Businesses Fret Over Life in a Bernie Presidency

[Squeeshy Keety 9,935]

"Paying for things costs money, Bernie  I am very smart you see."

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

9 minutes ago, JusKeepBreathin said:

What about raising the minimum wage. That's why most small business owners tend to vote Republican. That affects small business in a large way. They are the ones most affected by an increase in min wage. A small business (let's say bakery) can afford three employees at $10 an hour but only two at $15 an hour. 

Then there is rent control. That's going to bring construction down and affect small businesses like general contractors.

These are kind of conservative boogeymen actually. We've been asking these kinds of questions for decades and there's plenty of data on them. Increasing the minimum wage actually doesn't inherently destroy or weaken small businesses. There's actually data showing it could benefit them done in the last few years. Even Bernie knows that the impacts of a minimum wage hike must happen in different ways though, its not over night, and some parts of the country would be able to sustain that quicker than others. In fact, most minimum wage increases to my knowledge take place slowly over several years specific to the economy of a certain area in order to account for this. There's no reason why a federal minimum wage increase needn't do the same. (Also, several states already have minimum wages hire than the federal minimum wage and they weren't ravaged by the death of small business. This is one of IMO, the least controversial progressive policies to fight for)

But if you look at his entire agenda, there are ways in which he is working to improve the success of small businesses in many ways. If M4A passed for example, it would be a HUGE boon to small business owners because of the massive amount of money saved by not having to provide healthcare to your workers. It would also allow more people to simply start businesses because the biggest barrier to that is either not having your own healthcare in the process of establishing the business, or not being able to afford to offer it to employees. 

I could go on. His platform is very much crafted with small business in mind and the brunt of expenses taxes, etc. will affect wealthy large business owners (not workers at large businesses).

Rent Control is a trickier subject, but if there are problems with it, I suspect it would be about the potential loss of tenants from landlords and would require some kind of additional policies to buttress it, but it wouldn't be the death of construction itself or small business.

 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

1 hour ago, Economy said:

99% of businesses but not 99% of workers and economic output. There's tones of smaller businesses out there with only 1-5 employees kind of thing so there's a huge number of listed companies... Even self employed can be considered a business depending what ur doing...

 

Saying it's 99% of businesses in that wording makes it sound like it's the vast majority of the economy

 

That detail is extremely important if ur gonna measure impact

I had originally included that its around 60% of the workforce, but I decided not to because the point is that Bernie's plans aren't bad for workers in general regardless of whether they work at small or large businesses, and small and medium sized businesses will benefit as well. "Bad for business" would be an inaccurate phrase then and I didn't see the point of cowtowing to the point that "large businesses employ people too!" because it seemed likely I would have to elaborate on this point 2 or 3 times  

The idea politically that anything is "bad for business" is often weaponized politically. Some things genuinely are ofc, but too often it is a way for Republicans to essentialize burden on wealthy businesses and their owners down to the workers themselves (voters) against Democrats, who they have spent a century propagandizing as anti-business, anti-entrepreneurship, anti-American, pro-taxes, etc. In the case of Bernie Sanders, its referring to ideas that actually empower workers and small business owners. "Bad for business" so often really just means "bad for the 1%"Exorbitantly wealthy business owners are a vast minority of the country" So, "99% of businesses" is more accurate to the scope of that message, but yes, large companies employ people too even if the # of businesses there is small. 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

My broader point is this: "Dems be bad for business" is going to be the Republican framing of any Democratic candidate because they rely on that cultural idea to win elections. "Business" itself is romanticized, when the most significant current benefits and protections for businesses go to the least amount of businesses, large ones, and furthermore rarely translate to amazing conditions for the vast majority of their workers either. Bernie is pro business as a whole but anti monopolization antiunfair policies that benefit the already wealthy-successfuly, and most  importantly has the most pro worker platform in the field.

Trump's approval rating with prospective business owning voters actually went negative in 2019, so this is a spot Dems could swoop in on if they ran Sanders... but will they?  

