When the Rich Make Too Much: Is it Time for a Maximum Wage?

I just love it when academics come up with ideas that have no grounding in reality or logic. Is this one of the same people who is telling us that farmers will give up their crop waste to make ethanol or that aerodynamically bumblebees are unable to fly?

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i think this is a fabulous idea. and to all the naysayers, please try to remember that this society is ours to shape and mold, and we may do so as we collectively wish. the future is ours to determine. a more equitable society is a fine place to start.

go gardner! you da man.

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This proposal - no more than 4 million per year - would hit a lot more people than just hedge fund managers. Movie stars, professional sports players, entrepreneurs, even some farmers, doctors, real estate agents and others earn in that range. What's to stop many of these people from ensuring that they don't earn more than the 4 million yearly cap - ie, what's to stop them from producing less - in order to avoid the confiscatory taxation? I would. Why knock yourself out just to feed Leviathan?

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If there's anything that will send corporatists over the brink faster than asking them to help the least fortunate by paying taxes to support a social safety net, it's telling the most fortunate that there is such thing as enough money.

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The wealth gap--wider now than during the Gilded Age of the late 1920's--is quickly eroding the middle class and has the potential to lead to a severe economic downturn or economic depression. One solution may be to cap the tax deductability of large executive salaries--in other words, a corporation could still choose to pay executives very high salaries, but taxpayers would not be asked to foot the bill.

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Mr. Gardner's proposal is far too generous. Being extremely familiar with the manufacturing sector of American business, I can state without qualification that the "leaders" of this industry are fools, idiots or just plain stupid when it comes to manufacturing efficiencies. Hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted because these obscenely compensated "good old boys" don't have clue and don't want to have a clue as to what must be done long-term to make their companies productive, competitive and efficient. Why don't they care? They get paid regardless and for short term sucking up to Wall Street, they can just close plants, destroy communities and their middle-class workers. Unions are complicit in that their leadership is not much different. I've heard it said many times that "the union protects the worst 5% of us", to which I reply "then take back your damn union and fire the dead wood. Then shove that in management's face until they get their act together."

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the american system must continue to be abused until the people gets *really* fed up and the heads start rolling 1789 style, any moderation would be detrimental.

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"The United States needs an income cap, Gardner posits in the new Foreign Policy, that limits the amount of money a single individual can annually take home to no more than "100 times as much money as the average worker in a society earns in a year."

"If the average worker makes $40,000," Gardner proposes, "the top compensated individual may keep $4 million a year.""

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It is 100x the amount the average earner brings home, which is RIGHT NOW 40,000. If the billions or trillions are skimmed off the top then logically that will be able to help the people on the bottom go to real schools, get better jobs and overall is likely to stimulate the average income of the nation so subsequently the greedy bastards on the top can take home more than 4m.

You want to work on crime in this society? Locking people up is obviously not doing it. People who have a good education can get good jobs and make adequate wages. The problem is many aren't given that opportunity.

You want to work on drugs? Refer to the 'rat park' study. When people have what they need in society... food, clothes, shelter, community, work then they don't do drugs. People who are akin to caged rats and don't have what they need to be happy turn to drugs. We can't lift people on the bottom out of drugs and poverty when so much of our countries assets are allocated to 1% of the nation.

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In the 1968 - 1979 period many socialistic primeministers in Western Europe advised a ratio of monthly net income;
lowest salary ; maximum income.
1000 - 5000 excess to be taxed at 70%. The rich man s taxsurplus was used for health insurance and education. Of course some peop
le said this would destroy Europe and the american capitalistic system was better.
To day we see the unconvenient truth in America. People all over the world see how a small group of superrich fascestoid families enslaved the wonderfull american people.

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Sorry to be the barer of the most inconvenient truth of all, but I must inject some insight from Dan Piraro, progressive cartoonist and author of "The Three Little Pigs Buy the White House" and 14 other books.

He concisely (and accurately) sums up that it is what's on our plates that causing the biggest problems on the planet (starvation, global warming, rainforest destruction):

Enough plants and water to feed more than a dozen people is fed to livestock to product a single meal for a a meat-eating human. I'm no mathematician, but I'm guessing if we weren't breeding and feeding the world's 55 billion farm animals, we'd solve the human hunger crisis in approximately four-and-a-half minutes. Not to mention that animal agriculture accounts for the majority of water and soil degradation, contributes more to global warming than all transportation combined, and is responsible for virtually all of the rainforest destruction on the planet.

Read also:
The World's Problems on a Plate (Guardian, UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,717044,00.html

And don't forget:
“The costs of mass-producing cattle, poultry, pigs, sheep and fish to feed our growing population... include hugely inefficient use of freshwater and land, heavy pollution from livestock feces, rising rates of heart disease and other degenerative illnesses, and spreading destruction of the forests on which much of our planet’s life depends.”

-- TIME Magazine Visions of the 21st Century, “Will We Still Eat Meat?”

------

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." -- Tolstoy

“Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself.” -- Tolstoy

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The shocked, sneering reaction of some posters tells me plenty about their values. Is money all you care about, USA? In Denmark, people prefer not to be paid much more than their fellows, even if they're the boss, because the inequity makes them uncomfortable - they work for other reasons as well.
And damn right, the poster who spoke of the enormous taxes paid by the rich in the 1950s in your country. Didn't stop 'em, did it. Have any of you who dismiss socialism in such horrified terms ever actually considered what it means? I would love to live in a social democracy (please note, for the confused, I don't mean communism), where there was less inequality, more social safety nets. Sounds pretty good compared to your wasteland of vast inequities, little social caring and endless consumption...

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The US form of capitalism (called 'savauge' by the French) is especially nasty since the mid 1970s when corporations disavowed any responsibility to their workers aside from a subsistence wage, or to the communities in which they operate. Their sole obligation --by law-- is to their stockholders. Thus corporate directors are obliged to act like sociopaths and they do. With Nafta and other free trade agreements, American workers are put in competition with the lowest paid workers in the world. So much for American opportunity and the middle class.

