With wealth inequality and billionaire control over American society growing ever more obscene, it’s well past time to implement a maximum wage limit.
It’s not wages that are the problem, it’s compounding multi-generational wealth. It’s very easy for rich people to make their income zero.
Amen. Minimum wage was a good start, but it’s become a mere virtue signal for labor rights. I have no reason to believe a maximum wage wouldn’t function similarly. Furthermore, nominal sums are pretty meaningless with currency anyway. Inflation makes them irrelevant pretty quickly. Progressive tax and social subsidy is what works, historically.
I worked for a guy that got paid $1 a year. The business paid for everything for him. Wage caps will not work.
What was his role?
CFO
worked for a guy
Probably some variation of owner/boss/CEO.
CFO his dad was CEO. I saw a 27000 Amex bill that we covered.
multi generational wealth is the only way to have any fun though
That’s the whole problem.
if fun is a problem then I don’t want it fixed
Found the trust fund baby.
Can’t they both be a problem?
Well like I said, pretty much all of these mega rich people don’t have any income on paper, otherwise they would have to pay income tax. And rich people hate paying taxes.
We desperately need to get rid of billionaires and follow that up with millionaires
I think “millionaires” is probably a bit too broad depending on exactly how you define it. A million dollars doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to.
Most insanely wealthy people don’t necessarily have millions or billions of dollars sitting around in cash or in their bank accounts, that worth includes things like investments and real estate.
So going by that most people who own a house are probably around halfway to being a millionaire just due to that, add in a retirement account and some savings and odds are theres probably a lot more “millionaires” walking around than you’d think.
I have a relative who retired a few years ago, he worked as a bricklayer his entire life, and don’t get me wrong, that’s a solid job, and he was very good at it, so he made good money, but he wasn’t his own boss, or anyone else’s for that matter, wasn’t actively playing the stock market or anything, just a guy who worked his whole life, lived within his means, saved money, put it into safe retirement accounts and such, etc.
He retired with about 1.5 million. I’m not totally clear if that includes the value of his house or not, if it does that would still put him at around 1 million in savings and investrents, and if it doesn’t you can bump him up to around 2 if we measure him like we do the really wealthy people.
And there’s a good chance that medical bills and such will eat up a good amount of that from him in the coming years…
We desperately need to teach leftists academic economics. Yall have your heart in the right place but none of you have the slightest clue what the fallout of your policy suggestions are.
“Getting rid” of millionaires is ludicrous. There are people who are millionaires because a stock does well for a bit. There are people who had a million for a few days because they held Dogecoin when Elon manipulated that price. Millionaire is a much lower bar than you think.
the vast majority of lawyers, doctors, and farmer owners have a net worth above a million even
Exactly, I graduated college at the right time for many of my friends to he worth 10+ million on paper entirely in the form of stock in their employer. One of my buddies had $16 million in AskJeeves that he couldn’t sell as an employee. By the time he could sell that was $64k. Not everyone who is a millionaire is actually a millionaire.
I made about 60k when I started working as a dev. At the rate I saved back then, I’d be well in millionaire territory within about 10 years had I not left it for grad school.
You are framing this in a capitalist world. Getting rid of billionaires would also get rid of the stock market, they hold about 93% of stocks. The stock market is them buying a portion of working class wages and calling them dividends. If everyone’s material needs are met the accumulation of wealth isnt a driving force for ‘success’
Getting rid of stocks and billionaires would have a massive fallout hence why we need to teach leftists actual academic economics as this shift would be colossal and havea ton of externalities.
There are people who are millionaires because a stock does well for a bit.
These largely aren’t working class people.
You would be wrong about that.
The top 10% of the wealthiest own 93% of all stocks with the 1% owning 54%
Those statistics are for volume of ownership and aren’t relevant to a discussion about wealth. I can own a handful of highly priced shares and be worth 1+ million while not holding a ton of shares.
Your highly priced shares are highly priced because of the volume held by the 10%
That makes no sense.
I’d agree with you on tossing billionaires and two - three figure millionaires, but on the low end millionaires is a very wide net that could also include folks with property, retirees and small business owners. I’m not trying to sound out of touch or shill for the owning class here, because there definitely is a point where personal wealth gets excessive, but “common people” with over a million in assets isn’t all that unheard of.
Nah, change income and networth tax brackets. More brackets, over a wider range
The lowest incomes pay no tax at all. The higher you get, the more you pay. Once you reach 1 million per year, income taxes go to 100%.
Same for networth taxes. Let’s say that the max networth should be 20 million
Again, those that have nothing, pay nothing Those that have a little, pay a little Once you reach 20 million, anything over that goes automatically 100% to tax
Nobody van get richer than that level, ever… The numbers are quickly made up but with more details added, I think that system would be awesome. We can keep everything the exact same, we only change this.