[JusKeepBreathin 19,311]

48 minutes ago, ItsTommyBitch said:

These are kind of conservative boogeymen actually. We've been asking these kinds of questions for decades and there's plenty of data on them. Increasing the minimum wage actually doesn't inherently destroy or weaken small businesses. There's actually data showing it could benefit them done in the last few years. Even Bernie knows that the impacts of a minimum wage hike must happen in different ways though, its not over night, and some parts of the country would be able to sustain that quicker than others. In fact, most minimum wage increases to my knowledge take place slowly over several years specific to the economy of a certain area in order to account for this. There's no reason why a federal minimum wage increase needn't do the same. (Also, several states already have minimum wages hire than the federal minimum wage and they weren't ravaged by the death of small business. This is one of IMO, the least controversial progressive policies to fight for)

But if you look at his entire agenda, there are ways in which he is working to improve the success of small businesses in many ways. If M4A passed for example, it would be a HUGE boon to small business owners because of the massive amount of money saved by not having to provide healthcare to your workers. It would also allow more people to simply start businesses because the biggest barrier to that is either not having your own healthcare in the process of establishing the business, or not being able to afford to offer it to employees. 

I could go on. His platform is very much crafted with small business in mind and the brunt of expenses taxes, etc. will affect wealthy large business owners (not workers at large businesses).

Rent Control is a trickier subject, but if there are problems with it, I suspect it would be about the potential loss of tenants from landlords and would require some kind of additional policies to buttress it, but it wouldn't be the death of construction itself or small business.

 

Gurl what small businesses have full time employees? I guarantee you it's not the 99% that you speak of. Most small business don't offer healthcare to their part time employees. I'm not sure why you keep using that as a selling point for small business owners, because a real small business owner will laugh their head off on the other side of the screen. 

If you are a small business with several full time employees with health care then you are generating the amount needed for Bernie's tax plan to increase your taxes. It's just plain math.  

Also minimum wages affect big cities differently then rural small ones. Most the places where $15 min wage is available are big cities. 

"Huge boom to small businesses" 

[Economy 52,847]

6 hours ago, ItsTommyBitch said:

I had originally included that its around 60% of the workforce, but I decided not to because the point is that Bernie's plans aren't bad for workers in general regardless of whether they work at small or large businesses, and small and medium sized businesses will benefit as well. "Bad for business" would be an inaccurate phrase then and I didn't see the point of cowtowing to the point that "large businesses employ people too!" because it seemed likely I would have to elaborate on this point 2 or 3 times  

The idea politically that anything is "bad for business" is often weaponized politically. Some things genuinely are ofc, but too often it is a way for Republicans to essentialize burden on wealthy businesses and their owners down to the workers themselves (voters) against Democrats, who they have spent a century propagandizing as anti-business, anti-entrepreneurship, anti-American, pro-taxes, etc. In the case of Bernie Sanders, its referring to ideas that actually empower workers and small business owners. "Bad for business" so often really just means "bad for the 1%"Exorbitantly wealthy business owners are a vast minority of the country" So, "99% of businesses" is more accurate to the scope of that message, but yes, large companies employ people too even if the # of businesses there is small. 

I don't know if it's bad or not whatever I wasn't really commenting on that

 

I don't know enough details on USA premium programs when it comes to healthcare expenses to employees to be able to comment here on that aspect

 

I merely meant that stating the number of businesses being small (99%) misleadingly makes bigger businesses seem irrelevant to economy

 

And on top of that you bolded that part so... U only emphasised that point even more that way

[Economy 52,847]

6 hours ago, ItsTommyBitch said:

These are kind of conservative boogeymen actually. We've been asking these kinds of questions for decades and there's plenty of data on them. Increasing the minimum wage actually doesn't inherently destroy or weaken small businesses. There's actually data showing it could benefit them done in the last few years. Even Bernie knows that the impacts of a minimum wage hike must happen in different ways though, its not over night, and some parts of the country would be able to sustain that quicker than others. In fact, most minimum wage increases to my knowledge take place slowly over several years specific to the economy of a certain area in order to account for this. There's no reason why a federal minimum wage increase needn't do the same. (Also, several states already have minimum wages hire than the federal minimum wage and they weren't ravaged by the death of small business. This is one of IMO, the least controversial progressive policies to fight for)

But if you look at his entire agenda, there are ways in which he is working to improve the success of small businesses in many ways. If M4A passed for example, it would be a HUGE boon to small business owners because of the massive amount of money saved by not having to provide healthcare to your workers. It would also allow more people to simply start businesses because the biggest barrier to that is either not having your own healthcare in the process of establishing the business, or not being able to afford to offer it to employees. 

