With wealth inequality and billionaire control over American society growing ever more obscene, it’s well past time to implement a maximum wage limit.
We need monopoly busting, and inheritance tax, and general wealth redistribution. We need to stop monetizing basic needs and start paying fair wages. Income cap solves none of that. No way you can sell ‘income caps’ to the general public.
Monopoly busting, hell yes!! All the other ideas come from people who were unlucky enough to have nothing passed down to them.
I am sorry for your situation, but my father worked his ass off to leave me and my siblings something (it was meager compared to most I’m sure but it helped me out immensely when I needed a leg up), but blanket laws like this would have royally screwed me just because “well I didn’t inherit anything from my parents, so NOBODY ELSE SHOULD EITHER!!” mentality.
Inheritance tax is what stops you having a noble class or owner class with a long line of inherited wealth.
A good inheritance tax would be tiered like income tax. Lower amounts would be untaxed with higher numbers being taxed at higher rates.
Maximum wage would be nice, but the inequality doesn’t happen with wages, it’s stock options, asset hoarding, and rent seeking. These people don’t pay taxes, or claim wages lol. Inheritance tax of 95% of 11Million that’s an idea! Need to strip the aristocracy of its belongings.
All incoming money and assets. Hell, tax all assets at 100% over 100M. Maybe even hard code a limit to the size of corporations, since they are people the same rules apply.
We need a cap per owner. When you have multiple owners, the cap sums between them. Owners share equal rights.
So take a megacorp, like Google. They would be essentially need to make every employee an owner plus hire thousands of new “owner employees” to maintain their profit margin. Those profits get divided equally among owners, and the owners decide the direction of the company.
This pattern is also future proof against AI.
I love it. Also the cap applies to all companies owned by a single individual, total not each.
need it to cover all compensation but I agree. ben an jerrys had single digit multiples for the highest paid. don’t see why we can’t do 100.
The thing about most mega rich people is they don’t earn wages. So this wouldn’t affect them.
Semantics. We’ll change the wording to “assets controlled”.
Came here to say this. They’re poor, see how much their salaries are? Just a million, which they reinvest into the company for another share of 1% of their 3 trillion dollar company… that they control, and fire 20k employees to get back 50 million in just a week for their share…
Semantics. “Max income law”
Any income over $300,000 per year goes to the State to cover programs to eradicate poverty. Easy.
Ok so then once you hit $300k in income you should stop working? That sounds like a great way to have a shortage of working necessary skilled labor eg surgeons and lawyers who stop working after a few months every year.
My buddy is a spinal surgeon. He would stop working by May and his area would have no spinal surgeons for more than half the year under your suggestion.
that would kill lotteries
Why should I care? There’s no inherent reason lotteries deserve to exist. There are several reasons they shouldn’t exist.
gambling is fun
Lotteries are hardly gambling. You’re going to loose, statistically
Darn
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.
This is a stupid idea. The ultra wealthy make a tiny portion of their income through wages- that’s kind of the entire point and problem of capitalism. It is ownership of capital that drives the income of the ultra wealthy. Jeff Bezos’s salary from Amazon is only $80,000 per year, and he is one of the richest people on Earth. Maximum wage laws only hurt workers, while not impacting the ultra wealthy at all. When you see the giant compensation packages of CEO, very little of that is actually in wages. It’s in stock in the company, and other non-cash benefits. Even if you restrict this practice, that wouldn’t have done anything to prevent the wealthiest people on Earth from getting where they are since they are all founders or descendants of founders. I can’t think of a single billionaire who got there from wages or any kind of compensation working for someone else- it’s all ownership of capital.
I don’t think you’re helping the cause. A perfect solution is not the goal, and a good idea that fails to address the targeted problem is still a good idea.
You can at the same time think:
- people shouldn’t be allowed to have a salary of 1 million
- that the ultra rich aren’t ultra rich because of their salary
- believe that we should tax ultra-high income individuals highly
- believe that we should tax ultra-wealthy individuals highly
Don’t be a bad progressive by discouraging progress. “Tax wealth not work” is a great slogan to unify the working class. We should also probably tax ultra-high income individuals as well.
The ultra rich own assets. Their wealth does not come from monopoly money from a paycheck. So you can’t tax them unless you go after unrealized gains.
The issue is that this is literally not a problem. It’s like deciding that the best course of action when you’re starving in the woods is to hunt and eat Bigfoot instead of foraging for food. It’s a waste of time and resources at best, and a distraction from real solutions at worse. Nobody in the history of the world has become ultra wealthy through high salary.
