SeaGypsy wrote:1- how can government fund proper decent social programs such as safety net & single payer health, without raising taxes?
If the government would pass the kind of taxes on the rich that Australia has then okay -- I'd sign up for a FIFTY cent gas tax.
Australia has carbon taxes, but it's also got like a $15 or $20 minimum wage. And it's got free universal healthcare, nobody ever has a bill to pay, and that's funded with something like a flat 1.5% tax that everyone pays -- including billionaires and financial rich (if I understand it correctly).
So okay, that's all groovy. If we want to be Australia then we just need the whole package, that's all I'm saying. But not just the carbon tax part. That's not fair.
2- so tax the top few percentile more. How does this support wealthy Americans staying & investing in America?
Watch the last debate and listen to Bernie talk about how truly gargantuan the financial sector wealth is. I think they could afford a little tax, more than some elderly senior citizen struggling to survive on $12,000 a year social security. Or some 25 year old working 3 part time jobs, to try to come up with $20k a year and find money to fill the gas tank up with to get to work, and somehow pay for childcare too.
3- increase minimum wage by about double.
And that's all I'm saying, here. A gas tax would be groovy if Obama had passed working class living wage FIRST.
He campaigned on $12 an hour. Of course Republicans were against it -- but O could have fought for it. But he didn't. He never really made it a priority, and it's been 7 years now.
So okay, pass the $15 living wage -- then okay, put the oil tax on too, and while we're at it throw in a hedge fund tax as well and then things would be fair all around.
Offshoring is a huge threat to the US economy. Doubling minimum wages would simply force inflation, negating the nominal pay rise- well after the ship has sailed- in the well fared waterways to Chindea.
Therefore Seagypsy, if that's how it is and we're competing with China -- then we cannot impose carbon taxes on our economy, that China would not on theirs.
I rest my case.
But I disagree with you though -- big corporations over here, bix box stores and corporate chains, they could put in a $15 minimum wage and then progressives could have their carbon tax too, and then it would work out and the main street economy would grow (with the wages stimulus) and yet there would also be incentive there too, for green energy.