booms and depressions caused by freedom of contract? I’d recommend supporters of this kind of stuff expand their reading list to include the likes of Murray N. Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, FA Hayek and others in the Austrian School of economics. Ignoring economic realities doesn’t make them go away.

In related news, given that price controls have worked so well on CEO salaries, Congress just passed price controls on bread. The new maximum price that can be charged for bread is $1.

In more related news, the supply of bread has suddenly dried up in the US, though you can still get a decent loaf of bread for $1.75 Canadian ( equivalent to $3.50 US) right across the border.

There are price controls on bread in many other countries, including France. As far as anyone can tell, France has more than an abundant supply of bread - which may be why the quality of the baguette far exceeds that of Wunderbread.

In related news, as a result of the members of boards of directors having their salaries limited, in combination with the fact that corporations in the United States face some of the highest corporate taxes in the world, many corporations have decided that now is the time to move their headquarters to Ireland and other corporation friendly countries. As a result, the GDP of the US has dropped at an unprecedented rate, resulting in mass starvation and disease.

I enjoy how bile argues that we cannot ‘ignore economic reality’ because that ‘doesn’t make them go away.’ This coming from a person who references armchair academic economists whose models of capitalism are entirely theoretical and have no basis in historical and therefore empirical reality. Hayek and Mises theories are pie in the sky writings - abstracted from all material reality - and subsequently are as beneficial in explaining the historical development of capitalism and therefore social reality as a pile of dog crap. Last time I checked theory had to be constantly verified by the empirical world and therefore tweaked, refined, etc. And if a theory did not correspond with empirical reality it was supposed to be tossed into the dustbin of history. Explain to me how economic theories that have an explanatory power of ZERO PERCENT still operate with such esteem? Could it have anything to do with the brainwashing of people by think thanks, corporations and governments who blindly heed to the neoliberal dogma of there is no alternative? Hmmm..

uh yeah. without going into a lot of crap, a maximum wage law is an awesome idea.

as for moving corporate headquarters to ireland, thats outsourcing. no matter how you slice it. we need to make that illegal as well.

“The current minimum wage is $5.85 ($12,168 annually)…”

The current minimum wage is $6.55 ($13,624 annually) and will rise to $7.25 ($15080 annually) at the end of July, 2009 (http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/flsa/). This inaccuracy was clearly an intentional stroke of satirical genius used to indicate the ignorance of the minimum wage worker who would be overpaid to write this garbo.

Ok Shane, great plan. So you’re going to implement a maximum wage and then prevent outsourcing, or moving a business outside the US.

Presumably, you’ll also need to stop company owners leaving the country, as otherwise they’ll just go off and set up a company overseas to pursue their career where they can be really evil and earn as much as they can. Of course, they can only do this if there is any chance of them selling goods and services overseas, so we could probably need nuke every country on earth so there is no chance of that, although you may think thats a little excessive, I don’t know.

As a poor second, we probably need to have lots of guards on the borders, with orders to shoot any evil capitalists who try to get out or, God forbid, export any capital or import any goods or services.

Just to really make the point to these evil capitalists, we should probably change the name of the country. Maybe “North Korea” or “Pol Pot’s Cambodia” would be appropriate…..

Are do you really expect me to sit here and say that the the standard of living cap is a bad idea because it discourages a free market economy because it discourages what? The people who are in it for a definition of wealth?

You will not sit there with a strait face and tell me you require silver or gold as your bathroom throne or kitchen utensil.

Good and evil having nothing to do with it. Min wage is based of standard of living for basic needs. Max wage would be simply be a cap before rare metal utensils and toiletries. The most surefire way to see a business live till the end of time is to pump excess back into it rather then a personal bank account, sitting… doing nothing.

In related news. Economist and congressional talks already taking place on creating a bill for perpetual living costs for the successful retirees from CEOs down to tenured employees. The concept around the water-cooler. “Earn your wealth and keep it that way!”

