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Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by pydry on Friday October 09, 2020 @03:28PM (#24733507)
>No politician is going to get elected on a platform of higher rents and lower wages

Have you noticed how little the media focuses on the actual platforms of most politicians and focuses on the spectacle and drama of politics instead? That distraction serve a purpose (for the owners of said media).

Also, a platform of higher rents and lower wages will usually be called "lower taxes" and "freedom from onerous regulations". If you want to see more of this type of propaganda, look at https://www.aei.org/ for instance.

This type of thing falls apart when analyzed too closely, which is partly why the media will use it to drive soundbites but won't dive in too deep.

Politicians get elected on a platform of higher rents and lower wages because the donations they rely upon come from people who want it and the media coverage they rely upon come from people who want it.

Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by SamReidHughes on Friday October 09, 2020 @03:37PM (#24733603)
What.

Lowering taxes doesn't lower wages.

Higher rents are caused by regulations, not freedom from regulations. You have to ask permission for something as simple as building places to live.

Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by pydry on Friday October 09, 2020 @05:13PM (#24734507)
No, it raises rents. California rents can be traced back to prop 13, for instance.

Prop 13 wasn't run on a platform of raising rents, was it?

Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by xyzzyz on Friday October 09, 2020 @05:59PM (#24734842)
As bad as Prop 13 is for California, it's silly to put the whole blame on high rents on it. It's enough to note that rents are high in NYC, Boston, DC, and Seattle, and none of these places have Prop 13. If you can have skyrocketing rents without Prop 13, why would you think that it's Proposition 13 that's bearing the whole blame in California?
Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by pydry on Saturday October 10, 2020 @01:19PM (#24740371)
I wasn't putting the whole blame on it. I was citing it as one example.

And, Boston, NY, etc. rents are NOT as high as San Fran.

Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by SamReidHughes on Saturday October 10, 2020 @06:14PM (#24742259)
San Fran also has rent control, good weather, and high income jobs.

But while Prop 13 also affects politics around new construction, it's a far reach to use its long term effects on voter behavior to associate general concepts of lower taxes and less regulation with higher rents or lower wages.

Notably, it's a law that taxes people unequally.

Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by SamReidHughes on Friday October 09, 2020 @09:54PM (#24736175)
Lowering taxes on renters can raise rents, if new housing is banned, because renters then have more money to compete for limited housing with. Likewise, the recent corporate income tax cuts raised wages at the bottom.
Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by rayiner on Friday October 09, 2020 @04:05PM (#24733852)
If you can find an NYT article in the last two years using AEI as the source of a story I’ll buy you a nice bottle of whiskey. The media will systematically ignore sources like AEI, that use actual numbers, in favor of soundbites like the one in this Common Dreams article.
Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by pydry on Friday October 09, 2020 @05:14PM (#24734513)
the media ignores them does it? https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/05/26/capitalism-coronavirus...

i would be mildly surprised if "liberal" CNBC had even one person from common dreams on.

i'm not gonna dig through the new york times for examples where they cited somebody from AEI coz it's paywalled but it wouldn't surprise me if they, like CNBC do, routinely.

Re:If pay had kept pace with productivity gains, minimum wag... by rayiner on Friday October 09, 2020 @09:53PM (#24736170)
CNBC isn’t NBC, and it’s not a general-interest media outlet. It’s a specialized outlet for financial and business people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNBC