The Trump Presidency

Even if that leftist fantasy were a possibility, there is no "should" about it. Impeachment by both the House and Senate only has one outcome.
I can't even imagine what you fantasize the significance may be, as I live in the real world, where independents are souring on the impeachment effort, rather than your very tiny bubble.

This is either projection or plain old ignorance. You bring up an irrelevancy without even trying to connect it to your argument, and then just claim someone else is posting irrelevancies.

If that really addresses your claim that "Very rich people pay similar to lower tax rates than poor people, on average, in the US", then you should be able to cite a source that makes that case. Percentage of taxes paid relative to income is a meaningless argument. US taxes are still very progressive, and 1% still pay more into federal revenue than the majority. Neither fact is in any way altered by the percentage paid relative to income.

So, like I said, just arm-waving.

Irrelevancies that do nothing to support your argument? I agreed. All your posts are like that.

If you only had a clue how intelligent people are reading that.
Those figures I cited explicitly said "paid", not just taxed at those rates.

No, you just made more bare assertions. Yawn.

Where did I ever claim it wasn't true? I just put the onus on you for your own claim. If you were intellectually honest, you'd support it, instead of trying to shift the burden for your own claim. Conversely, there are many real-world examples of businesses closing, cutting hours, and/or cutting jobs due to mandated $15/hr. You have yet to show a single, real-world example of your claim. Or is that your claim? That cutting hours and jobs means that remaining employees MUST be more productive, least they face the chopping block next or the business goes under entirely?

Again, that only works in an economy where jobs are scarce.

Obviously you're just looking to excuses to be lazy. Yawn.

Sure, even though Independents and even Democrats are starting to sour on impeachment. So much so that Shiff said he wants to consult his constituents before deciding on impeachment. Either its a cut and dried case or it isn't. Public opinion only matters when it's just political theater.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

that is the irony of the tax declaration process of previous presidents

it is a cultural process
trump broke that
he said he was going to change culture
and he did

why is the conflict of interest in making money and operating a business not a simple law ?
i thought it was for normal government employees.

i do not agree with creating different class levels of laws
it drives the society into bloody revolutions or maintains a bloody fascist state or a mix of the 2 like in lawless areas where religious law is enacted as legal right.

it appears the American people have not made up their mind to prevent religion from maintaining an influence into legal frame works in the usa

they seem to be more interested in running as far as they can on wobbly broken wheels and jumping off before they break(getting rich quick).

you would think cowen would be a good example to lead the state away from gray areas.
but that is where the biggest money appears to be made.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It should just be a simple law. Before Trump, the custom to get rid of any conflicts of interest before taking office was sufficient. After Trump, I'm sure many laws will be reconsidered.

Who/what is "Cowen"?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

What do his tax returns before becoming president have to do with divesting from his businesses before taking office? Nothing. You're conflating two things that have nothing to do with one another.

 

It does remain true↗: The particular ignorance Trump defenders seem to require in order to make their cases ranges well beyond unbelievable.

Besides, it was, what, a handful of weeks ago, you were arguing↗ that, "impeachment is political, relying solely on political will".

In questions of political will, it doesn't necessarily matter if the facts are cut and dried. When you need to make believe in order to validate your talking point, you're doing it wrong.

And you did, two sentences before what I quoted, suggest, "Independents and even Democrats are starting to sour on impeachment", as if this is somehow significant. And it's true, I've heard the talking point from Trump supporters in recent days, but you're running around in self-defeating circles.

Briefly, since we've covered the Principle of Charity, before: First↗, finding the charitable pathway is sometimes tricky when the most part of the range is occupied by a dualistic proposition of willful versus accidental wrongness. It's not necessarily that there isn't anything to talk about; rather, the ignorance required to attend some discussions means some disproportionate share of the effort will be given to bringing the ostensibly uninformed up to par. Furthermore↗, as I suggested last month, it's long past funny watching antisocial know-nothing rightism get all self-righteous only to embarrass itself in the same breath. Moreover, it's one thing to be so far behind, but you're not even trying to catch up.

And this is why I keep coming back to the point about unbelievability; inasmuch as one is either unable or unwilling to fall away from unbelievable pretenses of ignorance, there comes a point at which the difference, for others who experience the effects of such behavior, is largely academic. The particular ignorance Trump defenders seem to require in order to make their cases ranges well beyond unbelievable.