In other related news, a complete federal dismantlement on state rights on dividing of wealth in a divorce. You don’t marry for a definition of wealth. Noted socialist analyst quoted “You earn your way, your standard of living depends on the individual, not any body of government or courts ruling.”

Patrick: European food prices (and French bread with them) are controlled to not fall below certain prices, they dont have a maximum price. You’re confusing two things.

‘The maximum wage cap is $182,520/year’ …Why not abolish a cap and tax the excess amount with 75% instead of 100%? You’ll actually have more tax income in the end. But in any way, the main effect is that there’ll be no ‘becoming rich’ anymore, and those who are already rich remain a tight group. While this doesnt hurt much for some limited time during war, it will certainly drive young eager minds abroad just as people were driven to America in the past centuries partially because of their sealed social classes.

This step seeks to solve problems, but the problems it creates will pave down the road to further socialism. Note that the salary cap not only applies to CEO’s (who some people regard as useless anyway) but also to engineers, mathematicians, biologists, basically any brilliant scientist who’ll then start to develop future innovations in UK, China or Brazil.

I applaud to most articles in the ‘NYT-SE’, but this one confuses a good intention (proper taxation of those who can afford paying high taxes) with bad incentives that lead to demotivation and ‘Berlin-wall’like restrictions of moving abroad.

The evils of unlimited freedom…Yeah, I see where this is leading to.
Freedom is evil if it benefits others but not myself. I get it.
And it is even sold with the (unexplained) phrase that it will stabilize the economy. Well, here’s the explanation: If we continue to dismantle freedom of contract and ban stock trading, then the stock markets won’t fall anymore. We then go further and fix all prices, so stable calculations and planning can be done without that annoying inflation stuff. Oh, and of course it must not be allowed to fire workers, so unemployment is avoided. Then we need to close the borders to avoid anyone coming in our out, and we will have a very stable economy because nothing can change anymore, right? And this ridiculous idea of freedom needs to be abolished anyway, who needs freedom if the government knows better whats good for you?

I for one promote selfishness in its fullest sense and capacity. Why PUNISH people for doing well in life?? a 100% tax rate on any income over $182,000 not only diminishes risky operations, it also stagnates growth, innovation, as well as the desire, that burning fire, to do WELL in life. If mediocrity is the standard we will hold everyone to in the future, then count me out of this forsaken country. This look at the future is bleak, depressing, and outright sickening.

A lot would be won, if tax evasion by the wealthy was punished as harshly as shoplifting a Hershey Bar at Walmart (by a citizen of darker skin, of course).

Well, that leaves me out and unemployed. I’m not worth $5.85 now, never mind the increased rate. Guess I can get work with the new CCC and live in barracks with all the other newly unemployed.

Heil, Hitler!

Pre-Reagan the top tax bracket was 70%, it is now 35%. I personally feel that is much too low and no one commentating here is anywhere near the top tax bracket, so I don’t know what the complaints are about. What a bunch of Joe the Plumbers

With Ken here… anybody realize how many more taxes we have since the Reagens? Then tell me where those taxes go.

Brilliant idea.

I’m astounded at the number of people who think there is no point to working, being active, or creating things if they aren’t paid large sums of money to do so. Capping large salaries is not going to stop people from working, or doing great work. There are millions of people in this country who work very hard for very little, and are making valuable contributions — teachers, firefighters, artists, social workers, nurses, and so on. Capping salaries would send the greedy overseas to countries that allow exploitation of their people, and good riddance. For example, we’ll no longer suffer with doctors who are in health care for the big bucks, but who actually want to help heal people. We’ll be left with people who are altruistic, hard-working, sensible, and compassionate, who have an understanding of how individuals in a society need each other to have a healthy, happy, less-stressed out society, offering a wider variety of work choices. When fewer people are working for giant corporations, but for themselves or in small companies, there will be far more flexible life choices for most people. Being rich and having a lot of junky material goods doesn’t mean that you are leading a better life, and being poor doesn’t have to mean that you’re perforce going to suffer. People will have a chance to cultivate themselves in other directions. We can learn to value education, the arts, helping each other, running small businesses that produce high-quality goods and services — things that don’t have to be expensive to create prosperity and be fulfilling.

