-17 points
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Call it crab bucket, but I would hate to work in a system where my labor value is capped by someone other than me, or the person I’m selling it to.

Edit love downvotes with no rebuttal. Any system where a laborer is told they cannot market services at a rate accepted by a client is an oppressive system.

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-1 points

All systems are oppressive by that low bar definition ya numbnut.

Would it be unjust for me to make a law preventing you from accumulating so much gold/wealth in one place as to cause a black hole to form? Is that oppressive? Fuck off.

You shouldnt care about edge case scenarios where someone doesn’t get to be more rich than they already are when we are talking about solutions to problems, affecting millions of people real people with real problems.

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-2 points
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Name calling?

Edit on topic, wages are not how billionaires are made. Wages are the concern of the general public. They would be the group impacted.

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2 points

You are distracting from the fact that the problem can be solved with easy fixes to the language instead of agreeing that rich people should have a limit on how severe wealth inequality is.

Numbnuts

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0 points
*

Why would you need to have total freedom there? There are plenty of rules and regulations in place for many things. If we as society can agree on a reasonable ceiling, why would that be an issue? What is your worry?

If there would be a cap on the hourly wage or total income the chances of you ever reaching it would be slim to none, and if you did… congrats you won capitalism, be happy.

It feels similar to the “hate paying taxes” and “I’m self made”. Paying taxes is a privilege, more is better, as it means you have more. Self made does not exist, more than half of everything anyone achieves is luck, starting with the birth lottery and going from there.

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0 points

The big fish to catch is untaxed earnings of the hyper wealthy. Any attacks on the potential of labor is anti worker.

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2 points

I agree that if there is anywhere to start it is taxing assets like stock portfolios and other vehicles the billionaire class uses to avoid taxation.

The whole trickle down economics did not work, it’s time we start trying rising tide economics, as it lifts all boats.

But anti labor is a stretch depending on where you draw a line. There are amounts that cannot be explained by mere labor.

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-1 points
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I think “freedom” resonates emotionally in different ways for different people. If you try to pass a law making it illegal to drink bleach, I will oppose that law. I certainly don’t want to drink bleach, but right now I have the freedom to drink it and you would be trying to take away that freedom. It has value to me even though I intend never to exercise it.

Taxes, unlike drinking bleach, are a matter of trade-offs. I’m not categorically against them. However, I don’t buy into the argument that I shouldn’t oppose them as long as I will never have to pay them.

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0 points

Well I guess I would say that if obscene wealth disparity is against public interest, which it is. We should curtail it. Personal freedoms that rub against public interests are always going to be a point of contention, that’s why we would need good laws, not just willy nilly ones.

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7 points
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You in particular need not worry about ever hitting that max GBU_28

The goal is to stop the bleeding for those being exploited by billionaires (the entire nation minus ~50)

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-8 points

What max? Who defines it?

Nice try with the personal insult. Schoolyard stuff.

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6 points

I don’t think you’re being insulted, just that the limit can be unobtainable by 99% of people and still be effective. Personally I think that’s a possible thing, but also a pointless thing, a wage cap is going to do nothing to redistribute Jeff Bezos’ wealth in a sensible manner.

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6 points

You in particular need not worry about ever hitting that max GBU_28

But that’s just it - they genuinely are worried about exactly that, because they’ve been convinced by the people exploiting their labour for profit that they too can become a billionaire one day if they just work hard enough and make sure to never remove their tongue from the boot standing on their neck!

This is a live demonstration of propaganda at work.

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5 points

One day I might be mega rich and then people like me better watch their step!

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2 points

You’re never going to have to worry about it. If you won the lottery every week you wouldn’t be close to what these people have.

Your labour value is already massively capped by the super rich. You earn a fraction of what you produce for others.

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-2 points
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“these people” don’t have what they have from wages. They have it from stock backed loans and similar.

Any legislation policing what someone in my job can earn is hurtful to the worker.

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20 points

Mind you, people probably don’t think of your standard high earner they they think of an income cap. They think of people who make four (or even five) digits an hour, a rate that maybe high end lawyers can match. Maybe.

CEOs of large companies can easily make that much, often not even tied to performance but contractually guaranteed. The super-rich make that much simply by existing.

Basically, if your labor (or mere existence) isn’t even worth 1000 bucks an hour to your clients you’re a peasant like the rest of us and an income cap is probably never going to be relevant to you.

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6 points

Thanks for actually discussing.

It’s my understanding that the earnings of the hyper wealthy are derived not through “traditional wages”, but instead loans backed by stock, business entities, etc.

So right out the gate we aren’t hunting the biggest fish: taxation of the hyper wealthy such that they pay their fair share.