 

I see you're leading with insult to poison the well. Yawn.

Neither statement contradicts the other. Impeachment is political, while Democrats are claiming it's a cut and dry crime. Whether that claim is intentionally rhetorical or actually believed, it does serve the purpose of fostering political will, which includes public opinion. Now we can debate if Democrats really believe it's a crime, and are just too spineless to act without public support, or if they know it's hyperbolic rhetoric, and essentially lying to their own constituents.

So I can only conclude that you either deny Democrats claiming they have solid evidence of actual crimes (and if so that's quite an admission), accept that they just give up on prosecuting actual crimes (I guess for political expediency), or admit that this is all Kabuki theater. I can see why you feel the need to insult people, when your every option makes you look either, spineless, corrupt/immoral, or gullible.

Unlike you, I can see it from both sides. I understand that many Democrats may actually believe there is damning evidence of actual crimes. If so, consulting opinion polls is as inappropriate as taking a survey to decide whether any other crime should be prosecuted. But then, leftists have never been strong "rule of law" people, aside from cherry-picking to suit their agenda. Regardless, impeachment is, and has always been, wholly political. I just accept what many Democrats claim they believe, whether I believe it myself or not.

It's obvious that you only mention the Principle of Charity to distract from the fact you never practice it. That, or you're too willfully ignorant to understand that some people will accept what others claim to believe and hold them to the consequences of those beliefs. Like polling people to decide whether to prosecute a perceived cut and dried crime.


But keep it up. I'm proud of you for attempting to keep it concise and without bringing up completely unrelated things from over a year ago to poison the well. Good job!

 

You need to learn how to follow yourself from post to post:

Okay, now you just need to learn to follow yourself from post to post.

Remember, the underlying point here was your confusion about what the allegations are; apparently, you had trouble discerning the difference, so, here, let me explain: If President Trump commits a new ostensibly impeachable act, it does not erase or explicitly alter those that came before. That is, despite your confusion↗, it is as Iceaura↗ explained, charges keep accumulating.

And it seems you can't tell us what you're on about. Like the Hill story about Schiff; it is unclear what, precisely, you don't understand—(there would seem to be a lot)—because what passes for an argument. A piece of information can have many meanings and implications, but you have yet to actually describe what you're on about. Do you even understand the processes afoot?

On Schiff's comments: Do you even know what the questions are? Or are you filling them in according to your own need? And the thing is, it's not really so hard to perceive the questions. But, like everything else, your critique seems ignorant of these aspects. The questions do orbit the politics, i.e., Beltway Republicans and McConnell's Senate. To wit, getting to the bottom of administratoin obstruction in the Mueller probe is going to take a while, since there is a lot to cover, and a lot to the processes afoot. Should Democrats go with the cut and dried, or should they pile on which other blatant offenses? Just how many obstruction charges should they go with at this time, since Trump intends to keep racking them up like he's trying to corner the market?

There are, after all, prominent voices among the president's supporters actually calling for terrorism. At some point, such rhetoric either will or won't come to bear, but with members of Congress calling for mortal violence aganist Trump's opponents, yeah, there are pretty good reasons to check in with the folks back home.

Meanwhile, while the process has been handed to Nadler's Judiciary Committee, Schiff is following up on administration obstruction and interference. As much as Republicans complain about unfair process, the ostensibly exculpatory witnesses are withheld from Congressinal access. With the prospect of McGahn's deposition, and others, bouncing around in court, Schiff and the Intel Committee still have work to do in this case.

Those who attend history more closely, and especially the more recent history we've all lived through, such as Republican abuse of closed hearings in what then House Majority Leader McCarthy boasted was a political hit job, are actually aware that, compared to the extraordinary question of impeachment, itself, the Democratic-led House process has been pretty straightforward and easily comprehnsible. The main counterargument shifts according to daily necessity, but as Republicans pretend extraordinary stupidity in order to put up indignant façades, the common aspect to any defense the Trump administration is extraordinary ignorance inasmuch as the surrogate defense of Trump is days, at least, behind what the public knows, which, in the case of Republican members of Congress who are part of the process, means weeks.

