World War 2 dragged the U.S. out of recession.

WW2 reduced private spending. The private component of GDP fell after 1941, and while the war lasted, private output never recovered to its pre-Pearl Harbor level. In 1943, real private GDP was 14% lower than it had been in 1941.

It was the end of WW2 (and perhaps co-indicdent with the destruction of Fascism and death of FDR, both large concerns of business leaders before the war) that allowed private spending to return to pre-war levels.

There were actually some economists who thought that the end of WW2 would plunge the world into another Great Depression due to the end of massive government defense spending. US government spending was cut nearly in half from 1945 ($118B) to 1947 ($57B). But the private economy boomed after WW2 despite the dramatic cuts in government spending.

These folks simply do not understand that the underlying goal is to drive U.S. wages to third world levels by introducing large labor surpluses.

It is unlikely that any surplus of labor would lead employers to pay significantly less than the productivity of a worker, especially in sectors such as computer programming where barriers to entry are low and new firms can rapidly form.

It is possible that labor surpluses could actually lower the prices of goods and services in general, which can benefit consumers.

for those who talk about expanding the economy to accommodate millions of new workers; how's that working for you?

Research suggests that "U.S. natives (especially high-skill natives) appear to have benefited from greater availability and reduced prices of nongraded goods and services that are intensive in low-skill labor"

Complimentary labor from low-skilled immigrants makes things better for high-skilled natives, although it may have a small negative effect on the earnings of low-skilled natives (especially those that drop out of high school).

BTW, I know several women in tech fields who only have the opportunity to work because of the low cost of services from immigrant nannies for their young children, immigrant house cleaners, etc.

Your argument is that the United States should be the only country in the world with open immigration?

Okay... lets do that. And then lets see how long your welfare and entitlement programs last with millions crossing the border and suddenly getting full social security benefits, EBT, etc.

I'm sure plenty of people would like to move to the US to work even if they do not get any entitlement benefits. Ethically, that would probably be better than forcing people to stay in places where they live at under $1 per day...

Warren Buffett once suggested a 100% capital gains tax on assets held less than a year.

Warren Buffet's main business is insurance, so he would like to encourage you to try to put your heritable funds into non-taxable insurance rather than into funds your children will directly inherit.

The "value" of stock is by no means connected to real world revenue of the issuing corporations anymore. It's just dependent on expectations of stock traders and whether or not they have any "faith" in the paper.

Actually equities price to earnings ratio (P/E) is highly correlated with 20-year annualized returns, (see graph here).

one in which financial returns are the priority, independent of whether they're associated with something innovative or useful in the real world.

Adam Smith pointed out in 1776...

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

You don't pay employer taxes when you hire a contractor.

The IRS says "There is no "magic" or set number of factors that "makes" the worker an employee or an independent contractor, and no one factor stands alone in making this determination."

But you can submit Form SS-8, Determination of Worker Status for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes and Income Tax Withholding (PDF) with the IRS. The IRS will review the facts and circumstances and officially determine the worker's status. Be aware that it can take at least six months to get a determination.

I don't want my tax dollars subsidizing Sam Walton's low prices

I would prefer for tax transfers to "top up" low income people rather than distort the market through price floors on labor, that may lead to less employment of the less productive, and may raise prices for all.

I feel that it is better to take a few dollars from a rich person through taxes than to say to a person who only produces $9 per hour that they can't have a job because the wage floor is $10 per hour.

Moreover, wages are a price signal, and perhaps people should know that not finishing high school and getting additional post-secondary training or education does not lead to $10 per hour wages, but more like $5 per hour.

Your examples of Communism had little to do with actual communism

I prefer to look at real-world track records.

Capitalism (economic freedom and secure private property rights) has a great record of dramatically expanding economic growth and delivering tremendous technological innovation. It has also lead to income and/or wealth inequality, but even the poorest of capitalist countries experience improvements in well-being over time.

Attempts to "fix" capitalism through reductions in economic freedom (such as labor rigidities such as high wage floors, costly firing, etc.) and also overly high levels of redistribution generally find a point of diminishing returns and often are retrenched (see Germany's Hartz reforms).