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Why take from the rich? How do we justify confiscation and then decry the loss of our civil liberties? Do we empower administrators to manage the wealth? Past performance would suggest this usually leads to a shrinking pie to be fought over by corrupt officials and criminal elements. As usual nothing of significance would trickle down to where its needed most.

The problem isn’t necessarily profit or its accumulation. They are proven tools for wealth creation. These are not dirty words. They have become so because we associate them with the misery and suffering that has become more evident in the face of obscene self-indulgence and the ostentatious display of individual wealth.

The real issues are cultural and structural.

As long as we worship at the temple of consumerism we cannot condemn some parishioners for becoming fanatical. If we want to change this behavior we need to develop a culture that confers status and privilege by different means.

There is no form of trickle down that will resolve misery and suffering. We need to make the structural reforms that address these issues before anything trickles up.

Some aspects of socialism should be utilized to insure our needs are met. The better aspects of capitalism should be encouraged to fulfill our wants. Combined, capitalism and socialism should resemble neither but result in a system where envy and pity have been mitigated sufficiently to insure co-operation by all towards the advancement of civilization.

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I have come to similar conclusions in considering these issues. I would have also included removing the cap from social security taxes (a straight % on all income), requiring stock to be held for a year before it can be sold for profit, a limit on wages of $1 million a year, a cap on inheritance of $1 million per heir, and a restriction on military spending so it is no more than the amount spent on the smallest average of national health, education, or infrastructure (transportation, energy, safety) per capita.
To paraphrase the old quotation: Anyone who is not a socialist at age 21 has no heart, anyone who is a capitalist at age 30 has no brain.

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.
If we ever wrest control of our government away from plutocrats, the first law we should pass is an income cap. Too much wealth in too few hands is a guarantee of tyranny.

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Good grief. Enough with the whining. There is such a thing as "enough wealth", and even if people set their salaries so that they're not paying the overages back, they're still restructuring society so that the average (I would think modal would be a better construct, personally) wage continues to rise and thus lift the highest boats again. People who like making money will continue to make money. Only their methods will change. In order to retain more, they need to ensure that more people make more money. So that's where they put their efforts. Most people will work within the system given them.

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Let's not forget that Thomas Jefferson sought to pass a bill that greatly limited how much money could be inherited because he feared the rise of an aristocracy in the US.

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I like it except for the fact that 4 mil is not enough. I have a remedy however: In order to compare bulges of greed the most greedy can see how many times in a lifetime they can start with nothing and reach 4 mil. Warren Buffet became a millionaire 14 times for example. Now that's an accomplishment we can all get down on our knees and well. . . enjoy.

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It's possible to earn 20,000 a year and get into financial trouble because you spend 20.500. Is it at all possible to earn 4 million a year and get into financial trouble by spending 4,05 millions? It seems pretty much like defining time into X eternities!

Besides there are many ways of getting immensely rich. Honesty is not among them! Grabbing what rightly belongs to or should belong to others sure is! All welfare cheaters combined damage society less than a fraction of a percentage of what a single Enron case does.

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...governments and act to reverse those trends. Others, apparently, look at government intrusion and abuse as their model.

Sure. Expand DHS to include the Regulation of All Citizens Income Department. Have the NSA enforce the Income Cap, and put some TSA agents in front of everyone's house to shake them down for contraband cash.

Undoubtedly, by the time we've given up enough of our rights to allow the expansion of such perversions of the role of government, we'll be in numerous more wars and need a whole lot more blood and money than the measly thousands of lives and half-a-trillion greenbacks this one cost. Your benevolent Government will Need Your Excess Dollars.

So, before you go hog-wild on the whole, "Bush got away with it, so I can, too!" idea, you may want to check his approval ratings. People have become disenchanted with Big Brother-style governments.

Wait...on second thought, I encourage you to not hold back. Please reduce your Financial Success Cap to three twinkies and a roll of toilet paper, and mandate that people stand in lines to obtain vouchers for them.

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The Dollar is God. To tamper with free enterprise it to interfere with God's will. Wealth comes through the Dollar, by God's will. Power comes through the Dollar, By God's will. Salvation, Holy recognition, redemption, is purchased with the Dollar.
We have a lot of good ideas. But, the Dollar is sacred in America.

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Although I hesitate to say we should give money to the government we have now, or to let them enforce laws I don't feel they have a right to, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to need that kind of money. One person, regardless of circumstance, doesn't need multiple dwellings, vehicles, or a mountain of other useless possessions.

A society based on consumerism, by definition, cannot last forever. And a people who define happiness by having "stuff" are missing out on just about everything else life has to offer. We're bereft of soul and compassion and plain logic. People existed (more happily, I might add) for eons before our current technological and soulless state, yet we think we have all the answers.

The problem with America is that we don't have a true free market. What we have now is a corporatocracy, where the elite buy our politicians and write laws to screw the common people. Not only that, but decades of propaganda have convinced even some middle or lower class idiots that they might be rich too some day, thus ensuring that these people will defend the powerful from the powerless. Tax writeoffs and corporate welfare are in direct opposition to a free market, and are becomingly increasingly more common for the huge corporations in our country. This is what needs to change, although it won't as long as we the people can't pull the wool from our eyes and go after the real threat to our freedom--the collusion of big business and government which can lead nowhere but fascism.

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You have added nothing to this conversation. You keep spouting that same old tired line of brainwashing rhetoric how terrible 'socialism' is...ooh me god a socialist nation. Europe is socialist and they have plenty of small businesses and innovation. Oh yeah, and you are the 'liberal'--today's progressives cannot be called liberals--we've tried to explain this to you people before--it is 'free market' tyranny that is liberal, being that it has no regulation, no limits, no restriction. Progressives are the new conservatives with thier environmental conscience, fair trade, a call for ethical and moral values--like, believe it or not, that evil word--honesty--and freedom of culture and diversity--as the hypocritical confederate south once cried. Republicans are liberals, and progressives (not democrats) are conservatives. How does a small business compete with walmart friend? In fact ultra-rich people, corporations, and the industrial-military complex is the biggest 'welfare' program on the face of the earth. Ultra-subsidized!!!!!! There is no actual free market--it is rigged to maintain status quo and is designed to 'maintain' strict class divisions with only an illusion of upward mobility. It is the progressives, your so-called 'liberals' who uphold democracy, the American Dream, and the so-called American way--in the face of and constant threat of fascist tyrrany--this is the history of America! Patriots are progressives--those who dissent and question and protect the idea of the American dream. It is we who are responsible for revery single incident of civil rights.