Next, I believe that such a system would be contorted to limit the potential of those at the bottom of the ladder. If we hope to improve the lot of those folks, the conversation should folks on minimum wages, and employment and safety protections

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3 points

I agree that going for wages in the traditional sense doesn’t catch many of the most relevant income streams. However, I think that a “maximum wage” makes sense as a theoretical construct used to create a sensible income tax scheme.

Essentially, tax brackets and rates could be defined in relation to the median income. Go too far above that (hitting the “maximum wage”) and your tax rate rapidly increases, maybe even going as high as 90%. Of course this would have to cover all sorts of income, not just plain money.

This scheme would effectively box people into a certain band of acceptable wealth and would create an incentive to raise wages – after all, if the average worker makes more, so can the most wealthy.

(Also, full agreement on needing to talk about better labor protections. American labor law is really lax.)

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6 points

A cap like this would have nothing to do with labor. Nobody, laboring, is going to ever be in danger of reaching it.

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-1 points

I believe it would be corrupted to target laborers and the hyper wealthy do not get their money from wages.

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2 points

Americans need to relearn how to protest, and how to get the boot out of their mouth during primaries. Otherwise everything will be used against the working class while giving the owner class full socialism.

With that said, one of the ways you organize is by pushing for laws in an honest manner. If you just stay negative, people stay home. They want solutions, not problems.

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71 points

Because making 400k/yr by sitting on a pile of assets and living a low-cost life in a paid-off small-town cottage is not the same as making 400k/yr as a debt-saddled surgeon renting in a high-cost city center, so targeting income instead of wealth gets us farther from a fairer economy.

Next question.

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11 points

Lets put that maximum at $10M/month (or year). Now your counter argument doesn’t work any more.

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8 points

The people who make that kind of money don’t make it through wages but other compensation.

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0 points

Which is why we need to not allow borrowing against assets to get over the maximum.

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3 points

Yes, so block that at a maximum rate (too)?

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1 point

but then businesses couldn’t run properly right? idk for sure but I feel like smaller businesses would be paid to a person and distrubuted to the company

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6 points

I think we should be setting these max/min wages as relative values, not absolute values. Otherwise we have to pass laws every time the min wage needs to be adjusted. And we’ll end up with stagnation.

For example, a person’s wage can only be X% higher than the lowest wage of someone a step below them in hierarchy. Including contractors and suppliers so they can’t skirt or find loopholes.

There still might be some haywire incentives that require more thought, but it should hopefully encourage labor to be valued at an appropriate proportion of value. Either everyone makes good money, or nobody does.

Should also probably deincentivize layoffs, stock buybacks, etc. at the cost of shareholder earnings / value.

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25 points

Next question, why did you immediately go to 400k? Why not 1 million? If you make a million dollars then you’ve made half the average lifetime earnings of a worker. Double question, if we capped earnings at 400k, would school lenders not take that into account?

I think a maximum yearly income, including any money you could conceivably spend for personal use, would be a wonderful idea. It would certainly put a damper on being a billionaire if you know you could never actually get more than about a hundred million dollars in your life. Just literally running the score up at that point.

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14 points

Ok sure, but if you frame the conversation to mean the limit would be set at $400k/year then you’re missing the point. We’re talking billionaires not single digit millionaires. Despite how those numbers sound to the average person there’s several orders of magnitude between them.

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6 points

i couldnt read the article (paywall) but is that applicable when billionaires often get paid significantly less than $400k/yr?

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9 points
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I don’t mean to argue against your point but they became billionaires somehow. There are people who are becoming billionaires today and their wealth accumulation could be limited. It seems like more than one solution is needed. I don’t think billionaires are good for society… They have too much power, political power

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8 points

Most of the super rich don’t make their Monday through wages.

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4 points

well most of us super poor can’t even make an afternoon, much less an entire day. jfc the entitlement of these assholes

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4 points

Most of the super rich don’t make their Monday through wages.

Certainly they must make their Tuesday through wages?

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2 points

You’d think so, but they don’t even make their Wednesday through wages, let alone Tuesday.

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29 points

If the minimum wage was a comfortable living wage — like it should be, in my and many other folks’ opinion — then it wouldn’t matter. One person’s excess isn’t a problem, unless it’s at the expense of someone else (which, you know, is kinda the case…).

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9 points

A handful of people’s excess is exactly the problem.

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15 points

Even if it’s not at the expense of someone else, too much wealth in the hands of one person is still harmful. It gives one person too much power over others, allows for people to buy their way out of legal trouble, buy politicians, etc.

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36 points

I’ve often said we don’t need billionaires. That when one reaches that milestone anything above $999,999,999 should be taken as taxes from that person.

When I say this people often become defensive saying that the government shouldn’t be able to dictate how much wealth one person can accumulate. (It also happens that many of these people are prolife but that’s neither here nor there.) Often times comparing this action to communism which of course it isn’t.