Compared to your huffy non sequitur unto yourself, rushing to self-gratification—

—the point remains much akin to what it was in September↗: If nobody knows what to tell you, it's because you apparently missed everything.

This is what it means when I say, the particular ignorance Trump defenders seem to require in order to make their cases ranges well beyond unbelievable. The extraordinary lack of accurate information about your defense of Trump stands out.

Like this. But, in addition to its dependence on ignorance, as well as its laughable pretense of "both sides", we return to the problem of you being unable to follow yourself from post to post:

Quantum Quack↑: A question for you: IF Trump is found guilty of the allegations made what do you think should happen?

Vociferous↑: Which allegations? They keep changing.

Iceaura↑: They don't. They keep accumulating. Trump is being well and truly buried, here - the only remaining question is what to do about the guy. He is the President, after all - he has a lot of power, a bent toward gratuitous cruelty against the vulnerable, and a loyal base of thugs. As with Al Capone in Chicago - everybody knows, everybody fears.​

So, QQ asked you a question; you pretended confusion according to the idea that the allegations "keep changing"; Iceaura corrected you, explaining that that the allegations "keep accumulating". Your response—

Vociferous↑: Sure, even though Independents and even Democrats are starting to sour on impeachment. So much so that Shiff said he wants to consult his constituents before deciding on impeachment. Either its a cut and dried case or it isn't. Public opinion only matters when it's just political theater.​

—was to change the subject. But this change doesn't really follow itself: The case is cut and dried, your fallacious version of "public opinion" notwithstanding, you have noted that impeachment is political, and even reaffirmed that this does not conflict with your complaint about political theater. Such as it is, your subsequent sentences about Democrats and what you can only conclude, in addition to being based in extraordinary ignorance, are utterly worthless distraction as you continue to run from one of the simplest questions about impeachment: If Trump is found guilty, then what do you think should happen?

A pretense of ignorance followed by a string of fallacies depending on ignorance does not a coherent answer make. It really isn't so difficult a question. In the seemingly cut and dried part of this, in which the only witnesses who can possibly save Trump by their testimony are being withheld, the big question is actually Senate Republicans. Given that House Democrats are waiting on a court resolution affecting the question of executive privilege and the guy who described the Ukraine gambit as a "drug deal", let's face it, nobody is expecting those depositions would exculpate the President. Prominent Senate Republicans are posturing themselves to acquit Trump regardless of the evidence, setting an extraordinary precedent for future impeachment. When it comes to questions of political theater, there we find our answer, or, at least, one of them.

Or, well, Nunes having exposure. I mean, sure, it was easy to guess, in general, but impolite, and, now, the detail doesn't even seem so subtle.

Like the bit about polling people. I mean, sure, I get why it makes an attractive zinger for the ignorant, but it's your own make-believe.

There comes a point at which a lack of culpability is ascribed to extraordinary circumstance. It doesn't mean a behavior isn't dangerous or wrong or inappropriate, as such, but sometimes people just can't help themselves.

When the Principle of Charity must entertain questions of competency, the particular ignorance Trump defenders seem to require in order to make their cases ranges well beyond unbelievable.

 

Vociferous

Perhaps it is forgotten that the POTUS is supposed to be bi partisan or at the very least not involved in partisan politics.

• He is supposed to be POTUS for all USA Citizens and not just the people who voted for him (including the Russians ~sarc.)
• He is supposed to hold the National interests, especially the defense of the Constitution as his highest priority including and especially the check and balances offered by the impeachment process.
• He should be a stalwart against systemic corruption and not be a participant of it.
• He certainly should not threaten or incite revolution and immediately stand down, resign, if such a potential is generated by his actions and words.

It is just staggering as to how destructive Trump has been to National/Global unity and how he is prepared to sacrifice the USA national interests for personal gain...revenge against imaginary windmills twirling away in his over inflated and craven ego.

----

The story regarding Trump and the questionable suicide of Epstein has yet to mature. No doubt Epstein was smart enough to leave something behind... just a matter of time and courage...I guess...
For Trump, there are many whistle blowers waiting in the wings no doubt...

There is also no doubt in my mind that Trump is pursuing the identity of the Ukraine extortion whistle blower, and it fully appears to be a case of extortion for personal gain, so as to intimidate all the other whistle blowers waiting there turn...

