you dont need a max wage if you tax effectively. it would be 100% past a certain, massive amount.
That’s exactly how the article suggests setting the maximum.
“Wage” is rather poor wording then.
Anyone with two brain cells can understand that it’s a wordplay on “minimum wage” and the implementation of this isn’t really going to rely on the narrow definition of wages.
It seems unwise to rely on the uneducated masses to interpret things correctly. Perhaps clearer communication would be helpful.
That’s why there’s a whole text with explanations right below the headline
As you can see, lots of people don’t read those explanations.
Perhaps clearer communication would be beneficial.
How does that work when the super rich don’t pay any taxes to begin with? How do you tax wealth? How do you tax loans against shares?
in the united states, there were all kinds of ‘wealth’ taxes that prevented the loop holes. all that was systematically deleted over the last 60 years as conservatives decided ‘me want money, fuck society’
The top marginal tax rate in the US peaked in 1951 at 92% on income in excess of $400k (joint filing two income), the equivalent of about $4.7M in today’s money. That should come back.
Easy, make capital gains tax match income tax marginal rates.
But capital gains only execute when you sell.
all stock market trades should be taxed at 100% value. dont like it? dont
gamble‘invest’…or just abolish the stock market (at least that’s how I read this).
At this point, abolishing the stock market would require a restart on the United States as an entity. The stock market is quite closely linked to the banking system. Closing the stock market would crash the US economy into oblivion.
And no doubt every other closely-tied economy, as well.
Do they get a tax refund when they take a loss as well?
Right. So when they sell, they’ll get taxed. You can’t spend shares.
The problem is that’s basically what billionaires do, though. They take out loans with their shares as collateral. So on paper they have huge debt, but it’s minuscule compared to their wealth.
Make it illegal to use shares as collateral for a loan. If a person can pay back a loan, they can buy back the shares after they sell them because they need money. Now people are paying capital gains taxes.
Ok but how are you supposed to do that when the most powerful and influential people in the world are the very people who rely on that method to maintain their power and influence?
Execution? 🤷🏻♂️
You tax holdings.
Take a listen to the recent Grey Area podcast episode with Ingrid Robeyns. Her book is “Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth.” and they talk about this very subject.
LoL yeah as if they won’t put loopholes in there like they did with taxes.
As others have said, the problem isn’t wages, rich are rich because of returns, dividends and other stuff that, depending on the country or city, is tax exempt, precisely to avoid paying anything. A cynical asshole might even go so far as to say that it creates jobs for lawyers and accountants, which is technically true. It’s a win-win-lose for the rich-those ethically wrong workers-everyone else.
Unless the UN or really big blocks like the EU+BRICS start pressing every tax haven to stop pretending that they’re doing nothing wrong (which, let’s be honest, won’t happen, ever), the rich will just move around. They have that luxury, thanks to effectively infinite money.
they are rich because they own property other people depend own
One of the challenges is of course that the wealthy don’t get paid. They own and control assets that appreciate in value.
What if we ended private ownership of businesses. I don’t mean ending ownership of businesses, but that every business became publicly tradeable. No more private ownership of businesses.
I’m not actually advocating this (yet), just curious what people think would happen if we did this.
The same as now
The people that own it privately will have controlling public shares. Can’t force them to sell at a given value and if you did they would just have a diverse portfolio that they swap between each other
I think finding a private company that brings people the levels we are talking about here are not an issue
Profit sharing works better, after x earned, everything is divided up between workers
Taxing profits is a good idea but they’ll figure out some creative accounting to avoid making them.
I think we just need to straight up take ownership of a portion their shares that increases based on how little tax they are paying.
What i said is closer to what you are saying than it is to taxes
What if we ended private ownership of businesses. I don’t mean ending ownership of businesses, but that every business became publicly tradeable. No more private ownership of businesses
Not sure if that would really lead to any significant change. Most billionaires “own” publicly traded companies. In fact, most billionaires became billionaires when their companies initiated an IPO.
The problem is that rich people can use their stock as collateral for huge untaxable loans. What we need to do is figure out a way to classify and tax these loans without taxing things like mortgages.
What if we ended private ownership of businesses. I don’t mean ending ownership of businesses, but that every business became publicly tradeable. No more private ownership of businesses.
