Is it because the people that we need to worry about don’t get paid massive wages? Instead they leverage their massive stock ownership as collateral for loans. And stock bonuses are not regulated or taxed in the same way as real wages.
Yeah, we can also make it fun. Once someone has amassed a certain quantity of wealth, make a big ceremony, where the guy is given a trophy that says “I won capitalism”. After that, every dollar he makes past the limit is taxed 100%
“I won capitalism”
Or we could think outside of the system we’ve been indoctrinated to believe is the only one that can “work” (by the very few people it does actually work for), and eliminate capitalism altogether so that there is no incentive to extract and hoard wealth in the first place, because those don’t serve society in any way shape or form.
No, let’s give them random privileges too. You get to drive in the HOV lane alone, you get a license made of metal, and you get to park in all handicap spaces except the closest to the entrance. And if you pay enough in taxes, you get an invite to the yearly pizza party with the president
What we need to do is implement “prestige wealth”. Once you hit, say, 100m you get your assets sold in order to fund a UBI, but you get a nice pin that marks your achievement.
Every time you prestige, you get a new pin, but the color of the pin changes.
I’m totally cool with rewarding people for making a bunch of money and giving it back to the people. Hell, make each prestige cooler. You find 100 billion in taxes? We’ll build you a little statue. You fund 1 trillion dollars in taxes? You get to be on a coin or some shit. Really put these greedy fucks incessant need for attention to work.
How does that work though? Let’s say the maximum wealth limit is one billion dollars and you own $750M of stock in the company you founded. Your wealth could go above and below that $1B limit multiple times in a day as the stock price goes up and down. What happens then?
I’ll preface this by saying the 1%'s stock holdings are pretty much the last thing I’m worried about protecting. But it could be as simple as requiring your wealth to be under the limit when you file your taxes. Let’s say it’s a billion dollars (I would argue it should be much lower). If you end the year with 11 billion dollars in wealth, you owe the government 10 billion dollars. There are controls we can put in place to prevent stock manipulation, similar to the ones we have now. Just actually enforced.
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.
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)
What max? Who defines it?
Nice try with the personal insult. Schoolyard stuff.
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.
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.
One day I might be mega rich and then people like me better watch their step!
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
The big fish to catch is untaxed earnings of the hyper wealthy. Any attacks on the potential of labor is anti worker.
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.
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.
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.
A cap like this would have nothing to do with labor. Nobody, laboring, is going to ever be in danger of reaching it.
I believe it would be corrupted to target laborers and the hyper wealthy do not get their money from wages.
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.
because the people in the top end are paid via stocks and not actual hard currency.
Tax rates used to extend over 100% in the USA. The IRS lost the case. They were limited to all of the money earned, not more.
So there used to ba maximum wage.
The Hamster from The Hamster Dance 2.0 makes maximum wage
My favourite line from the song.