WHAT ARE THE REAL COSTS?

A friend of mine posted this first part.

Bernie Sanders said at the debate last night that he wants the minimum wage to be $15 per hour.
$15 X 40 hr week = $600
$600 X 52 weeks per yr = $31,200

Bernie Sanders wants free health care for all and was asked how he would pay for it. His answer was raise taxes to 52% on anybody making over $29,000 per year.

52% of $31,200 = $16,224 in tax
$31,200 - $16,224 = $14,976 is your pay
$14,976 ÷ 52 weeks = $288 per week
$288 ÷ 40 hr week = $7.20 per hour

Now here are a few things that came up in the discussion of this topic. The first was that it wouldn’t be 52% on ALL of that money but everything OVER $29,000. At least some people see it that way. Others say that he didn’t distinguish one way or the other so there is that.

But then consider a married couple that files jointly. If both are making this new minimum wage and take home $31,200 per year that means their total income is $64,400 together. Which means that while they both worked 40 hours per week, they would be taxed on $33,400 which is how much they make over that $29,000 standard. This means that their take home from that $64,400 would be $16,032 + $31,200 or $47,232. In essence one of those two people now works for just $16,042 per year or $7.72 per hour. All of this also ignores several other items. It ignores the fact that there is sales tax on every item you buy as well as state income tax which means even more of that “new money” will be taken away. It also puts people in a higher income tax bracket. In addition to that, by making that much more money (because the government doesn’t sort take home from gross pay) those same people would no longer receive government assistance like food stamps, Medicare, free lunch programs, etc.

It doesn’t stop there. You also have the businesses to consider that will then be forced to raise wages. Small businesses that are barely getting by and making little profit would suddenly be closed because they can’t afford to remain open. This has already happened in cities where they have raised the minimum wage. Think of the thousands of mom and pop stores that operate in your community suddenly gone because they simply can’t afford to stay open because of this. Or where they used to have 4 employees but now can only afford 2.

Keep going though. In order to pay employees this much do you think that business will just sit back and make a smaller profit? No. What they will do is raise the price of things to compensate what they now have to spend on their payroll. This means that they $1 burger you now buy because you can’t afford the Big Mac will costs you $2. You milk, your groceries, your clothes, your home, your car…all of it will rise in costs that are being passed on from the lowest on up due to the increase in wages. All of your costs will go up which in turn means that those who got a raise to $15 an hour will make no more than they did before because they are now paying more while having much of that money eaten up by taxes at the same time.

Here’s the kicker to this too. Do you know how many people are making minimum wage or below in this country? Forget the emotional baggage tossed out by politicians claiming that everyone is suffering and starving because they don’t make more than $15 an hour. The real number. Here it is. In 2018, 1.7 million workers, or 2% of all hourly paid, non-self-employed workers, earned wages at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25. That’s right. Less than 2% are those who will be making $15 instead of $7.25. It won’t be just those people getting raises though. Workers already making $15 will be upset if their wages aren’t raised as well. That means that those worker’s wages will rise too. So EVERYONE will be suffering the repercussions from that raise. EVERYONE will be paying more in taxes. Prices will rise for EVERYONE. All because someone like Sanders wants to claim that the vast majority of Americans are making less than they should at minimum wage…when it’s really just 2%.

And in case your memory is short, don’t forget that he wants to increase the number of bureaucrats in DC by increasing spending on a number of programs. He wants college to be free, medicine to be free, healthcare to be free and thinks that this tax increase will take care of it all. The kicker here is that no programs ever proposed by the government has ever resulted in the costs they predicted it would be. They’ve always been outlandishly more than they predicted. That means more taxes and higher taxes. It means suddenly that level set at $29,000 isn’t quite where it should be for them to take in enough money. So they change that to $25,000. See how this works? And those “wealthy 1%” that he rails against? No politician will change the laws to block the loopholes they use to get out of paying their “fair share” (you know, the ones who currently pay in as much as the lower 95% does). Businesses will move to countries where they can pay lower wages which results in them closing here which means more people aren’t even making that minimum wage Bernie is cheering for.

So since Bernie and Elizabeth and Joe continue to talk about how much that minimum wage needs to rise maybe you should consider the implications of what follows. Because obviously they don’t. All they’re doing is selling you the deed to a land that they don’t even own, a piece of property that they will gladly pass off to you before they high tail it out of town.