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

via AlterNet:



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

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted September 13, 2007.


One of the world's most honored public intellectuals, writing in a premiere policy journal, is calling for limits on income and fortunes.



Can our contemporary world be saved from the problems that ail us, from climate change and oil dependency, from AIDS and religious extremism, from poverty and inequality? Foreign Policy, the world's most prestigious global affairs journal, is tackling this weighty question head on, in a new issue that asks 21 of our earth's most thoughtful observers to suggest the "one solution that would make the world a better place."

That "one solution," suggests Howard Gardner, the Harvard-based psychologist whose widely acclaimed books on human intelligence have been translated into 26 languages, ought to be a cap on the income and wealth that any one individual can accumulate.

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."

Gardner's Foreign Policy contribution also advocates a cap on wealth, proposing that "no individual should be allowed to accumulate an estate more than 50 times the allowed annual income." ....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/62507/

get a rope!

I only wish that people who do well do so by improving the lives of people and not hurting them. I have no problem with people making as much money as they can. Money is not what makes us happy since we can never get enough. If you want to stop suffering so much, stop desiring so much.

your family (for ten generations or more) ever has to work again?

To me, that just seems wrong.

In a conversation last night with my daughter, I asked the question, "Is their pursuit of infinite wealth (which guides every political/power move) not wrong in itself, or is the accumulation of wealth beyond ANY level of need a sign of evil?"

Not just the workers. CEOs who take 100s of millions out of their business for their own enrichment also cheat the shareholders and ultimately their customers. If Mattel weren't so driven to maximize short-term profit, they wouldn't be selling us lead-laced toys from China. Now, they say they need to charge us more for the privilege of being able to purchase safe toys for our children.

I only wish that people who do well do so by improving the lives of people and not hurting them.


If a person spends their whole life accumulating wealth they will miss out on much of what life is about. But if they do good with that wealth then that is a good thing. Wealth in itself is not wrong, how it is gotten and what is done with it can be wrong.

Also wealth does not satisfy the desire to have wealth. The only way to satisfy desire is to not desire. Therefore a person concerned only with wealth creation is never satisfied and in that way suffers and can not end the suffering.

I would not be so concerned with what other people do with their desires as I am about what I do with mine.

Where there are winners there are almost certainly many more losers.

The guy making 10% or 30% or even 100% more than his neighbor may have get there luck or skill - but the guy making 10000% more than his neighbor is a predator. Predators need to be controlled or they will consume everything in their path.

Let's run that one by *, Kerry, Cheney, Edwards, Gore, etc.

I'm sure it'll fly.

and increasingly disgusting.

This would not prevent the accumulation of wealth, just the taking of income for consumption, if the tax code were properly constructed. I would make it a goal to encourage a high rate of savings/investment while discouraging consumption beyond certain levels.

There ain't no such animal as a "self-made man". Or woman.

Nobody makes their fortune alone. Ask Warren Buffett
http://www.faireconomy.org/notalone/

:sarcasm:

As long as they pay fair taxes on their earnings. I'd much prefer to see reform and non-preferential enforcement of our tax laws so that the rich and not the increasingly struggling middle and upper working class are paying the lion's share of the revenue into the federal coffers.

Otherwise, I just find this proposal bizarre, although I admit I didn't read the link if there's more to redeem it. What is it going to do to help those who aren't making incomes sufficient to survive, much less, be capped?

Plus take the cap off of SS, there are rich people who pay their yearly SS taxes in the time it takes to cough.

Tax them more.

If the shareholders are really dumb enough to keep giving CEOs all the money, then we take it and put it toward something useful.

And there's your maximum wage, complete with public benefits.

And then tax their estates at 75%.

Meanwhile Bill Gates and so many like him could have a care in the world.

Its sickening that so many are suffering while others continue to live off of the backs of everyone else and could care less what happens to anyone else.

to good causes. No one can feed/shelter/clothe the entire world. Mother Teresa said something along the lines of if you can't feed a hundred mouths, feed one. You do what you can, and I think Gates should be commended.

It's also time for the return of the progressive income tax.

Those bastards weren't nearly so greedy when that extra million or ten was taxed at a confiscatory rate.

They just chiseled by having the corporation buy the yachts and jets and writing them off as business.

Greed is not good. I can't believe the people of this country ever bought the line that it is.

I don't really see how limiting the income for some people means that the wealth gets automatically redirected to the poor. It just means fewer income taxes are collectable, doesn't it?

but tax them so that max they can keep is $167,500.

:spank:

I gave up on the first.