Time for a Maximum Wage

[Klukie]

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
14 July 12

Reader Supported News | Perspective



uring a February 1934 radio address, when unemployment and economic inequality were both rampant, Louisiana Senator Huey Long said, "We do not propose to say that there shall be no rich men. We do not ask to divide the wealth. We only propose that, when one man gets more than he and his children and his children's children can spend or use in their lifetimes, then we shall say that such person has his share."

There is no state in the union where someone working a minimum-wage job for 40 hours a week, or $15,080 a year, can afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market value.

At the opposite end of the financial spectrum, Mitt Romney made $15,080 every 6 hours in 2010, when he grossed over $21 million in income. It would take a minimum-wage worker 1,436 years and 10 months to make what Mitt Romney made in 2010.

If that hasn't sunk in yet, I'll say it differently. To make as much as Mitt Romney made in one year, a minimum-wage worker working 40 hours a week for $7.25 an hour would have to start work during the Liang Dynasty and work all the way to the present day. Assuming an average life expectancy of 65 years, since minimum-wage workers can't get the same nutrition and health care that everyone else can, that's 22 entire lifetimes of nonstop minimum-wage work, from infancy to death, just to make what one man made in one year.

Guys as rich as Mitt Romney make money for having money. He doesn't simply work for a living, but rather acquires wealth from investments already made with previously accumulated wealth. While a minimum-wage worker pays a third of their income in sales, property, payroll and excise taxes, Mitt Romney pays just a 13.9% tax rate on more than half of his income, because it comes from capital gains, instead of good old-fashioned hard work.

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/274-41/12415-time-for-a-maximum-wage

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. it only stands to reason.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. The tax system needs to be changed to catch the likes of Romney

I'm not sure how a maximum wage would work. I guess the perpetrators would just move to a country where there is little tax and no caps.

[Sirveri]

4. It would be a 100% tax on income earned above a set value.

Realistically they'd probably cap out at about 50% for the first bump up, if they could even get that high in the current political climate.

[Cleita]

5. Thom Hartmann has suggested that up to the first billion,

people be taxed 100% after reaching there. No one needs more than that, ever. I'm not sure if he was talking about income or total wealth in assets. Total wealth would make sense to me. No one needs to own more than a billion in assets.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. I think they should be taxed at 100% starting at 5 million

problem is that we might lose these people. They will suddenly become residents and taxpayers of some offshore tax haven like the Isle of Man or the Caymans.

[Sirveri]

7. Then sieze their stateside assets.

Let them keep a single vacation property.

But their businesses, grab them, nationalize and distribute them to the employees of the company equally.
Real Estate. Yoink. If it's a rental unit, turn it into a Condo, just give it to the residents, or sell it to them at a penny on the dollar. If it's not, grab it and toss it on the market, someone will offer something for it.

You want to make money in this country, you'll pay to support it one way or the other.

[quispquake]

3. I remember in the 90's when Jello Biafra suggested a Maximum Wage on "Politically Incorrect"

EVERYONE on the panel (ESPECIALLY Maher) looked at Biafra like he had three heads...

Of all the addictions, wealth addiction is by far the most hazardous to the human race...

[MrSlayer]

8. Nah, we just need to add a few more tiers.

Leave it at 35% up to a million. 40% over a million. 50% at ten million. 60% at fifty million. 70% at a hundred million. 80% at five hundred million. Once you hit a billion for the year everything else goes at 90%. If you make a second billion you're still taking home a hundred million dollars of that. That seems fair to me. It should never be 100%.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

9. We need to model it after France...

Set maximum wage at 20x the amount of the lowest paid employee.

[Blue_In_AK]

10. I totally agree with that.

If you can't live on, say, a million bucks a year, you've got a problem. No CEO, no athlete, no movie star, NO ONE, is worth more than a million dollars a year.

[Honeycombe8]

11. One person working gets a ONE bedroom apt., not a 2 bdrm apt. Iworked for min. wage

and rented apts in the old days, when I was young. They weren't apt buildings. They were apts in houses, garage apartments, things like that.

To compare a min. wage worker with Mitt Romney is apples and oranges. There is no reason to connect the wages of the two.

I would also argue that there is NO amount of money that cannot be spent in a lifetime. We've seen examples of very rich people lose all their money through lavish lifestyles (Nicolas Cage, for example). They usu. try to blame their bus. mgrs. Maybe it's true, maybe not. But there's no doubt that the ones who lose it were living extremely lavishly...mansions all over the world, drugs, rows of expensive cars, etc.

I am not jealous of rich people. I do care HOW they got rich, whether they shelter their money unethically (even if legally), what they do with their wealth, etc. But I do not believe in pure socialism....which is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." It sounds good, but think about it.

If your neighbor is ill and cannot work 40 hours a week, should you have to work 50 hours a week to give him 10 hours of pay? If you want to, you can. But should you HAVE to? Then do you control what he spends that 10 hours of pay on? Do you have the right to access his relatives' accounts to see if they are giving him money, too? It's complicated and stifles the work ethic. You would soon not want to work 50 hours a week, since you don't reap the benefits.

It sounds good when it's the OTHER guy who loses out. When it's YOU, doesn't sound so good.

[reformist2]

12. What we need is a wealth tax. (That really makes the Repugs howl!)

[Fembot]

13. What would happen

When all the money moved off shore.

It would solve our Illiegal Immigration problem thats for sure.

[PETRUS]

14. Good point - we are dealing with a global system.

So I totally understand you calling for the workers of the world to unite.

In the meantime, we might consider applying the logic of the system and cranking up the top marginal rates as high as they can go before revenue starts declining.

[DefenseLawyer]

15. The real wealth in this country doesn't come from "wages" n/t