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It seems to me that there is a fundamental assumption that needs to be re-evaluated: that we are all equal. Sure the constitution alledges that all "men" are created equal, which may or may not be true, but do all people remain equal throughout the course of their lives? This proposal, like many socialist theories makes the assumption that simply giving those "less fortunate" a bunch of money will make them more fortunate and there's no evidence to support that. Remember the adage, "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day but teach him to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime"? The real question is why is there inequality in the first place? Are wealthypeople responsible for poverty? If not, then why penalize wealthy people? People who are self-made tend to think significantly different than people who are not. Remember, thought preceeds action, if your actions are resulting in poverty then odds are it's because you think in a way that is poverty-affirming. I think the real resource that should be taken from the self-made rich and distributed to the poor is not their money but their ways of thinking. These knee-jerk pseudo scientifc social and economic suggestions seek to appeal to people's ego and hubris by implying that the wealthy did not earn their money and so should have it nationalized and given to the righteous poor. Professional athletes make a lot of money because they attract lots of fans who pay for tickets and memorabilia. All that money adds-up and so why shouldn't the superstar athlete who's responsible for that money share in it? Next people will be telling those with multiple degrees that they can't get another degree because there are people who never went to college and don't even have one degree. Maybe we should do that, maybe we should find people who have Phds and give them to people who never went college. Of course that's ridiculous, giving somone a diploma for knowledge they didn't earn is no more intelligent than giving them money for work they didn't do. You want a revolution? Mandatory college education. Mandatory money management classes.

M

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True freedom can only be experienced if you have all of the money, or none of the money. Anywhere in between is slavery. However, if we must live with this evil, it would be better to be a slave to a budget than to money - especially if we had the freedom to set our own budget. And, any good, comprehensive budget has a maximum income.

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Even as a libertarian, I still think it is a good idea. Perhaps because I'm libertarian-left! This issue trumps and transcends all political views, because greed is just one of those really destructive things. But its pointless to even consider this because it would just destroy the country. Despite how badly greedy people mess things up, some of them try to do good. So treating all of them unalaterally like this would be totally foolish. Not to mention it would turn the US into a 3rd world country! Of course if things get bad enough we might actually prefer to live in a 3rd world country. Cuba is starting to look more and more appealing with the way things are headed here. And that's just a sad fact lol. But that's more a spiritual issue than a political one.

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Consider the old rancher who lives on $20,000 a year for 50 years, then one year sells his beautiful ranch for $35mn.

Happens a lot.

You gotta take this kind of situation into account.

Instead of simple annual income, how about the average of ones' lifetime income up to and including this past year cannot exceed $4mn a year?

There also need to be ways to stop the person who arranges with the Compensation Committee of their corporate board to pay themselves $4mn and then to pay their wife $4mn, too and then each of their 5 kids $4mn a year, too.

For their valuable contributions to the corporate mission, of course.

Jan VanDenBerg

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Freemarket-freaks don't have the RIGHT to destroy society, but you'll never hear that from them. Face it, the argument that somehow having limits to their greed is some imposition on their freedom is a rationalization for their greed. Greed and the lust for power is a mental illness that has inflicted almost ALL of the strife and pain in the world's history. It's time society stop reinforcing those impulses and attach to them the censure they so richly merit. It' snot OK to rape other people and the planet so you feel good about yourself.

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....and not less, for those with more.

I am a socialist, with communist leaning. I'm also Chinese, and while I'm not WELL versed with modern history, specific events such as the Cultural Revolution, I have read much on.

Wealth itself isn't evil, resources are a good thing. What's bad, is that some people, have took their excess, AT THE EXPENSE of those with less. As long as the ones that have the least are still care for, and living well, I have no problem with a few living much better than us. Though in addition to those with the least, living well as well, those with more, should also PAY fairly, especially in their use of labour to generate more capital. The generation of capital, that should be regulated in terms of raising the minimum, so that the good employers that pays fairly, aren't out competed by the bad employers that pay poorly. Raising the minimum is a matter of treating our citizens better, it is a matter of fair business, it is also a matter of long term economical sense.

What we need instead of a salary cap, is a higher minimum wage, an actually secure social safety net, and higher taxes for corporations, CEOs, and those with the highest incomes, especially the ones in business. (As Karl Marx have noted, capital generates capital, so those with more, have more an edge to earning more. Therefore, I'm not worried about a higher tax for the rich, driving the rich out, since, once the rich is out, others WILL fill the vacuum left by them now that their prior competitors are not longer there.)

For this to work, we do require protectionism. Is your freedom to buy cheaply, more important than your ownership of your country? It's not for me.

I don't believe in a salary cap. During the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution, instead of focusing on providing education to the peasantry, improving their living conditions, and making available to them culture that have been hogged by the bourgeois...the Reds, unfortunately, took the route of bashing the intellectuals, bashing those who have more wealth, and well, the country went to hell and millions of people died. On the note of revolution, stability is a key. Allende was democratically elected to Chile, but the problem was, the few super rich controls the resources already, and they deliberate interrupted the chain of supplies to the market to sabotage Allende. That isn't fair, but that is reality, before we upset the hostage taker holding the gun, let's make sure we have a back-up plan and that it works.

Insuring that those with the least, have more, in the scheme of resource distribution, will result in the current few that have the most, have the least, especially by ratio. It doesn't mean that those who have more, will be POOR, or even not rich anymore. I think, it's more important, that someone who starves now, have a roof and three meals a day, than for anyone who have the most right now, to have so much that they can't count it. I also think, once we raise the minimum, everyone will be richer. If not visible in numbers, when the minimum is higher, and there are no ghettos, when the minimum is higher, and The People is no longer bitter, than the ones with most, will no longer be afraid outside their gated communities, will have the freedom to move all through their ENTIRE country, eh? Let all our houses be the whole of our country.


