It would be my word against theirs wouldn't it? The proof must be made that I knew something so how can they prove that since I never worked there but only frequent the establishment once in awhile.
They could show that you worked with the company at the time (via records and such), and then you have to find some way to "prove" that you were unaware - you would have to establish legitimate doubt basically. If you don't work there though, then you should be fine. I'd still report it... but I'm an ass *shrug*
I think that if a company wants to do the wrong thing then it is that company who should be found out about by governmental people not by common citizens. I do not want to be brought into a court to tell what I know about anyone or any company unless if affects me or others personally like something sharp in the foods I eat.
A fair number of companies pay "under the table" - I have worked for a few. They hire both illegal aliens and legal workers. They do this so they don't have to pay taxes. Fortunately, if they do this in any kind of a big way, the IRS comes and arrests them for tax evasion. That's why the majority of companies do NOT do this. Of course. Unfortunately for them, they do have to. Fortunately _most_ businesses are pretty honest. To avoid jail time. You could ask your company to go to zero withholding and not pay any taxes, either. Why don't you? Are you so rich that taxes don't matter to you?
Just how many companies can you prove that went to jail for hiring illegals? I don't know of any so it must be a very lucrative way to cheat the government. If I went to 0 for withholding tax then at the end of the year I would have to claim myself. Let us look at the oil company. they went down to 45 dollars a barrel and that took about 8 months to do so. Now we see the prices up to 60 dollars within 3 weeks, not greedy are they? Yes the oil companies are fine examples of " honest" companies. There's nothing happening in the world today that should make prices for oil to jump that much that fast.
Companies like Tyson Foods who hire thousands of illegals cheat the same way with them they do with regular employees - unpaid overtime, illegal working conditions, etc. It's just easier with illegals. They don't usually just skip payroll and income taxes, because it's too easy to catch and the penalties are automatic. They instead use the illegal status of their employees to abuse them, rather than the government. (directly). The government has power, the illegals do not. I linked to the Tyson case (in the other thread on the topic) because it's on the public record - notice that the Company was able to beat the charges, which they would not have been able to do if they had failed to withhold taxes on their payroll etc. Here's an overview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyson_Foods Notice that the employees themselves did not benefit - they had payroll taxes deducted from their checks, etc. Notice too that the lower level management and employees of Tyson universally agree that the role of the illegals was to beat down wages for everybody. The idea that the illegals were doing jobs citizens would not do is not supported - they were willingly accepting wages citizens were reluctant to accept, but were forced - by the competition from the thousands of willing illegals - to take. There are companies that pay under the table - but they do that with legal citizens, as well.
240 in 2012. http://www.politifact.com/florida/s...holds-record-cracking-down-employers-who-hir/ Of course, as others have mentioned, most companies are clever enough to avoid getting caught. If they send in their employee withholdings like everyone else does, then no red flags get raised. Everyone claims themselves via the personal deduction. You would still get caught and (if you continued to refuse to pay) go to jail. Did you actually equate greed to dishonesty? The principal that all capitalist companies work on is greed. They might fool you with flashy commercials but that's what every successful company bases their strategy on - an inordinate desire for wealth, success and growth. That has nothing to do with honesty or its lack.
To return to the OP: the basic problem with Republican political power in the US is that the Party's agenda - the actual, stated agenda - is governmental incompetence.
Funny when I was younger I could buy things that were made well, cost little , made a good salary and bought a home for under 9,000.00 with only 2 percent interest. I would think that during that time there wasn't as much, if any, greedy companies that were in operation. Times change and in the 1980's things started changing when Russia became democratic and sent their ferrets into American businesses to make those businesses greedy.
I don't know when you "were younger" but - Back in 1970's most cars were just plain crap. They were inefficient, got horrendous MPG numbers, were quite unsafe compared to modern cars, rusted out quickly in any high salt area and didn't last all that long even in ideal conditions. Several cars - the Buick Skyhawk, Chevy Monza, Pontiac Sunbird, and Olds Starfire - required you to remove the engine to change the spark plugs. Today's cars are faster, more powerful, safer, more efficient, cleaner, have communications/navigation/entertainment systems that were just wet dreams back in 1970 - and yet are only 30 to 50% more expensive in real dollars. Car companies in the 1970's must have been as corrupt and greedy as they come. In 1970, one of the biggest banks in the US - Franklin National - went belly-up due to money laundering operations to support the Sicilian drug cartel. When it was finally exposed the fraud went all the way to the White House; Nixon used his influence to keep regulators from checking up on the bank. That's . . . . quite a conspiracy theory there.
