Wouldn't everyone else up the scale also need a pay raise? If the cashier makes $10 an hour, and the manager makes $15 an hour, then when the cashier gets bumped up to $15 an hour, the manager would need to be bumped up to about $23 an hour to maintain the same ratio, right?

Otherwise, why take on the responsibilities of management, if you're going to make the same as the cashier?

Currantly in Washington state 15$ an hour is way too little, espcially in the area around Seattle/Tacoma. Housing is going through the roof, many can't even afford an Apt at $20 per hour. By mid 2020 just 15$ will be starvation wages by then. But then that''s plan, cause mass starvation turn eveyone into the extreme poor. And even those who are employed many are part time or in jobs via vendors with no benifits, and can only get contract work anymore. Which means they are out of a job every 3-12 months and looking again. This country is becoming a nightmare along with most of the world. But that's the top 1%'s plan huh.

Raising the minimum wage will certainly benefit some individuals, but for many the primary benefit will eventually go to their landlord in the form of higher apartment rental charges. Because of systemic problems with tax policies, broad increases in incomes of any group are capitalized into higher land values, which are passed on in the form of higher apartment rents and higher residential property prices. The group that will benefit most are young working adults living with parents (unless their parents decide to increase whatever they are charging their adult children to live "at home." To really benefit lower-income individuals and households, what is needed are policies that dramatically increase the supply of affordable rental housing, first, and ownership opportunities, second.

The traditional approach since the end of the Second World War has been to provide public subsidies to developers or to use broad-based taxes and revenue sharing to construct and manage publicly-owned rental housing. This has proven ineffective in the face of a rapidly increasing population, and, in particular, the dramatic increase in single-person households. Moreover, Republicans have voted against increased funding for such housing subsidies.

The one real solution to the problem is offered in the form of changes in tax policy. Local governments and school districts should move over some period of time to a land-only property tax base. What this will do is reduce the potential to profit from land speculation and increase the annual cost of holding land idle. Thus, as more land is brought to the market and developed to its highest, best use, land prices will come down making it less costly to construct housing affordable to more individuals while still maintaining acceptable profit margins to developers.

The positive effects would be further enhanced by elimination of the beneficial tax treatment of so-called "capital gains" over the rates imposed on wages and salaries. The rate differential actually rewards gains derived from speculation and passive investment. Actual capital goods (e.g., buildings, machinery, technologies, etc.) do not resell for more than their cost of acquisition. They depreciate in resale value over time and in functional utility (unless here is a constant systems upgrades and detailed attention to maintenance).

More could be done to reward the production of housng (and other goods) over gains from what former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz and other insightful economists describe as the "rent-seeking" incentives vested interests have managed to secure under our tax laws for many decades. For example, tax simplifcation of federal and state individual income taxation, combined with real progressivity would capture more rent-derived income while lessening the tax burden on earned income.

Here's the 2012 third party debate introducing Jill Stein, moderated in part by Thom on RT.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h4HJBE62IzI

Hillary is clearly with the plan. All she has going for her is that she isn't Trump. She doesn't let anybody forget that too. Seems her campaign slogan is, "Hillary, she's not as bad as Trump!"
But the way Wall Street, with their buying of the election and nomination process, has it laid out, that's all she needs. That's exactly the set up.
I recommend Jill Stein. She's as good and as capable as Bernie, pure on the issues and accepts no money from business or superpacs, nobody Bernie wouldn't take from. There's no need to try to get Bernie to run independent.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fr09AFDPTpA

You have to love Thom's revisionist history. For starters we are not now nor have we ever been a democracy. Democracy is the tyranny of the majority and the antithisis of freedom. You have to love his cherry picking of quotes of the likes of Thomas Jefferson. Example? "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..." Of course in this country we have Due process so first you would have to prove that the wealth was a threat to the state in a court of law. In the same letter he condemed double taxation on the same dollar earned and was anamently against the "Progressive Tax" My rebuttle can be found here.

https://veritasvincitprolibertate.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/thom-hartmans...

Ou812, you're right, they want the cheap labor coming in from south of the border and their "free trade" and so on. This is all part of the strategy of moving the American political spectrum incrementally to the right every election by having Fortune 500 contribute to both parties and that way determine the nominees of each party. They then nominate a Darth Vader, monster Republican and a corporate shill Democrat, and so, force a choice between evils.

Wall Street and Fortune 500 don't need a crazy guy, they're happy with a corporate shill.

Bernie gave us what your endorsement of him gave us.....absolutely NOTHING,

or WORSE, the EVIL of.....Hillary Clinton.

Bernie needs to walk away NOW and join Jill Stein......but no one is covering that

or asking about it.....

The next four years......NO HOPE, NO CHANGE. Enjoy!!!!

The real question is; faced with potential copy cat exits, will Europe ostracize the UK now to teach other potential ship jumpers that there will be no reward or "free trade" with traitors?

It is perfectly understandable why Britain opted to get out and retrieve their own autonomy...but do the British know what that means in the post combined ramifications to both the EU and England?

The smart course for the Union is to turn their backs on the UK, restricting trade, commerce and tourism until England is on its knees begging forhiveness..but that "stiff upper lip" is notoriously stubborn..if jobs an opportunities were in short supply IN the EU, they be scarce as hens teeth in the near future.

Britain's failure to understand their own gambit was made clear when the UK assumed all the benefits of EU membership would still be theirs but all of the burdens would fall just to member countries.

It will be interesting to see just how big a stick Brussels plans to wield and where on England's backside they plan to strike first..or maybe England just needs a time out?

Gee Thom, thank you for telling everyone what they already know..now how about sharing the plan for reining them in?

BTW, I'd like the extra 15k a year it costs for me to have my health insurance. You know, the insurance I and everyone else is forced to have so that hospitals and insurance companies can get rich and build mega medical campuses while they diagnose bogus illnesses to justify tons of tests and dangerous surgeries.

Before Obama care, my insurance was 4300/ year with a 250.00 per person out of pocket, a 20 dollar Co pay or an 80/20 plan...I could choose any provider I wanted as long as they were in network, out of network my insurance paid 80% and I paid 20% until the max of 2500.00 or 4000.00 per family.

NOW
.....I pay over 12k a year, my personal deductible is 4k and the insurance company pays nothing until my deductible is reached. Out of pocket is 10,500 per year.

So basically, I pay a lot more and have no insurance...because I am not spending 6K just so they start splitting bills with me 80/20.

People should start insurance Co ops..pay a nominal yearly fee to meet insurance requirements, then f... the government. OBAMA CARE is about a captive consumer for insurance companies and the uninsured have been duped into thinking they now have great coverage...they now have a chance to get butchered or a nosocomial infection and die from it like the rest of us.

I agree with Thom, going back to the "highest marginal income tax rates" that existed before Reagan's trickle down swindle would be a very wise move and might even help us avoid the next Great Depression.

Don't count on Trump/Pence doing this though. During the Bush/Cheney Great Recession, Mike Pence a hardcore Teafascist, twice refused to endorse unemployment benefits if it meant that taxes went up on only millionaires.

Unrelated: Last night I noticed that NBC news spent the first six minutes talking about how brilliant Trump is for creating suspense around his VP pick, comparing it to his TV shows. Hillary then got two minutes of nothingness.