I could go on. His platform is very much crafted with small business in mind and the brunt of expenses taxes, etc. will affect wealthy large business owners (not workers at large businesses).

Rent Control is a trickier subject, but if there are problems with it, I suspect it would be about the potential loss of tenants from landlords and would require some kind of additional policies to buttress it, but it wouldn't be the death of construction itself or small business.

 

Im gonna reply to this cuz my Province did both. Big minimum wage hikes and rent control

 

On minimum wage while it did not cause the boom in consumption or trickle up effect in wages some hoped for... It was not a mass small business killer either... And the bottom 30% was better off too

 

But on rent control I have to disagree

 

We literally DID get a collapse in rental construction and recent eases in rental control laws have been followed by a surge in permit applications for rental construction as soon as soon as rental control laws were mostly removed

 

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/toronto-set-for-record-apartment-surge-after-rent-control-lifted-1.1286320

 

Trust me. U don't want rental controls especially u live in an area where population is growing and you need new supply

 

Most policies have pros and cons and can be hard to determine if it's a net positive or a net negative

 

Rent controls is one I strongly believe is almost always a net negative 

 

 

 

 

[HorusRa2 5,005]

I have no sympathy. People need to understand that Businesses and corporate interests do not care about human interests. They don't care about their employees well being. They treat us like cogs in a machine and when we get sick and die, they replace us with new cogs. The fact also remains that there was a time in the US history where these businesses paid much more in taxes and the economy was just fine. I get that we're now in a globalist economy and things have changed since the 1950's but to say that corporations and billionaires should pay less than everybody else is asinine. With our current makeup of our political establishment, this is only going to continue and many of you will end up either getting multiple jobs, or you're going to go bankrupt through medical bills within the next 20-30 years. The cost of healthcare and housing are making everything increasingly more gentrified and unless there's a fundamental shift in the way the power structure distribution in this country changes, it will only get worse. 

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates

https://bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Free_Resources/Federal-Income-Tax-Rates.aspx

 

 

[Andy McQueen 4,484]

People need to educate themselves. 

https://youtu.be/k79wCaFgU40

[Andy McQueen 4,484]

Neoliberal: "Socialism never works"

Me: "Scandinavian countries are socialist and they're doing great" 

Neoliberal: "They're not socialist. They're a capitalist country with strong welfare policies" 

Me: "Then let's adopt those policies" 

Neoliberal: "No, that's socialism"

[Economy 52,847]

1 minute ago, HorusRa2 said:

I have no sympathy. People need to understand that Businesses and corporate interests do not care about human interests. They don't care about their employees well being. They treat us like cogs in a machine and when we get sick and die, they replace us with new cogs. The fact also remains that there was a time in the US history where these businesses paid much more in taxes and the economy was just fine. I get that we're now in a globalist economy and things have changed since the 1950's but to say that corporations and billionaires should pay less than everybody else is asinine. With our current makeup of our political establishment, this is only going to continue and many of you will end up either getting multiple jobs, or you're going to go bankrupt through medical bills within the next 20-30 years. The cost of healthcare and housing are making everything increasingly more gentrified and unless there's a fundamental shift in the way the power structure distribution in this country changes, it will only get worse. 

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates

https://bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Free_Resources/Federal-Income-Tax-Rates.aspx

 

 

Ive been an open supporter of the rich paying more of their fair share 

 

The OP is about business in general tho not just the most successful Corporations

 

And I still think Capital Income tax hikes are the best ways to target the rich

[Economy 52,847]

2 minutes ago, Andy McQueen said:

Neoliberal: "Socialism never works"

Me: "Norway is socialist and they're doing great" 

Neoliberal: "They're not socialist. They're a capitalist country with strong welfare policies" 

Me: "Then let's adopt those policies" 

Neoliberal: "No, that's socialism"

Norway is an unfair example. A lot of Oil revenue per capita

 

Denmark, Sweden, Finland... I think those are better arguments to make for skeptics because then they can't use the argument that they only got really rich cuz of resources

 

But in any case Bernie's ideas do go beyond any Scandinavian Country tho so it's not the same

 

His taxes proposals are more agressive than these strong welfare Countries

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

1 hour ago, Economy said:

Im gonna reply to this cuz my Province did both. Big minimum wage hikes and rent control