Your memory is rather selective. You also earned a small fraction of what I think you value your idealized memories more than reality my friend. I remember folks, primarily my elders, making the same claim, that things used to be cheaper and better built. I think the emergence of plastics and the reemergence of the post WWII economy were contributing factors to that myth. But the reality is, things are much better built today than they ever have been in the past. In those old days, the useful life of a car was about 100k miles. Today, cars routinely get way over 100k miles before major engine repairs are needed. Engine oil quality has become much better. Homes are better built. Virtually, everything is better built today, and we all have more stuff. Virtually everyone has a cell phone. Back in my youth, not everyone had phones. And if you did, it was a party line phone (a phone line shared by a community). There wasn't much privacy. And there were no handheld calculators or personal computers. Communication with computer, if you could find one, was not through a keyboard but through punch cards. When it comes to housing prices, you forget, while home prices were much less, incomes were much less also. When I began working back in the 70's I earned less than a dollar an hour. The Housing Affordability Index which measures the affordability of a median priced home says homes are much more affordable than they have been in previous decades. So reality just doesn't support your memories. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPHAI
This foreshadowed the role a subsequent Republican President played in a more recent (and much larger) catastrophe. I'm talking about the subprime mortgage debacle that began in 2008, which cascaded into an economic catastrophe. The Comptroller of the Currency, a presidential employee, has essentially one and only one responsibility: to monitor the banks in this country to make sure they are in good financial condition. To this end, he is the manager of the country's entire army of bank examiners. They examine the records and practices of every bank in the country at random intervals. It's his job to maintain awareness of the banking industry, so he can sensitize the examiners to new kinds of problems. Well guess what? He was asleep at the switch and completely missed the fact that America's banks were selling mortgages to people who would never be able to pay them back! So the examiners weren't looking for that. If you think back to 1998, I'm sure you'll realize who was in the White House: Backward Baby Bush, the man with pre-senile dementia, who couldn't even quote a nursery rhyme accurately. ("Fool me once, shame on... shame on... shame on me. Fool me twice... uh... uh... Won't get fooled again!") This debacle crashed the housing market, one of the major supports of the U.S. economy. We're still feeling the recession, although it appears to be finally ready for a recovery--seven years later! One commentator explained that many of the banks, realizing that they had a portfolio full of worthless mortgages, quickly sold them to pension funds. In other words, they were stealing money from old ladies! Yes indeed, the last thing we need is another Republican President. Not that I'm a big fan of the Democrats either--they mean well, but they don't seem able to turn their ideas into action. I'm voting Green in 2016.
That's strange the minimum wage in the early 1960's was 1.50 per hour so you were being cheated! I was earning 10.00 per hour in 1969 and in the 1970's was up to 20.00 per hour. I guess you were in the wrong job or wrong company. There was no oversight by the banking regulators and it was a Democratic Congress that was not watching what was going on either. The Republicans also are just to blame for they too could have checked on the regulators but never did.
Actually, you are wrong. In 1968 the minimum wage was increased to 1.60/hour. But for most of the decade it was less than 1.60/per hour. Further, the federal minimum wage wasn't applicable to all workers. If you really did earn 10 dollars/hour in 1969, then you were way above the average income. Because the average wage back in 1968 was well below 5.00 per hour. Back in 1972, I earned 500 dollars a month in the military. Prices were lower back then. But so were wages. You like to focus on the prices and ignore the wages. It's an edited view of history. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The Republicans did nothing to stem the tide either. I voted for the first time in 20 years in the first term election of Obama. You forgot the first election of George (HW) Bush? Remember the hanging chads and the comedy that ensued? The American people wanted Al gore to win. But Florida is very backwards.
The citizens really didn't want either of the candidates that much for the voting was about even. I said that both did nothing. Regulators are hired on through government openings and those hired are supposed to not have affiliations but somehow they turned their backs when the banks and wall street were screwing everyone.
If you will reread post 36 I said the wage was 1.50 not 1.60 per hour in the early 1960's then, as you point out, it was increased to 1.60 in the later part of the 1960's. I just want to stress that you were being cheated if you were being paid less as you said. That was the minimum wage and I was paid much more due to my trade I was in. Many people made more than the minimum and that is why things were better back then.