A collapsed economy is a great opportunity to re-focus and get out of the financial trap we’ve all fallen victim to. We have to change the way we think about life.

[...] My coworker just told me about this fake NY Times that people were handing out yesterday morning. It’s filled with [liberal media elite] stories that are so-good-I-wish-they-were-true: Education Department Plans National Tax Base for Schools and Maximum Wage Law Passes Congress. [...]

@Sav: Punish is an interesting word to use regarding income caps. If one considers money equivalent to resources (resources being food, water, heat, tv, metals for production, etc.), and further agrees all resources (and therefore, money) are limited, then isn’t it the people without the resources [money] that are being punished by the person with the resources?

Here’s the opposite side of your coin:
“Why PUNISH people for not doing well in life?”

Here’s my question to most of the posters here:
Didn’t your parents teach you to share?

For those that spout off about socialism and capitalism… please read “Das Kapital” and “Wealth of Nations”, otherwise you just sound like an idiot preacher who’s never read the bible. After you’ve read them, take some time to explore their historical context and you may find something interesting there. Specifically, pay attention to the conditions as they were at the time of their respective writings.

After you’ve done that, you can safely throw away ALL your worthless Friedman babbling.

First off, as #21 notes, this is a parody NYT. But there’s another way to think about this, one that I’ve thought highly of for years. Rather than creating a uniform maximum wage based off a uniform minimum wage, simply require that the top wage in an organization be limited to a certain multiple of the lowest wage in that organization. In other words, if the multiple is 15x, the CEO can make $1.5 million as soon as the lowest paid employee makes $100k. More realistically, make it 30x. It would provide CEOs the incentive to “lift all boats” and create some sanity as a way of saying that the productivity of any firm is not all about how one person does his/her job, but is a cooperative venture. And I’d bet you’d get more productive workers if that was the new ethic.

#22 Dan has reached a reasonable point of equilibrium between the two extremes that would address the ever growing divide between the ultra rich and the rest of us. Tying executive compensation to the lowest paid employee by a reasonable factor (20-30 multiplier) would motivate the employee to perform / enhance productivity, help to curb the rampant greed eating at the heart of most (note I said most) big business execs, and would perhaps motivate all employers to pay their employees a living wage. It may even have a side benefit of making all the free market capitalists happy by giving more folks purchasing power to buy crap they don’t need.
Our only issue would be the investment banking firms and financial LLCs. They would have to be further regulated because they have shown themselves to be entirely irresponsible and possessed of reptilian morality.

The new Irish Government which had been elected in June welcomed the ending of the Iraq war. The new Taoiseach(Prime Minister) Eamon Gilmore who heads up the Democratic Alliance for Change which brought together the Labour Party, Sinn Fein and the Greens which won a surprise victory said: “On behalf of the Irish people I welcome the end of this horrific war in Iraq which will allow for a restoration of a stable economy and real and sustainable jobs. We feel our decision to terminate the use of Shannon Airport by the US played a role in this global peace process. Now that our corporation tax levels in Ireland, the EU, China are the same we feel that concerns that US Corporations will move their headquarters to Ireland are not valid. We now look forward to even stronger relations between Ireland and the US.”

#22. This is a fantastic idea that needs to be taken a step further into bonuses. Another part of the problem is that “Salary” is typically a very small percentage of the total actual compensation. I used to work for one of the now failed banks, and I remember that our CEO made 3-4 times his SEC reported salary in “bonuses and other compensation.” I think that CEOs and other execs absolutely should be able to be additionally compensated for good performance, but I also think that it should be heavily taxed beyond a certain ratio (say, a 1:1 salary to bonus) to base salary, UNLESS every other non-executive in the organization receives a bonus of the same ratio above the max.
For example, if a CEO’s base salary is $1M, his maximum bonus would be an additional $1M before being taxed 75% on the excess. If the CEO wanted a bonus of $1.1 million, he could opt for the additional $100K (10%) to be taxed normally IF everyone else in the company received at least a 10% bonus of their base pay for that year.