*aside from pro-sports competitors.
He is right though. Those rich guys won’t have an income at all, they just live on loans., get driven around in cars owned by the company, live in houses owned by the company etc, etc etc.
These cunts will spin it like, 'Society will break down if we pay more than 20 an hour. Don’t you like cheeseburgers? Don’t you like groceries?
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.
multi generational wealth is the only way to have any fun though
That’s the whole problem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with this but sadly in a multi national world the ultra wealthy will simply flee to some tax haven country as primary residency.
Senator Warren’s wealth tax confronted this with a 50% exit tax on all funds relocated within 25 years of the plan’s adoption (IIRC).
see that’s a good solution
I preferred it to Sander’s plan as his exit tax sunset after 4 years as I recall. Many younger tech guys can plan on being alive in 4 years but far fewer will be able to count on 25 years.
@desmosthenes @technocrit why does that matter if they’re not contributing anyway. But also https://taxjustice.net/press/millionaire-exodus-did-not-occur-study-reveals/
because they buy things - especially luxury items, create more companies, hire people, in theory… who knows anymore
@desmosthenes a lot of it is more likely to go into the Cayman Islands or investing in media they can control or buying politicians. Give $1b to one man or $20 each to 50 million people - bet you more money makes it into your local economy the second way.
this is what I was alluding towards. but have to crawl back that initial 1b in the first place… but agreed, normal folk actually pay taxes
@desmosthenes they also buy food and drink from your local town, rather than designer limited editions from Paris.
@desmosthenes but to go back to the first point - if they want to have a company in the US they will do it whether or not they’re resident. Can’t very easily employ thousands of Cayman Islanders in your billion dollar business. A Way would be found. But by structuring the business in such a way as to avoid whatever restrictions there are, there would at least be a small reduction in their cut. And a small reduction in billions is not insignificant. Plus… One fewer tax haven reduces options.
Good.
Okay. So, just keep bending over. Got it.
/s
This is an empty “threat” they promote. They want you to believe they are somehow valuable to society, when really, they are just leeches who contribute nothing. Let them flee, the entire world is getting tired of their shit.
na just think of other solutions on top of this. not saying to not set the maximum - but perhaps a multinational solution is needed, or set the standards on the banks themselves, or on repatriation of their income when they’re trying to spend (ie a sales tax for rich) or a carbon tax, or withdrawal of government grants/contracts for their companies (i’m sure there’s other besides aws and azure out there) for some ideas - so on
Wealth cap
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.
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
- Tax income greater than 100x the minimum wage at 95%
- Tax standing wealth above 1000x annual minimum wage
The solutions aren’t complicated. What’s complicated is getting the solutions implemented when enough representatives are bought out by the wealthy.
This is a much more difficult problem than you suggest. Taxing standing wealth of 1.8 million would limit so much of the upper middle class that actually drives economies.
Given how many people have their wealth invested in theor home, how do ypu propose to do this or is everyone constantly downgrading the home they are invested in?
Nothing in economics is ever “easy”.
Real estate is a good example of the trickiest thing about “simple” wealth tax.
I bought a house, and 20 years later I have to pay more taxes because my neighbourhood is more desirable?
Okay, easy solution, you get one free house you need to reside in for x% of your time per year.
But say I bought a painting from a local artist, even a friend, and decades go by and they’ve gone on to become ultra famous. Do I now have to pay more tax because I possess something that has become valuable?
Obviously thats a very unlikely scenario, but you can see the principle issue.
For the numbers I suggested, I don’t think you’d realistically hit these types of cases.
1000x annual minimum wage is $14.5 million. Based on a quick search, the threshold for the top 1% of Americans with respect to net worth starts at $13.6 million in 2023. So over 98% of Americans would never see the impact of a wealth tax like this.
If minimum wage were brought up to a realistic level, say $20/hour (still low, but better than the current $7.25), that threshold jumps to $40 million. This would capture somewhere between the top 0.5% and 0.1%. This is excessive wealth.
In the case where your painting is suddenly worth $50 million, yes–you’d have to pay more tax. But I think that many dollars might be some reprieve from the pain of selling it.
Applying sensible economic policy to extreme wealth is easier than general economic policy.
