I heard to pass the minimum wage increase there has to be a tax break for busineses.
My question is does anyone think it's possible to replace tax cuts for corporations with tax breaks as long as they have an American work force?
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Without questions there are no answers, without answers???????

They haven't actually done it yet, they are just talking about. Tax breaks for small businesses that is. I think that's a crock. If you know they can't afford it, don't raise the wage. It would be like decreeing a rise in the price of milk and then giving poor people a tax credit. It's just such a roundabout, inefficient way of doing things, and it's discriminatory as well.

Laws should apply to everyone equally, regardless of income. There shouldn't be seperate laws for seperate income groups.

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chicken butt

presluc, you're asking a good question.

I've always been a self-employed individual, running my own long term care insurance firm for over 30 years until I retired from that, now running several family businesses since my father died in 1996. Whether it's a small business (like mine) or a large corporation when it comes to staff, minimum wage is the minimum pardon the play on words) that should be paid. We never paid "minimum wage"; we always paid double or better than double minimum wage; and offered health care benefits, and all of the holidays off, and sick days, and, and, and, and we are just small potatoes. It, in our minds, would have been reprehensible to do any less. In the end, doing so didn't cut into our profits, it probably helped them to grow. "What goes around, comes around"

Yes, big corporations can afford it. Will doing so honor their commitment to their stockholders, to maximize their return on their investment? Strictly from a dollars and cents perspective, probably not. Should those corporations be answering to a higher moral value, i.e. doing the right thing for their employees without whom their businesses would fail? Absolutely, in my opinion.

A major mistake made by America, begun by Ronald Reagan and brought to its "zenith" by Bill Clinton was thre passage of NAFTA. It absolutely " Didn't HAFTA be NAFTA", and shouldn't have been. Instead of our seeing more free trade come into the US we have witnessed massive thousands of jobs being sent overseas, allowing big US corporations to "outsource" minimum wage jobs for slave wages.

Ever call Microsoft for tech support? You get to speak to India. I live in the Pacific Northwest, Billy Gates country, and saw thousands, literally thousands of jobs go from the "Silicon Forest" east of Seattle to India.

While I think that what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing to help find "cures" to diseases like AIDS, what they've done to undermine the American worker is obscene. And it isn't just Microsoft, by a long shot!

We need to start honoring our own, American workers and the American economy or we will see the downfall of this country as a World Power with whom the rest of the world must reckon, within the next few years. We have already lost much of the respect that we once had as "The World's Superpower".

With the advent of the "Baby Boomer's" accessing our major entitlements such as Medicare (already broke), Medicaid (already broke), and Social Security (going broke fast - even SS now admits in writing on the quarterly statement they send out that by 2043 SS payments will represent 73% of what they pay today) we are already facing a real serious possibility of the rapid decline of our economy.

We are already witnessing the end of "The American Era". It isn't a maybe, we are in decline. We must stop sending American jobs overseas, start paying more to our employees (that will result in more tax base being paid into our US coffers), and stop avoiding "speaking" honestly with the American Public, or we should all start learning Chinese, because they, and many other countries who are buying up and loaning money to America in such massive amounts will "own" us. We need to take some damn fast action or America, as we have known it, will cease to exist.

In my opinion.

I meant to address one other issue you raised, presluc.

In my humble opinion, as a Capitalist and small business owner, we do not need to give big corporations more tax breaks in order to afford to raise the minimum wage.

We do need to repeal NAFTA. Tomorrow!

THis is part of the demos 100 hr agenda, but please keep in mind it passed the Houise now it goes to Senate and on to Bush who will veto it and then the override goes into action. Could take awhile, I would not worry about it until they finish playing ping-pong with it.

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Whether you can afford the minimum wage isn't a function of size, it's a function of profitability. There are many big corporations who are losing money or very close to losing money and many small businesses that are insanely profitable.

That's why any law that effectively exempts small business from the minimum wage is discriminatory.

I work for a big corporation and have a smaller competitor a block away. That smaller competitor is more profitable(and BTW, doesn't even pay minimum wage). If Congress passes a dumb bill giving them a tax break, that business owner who cheats his employees out of minimum wage is going to get even richer, while I have to cut down on labor. Now that doesn't mean I'll be firing anyone, but it does mean I'll be cutting back on hours worked.

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chicken butt

Here's the deal: if you can't afford the minimum wage, don't hire anyone. You can't afford to purchase labor.

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chicken butt

Business plans are simple instruments; plug wage increases into operating overhead and use margin requirements to force product price. It's either salable or it isn't.

As to tax breaks, why dilute tax revenue in what amounts to government subsidization of private industry?

Way too late on NAFTA, the Mexico/Canada giant highway is already beginning. America complains about illegal immigration taking jobs Americans won't take, so leave the labor in Mexico and use NAFTA to distribute the products. I wonder what rednecks will think about Mexicans from Mexican/US companies in Mexico legally staffing distribution points on that highway.

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These are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. ~Groucho Marx~

Laws should apply to everyone like Haliburtian{misuse of funds no bid contracts} and Exxon {no windfall tax for us but we will take that tax cut}
I could go on but why bother.
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Ask no questions get no answers.

You make some good points, and as far as Nafta,and the fact that I am Democrat you should have read my letter I sent to Mr Clinton compared to my words the Monica scandle and impeachment process were being kind.
And I am still a Democrat,and not to take up for nasty nafta, but most of the outsourceing American jobs are going third world Islands and India and Japan China and the oreint, AND they're NOT all blue collar, unskilled jobs if ya know what I mean.