[...] Congress Passes Maximum Wage Law [...]

@#5

Exactly what form of economics provides verifiable theories? The Austrians have the only cycle theory I’ve come across which describes observed historical events and has been used to predict current ones. I fail to see how Mises is removed from reality given it was the only school of thought that accurately acknowledged economic realities instead of creating supposedly objective economic strawmen. Are you going to argue that freedom leads to the boom bust cycle? That interfering with freedom of exchange doesn’t distort supply and demand? That monetary manipulation has no ill effects?

Most of you in favor of Maximum Wage laws should commit suicide as you are useless. Especially people like Alice who think we would have better healthcare if greedy doctors left the country. Yes Alice, only the “good” doctors would remain. Those truly in it to help others. You are an idiot!

This is an absolutely ridiculous idea. If the USA ever implements a Maximum Wage Law I’m NEVER going to open up business here. While many people have used their high wages for evil purposes, they get away with that using legal loopholes and by taking advantage of an uninformed public.

I would say that the vast, VAST majority of businessmen who make $500k or more a year do NOT use their additional money on golden utensils, but rather invest it back into their business and other ventures. This is remarkable, given how much hype surrounds money, but that’s the beauty of humanity for you.

Let’s face it. The people who would support this measure are not financially successful people themselves. They haven’t achieved wealth, and they resent those who have risen to the top. In their misguided anger towards their conception of the greedy, avaricious corporate CEO, they want to deny the freedom of every other individual who has achieved wealth in this nation through hard work. They preach the value of “sharing,” but they won’t be the ones sacrificing the fruits of their labor. They’ve deluded themselves into thinking that motivated, enterprising individuals wouldn’t run for the borders were a law like this to pass. Of course it won’t pass, not in our lifetimes, because its supporters represent a tiny, deluded, naive minority of the American population.

Every day, a few American men or women will put everything they have on the line to turn an idea into a profitable company. Most will work 70+ hours a week to get their idea off the ground, and yet for all their efforts, they’ll fail spectacularly. A select few go on to create great wealth for this country. These individuals who burden the risk and shoulder the responsibility should not be denied a representative share of the wealth they create. And it’s their individual freedom to spend that wealth however they please, whether it’s on “golden toilets” (is this really your perception of rich people?) or a secure and comfortable future for themselves and their children.

Supporters of a maximum wage law claim to have the nation’s best interest in mind. In reality, most act out of petty contempt towards those who are more financially successful than themselves. Their contempt is so strong they advocate a law which undermines American ideals of individual liberty and ensures the rapid collapse of our already struggling economy.

are you serious? max salary cap? goodbye incentive to take risk

You don’t need more than 15 times minimum wage, you only want it.

I love the conservoboobs posting here who keep drinking the kool-aid. The hysterical hyperzealous religious whacko defenses of the most broken economic system on the planet, that their own policies and ideologies have wrought are comical in addition to being pathological. I love their screen names too… “SS” and “Conservative” clearly the most creative tools in the shed. I also note that they’re mostly, if not all, male. The dying rumpus of an about to be extinct species.

Mr. Common Sense redeemed the thread for me. If only “his” sense was indeed more common… we might not need a spoof piece like this.

H/T to the Yesmen! You RULE!

#31 K Jemsen. I applaud people who put it all on the line to become fabulously wealthy. This is the backbone of the American Work ethic, and I would actually say that they should be exempted from this.