For raising the minimum,
Mercurial Georgia, Canada

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It's tried and true. We know exactly how to do it. We have reams of examples of different regimes over the globe to study.

We had it once. Reagan got rid of it.

We've seen the result.

Let's just get it back. Maybe not to Swedish levels, but let's re-introduce some of the old progressivity back into the tax tables.

Duhhhhh!!

Jan VanDenBerg

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and not a socialist nation. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Does anybody remember that?

The Constitution assures protection of our [god/nature/whatever] given rights. An individual has the right to make a much money as they want AND to do what they want with the money.

A maximum wage is by far the most asinine idea that I've heard in a long time.

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Why is anyone even wasting their time arguing about this? It's not going to happen. The rich won't allow it. Just one thing though. Are any of those that are in favor of this making millions? I didn't think so. It's easy to advocate for sharing the wealth when it's not your wealth being shared. Drop the cap to $50k and see how many people on here want to share THEIR wealth.

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They are interested in accumulating as much wealth as possible in the short term, because they realize that, in the long term, their fablulous wealth will only come to a modest holding. However, in the coming catastrophes, those modest holdings will still be much, much more that the billions and billions of humans living in abject squalor. Better not to be one of them...

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I'd vote for it! I believe there's a policy in place at Dr. Bronner's soap company which limits the top executives to just 5 times what the lowest paid employees take home.
Greed has corrupted our best and brightest as well as our value system.

"A pair of wing-tipped shoes strode by
as I was daubing up the mess
I stood to meet him face to face
my eyes appealed to his noblesse
But fathomed quick to lifeless shoal
bereft of all such worthy pearls
Unscrupulous and lowly tradesmen
had razed and overrun the world
For my trouble I received
a wagging finger manicured
That lorded over integers
for staid investors sinecured
Architects of hollow empires
corruptors of the Senate
Amalgamating noble men and metals in
A dull specie of decadence"

- Gremillion 'The Velocity of Falling Bodies'

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When I was a boy there was a saying,'Those who make the most pay the most'. It was the late 50's and I was asking my Dad about this thing called 'taxes'. He told me what made our country strong was that the country was'nt going to become like other countries where people with too much money control everything. The way we kept Greed in check was by having a 91% tax bracket for the rich. Then Kennedy got in.
Lowered the tax on the rich.We soon had a budget shortfall.
Every President right up to Reagan gave the rich some kind of tax break. Yes this one too. Georgeie is all about protecting his wealthy cronies asses. What did we get back? The kind of country we did'nt want. The wealthy control the gov't. Control what we watch,what we eat,who we should be friends with,who we can marry,where we can live,what you wipe your ass with.
There's one sure fire cure for this situation....the 91% tax
bracket for the wealthy. Since there are various degrees of wealthy it should be scaled according to one's income.
If you make 20 million a year,50% incomes over 100 million,and there are thousands of them,91%. If you have an off-shore secret bank account,you pay a flat tax of 10 million for the account. Why? Because there can be hundreds of millions in that account.
We have to stop being such pussies on taxing the wealthy. It served our country well for almost 150 years.
It's time for the wealthy and the wealthy businesses to pay their share,without loopholes,special tax breaks or anything that does'nt add up to them paying what ought to be paid.
Draft Jeffrey7 for Prez

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...do NOT make it impossible for the rest of society to live a decent life with dignity. Who cares how rich the rich are as long as they STOP driving up the costs of living and STOP making it impossible to find decent affordable housing and STOP inciting wars they will not die in. Some of us do not need to be millionaires, and some of us want to live a life in anonymity, but we want to do it with the opportunity to live in homes we can pay for without starving or going without medical treatment. When the rich have a stranglehold on everyone else is when revolutions are contemplated.

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Missed the boat on this one, Sam. You're a day late and a $ short. The American people, ignorant and complacent fools that they are, still fail to grasp the gravity of the impending economic meltdown, but if you think a discussion of the potential benefits of a maximum wage are in any way germane to the current financial disaster that continues to unfold, then all I can say is, you're part of the problem.

The time is quickly approaching when minimum or maximum wages will be a moot point. Think runs on banks and dumpster diving. I'm going to break it down for y'all right now as even Alterneters continue to live in some folkloric reverie of American entrepreneurial spirit and good old fashion "hard work" coupled with technological superiority.

We are NINE (that's 9) trillion dollars in debt. We have a negative savings rate as a result of rampant consumerism and the ineffective pricing of debt and assets by Mr. Wonderful's, aka, Greenspan's financial genius. Fuck it - let's go back to 1% Ben! We are blowing 10 billion a month in Iraq and the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and various ME sheikdoms own the better part of 60% of our debt. The dollar is falling like a stone and when Idiot 2 lowers rates it will fall even further. How much longer will Russia (OPEC's 2nd largest producer) continue to accept dollars. How about Venezuela or even Saudi Arabia for that matter?

Wake up people. The US is entering a tailspin and you're still talking about maximum wages. This is the endgame everyone. The US is in its death throes and no amount of tinkering with wages or rates can pull the dollar out of this dive. Get your savings out, buy gold and for the love of god, DO NOT think about buying a house. If you were dumb enough to buy one recently, strip everything and sell it on Ebay, walk away from the overpriced and cheaply built piece of crap and start renting. Personally, I think you deserve to be out on the streets, but given a choice between watching people or banks and other financial institutions go down, I'll take the latter all day long.

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So if we set the cap at 100 times the average wage, what's to stop the guys at the top from boosting wages so they can boost their own take?

Or am I being completely ridiculous here?

I think a lot of people got unnecessarily hung up on the $4 million figure.

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I've been a proponent of maximum wage for years, and fully appreciate the arguments that implementing it would wreak all hell on entrepreneurship. But it doesn't necessarily need to be so. While Mr. Gardner advocates tying it to a flat multiple of an arbitrary average national income of $40,000, what I would suggest would be to tie it instead to the average income of a company's employees, and make the multiplier a function of the number of people on-staff.