Nobody will be much richer than the rest, or much poorer than the rest
Governments will have huge tax incomes that it can use for the social net that protects everyone. Use it to find free healthcare, free education, free housing, universal income, you name it.
I put together a concept that I called “Universal Ranked Income”. Everyone gets benefits like generic food, basic shelter, healthcare, utilities, and so forth for free. Money is used to buy luxuries such as bigger houses or fancier clothes, and jobs are classified into ranks. Each rank grants an absolute income per year while someone holds a job. Without a job, a citizen gets $10,000 per year by default. Someone with the highest ranked job, such as an Astronaut at Rank 5, gets $100,000. After taxes, it is about $8,500 and $60,000 income respectively. The lowest rank job (2), such as a waiter, gets $40k, $30k after their own taxes. Someone with the best job gets x2 income than a waitress.
There are also hard caps on annual income, savings, and assets of $100,000 for each category. By making incomes very fixed, we make it easier to detect when someone’s wealth is too large, making it easier to investigate them and to confiscate their outsized wealth. We might also be preventing inflation, since incomes are fixed numbers - the economy has to react to the wealth bands, rather than the income reacting to the economy.
That seems rather over complicated and would cause a lot of other issues. Your entire economy now has to deal with everyone basicsally having more or less the same income, while vendors get very limited in how they can differentiate with prices. Inflation will still exist,how will you fix that with these fixed incomes?
One option is for the government to use its taxes to pay for inflation, especially for goods from outside the nation. There will have be some sort of “translation” layer of internal economy against that of foreign nations, so the government would have to develop tools and institutions for handling that. For the universal goods that the nation supplies to people, it can use taxes to buy the necessary supply chains. Companies that sell luxury goods will have to compete against the free articles, so there is pressure on corporations to adjust their pricing and quality against what the government offers.
For the URI (Universal Ranked Income), the bulk of taxes comes from corporations, since they are expected to regularly exceed the wealth caps by a good deal.
In any case, I don’t think it is actually complicated, at least compared to our current economy. For example, prices of goods vary from one location to another, also known as cost-of-living. URI instead makes all locations in the nation have free basic goods and services, and jobs to have fixed incomes. People will be able to much more easily understand their fiscals, both as a business and as individuals. Much of our current economy is also built on exploitation, such as ghost jobs, the threat of firing people, wage theft, immigrant pay, and so on. By making it easy to understand how much money there should be, it makes it easier for people to detect and oppose corruption. Further, universal benefits like free shelter, healthcare, food, and so forth, allows for unionization since bad companies lose a great deal of exploitative pressure on workers.
What we lose by sacrificing capitalism’s efficiency, we get back in controlling corruption and ensuring fair dealings.
Tie those numbers to minimum wage or UBI values. If the rich want more, they gotta let others have more too.
Oh sure. The numbers are made up, of course and a lot of details would have to be added, but in basics, i think that idea would work
Wealth cap
Yeah this is the only way
Billionaires get cash by taking debt out against their giant stock positons. Not wages.
They can have a wage but I think it should be legally capped at 10 times the lowest paid person in the company
Coupled to a highly progressive tax, a wealth floor, and UBI, and we got something really cooking!
As someone once suggested a while ago, we just cap wealth at $999 million. Every dollar above that goes to building schools and hospitals. When you reach this point, you get a plaque that says “I won capitalism” and we name a dog park after you.
I also believe in the 999 rule! When I was a kid, I would play Zelda games and in those games the maximum number of rupees you can have is often 999. You can’t collect any more than that. Sure, you can try to put it in your pocket but it just disappears into the void. In that game, as in life, I never really needed to have any more than 999 at one time. Very rarely would I go out and spend all of my rupees.
“It’s not that I must always have a lot. I must always have more than everyone else. Forever. And everyone else must show their enthusiasm about me having the most.”
This article is TERRORISM (according to Trump’s Republican Administration!)! If you would like to NOT be Terrorists please SHOOT UP A CHURCH IN A MAGA HAT instead!
My limited understanding is that once you’re super wealthy your actual income doesn’t matter. They take loans against their wealth to pay for whatever they want.
We need to tax both capital gains at a rate higher than labor and tax loans as income if they use stock as collateral.
I think we need to decide, if unrealized gains are real gains. How you can loan using unrealized gains as collateral if from tax purposes it’s not real money.
If you can loan money using unrealized gains a collateral you should be taxed. I am not saying you tax unrealized gains, but taxing when get money “from” it.
But loan is considered a loss and you even get a tax break.
Also need to limit tax write-offs to really business needs, like rich people can get a huge car like a Mercedes G class on their business and write-off the cost for instance. The rich have a lot of loopholes. Incentives should be limited to people and companies making a X sum. If your company makes billions, I don’t think you need a tax incentive.
