have a chance to defend their positions.
I think the causes of the current crysis is that people have lost their class conscience, so at every turn the wealthy top of the society have made advances, while the bottom 90% of the population is going down more and more, until is imposible to have kids and make a life for yourself.
This is not good. A society that don’t make life good for 90% of the population is not a good society. People must have kids for societies to continue functioning.
Alstein
3459
They’d be replaced by local, smaller places which would treat folks just as bad.
I often feel like the only way I can eat out ethically is to limit myself to small, entirely family-worked restaraunts. can’t exploit workers when you’re the only worker.
I wonder what industries are benefiting from the exodus of restaurant workers. Is the gig economy hot again?
The service/hospitality industry is absolute horseshit and I dearly hope it burns down entirely to be reborn in some new sustainable and humane form.
That’s a great question. The narrative from many is that these ex-food service folks are just sitting at home and raking in the bonus unemployment. I’d love to see stats backing that up.
All I know is that my few weeks in food service as a youth were enough to convince me that I did not want to do that kind of job ever again. The work is hard as Hell and you take gobs of BS from customers and bosses.
No doubt that’s a part of it. Anecdotally, it definitely plays a role. But there’s also the fact that for a lot of people this has been a breath of clear air after years of desperately treading water in the only ocean they felt was open to them.
Hard to go back once you realize life doesn’t have to be like that.
I always have wondered how the US can sustain so many more restaurants then Europe. I thought it was just that people are out more, but it feels like it’s more then it exploits people.
Is there data that supports this? I’ve never felt there’s a lack of restaurants in Europe. Admittedly, I mostly travel to major cities for work and/or vacation.
I couldn’t find anything comparable.
My experience is, if you leave the tourist areas and cities, the number of Restaurants you see are far fewer then in the US. You just don’t have things like Subways, or Pizza Hut, or Dunkin, or Apple Bee’s in strip malls or regular malls.
I live in small town in PA, and probably see more restaurants and types of restaurants then in all 3 towns I lived in growing up in the Netherlands.
Amen, waiting tables was probably one of the hardest jobs I ever had, which include half a dozen factories, construction, delivering food to a slaughterhouse at 6am, etc. etc. It’s not only extremely hard at the physical level, it’s also really hard to do well mentally, pays for crap, and haunts your ass when you try to sleep. I’ve had a lifelong thing where any time I meet someone who waits tables (specifically that, doesn’t seem to be as prominent among back of house and bar staff) I ask them if they have the waiter nightmare. 100% do, and it’s more nights than not.
ShivaX
3469
Labor disputes belong here right?
And for the record:
I would guess there’s a non-zero number of young parents who looked at the poverty wages on offer at many restaurants and then at the cost of daycare, realized it’d be a wash, and just opted to stay home with their kids instead.
The Newshour did a series of shows on daycare in the US. (Spoiler alert it is not good, and it got worse during the pandemic.) Lots of daycares went out of business so for many women it is not just a case of it being unaffordable but also unavailable.
It’s a mystery on why they’re leaving
After 37 years, I still get forced to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Seven years ago, my wife passed away and I spent a lot of time in grief counseling, and I told the company, I don’t want to work 12 hours a day seven days a week. I ended up getting FMLA [Family Medical Leave Act unpaid leave], but they’re still having me do it sometimes. You come in at 7 a.m. and not only do you work eight hours, but when you get off at 3 p.m., they suicide (force you to work a double shift) you and have you come back at 3am. There’s 850 employees and it’s true for half or three quarters of them.
[…]
Frito-Lay has been told they need to fix this but unfortunately, when they bring in new people, they force the same schedule on them and they quit. Frito-Lay has waited so long to replace workers, and now Frito Lay has a horrible reputation in town so a lot of people won’t work here.
[…]
I can tell you that many people have had heart attacks in the heat at Frito-Lay since I’ve been here. One guy died a few years ago and the company had people pick him up, move him over to the side, and put another person in his spot without shutting the business down for two seconds.
“It got to the point where I was having chest pains, my chest was throbbing and my manager would say ‘you’re fine’ and wouldn’t let me leave, so I just quit,” she continued. “I would never work at McDonalds ever again.”