The issue of course is that many people don’t understand what a billion of anything is. The human brain can’t comprehend such massive numbers. But nevertheless, there are people that are approaching the trillion dollar mark a number even further removed from a billion by several magnitudes.

Should there be billionaires. Probably not… What do you think?

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12 points

I was thinking about this the other day, one of my favorite analogies is seconds.

A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is … 31,688 years.

The analogy already breaks down, because while most people could understand 12 days and a lot of adults can understand 31 years for having lived it (some even twice or more!), 31,688 years is completely incomprehensible again. How many human generations is that? All of recorded human history is only like 5,000 years. It’s utterly, mind-numbingly insane. No trillionaires, ever! No billionaires!!!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/17/business/elon-musk-richest-person-trillionaire/index.html

This was published on September 17th of this year, after most of the nonsense of Twitter and utter things. He’s still on track, by 2027 no less. There’s no telling how directly and flagrantly he’ll benefit from a Trump win, either.

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3 points

I think the best way I’ve seen to illustrate it is the stories of immortals earning incredible amounts of money every day who still can’t reach the wealth of Elon Musk.

Like, you’re an immortal born during the ice age 80,000 years ago. You are somehow making $5000 per day (or its equivalent in gold for the 79,700 years before dollars are invented, and you save all of it. You’re not as rich as Elon Musk.

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8 points

My favorite is “do you know the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars”

Like, being a millionaire is a pretty sweet spot to be in if you’re lucky enough. Not quite like a millionaire of decades ago but still good. But if you’re a billionaire, a million dollars is basically a rounding error.

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2 points

Use milliseconds instead: a million milliseconds is 17 minutes, a billion milliseconds is 12 days, a trillion is 31 years.

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4 points
3 points

Considering there’s no fully legal and definitely no moral way to get that kind of money, they should all be behinds bars. As for kids that inherit such wealth, shame on them for accepting blood money and doing literally nothing with it, besides make the world around them even worse.

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11 points

I think all the talk about billionaires is using a completely arbitrary number and subject to inflation. Wealth inequality is the big problem, it doesn’t matter what number on their bank account is.

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1 point

What would be the point in amassing more wealth when its capped? At that wealth no matter what you do, its not gonna get less really if you invested into things. How does that solve any of the problems we have in society?

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2 points

There wouldn’t be a point aside from maybe philanthropy. That these powerful Rich individuals will continue in Mass more wealth above the $1 billion cap specifically so others can benefit from it. I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything like that.

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2 points

people often become defensive saying that the government shouldn’t be able to dictate how much wealth one person can accumulate

Of course it should. If we’re expecting to live in a democracy, then people need to have equal voices. If you’re a billionaire you have a megaphone, as Elon Musk has shown. Democracy can’t work if some people have far more power than others.

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3 points

if you exceed $999,999,999 it should reset, giving people a motivation to keep things well under the cap. like exceeding the high score registers in a game, let it roll over.

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5 points

The problem is that they have enough independence to just cross borders and easily pay for new citizenship if it suits them. It would have to be a world wide movement. It’s impossible, or at least would only be possible within some mythical completely self-sufficient country that could withstand their meddling.

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6 points

My solution:

Your tax burden is your tax burden. If it’s 15% and you run off to a country where it’s 5% to avoid taxes, that’s fine. You can pay them 5%.

But you’re still on the hook for the remaining 10%.

If the 5% country tries to act as a tax haven and refuses to enforce the remaining 10%, they get a national embargo until they get in line.

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1 point

I have to repeat my response here, that is meaningless, when their taxable income is meaningless. How much did Trump pay in taxes again? The trick is to keep it tied up in an “investment” until they need it.

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1 point

Welcome to yet another world war I guess?

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1 point

Isn’t that already how it works? Currently, US citizens still have to pay taxes when living outside the country unless they’re paying taxes to a specific set of other countries. Although consequences are on the individual who fails to pay and not their country of residence.

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1 point

The US has exit taxes, as do many countries. If you try to renounce your US citizenship, you can be taxed based on the value of unsold assets.

I hate that the US is one of the few countries in the world that has citizenship-based taxation. It’s awful and stupid. But, in theory, it does mean that an American couldn’t just avoid taxes by moving to another country.

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1 point

Those are meaningless, when their taxable income is meaningless.

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4 points

There really isn’t much difference in lifestyles between billionaires and people with 100 mil. No one needs that much money. Anyone who has made more than 100 million has done something truly heinous to do so. I feel we should set our sights at a much lower tax bracket to cut down any potential antisocial oligarchs.

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Work Reform

!workreform@lemmy.world

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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.

Our Philosophies:

  • All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
  • Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
  • Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
  • We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.

Our Goals

  • Higher wages for underpaid workers.
  • Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
  • Better and fewer working hours.
  • Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
  • Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.

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