 

The usual formulation is that one is president for all Americans, not just the president's voters. There is a particular Republican malady about it, or else that is just another brick in a much larger stumbling block, but watch Republicans complain that Democrats conceding and passing the Republican plan is a president abandoning the half of America that didn't vote for him, but then they go and elect Donald Trump, who appears to be president, as such, for white supremacists, rapemongers, billionaires, and foreign interests; we might also note none of those categories are mutually exclusive, so it's a hell of a constituency.

And season seven remains my favorite Simpsons year:

"As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball; but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"

― Kang, "Treehouse of Horror VII", #4F02​

 

The 1% pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than the lower classes. That is regressive, not progressive, taxation.

Using percentage paid relative to gross income is how "regressive" and "progressive" taxation systems are defined. It is the central and definitive fact involved in distinguishing them.
The total amount paid by the rich vs the majority is completely irrelevant - in a completely regressive system the rich might very well pay all the taxes, since they have all the wealth and income.

Same as any other:
Less often absent, less likely to quit and impose extra training costs, less likely to incur or be forced to juggle competing obligations, less likely to get sick or come to work contagious, more likely to treat customers well, less likely to neglect and abuse machinery, less likely to steal, etc etc etc - quite a long list.

 

So? They are irrelevant - the rich choose the form and timing of their income, and that's a big part of how they avoid paying taxes on their gross. A theoretical table of payment that includes only that one tax on only the taxable income provides us with very little information - a billionaire hedge fund manager, for example, would likely show only a small fraction of their gross income subject to such taxation.

They identify the businesses and his record of manipulation over the years, which his how we assure ourselves that he is not vulnerable to blackmail or profiteering from his Presidency.

They are impeaching Trump for indictable crimes (bribery and extortion and obstruction of justice, say), high crimes and misdemeanors not indictable (including some particular to the Presidency), and so forth.

Dishonestly. You appear to be pretending to doubt what we all know is simple and obvious fact - if you actually doubt it, that needs to be explicit.
Besides, I enjoy seeing how far I can push your willingness to assert foolishness - like your confusion over regressive vs progressive taxation and its dependence on total tax paid/gross income.

Sounds like the reality, or part of it - it's political of course (as is everything else done by Congress), and in the current circumstances involves at least one cut and dried crime (obstruction of justice).

 

Illustrative graphs. Europe has a somewhat different taxation system - but even that "somewhat" difference makes a large difference in outcome. Note the years of most rapid gain by the 1% in the two economic zones.

 

Except that you've largely just made all of this up or simply read one article that you liked.

Of course it's better to have healthy employees. It doesn't follow that to keep paying them more than they contribute to the company makes them more and more productive.

You could pay a fry cook $100k/yr but there's only so much additional productivity that a fry cook can generate.

If it were as clear cut as you suggest, it would be done. We both agree business like to increase the bottom line and if greater pay would do that, it would be done.

 

Trump's dementia is deepening. His comments are even more unhinged. He once again humiliated the United States on the world stage.

Trump went off at the NATO summit with wild comments about climate change, ISIS fighters, and Adam Schiff

• In his meeting with Macron, Trump incorrectly claimed that the European Union was partly created to "take advantage of the United States."
  
• On the US-Russia relationship, Trump said, "We can get along with Russia. I think it's a good thing to get along with Russia. I go to big stadiums and people like it."
  
• On the subject of climate change, Trump said, "I think about it all the time. Honestly, climate change is very important to me. I believe very strongly in very, very crystal clear, clean water and clean air. That's a big part of climate change."

​

 

The problem with your attitude is its inability to comprehend basic detail. Like your question: "How does a McDonald's worker become more productive when you pay him a little more?"

Well, you know, at some point, it makes a difference if workers are making rent, eating reasonably well, and have health care access.

What, really—

—do your straw men contribute to any discussion?

Even a $15/hr minimum wage won't qualify for a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle without assistance. A hundred thousand? Yeah, probably not for a fry cook. Seventy-eight? Yeah, you know, fifteen hundred a week? That will qualify, without assistance, for a one-bedroom apartment. And, sure, I know some will say thirty-eight and a quarter per hour is expensive for a fry cook, but if the business model requires employees to operate in a state of suffering, work quality reflecting that priority is a problem of the business model.