After Hernandez discovered she was bleeding, she notified her manager that she was having a medical emergency and could be miscarrying, and went home. She asked for medical leave, which was denied, according to a letter reviewed by Motherboard showing that Amazon had denied her request for Family and Medical Leave Act leave because she hadn’t worked enough hours.
I work in the freight industry and this sounds almost exactly like it
Everyone has been working overtime constantly, people are quiting left and right, hiring freeze in place so we aren’t replacing people, and when we finally get permission to replace people who quit it’s been weeks.
As it stands we’ve hired 15 people in the last 12 months and we’re still net negative.
Mandatory overtime is for 1 hour every day, bit you have to finish the trailer you’re working on so it usually turns into 2+ hours of OT everyday. Also the bosses have said that they’ll let you work all the way up to 3.9 hours of OT if you want, they just don’t want to give you a second lunch.
We can’t keep nurses either. On my unit, 4 have turned in their notice in the last 3 weeks. We can’t keep techs either. Everyone is mentally and physically exhausted. We don’t feel we’ve been compensated fairly for the work we put in and the danger we faced the last 18 months. Those who are able to are leaving to do travel nursing where they can make more than double what they are currently making. If admin looked at things logically and gave everyone a pay boost (or at least a raise to keep up with inflation) they wouldn’t have to pay travelers and hemorrhage experienced nurses.
I was charge nurse this week on my floor. One day when I was making the assignment for the next shift, we were short 3 nurses. Those 3 nurses we were short would normally care for 12-15 patients. So the remaining staff is left to pick up the burden and thus are getting more burnt out.
Guys- there will be a very real and very dangerous nursing shortage VERY soon if admin can’t get their crap together. This is dangerous to everyone who will need medical care any time soon.
I’m a physical therapist in a rehab. We had multiple covid outbreaks. My company gave everyone a blanket 10% pay cut at the start of the pandemic becuse they said they had to pay for additional PPE and covid testing supplies/costs because they were self insured for health insurance. They had company wide phone meeting evey 3 months to explain how hard they were working to get that 10% back to us. After a year, they sold the company to a larger national company and told us that out salaries would not be going back. At that point I was so burnt out of from all of the additional stress from the emergency covid procedures, wearing full ppe through 90 degree temperatures in the building, risking my and my family’s health, and being paid less than I did when I started out as a therapist 5 years prior. I wrote a letter to either renegotiate my salary or resign. They wouldn’t renegotiate, so I resigned. I now work per diem and am being paid fairly, but that year was pure hell and I still get depressed thinking about it.
I am not in human medicine. I am a veterinary technician. Obviously we didn’t have to worry about catching covid from our patients but this pandemic has the vet industry collapsing. People are awful and getting worse everyday. We have more new unsocialized puppies than I have ever seen in my 15 years in the field. We are not paid much more than minimum wage in some areas (in the US) and many small practices offer zero benefits.
Our thanks from our company?
Pizza and a few signs saying heros work here.
Many of us wanted to try to make the jump to human medicine but many have since left medicine all together because it’s just not worth it anymore.
At least they’re not Tyson Foods.
I don’t think that’s true.
If you look at restaurant visits, there are other countries:
As for restaurants per person, at least Japan has many more: Which country has the highest number of restaurants?
If you open it up to more informal eating venues, Spain has even more: Spain, the country with the most bars and restaurants in the world, asks to make them a World Heritage Site - Teller Report (we do use bars to eat or have a bite, these are open all day long).
Interesting. Honestly, it’s been over 2 and a half decades since I have been to Spain, so I have no clue about how restaurants are.
I just have my experience growing up and living in a small town in the Netherlands, and how it compared to the living a small town in the US, and how vastly different eating out is experienced.
And I don’t believe Germany or Belgium treats it all that differently.
Spain is pretty crazy. Here in Madrid we are at one bar/restaurant per 200 people. These are places where you eat. At 5500 people per square km, it gives you 27 or so places per sq km, or about 8 restaurants per straight km of street, or one per 125m of street.
I remember Japan also felt full of places to eat/drink when I visited. Felt very similar to home, actually.
As per your original point: waiters are paid pretty poorly, sadly.
