Distribution of Wealth

[Azdgari]

Discussed this a bit on SaS and wanted to see what people here thought of it. Basically, an idea my brother had was to essentially enforce a sort of salary cap of ten million dollars: you can't earn more than ten million dollars per year. The surplus would be a) be diverted sensibly through your company to give -everyone- a higher wage and standard of living or b) be diverted to social programs, education, and other charities.

This was all very influenced by our visiting Switzerland. There's no cap like that, but there -is- some sensibility. The gap between the management/CEO and the other members of the companies is not ludicrous like it is in a lot of places. As a result, almost everybody gets a real living wage, the country is gloriously maintained, public services and transportation are fantastic, etc. I know that's partially because they have all that banking money, but at the same time the principle of not having a massive gap between workers and management is darn sensible. :3





"In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth." The idea would be to work on that ugly statistic.

[DGFone]

To put it plainly (and use a cliche), America is the Land of The Free. In other words, you are free to earn every penny you get, at no cap.

You work hard and get a salary, you earn it. Don't work as hard, but because you are a mega CEO, you get millions, you still earn it. It's yours. Do with it as you please. Is it a good thing to give it to others who might need it more? Absolutely. But there is no way that the law will dictate that you will have to. It's your money.

[Azdgari]

Do you think that's a good way for things to be? And how do you define 'earning'? If a blue collar worker 'earns' low wages working hard, 60 hour work weeks and and high management boss 'earns' a hundred million dollars per year working 20 hour weeks in air conditioned offices... you can't both be 'earning' your money. One of you is, and one of you is not. Earning something means getting something proportionate to the work you put in. :3

[Regulus]

A lot of people don't agree with the idea, but I'm not one of them.

I mean seriously. How many Ferrari Enzos, Bugatti Veyorons, and McLaren F1s does one person need?

[SimbaKovu]

I've been wrestling with this theory of mine (and perhaps I'll post the details of it on here when I've managed to flesh it all out) that unfettered capitalism cannot exist in a highly democratic society and that, if capitalism were to exist in a nation with a wealth of political freedom (such as the United States), then, in order to prevent either popular socialist revolution or totalitarian takeover, reforms would have to be undertaken to either: A) Increase government participation in the economy to reduce the wealth gap and provide a level playing field, thus creating a European-style social democracy, OR; B) Implement policies which gradually erode and reduce political freedom to the point where capitalism can exist in a stable eco-political environment. The latter has has been done in nations like Belarus during the mid-1990s, Russia during the late 1990s and most of the Putin Presidency as well as, much more recently, Hungary, Greece and Malaysia, which all implemented new laws and/or constitutional changes granting their elected leaders unprecedented powers and prohibiting certain types of protest. All this was done in the wake of widespread popular protest or democratic action displaying the public's desire for a more socialist distribution of financial resources. And, rather than responding to this democratic call for more government involvement in the economy by implementing reforms needed to mollify the public, the leaders of these nations decided it was prudent to roll back political freedoms to the point where Belarus now sports Continental Europe's only authoritarian regime, Russia has a de facto dictator in Vladimir Putin who is being challenged with a public now demanding a return to republican democracy as it was under Yeltsin, Hungary's Prime Minister can no longer be removed via a Vote of No Confidence by Parliament, and Malaysia has made the decision to ban any and all street protests for whatever reason.

Sorry if I rambled. Haha

[SnowyCheetah]

[quote="DGFone"]To put it plainly (and use a cliche), America is the Land of The Free. In other words, you are free to earn every penny you get, at no cap.

You work hard and get a salary, you earn it. Don't work as hard, but because you are a mega CEO, you get millions, you still earn it. It's yours. Do with it as you please. Is it a good thing to give it to others who might need it more? Absolutely. But there is no way that the law will dictate that you will have to. It's your money.[/quote]

This is how it should be. Say what you want about not needing hundreds of millions of dollars, or needing all those exotic cars or other high-dollar possessions, or being greedy and withholding your money from those who could/need to do better with it, but freedom is a massively important factor in any successful (or moral) society. Setting aside the problem of who decides (and what they decide in regard to) the cap on your allowed value of possessions, as much as it's wrong to be greedy, it's even more wrong to try and decide (regardless of your income/possessions) what anyone else is not entitled to and then try to enforce (more like force upon) what you decided.

Call me blunt, but it's Communist/Socialist thinking to suggest that people should not be allowed to possess more than a certain amount.

And this is coming from someone who works his a** off at a minimum wage job where he is treated like crap, so spare me the "you're rich, and you don't want anyone threatening your money" argument. I think it's highly immoral and dare I say it, arrogant to say that anyone should have a cap on what they can have (inb4 the arrogance argument is reversed and used on me).

Land of the free. Can't really continue to call it that if we're going to begin heading in the direction of Communist countries.

[DGFone]

^ I have to agree with that.

And for the argument of "how many Ferrari's does one need to have", I have the answer: Like it or not, but these exotic, extremely expensive machines are what drive the future. Look at computers. They started out as large, bulky, building sized behemoths that only governments could afford. Now computers fit in your pocket.