What I personally hate to see are the CEOs and upper level execs being paid huge bonuses based on criteria they themselves control that and having no personal stake in the game if they run the company into the ground. Look at Countrywide. The CEO made vast sums of money on the backs of hard working Americans with knowingly bad business practices, then was paid $60 million dollars to basically go away when it was bought by BofA. There’s no sense of responsibility in the boardroom. Just make as much money as fast as you can within the letter of the law, because you may not get another job again but you’ll never have to give it back. Not to the shareholders, not to the customers, and certainly not to the workers you continue to lay off to keep your bottom line in the black and the bonuses rolling in.

People argue that a maximum wage law would reduce incentive to take risk above and beyond the maximum wage… Sounds like exactly what we need to solve our current fiscal crisis! For a long time there has been too much incentive to take unnecessary and dangerous risk. Just check the DOW or the value of your home for confirmation of that.

#19Alice: You’re most hilarious! Maybe check your own made up economic system for validity once or twice…a day.

@Topic: the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the US, Berkshire Hathaway, earns already pretty close to that cap. Because he chose to and he’s already the richest man on earth, and the biggest philantrop also. But I doubt he’d agree to such an freedom-taking solution.

Let there be proper taxes and less ways to escape them, for those who earn that much. But dont expect to have such a law and still keep those who earn much and maybe deserve it, to stay. Not necessarily only corporate managers but also scientists or doctors or just brilliant minds who know they live in a society that doesnt like them.

#36Bob: Yes, check the DOW or the value of your home, and not only over the last year, but over the last 10 years, or the last 30 years, and you’ll see what you need.
What we have is a horrible administration and bankers who gave housing loans to the poor. Not really good, but still better than many other countries are faring.

“Look! I can vote money out of the treasury and out of other people’s wallets. It’s like stealing, but legitimate.” Thus, democracy fails.

This just isn’t that creative, funny or interesting. What a waste of bandwidth. Check out the Onion some time - it’s actually funny.

Alice (comment #19) YOU ROCK GIRL!!
This paper rocks too! Keep dreaming people! We can make the dream real.

Riblo - this isn’t supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to draw out the opinions of people like Lil’Phant, or so-called “Common Sense” for their real views. Unfortunately, these weirdos already congregate around those other wastes of bandwidth such as DailyKos, Huffington Post, or the real NYT.

These people never realized that Marx never had the stones to try and put into place what he suggested. No risk, no reward for him. He died poor and so did the countries who followed him.

Now, the folks who have taken the risks in the far and recent past (Ford, Edison, Brin, Gates) reaped the reward. Like it or not, these people and those like them are the ones who drive your lifestyle today, the ones who made it possible.

Also, I guess nobody commenting for this idiotic idea has a pension, 401k, or anything like that. What do you think these things are invested in? The stock market, especially these “public” pension funds for government (cheese) workers and folks like teachers (and these people don’t even pay into these accounts, the taxpayer does). What drives the stock market? Risk and reward. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Hey JustJack,

Are you sure it isn’t JustJackAss? You do realize that the SS was an arm of the Nazis. Do you know what Nazi is short for? National Socialists. Definitely not conservative. That’s right, they were left-wing fascists. A lot of the same type of rhetoric used in Germany in the 30s was used by the liberals in the 08 election. I know you’re not big on history, but you should read up a bit before showing everyone what an unaccomplished tool you are.

I would like to add that huge class diference is a crime generating factor, not just that but capitalist values over other values. For example, if you ask the drug dealers on my country why they joined the crime they will say: “I wanted to buy a Nike sneakers” ( juts like 50 cent). And just to correct Ferd, Nazis werent lef wing fascists (facist means right wing, buddy), they were far from liberal, they fought comunist as jews in the begging of their rise to power, just because they put Socialist doesnt makes them left wing, you moron.

Maximum Wage laws… Bliss or Cheese? Opression under the guise of a rise in equality… Or the paviment in the road to ture freedom? Hard to say… gonna say that besides “wage” other ways to limit hiltonian, leesimmonsian and hollywoodian wealth in general shall be the key… But people shall be limited in using straw purchasers, or anything akin, like the separate legal personality of a corporation, to get the same consequences… Corporations do require this separation but to prevent it from being used for exceeding wealth it must be equally divided in ownership among the minimum number big enough to prevent this. The wealth however shall not necessarily be limited to a 15 factor… After all… At which point do wealth turns people into filthy rich aholds? And before anyone thinks I speak in defense of the poor I bet ya even the rich will enjoy the elimination of the isolation brought by monetary power.