For example, a small business employing 5-30 full time staff could have a salary cap of 5x that of the bottom earner, while mega corporations employing 100,000+ staff would have a cap of 400x. Now, these specific numbers are pure invention without any study to back them up, but they're just preliminary suggestions and very much subject to revision.

The big thing here is that this maximum wage idea gives all sorts of incentives for hiring, growth, and overall better wages. Want a better multiplier? Hire more people. Want a better base salary? Give everyone a raise. Basically, it is trickle down economics actually legislated instead of blindly hoped for, like we get now.

Ultimately, I think we can still have large companies headed by the top talent, as long as said 'top talent' is willing to bring the rank and file along for the ride.

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"There are certain things one has to be an intellectual to believe, since no ordinary man could be so stupid."

Simple, huh? Just confiscate the wealth from rich people, and magically the world will be transformed for the better.

Apparently, Mr. Gardner slept through the 20th century, when a host of governments adopted such policies. Ho...wait a minute. He does say that his idea would have been regarded as wonderful 50 years ago. He has a point. Fifty years ago, the sheer idiocy of socialism wasn't as clear to most people. Since then, even the communist Chinese have bought a vowel, and figured out that if you want a rich society, you need...rich people. Too bad, but there you are.

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The key is free enterprise and our competitive economic system. The notion is that if you remove the competitive aspect there is no incentive to improve. Well, there’s good competition: profit as an incentive to create higher and higher quality goods and services. Then there’s bad competition: profit as an incentive to rip off the public so as to become richer and richer (think Enron and the many other companies that recently have fallen into this category).

This competitiveness has driven our economic system to the point that the means have become substituted for the ends. Instead of profit being the means to quality, quality is the means to profit. Unfortunately, once profit is the goal, quality gets to be the thing that is manipulated to achieve that profit. Then, the only quality that is good is that which produces the most profit. “Planned Obsolescence” is an example of what can happen to quality when profit is the only goal. That’s “bad” competition, but, on the other hand, “good” competition can drive the economy to the benefit of all our citizens, not just the wealthy.

To that end, here’s a crazy idea: Let corporations compete to compensate their CEOs however much they want. But, every year, Congress decides how much it will cost to run the government for the next year. The ten percent of highest income bracket people who control ninety percent of the wealth, collectively chip in enough taxes to pay for ninety percent of the cost of running the government. Seems only fair, doesn’t it? They get to provide for the economy that allows this ten percent to be so rich and thereby keep it running. The remaining ten percent of the cost of government collectively would be paid for by the ninety percent of the citizens not in the highest bracket. Just a side-note, no deductions of any kind would be necessary (or allowed).

Think of all the disposable income the bottom income brackets would have to spend on both the necessities and luxuries of life. Perhaps we’ll all see that a “percolate up” theory of economics really would work best, as opposed to that nonsensical “trickle down” theory. It’s amazing the manifold forms of stupidity we are forced to live under. Why would anyone buy the idea that low income families would benefit from a “trickle,” while the wealthy get a “flood?” Would you?

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What you have now is gang rule in the United States, which threatening to turn into a single system of totalitarian rule - much like what IG Farben established in Nazi Germany, or what the Soviet Central Committee established in Stalin's Russia.

Almost all major markets are tightly controlled by aligned corporate interests. The American Petroleum Institute, the Edison Electric Institute, and the Nuclear Energy Institute are examples of a coordinated propaganda system that mimics the far more secretive (and quite illegal) coordinated economic behavior. Anyone who believes gas prices are set by supply and demand, for example, is either a modern economist or an idiot - but then I repeat myself, don't I?

Economics - that's the one 'science' that has actually regressed during the past two hundred years.

In essence, what's happened is that the British Corporate Crown system (Hudson's Bay and British East India Companies, for example), is still alive and well. Bush is one of their tools now, nothing more. Just as the products of the US colonies had to go through Britain before being sold on to Europe, all global oil reserves must now pass through the London and New York Exchanges before being sold on to their destinations. That's just one example of how the modern globalized colonial system works.

As a first step, high taxes on the wealthy are a good step. If they want to flee the country for the Caymans, that's fine. Watch out for global warming fueled hurricanes, though.

However, politicians are hired by the wealthiest of the wealthy, so you need public financing of elections to reverse this century-long trend. Obama and Clinton will never do anything that hurts the interests of their wealthiest sponsors, regardless of their finely tuned propaganda messages.

Then you'll have to start dissolving corporate charters and applying the 14th amendment to make it illegal for corporations to own other corporations. Holding companies and other fronts should be illegal - direct transparency to ownerships is absolutely necessary.

Seems kind of daunting, doesn't it? How to change things? First, take a walk - look at the sun, the wind, the growing plants, the soil, the rivers, the oceans, and just stop for a second. Imagine yourself lost in the desert, and ask yourself a simple question - if you were all alone, dying of thirst in the desert, what would you rather have? A gallon of clean fresh water, or one of those billion-dollar pallets of $100 bills that went missing in Iraq?

Think about it. If you answered "the cash" then you're insane, probably suicidal, and you need some immediate psychological counseling.

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The way it works; even the highest paid CEOs are dependent on the lowest paid workers. What would they do without the garbage truck driver or the clerk at the check out stand? They would founder like a fish out of water. A progressive income tax recognizes this situation and would benefit everyone, even those with higher incomes, since the lower income folks would have relatively more to invest back into the economy. It's a trickle-up situation then, and the biggies would be the one's up there collecting their share of the benefits.
It would benefit them overall as well as those they try to keep it from. And greed is then as bad for the interests of the greedy as it is for those it trys to short, but "a rising tide lifts all boats"
The rich don't understand this because they, as most others, treat money as if it were a fixed quantity, so they'd better get, and keep, as much of it as they can. Wrong.

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but Americans think it is written in the book of nature that some will have it all while the majority must go without.

