• p3n@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    How is it that legislatures can pass tax law which use %s that automatically scale with income/sales/property values, but they can’t figure out a way to pass wage laws that use %s to automatically scale with COL/inflation? Imagine hardcoding a taxable $ amount, and then not updating it for 30 years…

    • Patches@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      7 months ago

      We tie a lot of things to Poverty Level.

      This is why Poverty Level hasn’t changed to match anything close to resembling reality in decades.

      We would just do the same thing. I wish he didn’t but we already changed how Inflation is measured in the 1970s to remove Housing, Allow Canned Chicken instead of actual chicken. It’s all a big pissing game from on high.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      That’s part of how it gets passed. The problem with setting it with an auto-increase is that it creates a situation where we might not ever pass another law about it because if we get it wrong on the high side Democrats will block any change and if we get it wrong on the low side Republicans will block any change.

      A few years ago when the Fight for Fifteen was at its height, Mitt Romney proposed a minimum wage that auto-increased with inflation and he put the starting rate at…$10. And included some crazy cuts to Social Security and stuff so it was never going to happen but that’s what I mean about the numbers being so far apart. $10/hr is so low that the left flank of the Democrats would reject it, which means you need more Republicans, and you’ll just never get enough Republicans for a minimum wage increase.