I had a public policy professor who used to say wealth taxes frequently come with loopholes you can pilot a yacht through
1000x annual minimum wage is 14.5 million. That’s not the savings of the worker class (a conservative investment would provide enough return to live without working). And the point is that it’s tied to minimum wage. Want to be taxed less on your wealth? You gotta raise the minimum wage.
You’re right in saying it’s a bit more complicated than that–my two point suggestion is oversimplified–but my original point stands: the solutions are less complicated than getting rational legislation passed in a system where the checks and balances are bought out.
Ooof, how did I fuck up themath that badly? At 14+ million it’s different. That’s a lot of wealth compared to the average upper middle class family.
Is the way you judge what’s wealthy to look at your own situation and target something comfortably above that? There’s plenty of people who will surmise that your situation is comfortably better than theirs once that power is available to the public.
You don’t have to base it on your own situation, you can base it on cost of living or other objective values.
There’s a big difference between 1 million and 10 million. With a modest 5% return on investment, 1 million nets you $50,000 per year, which is enough to support a very modest lifestyle in some places (near poverty in others). 10 million with the same investment nets $500,000 per year, which is more than enough to retire to a very luxurious lifestyle and accumulate more wealth along the way.
And that’s still less than the 14.5 million I proposed, so that person would still not see any wealth tax.
No it’s based on a ton of actual hard statistics that focus on relative buying power vs what the state supplies. Many Europeans who make less than I do have a higher QoL than I do because their education and healthcare are subsidized/free.
It’s not that much different.
It’s vastly different. A net worth of ten million plus isn’t just a case where you own a home and a retirement fund.
It’s wildly different.
$1 million invested at 5% is $50,000 annually. $10 million invested at 5% is $500,000 annually.
That’s the difference between the working and wealth classes.
Giving that money to poor people would drive the economy more.
Not necessarily, it is a lot more complex than that.
Even simpler. If one’s wealth exceeds some function of GDP, the law no longer protects them.
As much as that appeals to some part of me deep down, those are the tactics being employed right now against vulnerable people in the US. If the law doesn’t protect everyone, it doesn’t protect anyone.
And honestly, I think the wealthy are more threatened by taxes than by having to hire their own protection.
I get that, but I don’t think they deserve the same protections as the vulnerable. The vulnerable cannot easily change their situation. The wealthy can. Beyond that, their cost to society is much much worse.
I don’t think they deserve it either. But when I advocate for due process and humane conditions for the worst people, it’s not for their sake–it’s for everyone else’s.
As soon as there is some class of people who are not protected by law or due process, it can easily be weaponized against the more vulnerable, even if that wasn’t the original intent.
For example, right now in the US, the government is denying due process to “illegal immigrants.” Doesn’t seem like a problem for anyone here legally, right? Except that without due process, what’s stopping them from throwing lawful residents into a van and hauling them away? They don’t get due process to prove their innocence. So anyone can now be defined as “illegal” and deported without any due process or recourse.
Lawfulness is for the vulnerable, even when applied to the less vulnerable.
I’m saying it isn’t a class of people that is not of their own volition. It could be looked at as similar to choosing the class of rapist or other criminal. By choosing to allow your wealth to exceed this point, society has deemed you to be in violation of the law; due process intact. You are therefore, no longer protected by the police, fire departments, emergency rooms, etc. It is one of the primary roles of society to determine what is acceptable and what is not.
I’m not sure what purpose revoking law has on anyone, including this group. In fact, the wealthy is often the group who advocates for privitization of these services, as they’re the only ones who can afford to pay for them out of pocket. Seems like an inconvenience at most.
If you want to make excessive wealth illegal, I’m all for that. But that’s not removing legal protections, it’s allowing the people to prosecute and reclaim wealth from those hoarding it, which seems more productive for what you’re trying to achieve.
If tomorrow’s wealth will exceed that cap, I’d like to see today’s priority be offload that money at all cost. That’s really all I’m suggesting with a partly tongue in cheek suggestion of making it scary to cross that line. But the point is simply to make a person approaching that line feel that getting rid of money with a quickness is integral to their wellbeing.
Why not just Most Dangerous Game the wealthiest individual at the end of each year if that’s your objective?
Honestly fuck these leeches, drop a zero from each.
I completely agree with the concept of taxing income above a certain limit entirely. I think that only solves a portion of the problem, with the majority of the problem being solved by well implemented wealth taxes. Every dollar of wealth over something like 50 million USD should be taxed at 100%. No one should ever become a hundred millionaire again, let alone a billionaire.
50 million is too damn high.