Economics is to Liberal as Evolution is to Religious Nut Job. Just like the excessively religious have something defective in their brains that makes it difficult for them to grasp the real world, so do the liberals.
I think they are probably the SAME people with just a slightly different background.

A maximum wage law (a limit by the ruling class on how much the governed can strive and aucceed) would be an ultimate triumph of a totalitarian, fascist state.

It is really not the government’s business. No maxiumum wage law, and also get rid of the minimum wage. The only wages the government should set are those of government employees.

You should find a good book about the black market economy in Soviet Union. It will help you to get rid of some illusions.

There are a lot of unkind insults here that replace light with heat. One could ask the question differently and examine it more dispassionately and also more creatively: Do we really need a minimum or maximum wage in a democracy that would allow everybody to make collective decisions (including in the economic sphere)? Couldn’t we have an equal wage (income) for all and begin concentrating on the good of all, doing work for the good it does ourselves and others instead of trying to gain some economic advantage (which also translates into having other kinds of power over others, the contrary of liberty and equality working together)? Parts of Alice’s comment move in this direction, I think. It might be worthwhile to read, for example, “Hierarchy of Wages and Incomes” by Cornelius Castoriadis, in the third volume of his Political and Social Writings (University of Minnesota Press). A former economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as well as the founder of the French revolutionary group Socialisme ou Barbarie, which criticized both Western capitalism _and_ the erstwhile “Soviet Union” while championing “workers’ management,” Castoriadis advocated _wage and income equality_ as a way of moving us beyond a selfish and disfunctional society based on private economic incentive and toward a human society of responsible, shared creativity. If we had democracy in the workplace, there’d be no need to set a cap on CEO’s salaries since there would be no CEOs, just people working together in equality and freedom.

fifteen times the minimum wage? Sounds good in theory, but it limits human drive to do more and seek more. Individuality, if it is valued, must include the value of those who seek to do more and seek bigger rewards for doing it. Limiting salaries is not the way to go. What you should limit is the ability for cooporations to form quazi-monopolies. And if you flatten taxes across the board, everyone chips in equally. Limiting wealth only limits opportunity, not greed and not poverty. You guys, who i respect, should have thought that one through more. Still, it was a good paper, and I agree with almost a hundred percent of it. Very cool, guys.

Let’s have a little reality check, here. All this talk of freedom and opportunity, supposedly based on an unchallengeable economic theory from the Austrian School, von Mises, Milton Friedman, etc., such that anything that deviates therefrom is ridiculed or dismissed out of hand. Well, it wasn’t but a few weeks ago that the main apostle of what in Europe is called neo-liberalism and in the United States is the ideology of conservative free-marketeers, Alan Greenspan, admitted in front of Congress that the assumptions he has been working with (and imposing upon us) for the past four or five decades have proved to be useless and inaccurate in the face of what has really transpired economically. Come on! A little renewed creative thinking and facing reality as it is are what is called for. Greenspan has just pronounced the death sentence of market fundamentalism, but some apparently haven’t read the obituary yet or don’t want to acknowledge it. It was originally called “political economy” but the effort of economists for 150 years or more has been to eliminate all political questions about what kind of society we want to live in (maybe a free, egalitarian and democratic one at all levels, including in the workplace?) by pretending that they have created an objective “science” beyond question. Whence many of the abusive comments above.

thank you #48! I’m not familiar enough with your refernences to agree, but I appreciate your tone. People that insult others just because their opinions diverge will not gain respect. Calling someone a moron and telling them to read history (and then showing your own ignorance of history) won’t win any arguments.

