> They lobby for EITC like proposals to be put in place so that they can offload part of their labor costs onto the tax payers.
This is a weird criticism to make, because the EITC doesn't "offload" labor costs at all. In fact, the biggest advantage of the EITC over systems like wage floors is that the EITC is completely invisible to the employer. (If you hire ten employees for the same role at the same wage, three could be receiving EITC benefits, but you may not even know, because you're paying them the same amount regardless. It just so happens that the people who receive the benefits end up taking home more of the money you give them.
> No wonder EITC is so popular among the usual suspects.
EITC has broad, bipartisan support not because of some conspiracy, but because it actually works. And, unlike the minimum wage, it scales gradually, and it also can be used to target people in need of different levels of assistance with zero additional overhead.
In other words, take that example of ten employees. Three are on the EITC - one is a middle-aged, single mother of three children, one is a married father of two, and one is a 22-year old single mother attending college full-time (on top of work). The other seven are all upper-middle-class college students who have all of their tuition and their living expenses paid for by their parents, and are simply working a summer job to earn some extra pocket cash for the "non-essential" expenses that their parents won't cover.
It's pretty clear that those three need assistance whereas the other seven don't. And it's also clear that those three don't need exactly the same levels of assistance either. But for the employer, that doesn't (and shouldn't) factor into the equation - you don't want the employer deciding that the single working mother of three needs to be paid more[0].
The EITC provides an easy way for those three to take home more money without the employer entering the equation. And all three cases result in the same amount of government overhead, regardless of how much assistance they receive. Furthermore, if they receive raises (perhaps they're promotion) or their eligibility changes (let's say the first woman gets married, and the combined incomes mean she needs less - or let's say one of them has an additional child), the assistance calculation scales smoothly with those life changes.
[0] If for no other reason than the fact that, in the long run, this results in employment discrimination against women (and especially mothers).
The missing step here is that the EITC should be funded by tax on companies that have low wage employees alongside extremely highly-paid employees/managers, and profit-taking owners
If you put additional taxes on hiring low-wage employees, you make it harder for them to get a job, and take away their one competitive advantage relative to higher skill workers.
This is a weird criticism to make, because the EITC doesn't "offload" labor costs at all. In fact, the biggest advantage of the EITC over systems like wage floors is that the EITC is completely invisible to the employer. (If you hire ten employees for the same role at the same wage, three could be receiving EITC benefits, but you may not even know, because you're paying them the same amount regardless. It just so happens that the people who receive the benefits end up taking home more of the money you give them.
> No wonder EITC is so popular among the usual suspects.
EITC has broad, bipartisan support not because of some conspiracy, but because it actually works. And, unlike the minimum wage, it scales gradually, and it also can be used to target people in need of different levels of assistance with zero additional overhead.
In other words, take that example of ten employees. Three are on the EITC - one is a middle-aged, single mother of three children, one is a married father of two, and one is a 22-year old single mother attending college full-time (on top of work). The other seven are all upper-middle-class college students who have all of their tuition and their living expenses paid for by their parents, and are simply working a summer job to earn some extra pocket cash for the "non-essential" expenses that their parents won't cover.
It's pretty clear that those three need assistance whereas the other seven don't. And it's also clear that those three don't need exactly the same levels of assistance either. But for the employer, that doesn't (and shouldn't) factor into the equation - you don't want the employer deciding that the single working mother of three needs to be paid more[0].
The EITC provides an easy way for those three to take home more money without the employer entering the equation. And all three cases result in the same amount of government overhead, regardless of how much assistance they receive. Furthermore, if they receive raises (perhaps they're promotion) or their eligibility changes (let's say the first woman gets married, and the combined incomes mean she needs less - or let's say one of them has an additional child), the assistance calculation scales smoothly with those life changes.
[0] If for no other reason than the fact that, in the long run, this results in employment discrimination against women (and especially mothers).