Most low income workers are in agreement with their wealthy owners that it is right for a man to make as much money as he can, pay as little taxes as possible, and pay his workers poorly. Well, some might complain sometimes about not getting paid enough, but few think it is really truly wrong for it to be this way. They are just jealous you see. They would like to be the boss. Look at rap culture, the music of young blacks and young people, for instance. It celebrates greed. Look at the people's cultural heroes , professional athletes, like Micheal Jordon. Americans are raised to believe in getting as much money as you can and that the more you have the better a person you are. Any nice, humanistic lefty notions like this one about putting a cap on how obscenely rich an individual can get strikes them as unnatural and somehow oppressive, even when they are poor themselves.

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100 is way too high. The cap should be about 20. But something more is needed here--a criterion for why your salary or wealth should be higher.

First, we need to have the salary for everyone set at the same level, from garbage collector to CEO (let's call that Level 1). Every worker should be a Level 1. If someone wants to get to levels 2 to 20, then the criterion should be voted upon by everyone and would be based on the degree to which the aspirant (to a higher level) had made a contribution to the common good for that year. After a year, the "reward" reverts to Level 1. A cure for cancer or a viable alternative to oil would warrant a rise from Level 1 to anything from Level 2 to Level 20, as voted on by everyone else; yet another Big Mac or worthless trinket would get the person zilch--he or she would remain at Level 1. This method would assure that those who wished to excel could do so and get rewarded, and also that the quality of work and inventions would be high (and for the common good); there would also be far fewer trivial and worthless (for the common good) products and projects.

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Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait.

Translation: "The secret of great fortunes without an apparent cause is a crime, forgotten because it was well done."

The great fortunes of the 20th century were built on those of the 19th, which were built on those of the 18th, which were built on those of the 17th and the 16th... one long sorry saga of Enclosure, enslavement, murder, conspiracy, bribery, and theft. There is not a one of them that can be ascribed to honest labour or inegenuity alone. There is not one that was not derived from "sharp practise" (i.e. fraud) or brute domination (force). Vulgar libertarians claim to loathe and eschew force and fraud, yet worship the meaningless cowrie-shell collections accumulated by force and fraud over generations.

Trace back any family fortune you like, any country you like -- not just the US. You will find the great crime, conveniently forgotten. What the ulttrawealthy owe is not even taxes. It is reparation, and should go to a global fund to repair bio-regions ravaged by colonialism and extractive exploitation, aid and assist displaced and landless persons and climate/war refugees, provide appropriate tech for local autarky and sustainability etc.

Not only a cap on income and wealth is in order, but truth in labelling. All great fortunes should be publicly documented: since wealthy people exercise disproportionate influence on government and public affairs, they should be regarded as part of the apparatus of the state and required to meet Glasnost standards for accountability and public inspection. Noblesse oblige, after all.

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I think a maximum wage would not only be unconstitutional but just plain wrong. HOWEVER, a war tax is perfectly reasonable. All income over $500,000/year would be taxed at 90% during any conflict where Congress has passed authorization to send troops abroad is fair. Those that have monetary interests in war would lose their incentive to support wars of choice. Those that think others should fight their wars for them, i.e. support without sacrifice, would be less likely to engage in these imperialistic fantasies.
From a Robert Reich article in 2003:
"Traditionally during wartime, taxes have been raised on top incomes to pay the extra costs of war. The estate tax — overwhelmingly paid by wealthy families — was imposed by wartime Republican presidents Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley. It was maintained through World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Cold War. Now, the estate tax is being phased out, at least until 2011, as part of the tax cut of 2001.

The top income tax rate rose during World War I to 77%. In World War II, it reached more than 90%. In 1953, with the Cold War raging, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower refused to support a Republican move to reduce it. By 1980, it was still way up there, at 70%. Then Ronald Reagan slashed it to 28%, giving us the lowest top tax rate of all modern industrialized nations. Because Reagan kept spending record sums on the military, the federal deficit ballooned. A few years after that, the Berlin Wall came down, ending the Cold War. We congratulated ourselves and then faced the largest budget deficit since World War II. "

Let's force Democrats, who can't seem to grow a spine, to take a stand on this issue. And let's see Republicans vote against the interests of their redneck base.

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in effect until the early 1960's accomplished much the same thing. Conservatives often crow about Kennedy lowering it to 70% as evidence that he was "anti-tax", but he at the same time tightened tax loopholes that ended up bringing in more tax revenue. It was the major tax slashing for the super rich, begun under Reagan and worsened under Bush II, that caused the obscene and growing gap between rich and poor in this country. For comparison, top pay in Japan is only 17 times that of the average worker, and in the low 20's for Britain if memory serves. Here, it's 400 times! Is a Japanese or British CEO really so much less productive than an American one? Well, if by "productive" you mean is he willing to do anything and harm anyone in exchange for so much wealth that he needn't ever be accountable to the victims of his greed, maybe so.

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According to the United Nations Development Program, the last three decades have seen an alarming growth of global economic inequality. Thirty years ago, the richest fifth of the world’s population had an income 30 times greater than the poorest fifth. Now, the income of the richest fifth is 61 times that of the poorest fifth. And 358 super-rich individuals now have a combined wealth equaling the total income of 2.3 billion people, nearly half the world’s population.

To quote David Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World:

"Beginning with Adam Smith, market theory has been quite explicit that the efficiency of the market's self-organizing dynamic is a consequence of small, locally owned enterprises competing in local markets on the basis of price, quality, and service in response to customer-defined needs and values. No buyer or seller may be large enough to influence the market price individually.

By contrast, what we know as the global capitalist economy is dominated by a few financial speculators and a handful of globe-spanning megacorporations able to use their massive financial clout and media out-reach to manipulate prices, determine what products will be available
to consumers, absorb or drive competitors from the market, and reshape the values of popular culture to create demand for what the corporations choose
to offer."

