John Edwards tax plan create 5 million jobs

[JI7]

<(Des Moines-AP) -- North Carolina Senator John Edwards says his tax cut plan would create 50-thousand jobs in Iowa and five million around the country.

The Democratic presidential hopeful was in Des Moines today to give details on his plan to improve the quality of life for middle-class Americans.

Edwards says President Bush has divided the country according to wealth. He says a select few get big tax breaks while the rest of America does the work and pays the taxes.

He says he would repeal President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy while preserving tax breaks for working families.>

http://www.kcrg.com/article.aspx?art_id=73165&cat_id=123

[maddezmom]

1. kick for Edwards

:kick:

<<Edwards says President Bush has divided the country according to wealth. He says a select few get big tax breaks while the rest of America does the work and pays the taxes.>>

more truth from John Edwards. :)

[spooky3]

2. I hope he will have a good showing after all the time he is spending

in Iowa.

His proposal to tax capital gains at the same rates as ordinary (wage) income is just, and it is NOT going to have the adverse effects the Repugs fear (other than take some $ out of the overstuffed pockets of a few).

[kcwayne]

3. These tax plans don't address the problem

Edwards is proposing tax incentives for companies that keep their labor force in the US. Companies that are looking strictly at the bottom line will still find it more attractive to outsource. Here's why:

Assume labor costs for a company run at 30% of the product's end price, and that net taxable profit runs 5% (this are typical percentages).

For a $100 product, labor runs $30, and taxes will be $5.

By outsourcing to China or India, where people make $75 a month instead of $1120 for minimum wage employees, the company's labor costs would drop to $2.67.

After shipping and import taxes (assuming the company is not importing from Mexico or Canada), the net savings are around $25.

Even if the tax incentive were to completely eliminate taxes, it is still more cost effective to go overseas and secure slave labor. And this analysis is based on minimum wage, so it is even more compelling for companies that have been paying between $10 and $20 per hour for labor.

It took the Civil War to disconnect the plantation owners from their "right" to use slaves to maintain profits. Even then, they created the equivalent of what is happening in China and India, which is a repressed labor force with no rights, or compenstation that provides for anything but the most basic of needs.

Our corporations are incented to take advantage of the unfortunate state of powerless people throughout the world, and our government is incented to help them institutionalize this oppression. The only way this system of virtual slavery will be stopped is when nations throughout the world set equivalent mimimum standards for how labor is to be compensated. Until the playing field of the world's economies are driven by innovation, efficiency, and creativity as opposed to who can provide the most easily manipulated and starved work force, working for nothing out of survival necessity, we will see the standard of living in the US decline to levels not seen in 150 years.

The problem of industrial slavery goes way beyond tweaking with tax codes in the US. Global solutions are required.