Twenty-seven fifty? That will qualify for a studio in the bottom rent quartile.

Think back. There's an old song called "Lorelei"↱, by Styx, and it's about unmarried cohabitation. Living with an unmarried heterosexual partner was controversial in the day, but that one-bedroom apartment requiring thirty-eight and a quarter per hour, these days, is much more likely to be shared by two people. There's a joke about Republicans, in there, if you think about it.

Meanwhile, tune into the Amazon labor dispute; it's brutal. And Bezos is just rubbing people's noses in it, talking to the one about how much money he makes, while refusing, to the other, to actually pay decent benefits to his employees. It's true, you'll get better quality, safer work out of employees if they aren't sleeping in their cars.

 

There's no problem with my attitude.

Regarding Amazon, they seem to be doing just fine the way things are. I don't think you could handle it if they got any more productive.

For some reason, you seem to think that you are contributing more to the conversation than I am. That's not true even though your insecurities may require that you think that way.

If your ultimate skill level is maxed out by working at McDonald's then you don't need to be living in Seattle. You can live in a city where the cost of living is lower. If you are a student or a spouse looking to make a little part-time income, McDonald's in Seattle might be a good choice (apparently).

Would you consider it a good game play to move to NYC and work at McDonald's?

Salaries aren't determined by how much you'd like to make or by how much you need to live. You determine how much you need and then you get the job that pays that.

It's been working that way for a long time now and it's pretty successful. It's true that the tax rates on the top 1-10 percenters is out of wack so address that. Otherwise, what you are implying with your editorial "contribution" is nonsense. That's what is wrong with your attitude (for starters).

 

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

"Industrialist", by Bill Kliban.​

Another straw man.

To the other, you make the point why McDonald's needs to go away.

However, setting that distraction aside, there is also this bit of seeming naïveté:

Do you really think that's how the world works? Because we wouldn't need a minimum wage, or have rent crises, &c., if it did.

Furthermore, do the rest of us want coffee and fast food available to us? As a question of the business model, I'm probably just fine with getting rid of McDonald's. And Starbucks, sometimes praised for its barista compensation packages? Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Is your barista making fifty-six a year? Most likely, no, not even in Seattle.

Ducking out on practical details, that you might hew to ill-considered political fallacies, isn't much for an argument.

Furthermore, in the context of the Trump presidency, how many people, at least since the time of Reagan, have pushed those fallacies, and those who attend history recognize the role of such outcomes in creating the very disparities so many complain of, today; and within that, yes, there are subsets, and not simply fringe elements without influence, who helped elect Trump because they blame everyone else for what they voted for and supported in the past.

Cycles like that remind me of an occasion, nigh on a quarter-century ago, in Oregon, when people were complaining about compensation packages for public employees. This was, largely, a self-defeating argument: The point was to complain about and discredit unions, but the effect was to argue that it was unfair that some workers didn't suffer as much as others such that the solution would be some manner of expecting all workers to suffer both equally and more. The difference always was the fact of having union representation to account for cost of living and changing workplace standards, or, precisely what many of the complaining voices had voted against in the past when supporting anti-union politicians and policies.

Those who are old enough can remember Clinton and Bush Sr., or other politicians, arguing about job creation, with the bitterly muttered punch line among workers being, yeah, sure, but these were insecure, low wage jobs; sure, the factories are gone, but, hey, at least they created a bunch of fast-food jobs by giving tax breaks to large corporations.

And these years later, we've expended a particular grace; part of what went awry is that we bled workers enough, as a society, that they could not afford, in their role as consumers, to consume enough and keep accruing debt in order to keep things afloat. And in that American tradition, the middling, equivocating path forward is to triple down while complaining about the results. It's a weird outcome by which a market option and concomitant demand exists, and consumers who demand everyone else get on board then complain that nobody succesfully performed some elitist stunt to override them.

Your pitch? It's a pretty consistent bit of folklore among the lower tiers of the capitalistic pyramid. And, honestly, I really don't understand why, incel or capitalist, society keeps coming back to Crowley jokes°.