Thank you #22: Let’s link the top to the bottom.
Thank you #35: Well said: “There’s no sense of responsibility in the boardroom. Just make as much money as fast as you can within the letter of the law” (and just barely), sink our economy, then whooosh - $10M golden parachute. This mess has been largely fueled by greed at the top and I don’t blame anyone for being angry about that or for proposing an alternate schemata.

There are a lot of intelligent people on all sides of economics - liberal and conservative. We need everyone’s brain power in the pot to get us out of the mess we are in, here in Nov. ‘08. We won’t ever get rid of greed. But ideology won’t save you - conservative or liberal - so let go of it.

also: I beg of you, reread and spellcheck before pressing send! geez.

viva satire! viva dissent! viva Yes Men!

I guess the guys selling the diamonds in the adjacent panel are going to go belly up.

It is good to know that most people that enjoy this spoof realize that this proposal is unrealistic and would most likely be disasterous. Ask Ben and Jerry they couldn’t get the job done with such an internal proposal. Evidence backs up my statement, not conjecture. Even though the idea is provocative.
Enjoy the coctail party chatter.

Fuck yes.

Cap salaries and 100% taxes? Ok… First of all the millions of dollars that these CEO’s make are not actually wages but end-of-year bonuses. Its the bonuses you have to ban. Furthermore, rich people dont care how much tax is because they dont pay any. That’s why lawyers and loop holes exist. And nice secret bank accounts in the Key Islands.
However I do applaud the whole “detournement”. Anything that gets people thinking and talking is better than silent acceptance.

To whoever is behind this NYT mockup : this is GREAT !!
I’m not sure I believe in *every*thing you’re calling on Obama to do, but it comes quite close.
Who ever gets the chance anyway, to interact with the rest of the nation about issues like fair fiscal policy ? You did it, with this mockup.
I think you should keep the website running in the coming months/years — maybe a new issue every 1st day of the month ? Who knows - maybe Obama, Pelosi and the others can peruse it once in a while - see what the “constructive radicals” have to say this month.
Anyway, if that’s in the books, you can count me in for donations.

#41, 42… Do you know which of the guy you cite had the portrait of another guy you cite? Hitler with G. Ford (himself a great supporter of nazism). So please stop exhibiting your personal inconsistent undigested historical mix of communism, 08 election, nazi stories, socialism, Marx, Ford, ignorance, American dream, self made man and the land of freedom, people like you are already too much vocally active in this country and it’s a shame. Just read a bit and come back. The ideological position in this paper is not the one held by the author, but obviously the close mindedness demonstrated by many of the commentators… if you’re not even able to argument against capping top salaries without blurring with pre-made free market mantra that has so prove to be totally wrong for 10 years now (I include the dot com bubble that was just a terrible joke but an instructive one for whoever was willing to read its meaning). You remind me these average US citizen who are 80% convinced than within 10 years they’ll make more than 100k$/year (thus in the top 5%) and who therefore support con or free maket policies just because, “one day” they’ll be able to screw everybody else… where as this country is actually the one among developed ones where it’s the less likely to happen (a fact).

When was Barney Frank elected to the senate?

Yes, we can cap salaries, and no, it will not cause the end of capitalism. If the potential to claim more wealth than can be expended in a lifetime is your prime or only source of motivation to contribute to society, then you live a most shallow life, indeed, and we would be better as a society if you would move your sorry ass to Ireland, or wherever you think would be a better place to live. Better still, we should just seize what is rightfully ours, and let the bourgeoisie turn tail and run…Take back what is yours, fellow workers! Without labor there is no value. Dump the bosses off your back. We can handle all of this ourselves.

OMG #59, that is the funniest thing I have ever heard. Wow, good luck with that.

The federal minimum wage for covered nonexempt employees is $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008. The federal minimum wage provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Many states also have minimum wage laws. In cases where an employee is subject to both the state and federal minimum wage laws, the employee is entitled to the higher of the two minimum wages.
HOWEVER…
Georgia Minimum Wage Rates

GEORGIA
$5.15: see the statement below:
The State law excludes from coverage any employment that is subject to the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act when the Federal rate is greater than the State rate.