You never know what little thing the $1000000 car will introduce that will someday be used by all cars. And who can afford to buy these cars and keep the companies researching? Not me. Just look at the Teslas. And so far, all hydrogen vehicles are also expensive. Your cheap cars all run on petroleum for now.

So to put it at another way, you cannot limit the wealth of people, because they are the ones who can afford to take risks, and drive society technologically forwards. And I think today, everyone know that our current level of technology is not good enough.

[Azdgari]

Cheap cars are twice as efficient as any Ferrari, Lambourghini, or luxury car. And a Volt or Leaf is twice as efficient as a Tesla at a fraction of the price. Real, practical automotive innovation does not happen in expensive cars, it happens in the affordable segments. Admittedly that might not be true for all technologies, but I don't think "if people don't spend incredible amounts on expensive products technology will cease to advance!" is a powerful argument, at least not to me.

I guess it comes down to the practicality of fairness versus the unfairness of ideology, at least in the case of "it's the land of the free!" argument. Sure, you can champion that slogan, but that doesn't make it fair or practical. Again, In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth and the top 1% owned 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth. Any way you play it, that doesn't come up as a solution for a healthy, equal country. I guess that makes me unpatriotic; I don't personally believe you have the right to live in insane wealth while others who work harder than you barely get by. Can you live in extreme wealth, say 100 million per year? Sure, I guess. But if it's the land of the free, you have the freedom to be incredibly unequal, I suppose.

[SnowyCheetah]

No it is not fair. But that's not the point. What one person (or a large group of people) deems fair doesn't give them the right to usurp the rights of others in the interest of upholding what they deem as "fair." The whole "being fair" and 1% arguments and complaining is an appalling display of childish "its not fair!!" Behavior.

[SimbaKovu]

[quote="DGFone"]^ I have to agree with that.

And for the argument of "how many Ferrari's does one need to have", I have the answer: Like it or not, but these exotic, extremely expensive machines are what drive the future. Look at computers. They started out as large, bulky, building sized behemoths that only governments could afford. Now computers fit in your pocket.

You never know what little thing the $1000000 car will introduce that will someday be used by all cars. And who can afford to buy these cars and keep the companies researching? Not me. Just look at the Teslas. And so far, all hydrogen vehicles are also expensive. Your cheap cars all run on petroleum for now.

So to put it at another way, you cannot limit the wealth of people, because they are the ones who can afford to take risks, and drive society technologically forwards. And I think today, everyone know that our current level of technology is not good enough.[/quote]

The fact is that we no longer live in a society where the wealthy actively work to ensure the livelihoods of their employees. We haven't had a society like that since the 1960s.

During the 1960s and 70s, there was this interesting dialogue taking place in the United States about what the future would look like and how Americans would live. Because what had happened was that from the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 to the time period I'm talking about, the productivity of American workers had increased nearly unceasingly and, at times, exponentially. What had also happened was that wages tracked productivity, as in wages rose as worker productivity rose. And every time there was this new breakthrough in how workers interacted with their employer and their working environment, productivity made a corresponding massive leap forward. For instance, the invention of the cotton gin, the abolition of slavery, the Industrial Revolution, the development of assembly line production, etc. And with each of those breakthroughs in worker productivity, leisure time for the average American worker increased, to the point where, in 1967, it reached its peak where, for the first time in American history, the average worker enjoyed more leisure time than time spent at his or her place of employment.

So, what was going on in the 1960s and early 70s was that analysts were beginning to realize that the imminent introduction of computer technology to the workplace would result in another massive leap forward in terms of worker productivity. So the dialogue that was taking place was all about The Coming Leisure Society, and what that society would look like. By this point, people were working 40-hour work weeks with very good, livable wages, mainly as a result of government regularly increasing the minimum wage since the advent of the New Deal programs as well as the advances in worker treatment and leisure time brought about by the prominence of labor unions. So, the analysts were thinking that, as worker productivity made another massive leap forward, wages would continue to increase, and therefore, leisure time would increase to the point where people would be working perhaps 35 or 30-hour work weeks or even the expansion of the work weekend to 3 days. The Jetsons TV show was all about this Leisure Society that people at the time envisioned we would be experiencing by now.

And then, a funny thing happened. With the election of President Ronald Reagan and his efforts to completely dismantle labor unions in the United States as well as further the interests of corporations, wages suddenly flatlined. So, as worker productivity continued to increased, wages remained comparatively flat up until today. So, here is this yawning chasm that is opening up in the productivity-wages graph. And in the widening gap between wages and productivity is all this extra wealth that did not go to the average American worker. Instead, since 1980, it has nearly all gone to the richest 1% in this country.

So, here we are, with another massive leap forward in worker productivity imminent thanks to the development of smartphone technology. And yet, leisure time for the average American worker seems to be inexplicably falling, to the point where people are working 2 or 3 jobs, working 50 or 60-hour work weeks, thanks to the theft of wages which began under Reagan and continues to this very day. The question is: Will the citizens and labor unions of this country seek to correct this wrong and demand a return to sustainability with respect to wages to where it was in the 60s and early 70s? Or will Americans accept this and be willing subservients of their new corporate masters and their allies that dominate government?