I propose we tax owning stock like property
Yes but this is an article aimed at a casual audience of wage-laborers, who undestand wealth as the thing you get for a job.
And the details of the demand don’t really matter that much, because at this point it’s clear that even a milquetoast request like this will still prompt the US oligarchy to have the secret police fire on protesters. Imo if anything you want the demands to initially be as mild as possible, makes them look more unreasonable. Once people are onboard you can push for more important goals.
I agree with the post who said that it should be categorised as a mental illness. If I had 100 cats people would look at me funny, if I was going around the state grabbing every cat I could get my hands on they would have me locked up.
Cash addiction just needs codified. We already know a wad of cash lights up the brain like a bump of cocaine.
people with mental illnesses are better than those without
Well, cats are better than money, so if you went around petting every cat you could find, I wouldn’t really think much of it. In fact, I’d be pretty goddamn jealous that you could spend every waking minute in search of another beautiful pussy to snuggle with.
Yes, this. It also explains why they can’t ever seem to stop even though they already are filthy rich. It was never healthy to begin with.
A big misconception is that billionaires get rich from their salary.
Is it? This is the first I’m encountering that idea. I think most are aware it happens via gains in other ways.
Have you considered you may be in an echo chamber? Most Americans can barely operate on a 6th grade reading comprehension level. Source years of customer facing work as an American
constructed propaganda chamber/consent manufacture machine?
Sure I’m in probably a few. But I also think I’m old and decently read. And I haven’t encountered people that think billionaires got this money from salary.
You’d be surprised. My dad once complained about “the top 10%, the billionaires” and I had to I’ve inform him that based on wealth and income, he’s the top 10% just being middle class, and the billionaires basically don’t even show up as a percentage because there’s only like a thousand in the entire world. Most people do not understand how any of this works and do not have even a basic understanding of how any of these people got wealthy in the first place.
Now that doesn’t surprise me a bit. Many people struggle with curves and the intuition of growth systems.
I predict we’re going to see our first trillionaire by the end of the decade. It’s beyond obscene. If you “earn” (lol) more than 5 million dollars a year, you should have that part taxed at 100%
Musk is currently trying to negotiate a pay package from Tesla, which, if approved would pay him roughly a trillion dollars over the next decade. It’s into the “not really comprehensible by humans” range.
Why the fuck does this ugly cunt need more money?? It’s just a small dick competition at this point.
I agree with the sentiment, but it’s worth noting that the current excesses of CEO compensation through stock incentives are a response to a poorly implemented attempt to curb high CEO salaries.
We do need to reign in CEO compensation, but directly going after wages made the problem worse. I don’t see the article addressing this, but a Clinton-era policy aimed to curb excessive CEO wages. IIRC the ratio of CEO pay to lowest paid worker within the same company was as bad as 30:1 at the time, but has since ballooned to hundreds: 1.
Maybe something as simple as capping stock incentives at N% of total compensation could work. But we’d need to make sure we’re not just encouraging a new way to skirt around the legislation like last time.
If we broke up all their massive companies, they could not get such compensation. But they decided not to use the antitrust laws that already exist or say no to literally any merger.
This might be even more important.
I agree with the sentiment, but it’s worth noting that the current excesses of CEO compensation through stock incentives
Securities tax, payable in shares of the security. 1% of all registered securities are transferred directly to the IRS each and every year. Natural persons can request an exemption for up to $10 million worth. No exemption for corporate or other artificial “persons”.
IRS liquidators will auction the taxed shares over time, such that sale of taxed shares are never more than 1% of total traded volume.
No chance anything that actually attacks inequality ever gets implemented through existing legislative channels.
Most billionaires don’t earn a wage at all. So they’re ahead of you on this. Most of their wealth comes from simply lying about what their shit is worth, and other rich people agreeing.
Everyone makes $1/hour.
But everything only costs $1.
1 hour of labor = any 1 thing.
Bro we’re gonna starve.
Work three hours, buy house, sports car and superyacht.
Why don’t you buy me? ;)
(Disclaimer: I am NOT worth $1)
Which everyone works to make because a single grain of rice is $1.
That won’t solve the borrow, die, repeat. It’s a great idea and should definitely have been implemented yesterday to modify the incentives of middle management but we REALLY need to start taxing people on a “personal GDP” after a certain level.
Space Kare pays proportionally 1\10 of the taxes I pay without having a “wage”.
“Oh, you want to buy twitter for 50b, here’s your M&A property tax of 25%”
Yes. If congress really had their shit together, they could implement something at the IRS where each really wealthy person is audited and taxed on their personal GDP. Auditors could present their findings of wealth and a committee could tax the value at an appropriate level.