On minimum wage while it did not cause the boom in consumption or trickle up effect in wages some hoped for... It was not a mass small business killer either... And the bottom 30% was better off too

But on rent control I have to disagree

We literally DID get a collapse in rental construction and recent eases in rental control laws have been followed by a surge in permit applications for rental construction as soon as soon as rental control laws were mostly removed

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/toronto-set-for-record-apartment-surge-after-rent-control-lifted-1.1286320

Trust me. U don't want rental controls especially u live in an area where population is growing and you need new supply

Most policies have pros and cons and can be hard to determine if it's a net positive or a net negative

Rent controls is one I strongly believe is almost always a net negative 

 

 

I agree that Rent Control is dicey. It needs several other provisions to be effective and should be as comprehensive as possible because it can skew badly. That's probably things like investments into social housing initiatives, subsidies and other incentives, etc.  It's not an issue I spend the bulk of my time researching, but just looking for like an hour has told me that it more than most proposals has been more overtly negative than a mixed bag on the specific issue of decreased # of rental units - as you have shown with this graph.

Just going on a limb though, socialists would probably tell you that focusing on the  changes to overall rent increases than # of rents themselves is more accurate to judging the success rates of rent control initiatives. Bernie's policies are mostly social democracy, but he is still an *actual* socialist in terms of his values. I have no reason to believe he doesnt, like me, see the point of rent control in a different light than many capitalist economists, so a strategy to implement rent control may be drastically different under his administration than the attempts in your home or even in Europe.

For one thing, I'd bet socialists would argue that the turnover rates of rentals,  people getting priced out of where they live, etc. has a social impact as well as an economic one, and we should prioritize the protection of renters as well as the social cohesion of a community/neighborhood over the potential economic gains of the landlord.  Landlords should still be able to increase rent etc., but it should probably be related to the cost of maintenance and production, and not arbitrarily so. If landlords are able to add "improvements" that are entirely unnecessary, but are a justification to increase rent, that's abusive. Similarly, increased value to rental units can sometimes be justified in a gentrification-esque "this place is popular because of who lives here now" for example is probably not a good model to look at for the best interests of an actual community, even if it is for the best interests of the finances of individual landlords. In that sense, I would argue that renters probably need more flat out rights in general in these situations (social housing investment >>)

This is obviously an important issue, they all are. But I would say that taking the work being done in some cities around the country, reflecting, and working to a national level on this issue is certainly an area of compromise that I could see Bernie making. This isn't Day 101 propose it to Congress kind of stuff. I like the idea of national rent control, but it may simply be better to work this one more incrementally with this being the end goal. Idk, maybe other Bernie people disagree with me. Everything is connected, and even if Bernie's theory of change ends up super effective and we end up being able to leverage power over republicans in Congress, we still won't be able to pass massive reform on everything, so yeah.

Also, we have an influx of millennials and soon to be Gen-Zers by the end of this decade who will be in this market of housing, all of whom are much much less equipped to deal with this issue financially than previous generations and other ageing populations were, so I would say for that reason alone, this approach deserves a second look. (Millennials rn have like 14% of the wealth Baby Boomers had at our age, and Gen X are lagging behind as well. Don't know how Gen-Z is expected to fare yet, but I doubt its good.)

My somewhat informed take.

[Woolfsmck 2,763]

2 hours ago, Andy McQueen said:

Neoliberal: "Socialism never works"

Me: "Scandinavian countries are socialist and they're doing great" 

Neoliberal: "They're not socialist. They're a capitalist country with strong welfare policies" 

Me: "Then let's adopt those policies" 

Neoliberal: "No, that's socialism"

Dictorship and despotism works pretty well for Russia,Libya,Iran, and Cuba … ect. ect. ect.. 

hey … 

Lets adopt those policies …  

[Woolfsmck 2,763]

Uhm  small business are usually 10 people or less, family owned .. and less than 100k a year …. 

The bigger you get the harder it is to make a profit … 

Super big companies make money on volume .. they can't control every employee or even care about each and every person .. 

So, putting a blanket policy on 'business' show just how uninformed some people really are.... 

I object to the 'tax the rich'  'increase this tax or that fee' to solve the problems facing the US or any free  economy … 

Use the current tax revenue better … abuse and corruption are killing it for those who actually play by the rules … 

Just ask all the immigrants waiting legally for their turn …