There’s something to be said for mandatory stock awards to all employees (with no contractor sub-contractor loopholes) calculated to enforce a controlling interest among current staff.
Of course, arguably, I just described a union with more steps.
Edit: I think this won’t necessarily need to be mandatory, after current shareholders wise up that their current crop of CEO’s aren’t actually serving their interests.
But, if it works, there’s an argument to be made for making something mandatory to set a baseline expectation for human decency.
Which I suppose amounts to crowd-sourcing to staff things not currently handled by OSHA.
The author mentioned in this article was recently on The Grey Area podcast and the arguments and reasoning is pretty compelling. It’s also about the discussion and civic involvement and not a particular limit. But the reasoning behind a Limitarianism makes a lot of sense.
If person A makes 100million a year, that’s 1,000 times more than person B making 100k a year. Can you honestly say that person A is working 1k time harder, or is contributing 1k times more than the person B? Also remember that we’re not talking about the hordes of people working below person A who execute most of the work. We’re just talking about that one individual and their contributions.
Either way, the discussion about the subject is the important thing here. What do you want your society to look like in the future and for the next generation? Even if it’s not Limitarianism, starting the conversation and cival discourse to push society towards a better version of its current form is worth the effort.
Another way of thinking about it is the human potential it would open up and create.
Imagine limiting the wealth of the those with enormous fortunes and allowing those in the middle to become enormously wealthy, while at the same time allow those at the bottom to finally make it to a level where they no longer have to worry about surviving. It would be terrible for those with enormous wealth because they would lose control but it would great for those at the bottom who would achieve a way to take back control of their lives.
Imagine a world where those who never had the opportunity now have a chance to become doctors, engineers, scientists, professionals, creators, builders and inventors. Imagine a world filled with people who have the free time to just create things because they can instead of spending their lives just trying to get by. Most people in the world don’t want to become master and ruler of the universe … they just want to have a nice life, do something useful and enjoy their existence with others. It’s only a minority few who feel compelled to neurotically want to collect every bit of wealth everywhere and pathologically amass so much wealth, it would take a thousand lifetimes to actually use it, let alone enjoy it.
Imagine every poor inner city kid build up an education to become a professional at something and not worry about how they are going to make a living. Imagine a millions of poor kids in Indian and China doing something with their time in engineering, science or medicine. Imagine every poor kid in Africa building their countries and developing new ideas.
The world wouldn’t become a utopia … it would most likely still have all the problems we deal with today … but at the very least, we would have a world full of educated, capable people who would be able to handle it all. Right now, we’re just a horde of raging mindless apes that are worried about dying and will kill one another for a share of a few bananas.
Reminds me of the Kurzgesagt video “A Selfish case for Altruism”. If all those people were educated and working on making the world better, that would mean more people curing diseases that you personally could die from in the future. More people solving global warming and other future unknown global issues, that could harm you or you kids in the future. Etc…
Even from a self serving angle, it’s better to have more people in the world well fed, well educated, living well, and contributing to society.
They usually dont get paid much in wages. I think zuckerberg got paid $1/hr?
I think the word you’re looking for is “income” or “net worth”
Setting a maximum wage for them wouldn’t do a damn thing. They’ll just use the wealth they already have to hoover up more through things like insider trading or flat out stealing company money.
Adding a maximum wage for the rich would be like trying to drain the ocean using a toy bucket.
In an ideal world anyone making more than, let’s say for an example, $1 million in a year would pay 100% tax on anything more.
No one needs more than $1,000,000 a year for anything. No one works hard enough to actually deserve that. It’s just pure luck and/or screwing over other people to get more than that.
Unfortunately if one country implements that, all the rich people leave and go live somewhere else that doesn’t tax that much.
On paper they don’t make anything a year and pay less tax than you or I. The only way that’s going to change is a massive world-wide effort to crack down on tax havens and to start taxing their assets fully.
The author in the article talks about how most of the wealth is either coming from capital gains and/or inheritance. They know wage isn’t the thing to cap, the article is likely just trying to maximize clicks. The subject is still worth exploring and the author is very well informed.
I’d like to know more about how this is supposed to work.
