[Your Nightmare]

THere cannot be a majority in both prices and wages. That's that middle school math again.

First, I didn't say the majority was in both prices and wages. I said the "majority of the 'embedded taxes' you claim are in prices are also 'embedded' in wages."

Second, the majority of taxes can be in both wages and prices and most likely are. The two are not mutually exclusive. Taxes can be in wages and wages can be in prices, therefore the taxes in wages can be in prices. You are saying either taxes aren't in wages or wages aren't in prices.

Further, what taxes in wages do you speak of? Taxes reduce wages, not add to them.

Taxes don't reduce nominal wage costs, which is what a business considers. A business will hire employees as long as the total cost of hiring that person is less than what that person will produce for the business (i.e. marginal product of labor). When deciding, the business doesn't care if the employee has to pay a portion of it to government or not. Real (after-tax) wages are reduced by taxes, but we were talking about nominal wages.

[pigdog]

Please give us the definition of the terms "real" and "nominal" you use in this post before we go further.

[Principled]

I didn't say the majority was in both prices and wages.

Eh?.
The majority of the "embedded taxes" you claim are in prices are also "embedded" in wages.

How can the majority be in both?

[Principled]

...the majority of taxes can be in both wages and prices

If the majority of taxes is in prices, then more than 50% of taxes are in prices. If more than 50% of taxes are in prices, then less than 50% is anywhere else and less than 50% is not a majority. Hence it is not the case that a majority of taxes is in two places.

Did you mistype?