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There are Minimum Wages, Why Not a Maximum Wage?
(www.counterpunch.org)
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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
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- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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Because making 400k/yr by sitting on a pile of assets and living a low-cost life in a paid-off small-town cottage is not the same as making 400k/yr as a debt-saddled surgeon renting in a high-cost city center, so targeting income instead of wealth gets us farther from a fairer economy.
Next question.
Next question, why did you immediately go to 400k? Why not 1 million? If you make a million dollars then you've made half the average lifetime earnings of a worker. Double question, if we capped earnings at 400k, would school lenders not take that into account?
I think a maximum yearly income, including any money you could conceivably spend for personal use, would be a wonderful idea. It would certainly put a damper on being a billionaire if you know you could never actually get more than about a hundred million dollars in your life. Just literally running the score up at that point.
Ok sure, but if you frame the conversation to mean the limit would be set at $400k/year then you're missing the point. We're talking billionaires not single digit millionaires. Despite how those numbers sound to the average person there's several orders of magnitude between them.
i couldnt read the article (paywall) but is that applicable when billionaires often get paid significantly less than $400k/yr?
I don't mean to argue against your point but they became billionaires somehow. There are people who are becoming billionaires today and their wealth accumulation could be limited. It seems like more than one solution is needed. I don't think billionaires are good for society... They have too much power, political power
Lets put that maximum at $10M/month (or year). Now your counter argument doesn't work any more.
The people who make that kind of money don't make it through wages but other compensation.
Yes, so block that at a maximum rate (too)?
I am not an accountant but from what I know, taxing stuff like compensation in the form of stocks is pretty hard to do.
I'm not disagreeing with you, the system is just rigged in favor of very wealthy people.
I think that's the whole point we're trying to change in this discussion. ๐
Oh for sure, it's just going to be a really long uphill battle as long as the current liberal system is in place.
I don't have any faith in any reform happening with wealth in any country. Money is too powerful to change anything at the top. ๐ So in that sense, a very long battle indeed. ๐
Not with that attitude ;-)
shut up dork
You just make it illegal to compensate in this form. Problem solved.
Which is why we need to not allow borrowing against assets to get over the maximum.
I think we should be setting these max/min wages as relative values, not absolute values. Otherwise we have to pass laws every time the min wage needs to be adjusted. And we'll end up with stagnation.
For example, a person's wage can only be X% higher than the lowest wage of someone a step below them in hierarchy. Including contractors and suppliers so they can't skirt or find loopholes.
There still might be some haywire incentives that require more thought, but it should hopefully encourage labor to be valued at an appropriate proportion of value. Either everyone makes good money, or nobody does.
Should also probably deincentivize layoffs, stock buybacks, etc. at the cost of shareholder earnings / value.
but then businesses couldn't run properly right? idk for sure but I feel like smaller businesses would be paid to a person and distrubuted to the company