The track records of attempts to have "common ownership" of the means of production has generally lead to violence, poverty, and lack of innovation. I would like to suggest that this is because the ownership is never truly "common", the ownership resides in political power, of politicians (elected or not) who are rent-seekers on the means of production, and they may have political needs to maintain power that is greater than economic profit of the means of production.

This is opposed to capitalism where ownership resides in those who put their actual capital at risk and are seeking actual profit by meeting the needs of customers.

CEO's may not always represent the best interests of shareholders, but shareholders can always sell their shares and invest elsewhere. It is typically difficult to exit a "common ownership" system.

China is informative, where common ownership is being converted into capitalist ownership, with great reductions in poverty along with higher levels of income inequality.

Seattle's unemployment among those who are age 16-24 is *lower* than the national average. How is that possible?!

The greater Seattle area has a lot of economic production (Microsoft, etc.) so I'm not surprised that highly-educated, high-income workers are demanding the service of lower-income workers. It is possible that the market-clearing wage for low-educated workers age 16-24 is around $10/hour or perhaps not that far below that level. Whether it is around $15/hour remains to be seen.

If the artificial wage floor is raised above the market-clearing wage, there will be enhanced unemployment of those who are least productive, typically the least experienced and educated.

Kids have no choice in who their parents are, and typically only get SS if they have something like autism.

SNAP SNAP offers nutrition assistance to millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families and provides economic benefits to communities. SNAP is the largest program in the domestic hunger safety net.

"We" were not a uniform body of people, but a series of waves of immigrants

And the part of the reason the US is the greatest economy on the planet (and also the world's leading culture, which is also monetizable) is due to immigration.

For example, consider these immigrants: Albert Einstein, I.M. Pei, John Muir, Joseph Pulitzer, Irving Berlin, Ang Lee, Cary Grant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eddie Van Halen, Rupert Murdoch, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pamela Anderson, Dave Matthews, George Soros, Sergey Brin, Alexander Graham Bell, Marcus Goldman (Goldman Sachs), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), Theodore and Milton Deutschmann (Radio Shack), Maxwell Kohl (Kohl's), Daniel Aaron (Comcast), Sol Shenk (Big Lots!), Jerry Yang (Yahoo!), John W. Nordstrom (Nordstrom's), William Colgate (Colgate), Nathan Cummings (Sara Lee), E.I. du Pont, James L. Kraft, Charles Pfizer, William Procter, James Gamble, Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun / Arista Networks), Andy Grove (Intel)....

Those are of course the 1st gen immigrants. Think about how many 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants who are participating in expanding the US economy and culture (like me, for instance).

It's only natural that people who know and are related to each other would want first and foremost to support each other over any other randomly selected set of people.

Personally I don't care about people who theoretically share some kind of artificial division of humanity with me. Nationalism is a dangerous feeling that should be relegated to its proper recreational use. Man-made borders of a country are only means to achieving scalable governance.

I only care about the myself and my family and the things and people that are important to me. That is why the US is such a great and open country where people of all kinds can work together to create amazing economic and cultural growth. That is the American way!

All barriers to economic freedom reduce everyone's potential. Everyone is different, and mathematically we know that if everyone can specialize in what they are most productive at (whether that is management, computer programing, being a nanny, being a house cleaner), total productivity of humanity is maximized.

No big surprise that the collapse of the unions in the late 60s and 70s coincided with the rise of minorities in blue collar/skilled labor.

Which minorities are those? African Americans? Since most African Americans have ancestors in this country going back over 200 years

African Americans were actively excluded from unions until the late 1960's, see Unions and Discrimination.

It should be illegal to require a person's high school graduation date on a resume.

Currently younger people are not a protected class (at a Federal level) against age discrimination in the US. Only workers over 40 years old are a protected class. (Some states may have other age protections).

You didn't think they were sent home, did you?

I know an H1-B holder who had to leave the country with his family (and kids who grew up in the US) when it came to and end.

So yes, they do send them home. Why don't you go talk to an H1-B visa holder...