Michael Moore once wrote a chapter called, "Horatio Alger Must Die", and, sure, we can describe much of what happeneed as bipartisan, such as it goes, but, as I've reminded others, before, the Blue Dogs weren't for a lark. That is to say, despite the complaints we heard in the '90s, and the first decade of this century, people kept voting for their own harm. And you might note, whenever the People, as such, get annoyed with the so-called liberal side for not being liberal enough despite the instructions of voters, the solution is rarely to leapfrog them leftward; no, if people didn't get the liberalization and progress they claimed to want but constantly voted to mitigate, disrupt, and oppose, they would prove their point by voting for conservatives.

When Moore wrote, "The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not among them, not now and not ever" (145), this was easily deflected by invoking the very flag-drapiung mythopoeia he is denouncing: Those mean, elitist lib'rals are pickin' on 'Merica. When Donald Trump tells people the system is rigged, it gets him elected.

Or, the page before (144):

The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not among them, not now and not ever. It's rigged so well that it dupes many otherwise decent, sensible, hard-working people into believing that it works for them, too. It holds the carrot so close to their faces that they can smell it. And by promising that one day they will be able to eat the carrot, the system drafts an army of consumers and taxpayers who gladly, passionately, fight for the rights of the rich, whether it means giving them billions in tax breaks while they send their own children into dilapidated schools, or whether it means sending those children off to die in wars to protect the rich man's oil. Yes, that's right: The workers/consumers will even sacrifice the lives of their own flesh and blood if it means keeping the rich fat and happy because the rich have promised them that some day they can join them at the table!​

That was 2003; the difference 'twixt then and 2016 includes voters making hardline stands against liberal progress in society.

Your pitch, though, isn't so much hardline as roadworn.

And if we follow back from your McDonald's inquiry↑, what we find is that you're asking for what is already on the record↑ in a back and forth about a word game↑ necessary for pushing known fallacies↑ that we can track back two months↑. To your defense, of course, the part you're asking for has only been on the record for one month.
____________________

Notes:

° See Perdurabo, ΚΕΦΑΛΗ ΙΔ ("Onion-Peelings")↱.​

Moore, Michael. Dude, Where's My Country? New York: Warner Books, 2003.

Perdurabo, Fr. "Onion Peelings". The Book of Lies. 1913. BibliotecaPleyades.net. 5 December 2019. http://bit.ly/2pWgPxe

 

Dealing with you is like entering bizarro land. You respond as if you are writing a book or delivering a television show monologue. You realize that there are about 20 people on here, right? It might help to get out of the basement every now and then.

Getting rid of McDonald's or Starbucks doesn't exactly help the employment environment now does it?

Those businesses didn't start because of "tax breaks for large corporations". Amazon started out of Bezo's garage.

To wit, twixt, nigh on...what are you 90 years old?

You're not living in the real world. No small retail and everyone has a high paying job? It can be done of course in Denmark or Norway but it's not going to happen here.

 

Most of the problem is the technology lag, a situation where technology replaces humans, making them redundant when it comes to low skilled but fair paid work.
The lag which could be many years means that you have a sort of rotating shift of displaced workers as they attempt to skill up and become valuable again. ( or alternatively fall into a pit of uselessness.)
Also the hidden costs associated with homelessness and unemployment are often understated. Criminal activity, violence, mental health etc are often underappreciated.
By maintaining a satisfactory minimum income most of these hidden costs can be mitigated.
Realizing that a mere $5 USD under the breakeven survival threshold is enough to cost potentially millions ( domestic violence and homicide etc) you can understand that ensuring basic needs are met is cost effective.
Even a poor person can blow a city up or commit a terrorist act, if he has the mind for it and so looking after all at a basic level is just good sense.

just thoughts...

eg. 6 police officers attended a violent drunk vagrant here a few days ago. They spent approximately 45 minutes to restrain, and organize transport.
Average hourly rate
Insurance
Psychological support
Equipment
multiply by 6
==
jail provisioning etc
Legal costs
victims of crime payouts
and so on...
Then repeat every two weeks or so until the vagrant either dies from alcoholic poisoning or gets the help he needs.

A reasonable minimum wage/pension that is adequate attends to most of these hidden costs and is cost effective by many orders.

 

That's a job best administered by the government and not by employers.