In understanding the nature of the structural changes that have occurred in the global economy, it is important to understand the shift that has occurred between the real economy and the speculative economy. In an article entitled “From the Real Economy to the Speculative,” Bernard Lietaer explains the distinction between the real and speculative economy and the shift that has occurred:

“In 1975, about 80 percent of foreign exchange transactions (where one national currency is exchanged for another) were to conduct business in the real economy. For instance, currencies change hands to import oil, export cars, buy corporations, invest in portfolios, or build factories. Real transactions actually produce or trade goods and services. The remaining 20 percent of transactions in 1975 were speculative, which means that the sole purpose was an expected profit from buying and selling currencies themselves, based on their changing values…

…Today the real economy in foreign exchange transactions is down to 2.5 percent and 97.5 percent is now speculative.”

This monstrosity of global speculation and currency trading has no allegiance to anything other than profit and the perverted thing is that market instability is how these vultures profit. As Litaer puts it:

“Big fluctuations in the values of currencies allow for big profits to be made by trading them. Consider the following statements by leaders at opposite ends of the spectrum:

“The biggest concern today is the growing constituency for instability.”

- Paul Volcker, ex-governor of the Federal Reserve, in Changing Fortunes.

“Instability is cumulative, so that the eventual breakdown of freely floating exchanges is ensured.”

- George Soros, the largest currency speculator today, in The Alchemy of Finance.

They both agreed that there are many more people now who have an interest in profiting from instability; previously, they had an interest in stability. If you have an unstable system, it is just a question of when it will fly off the handle. It will blow apart at the moment when the U.S. dollar experiences a crisis. When the dollar crisis occurs, the world will have no system left…

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"Wealth without work" is among the most toxic elements of our culture. It is a fallacy that those who hold the most wealth are the most "productive" members of our society. The vast majority of those who belong to the 5% of the most wealthy Americans (holding more than 60% of total capital) inherited much of their wealth and the rest is "investment" related. These are not working people.

It is a mistake to believe that democracy=laissez-faire capitalism. We are morally responsible for ensuring that every American citizen has the dignity due him/her as a human being whether he/she is fortunate enough to be born with financial resources or not. The American Dream- pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps- Horatio Alger mythology- is defunct. Let's evolve already and recognize that so we may leave something more valuable than money to our children- justice.

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I am a teacher of history and a retired military officer, and a mathematician. If I were to write a paper asserting that a particular technique for heart surgery was better than the rest, that paper, rightly, would have no credibility.

So, a psychologist (an expert in that most unscientific of the social sciences) proposes an economic shift of gargantuan proportions to fix the self-esteem of the non-productive and unsuccessful--don't you see a problem here?

Economics, at its base, is very uncomplicated, and this aspect is well documented. If there is a limit on wealth formation and on income, then that will limit production accordingly. There is simply no motivation to knock yourself out in any endeavor, when your rewards are limited. You'd think a psychologist would know that!

Implementing this proposal would not yield a plethora of tax dollars for great projects--it would lead to lower tax receipts and fewer jobs for the very people it is intended to help.

This is not Economics 101, this is economics 099--my 7th graders know better.

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The survival of this country depends on reversing the quarter-century long string of economic redistribution, where govt has put the wealth of the nation into the hands of the few. The govt ended basic humanitarian aid to the poor (i.e., welfare) at the same time that we have poured billions of dollars annually into aid for the wealthiest 1%/corporations. The govt. systematically stripped away workers rights and protections, from effectively dissolving labor unions to the increasing use of sub-minimum wage waivers, taxpayer-funded job outsourcing, blocking access to higher education and job skills training, etc. We have essentially become a feudal state, and this has destroyed the middle class, abandoned the impoverished, and paid for a seemingly endless party for the rich. This isn't going to change until/unless we compel the govt to change it.

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This article is nice, but it smacks of "belling the cat".

One more time for the educationally impaired:
-Our elected pay you and me no heed.
-Our elected are owned lock, stock and barrel by big-bux contributors
-And what they don't own, the lobbyists do, so....

...so where you get this idea our elected would do something like that, Looooooseeeeeeee?

Get a grip. Maybe after the revolt following the next depression....maybe then.

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Why is it that a CEO who makes multi-millions of dollars per year, can drive his/her company into the ground, leave the company with many more millions of dollars from his/her golden parachute and then instantly be hired to run some other corporation at an even higher salary? It doesn’t work this way for the rest of us.

I can't help but wonder if the answer lies in those interlocking corporate boards of directors. If the CEO of one company is on the board of lots of other companies, do they have an agreement to protect one another? To rehire one another? To raise each others’ astronomical compensation every year regardless of the company’s progress? To band together to buy politicians?

I wonder too, if all this rampant, draining and corrupting greed stems from the idea of profit margins. As I understand it (and I’m not sure I do), profit margins have to do with the percent of profit you make each year. Unlike past centuries, where if you made a nice, say, ten percent profit one year and you wanted to make more DOLLARS of profit next year, you'd have to increase productivity. If you couldn’t, well, ten percent is still a healthy profit and you could prosper on ten percent for the rest of your life.

With profit margins, it seems that if you make a ten percent profit this year, you MUST make, say, twelve percent profit the next year. Then the year following that you MUST make fourteen percent profit. But no, that’s only a two percent profit margin each year and that’s not good enough.

If initially you make a two percent profit margin, the next year you MUST make a higher percent profit margin, maybe four percent and the following year you MUST make a still higher margin, five percent, and again the following year, and the year after that, and after that, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad exploitation, ad cooking the books, ad cheating the consumer, ad corrupting politicians. It's the snow ball theory of business. But snowballs meltdown. Like Enron, et. al.

I know it sounds like another oligarchic conspiracy theory, but can anyone argue cogently that we’re not already running rapidly into oligarchy?

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I have come to the same conclusion regarding limiting wealth and income. I would set the ceiling much lower however: maximum wealth = 10 Million, maiximum yearly income = 1 Million.

My reasoning is simple. You can only have democracy if citizens have roughly equal power(wealth). If a few can buy the votes of many, as in the U.S., you don't have anything resembling a democracy. (I know, it's supposed to be a republic, but it's really not - for the same reason).

Many problems are solved with hard limits on wealth. Politicians cannot be bought, because they are already at their limit. Besides, no one would waste their limited wealth to buy a politician. When you have no hope of extreme gains, why bother cheating?

