re: #74 Wendell Zurkowitz (slave to the waffle light)

I do not like the fact that many minimum wage workers still receive government aid to the tune of up to $150 billion annually, which means that taxpayers are de facto subsidizing wages.

But that’s a good idea. Some people just cannot do work that will earn them $20 an hour. If that’s the price of their labor, then nobody’s going to buy it.

Some can’t earn $15 an hour, for the same reason.

Hence, the earned income tax and other subsidies. We don’t want the working poor, who are doing their meager best, to suffer undue financial hardship simply because their skills are not sufficient to sustain them. Neither do we want them to just drop out and be, and feel, entirely useless. The earned income tax ought to be expanded, so that married couples can collect what they would have collected if they were simply living together, and so that the implicit marginal tax rate on extra earnings is lower…that is, the benefits don’t phase out so fast. If benefits under EITC are cut by $1 for each extra $2 earned, it’s an incentive killer.