Labor Law Proposal

[Omniscient1]

Originally Posted by tvdxer

(Note: I don't necessarily agree nor disagree with this proposal)

1. The full-time work week will be reduced from 40 hours to 35 hours. This has legal implications: for example, after a wage employee works 35 hours, the employer will be required to pay him 150% of his normal wage. It also should open up jobs.

A provision of the law will be that salaried workers will be required to be paid overtime if they work more than 48 hours a week.

2. The federal minimum wage will be raised from $7.25 per hour to $10.00 per hour (what the minimum wage in 1971 would be today) for workers without dependents and above 18 years of age and $10.50 per hour for workers with dependents employed by companies with over 500 employees. Those with less than 500 but more than 1 employee will be required to pay their employees on a gradated scale beginning at $8.00 / hour. Employers will generally not be able to discriminate against workers with dependents. The $7.25 minimum wage will still be in effect for employees under 18 with no dependents.

3. All employers of 500 or more will be required to give each of their full-time (35 hour or more a week) employees 20 (twenty) days, or four weeks of vacation, at least two weeks (ten days) of which will be able to taken off consecutively.

Employers of more than 20 but less than 500 employees will be required to provide paid vacation time as follows: 10 days off for 21 - 50 employees, 11 days off for 51 - 100 employees, 12 days off for 101 - 150 employees, and so on.

Part-time employees will be required to be provided one vacation day for every 84 hours worked at companies with more than 500 employees. For companies with less, the scale will be graded according to the paid vacation requirements for full-time employees.

Employers of 11 to 20 employees will be required to provide a week off; under 10 employees, five days off.

4. Employers of 500 or more will be required to provide one year maternity leave at 75% of pay or two years at 50%. Employers of 500 or less but 21 or more will have maternity leave requirements imposed at them on a gradated scale.

5. An Extravagant Income Surcharge (EIS) will be placed on the first 1% of earnings above $500,000; 2% of earnings above $1,000,000; 3% of earnings above $1,500,000; 5% of earnings above $2,000,000; and 10% of earnings above $10,000,000. This will be imposed by the Department of Labor and administered by the Internal Revenue Service and fund supplemental federal unemployment payments to ex-workers out to 99 weeks (148 weeks in certain professions), the Social Security system, and social welfare programs.

A similar income surcharge will be placed on passive income (stocks, bonds, futures, options, property, and the like).

6. The earnings cap for Social Security and Medicare will be removed and any income in excess of the former earning cap will be distributed among the general SS / Medicare population. (So a worker earning $500,000 will still have to pay the full FICA rate but will not earn any more than a worker earning $100,000 when he or she becomes disabled).

7. Group medical insurance companies will be limited in how much they can charge for co-pays according to the income earned by the employee.

What do you think?

You want to know what I think?

I think I hope you plagiarized this from somewhere and didn't waste your time writing it yourself.

[rw47]

What kinda nordic **** is this?

[andrea3821]

Originally Posted by tvdxer

$10 an hour was the minimum wage in 1971 indexed for inflation.

An online calculator, or an automatic tool in a payroll program, could easily be deployed to resolve any complexity in the system.

Hmm, so force business owners to have to spend more of their valuable resources just to figure out what wage someone should make??

First-world countries in Europe tend to have higher minimum wages than the States or minimum wages set per sector. For example:

France - $13.06 / hr (9.00 EUR)
Great Britain - $9.53 / hr (5.93 GBP)

And do their markets do as well as ours? What's their GDP?

We lag behind other developed countries majorly in the paid vacation we offer to employees. For example, Germany requires 24 days, France 30 days, and the United Kingdom 20 days. The U.S. has no requirement at all!

Why does it have to be mandated, though? Leave it up to the company.

Again, it might be argued that part-time employees need vacations too.

LOL Someone working 20 hours/week is practically living their life on vacation. There is no valid argument for a PT worker getting vacation time.

Ask how Sweden does it for 480 days at 77.6%.

Again, how's their economy looking? Our debt aside when making a comparison.

The rich have gotten a gigantic break from the government over the past 30 years, allowing them to make extravagant fortunes while the middle and lower classes have seen little real economic progress.

Ehhhhh, wrong. The rich make extravagant fortunes by putting their money where their mouth is. That money is THEIRS to do what they want with, and the gov't has no right to take it at a higher tax rate than those in the lower brackets. Don't like making just a little bit of money? Find another job, get a skill, go to school, work for yourself, etc. No excuses.

And remember, the tax on passive income only applies to INCOME. It does not apply to static assets; however, it would apply to interest. Over $500,000 in interest per year is an uncommon sum. It is especially designed as a disincentive for those passions of some rich which are said to disadvantage the rest of the public (e.g. some futures trading), and to penalize the idle ultra-wealthy.

I don't care about assets, it would make no sense to tax them anyway. I'm talking about paying taxes on capital gains, which is essentially what you were referring to, correct? And why are we penalizing the wealthy? Out of jealousy, that's why. They worked harder or smarter and got to a better place in life, just b/c you haven't been as successful doesn't mean they shouldn't reap the fruits of their labor.