Many of today's problems are symptoms of the rich trying to get richer: War in Iraq. War anywhere? Insurance-based corporate healthcare system. Global warming. Cigarette smoking. You name it. Most of it goes away when you don't have a powerful lobby pushing the interests of the filthy rich.

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The maximum sacrifice of personal time and energy that can be made in order to contribute to the pool of wealth is FINITE, yet we allow infinite withdrawal, thereby getting farther and further from reality, justice, safety, happiness - and survival. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer means the 1% get paid more and more per unit of work while the 99% get paid less and less per unit of work. The legal thefts are constantly shifting money from earners to nonearners. Transaction itself contains the primary legal theft, since the two things in each and every exchange cannot be of equal value, ie cannot represent equal amounts of contribution to society through work. Over trillions of transactions that fact on its own must lead to an ever-stretching bell curve of overpay and underpay. The correct motivation for work is fairpay. Neither underpay nor overpay is necessary to get people to work - just as in nature: bear no fishee bear no eatee; and bird no catchee worm bird no eatee worm. The insertion of money in between work and eat doesn't change the fundamental situation.
No one can work more than twice as hard as the average person who works more than 50 hours a week, and no one can work more than about 100 hours a week long-term. Meanwhile, pay ranges extremely widely: from a million times to 1000th of world average hourly pay, from US$1billion a fortnight to $1 a fortnight around the world average of US$1000.

The subrational argue that work is unequal, therefore unequal pay is just. The error here is that the inequality of work does not prove that inequality of pay should be uncontrolled; it argues only that inequality of pay should be proportional to work, which is very different from what we have.

One ought to be able to say just the one fact that pay per fortnight ranges from $1 to $1,000,000,000 and immediately everyone should understand that that is extremely dangerous destructive wasteful miserymaking violencemaking warmaking slaverymaking - that it is putting a brake hard on human progress, destroying happiness, and that it is in everyone's interests to have some mechanism for preventing or countering the ever-escalation of overpay and underpay violence.

The solution is so easy: counter the ceaseless automatic drift of money from earners to nonearners by shoveling money from the 1% overpaid back to the 99% underpaid who did 99% of the work that produced the goods that the money is token of. Human acquiescence to inequity is responsible for the deaths of 100 million per year; starvation and war take 1 in 50 humans every year. Inequity is extremely wicked. It causes misery, and misery is not isolatable, is infinitely contagious and mobile. No one with pretensions to goodness can take refuge in doing lesser good than abolishing inequity. Saving the whales or being good at branch level equates to destroying the planet by default, by failing to strike at the root.

1. A 1% increase per month in the global money supply, going equally, directly, freely, electronically to every living human being, children included. One account per person. The inflation effect will reduce overpays, the money effect will reduce underpays. Without the cost of assessing fortunes. 2. Make inheritance public instead of private, making the overpay shower gently down on humanity over three generations. It takes no self-earnings from living persons. It reverses the perpetual concentration of wealth and political power in fewer and fewer hands. It counters effectively the natural tendency of money to concentrate unjustly, violently. A just cap on fortunes defeats all methods past, present, and future of circumventing justice. Be rid of the idea of having wealth-heaped power-giants, or succumb to the result of having the next and the next and the next ad infinitum.

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Corporations used to be all about imposing limits on collective enterprise. This was deemed in the interest of the nation as it prevented corruption and rampant greed, and kept the efforts of corporations focussed on goals other than profit.

Now corporations are all about escaping responsibility.

This idea of wealth limitations is not that new or fancy of an idea. It is (in a sense) the way things used to be done around here. But then, back in those days people were pretty conscious of the dangers of concentrated wealth and corruption. Not just to themselves, but to the nation as a whole. People also used to think that this was a democracy and that people could make changes in a democracy.

Hmm... maybe they had a thing or two right?

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As long as we have a system where each dollar has a vote, the new American Aristocrats will rule.

We are what our founders feared.

The real question is how did we get here?

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The paper shufflers have control of nearly everything right now. The money generated by the buying and selling of pieces of paper rules America. The people, in many cases, who have the highest incomes produce absolutely nothing that we need and add no real value to anything. Can't touch it, eat it, breath it, but it is a great system to bilk the workers out of their rightful rewards.

History has shown what happens to countries and empires that embark on this path. Financial ruin soon follows. The hollow house comes tumbling down.

The Wall Street news reports each day have less real value than the goat report, but the Corpse own the media circus.

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Yes, it goes without saying that there should be a maxcimum
salary and a reasonable redistributive fiscal mechanism and
rigorous revenue collection procedures to criminalise flagrant flights of capital from any nation-State! This presupposes that the LIE of globalisation has run into the ground, and people deal with the collective vice that has passed as neo-liberalism
for the past 37 years.
I live in the United Kingdom, which thanks to the reasonableness and generosity of the, then, United States government under the Marshall Plan, struck a New Deal for Europe, and with the collaboration of principled political and academic interests established the Welfare State. This enforced a proportionate and just distribution of wealth through a Keynesian economic policy, underpinned by responsible employers and representative trade unionists.
With the destruction of Welfare Capitalism and the advent of Warfare Capitalism (market fundamentalism) these traditional State protections were abolished and the British nation State made captive by private corporate interests.
We are now witnessing the endgame of market fanaticism
in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
The time is overdue for a recovery of Welfare Capitalism, and economic and social justice, warfare/workfare Capitalism with its huge penal colonies MUST GO along with the ONE PARTY STATE in which all major parties share the same incestuous fundamentalist orthodoxy of neo-Liberalism!

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It simply won't work and is a bad idea, though there is no doubt that the inequity between workers and management is obscene. But capping potential income is not the answer.

This is in our hands. It is in the workers hands.

First, strict rules on corporations moving overseas to avoid taxation and to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor should be enacted and enforced, while we still have a middle class.

Second, unions are almost powerless these days. Dems should be pushing unionization. Workers can dictate the terms if they are organized. The president of a large corporation will not be receiving a half billion dollar salary if his workers walk and he can't outsource.

And should we also demand that ballplayers, actors and musicians have salary caps as well? These outrageous payouts cost us all, too.

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