What is considered a wage? Is it net worth, increase in worth from one year to the next? Liquid capital?
Are benefits (insurance, child care, etc) counted towards this wage cap? What about company cars or housing? What about profit sharing through bonuses and / or stock grants?
Would loans be counted towards the wage cap? If not, can you borrow more than the wage cap?
What happens if you own a home or business that is worth more than the wage cap? Would you only be able to sell that commodity for the wage cap or would any excess of the wage cap be spread over multiple years?
Would inheritance or “gifts” be tallied towards the wage cap? Would donations to charitable organizations offset the wage cap?
Would companies be subject to these caps? What if a person incorporated, had all of their wealth and earnings go through that incorporation which they had sole discretion and control over the use of those funds?
What about foreign entities? Would people, companies, or even governments from other countries who exceed the maximum wage be allowed to buy / sell goods, direct / manage corporate interests, invest in land or stocks, or even reside in a country with a maximum wage? What authority or oversight would exist to even identify such a wage of a foreign entity? Or
Every single one of those questions represents a potential loophole that could be exploited to circumvent a “maximum wage” and I’m sure that somebody who has studied or worked in finance could think of others.
To be fair, there are a number of countries that already have a wealth tax. So it wouldn’t be some insurmountable concept.
Wealth that’s just sitting there is hard to assess and therefore easy to game. What’s the value of a piece of art? It’s far more practical to tax transactions and realized gains, when money changes hands.
Why on Earth would they use Taylor Swift as an example. Seriously?
Republicans hate her now so clearly she’s an extremist leftist /s
The Kremlin hates her now that she’s potentially opposing their candidate.
Because Taylor Swift is a billionaire who is politically relevant. She often has been on the right side of things (but not always). Even if she was solely a source for good, that doesn’t justify the obscene wealth she has or her lifestyle
And the right doesn’t generally worship her the way other billionaires are worshipped because she’s woke or something? Whatever the reason, they’re more willing to criticize her
She’s also far more susceptible to public pressure than other billionaires as an artist
All together, she’s a good target to rally around.
Does she deserve to be wealthy? Sure. She actually worked to get where she is, and has done a lot of good.
But she’s a billionaire, and we need to discuss limiting all billionaires to reasonable amounts of extreme wealth.
It doesn’t matter where the conversation starts, we can’t really afford to be picky
I do think the argument of a maximum value to contribution is more difficult to make with an artist as the example. Especially one as prevalent as Taylor Swift.
Art is intended to illicit emotions from people. Music in particular continues to illicit those emotions from years after it is released.
Are we then saying that the value of people feeling joy has a cap?
I don’t necessarily disagree with capping the income of an artist. I’m just pointing to the danger of using them as an example.
Taylor Swift is the new posterchild for billionaires, but honestly, she’s the least egregious example of a billionaire. She makes a fuck load of money because her concert tickets are like $1000 a pop. She’s known to give huge bonuses to her tour staff. If anyone is getting exploited, its her fans, but she’s literally just a performer. She’s hardly manipulating stock prices and doing pump and dump schemes and not paying her staff a livable wage.
How about we just execute the richest person every 3 months?
I have better idea: 100% tax
Anything over a $500 million in asset value taxed at 100%.
Far above what anyone should own. And yet, you’ll get middle-class people defending the people with those riches, that they deserve to keep their billion dollars.
Yes, the world doesn't need billionaires And we can do it without guns No, we won't kill you and we won't lock you up On the contrary, you'll become millionaires!Knorkator - Die Welt braucht keine Milliardäre
100% agree with all the people saying it’s not enough, but it could be a start, which potentially forces interesting changes at the company level even if it doesn’t do much with the economic system.
I would rather see no shareholder influence, but weakened shareholder influence and less incentive for CEOs and execs to be douchebags can still be meaningful (though perhaps not alone). Unfortunately, since people who want to lead others tend to be empathetically challenged, they still need explicit incentives for them not to just go through the same old exploitative and abusive patterns. Say this went through, the people who replace the spoiled CEOs who decide to leave would just end up being corrupt as well if some kind of positive reinforcement doesn’t also exist.
lol imagine being so poor that you earn a wage