A 100% tax on all earnings over 150,000 will not stop everyone from working hard…but it will indeed stop a substantial number of highly productive people from working hard. If most skilled doctors would be willing to work for a max of $150,000 per year, then that is what they would be paid. The reason highly skilled doctors make $300k and more per year is because most of them demand to be paid that much. If most doctors valued treating people in need over money, then they would not be working in the US…they would all go to third-world nations to provide services to people who truly need it. Some do, they are called “Doctors Without Borders.” But most don’t…because most are in it for the money.

I will make everyone on this site that favors wage controls a deal. I will read the communist manifesto if you will promise to read Atlas Shrugged. It may not shake you into reality…but it will at least give you an idea of what extensive controls over economic freedom could likely do to an economy.

Great! Just great.

@ #62: Patrick, I take issue with your literature recommendations. Instead of the Communist Manifesto, which more a work of polemic than anything else, might I suggest Capital, Marx and Engels’ detailed and thorough criticism of capitalism. And in the place of Atlas Shrugged, which fails at philosophy even more spectacularly than it does at philosophy, perhaps Wealth of Nations would be better. And I’d encourage anybody to read Proudhon’s “What is Property?”. I disagree with much of Proudhon’s philosophy but this is essential reading for anyone who takes private property for granted, whether you agree with his conclusions or not. Capital and the Proudhon piece can be found for free at marxists.org

Back to the topic at hand, I’m reading a lot of comments here which claim that increasing taxes on the rich will induce them to flee to other countries. This seems plausible but it raises a few questions — were all the would-be millionaires fleeing the country before Reagan when their income bracket was taxes from 70-91 percent? Did they emigrate in response to FDR’s income cap, or after federal income tax was established? I’d hope to have more faith in the patriotism of the American elite than to think that they’d move to Qatar en mass for an extra million bucks or two.

Staffing up the regulatory agency to police this rule would eliminate the need for any other job-creation efforts. We’d kill so many birds with this one stone that we’d be up to our knees in decaying finches and sparrows.

EXCEPTIONS to the Maximum Wage Law.

Billions of dollars in bailouts and year-end bonuses continue to be directed to the “wonder boys” on Wall Street. Unfortunately for the human community, these self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have turned the great capitalist system into a paltry gambling casino. Yes, in the light of all their avaricious risk-taking and conspicuous hoarding behavior, they can no longer be called by any name other than “thieves of the highest order”. And yes, bought-and-paid-for politicians are still allowing these bankstas to create dodgy financial instruments, irresponsible business models, generate economic bubbles and run Ponzi schemes. After all, greed is still extolled as good.

For those at the top of the economic pyramid, nothing really changes, I suppose, even though the laws do.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176

Just wanted to note that Nomad said “European food prices (and French bread with them) are controlled to not fall below certain prices, they dont have a maximum price.”

that’s wrong! Baguettes do have a fixed max price in france (85 euro cents I believe). I know it’s hard to believe for an american, but it’s true, don’t spread false information.

So, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are evil men because they were wise investors and entrepreneurs? Wait, aren’t they some of the biggest philanthropists living today? In addition, wouldn’t the salary cap essentially secure that no one else enters into the top 1% of the economic status, those people directly descended from the Rockefellers and the like who don’t have to work to pull in money? What this would do is essentially create an enormous gap between what would become the middle class/lower class and the super wealthy.

[...] favorite article was: “Maximum Wage Law Passes Congress”. Salary cap will help stabilize economy but check out: Website Videos pdf & do not miss the *real* New York Times blog [...]

It seems like the tax debate for the most part centers around the fear that higher taxes will prohibit companies from highering as many workers, or worse, laying off the ones it already has. Could it be possible though, to raise taxes on very wealthy individuals while lowering the taxes on businesses themselves? It seems like a system slanted that way would discourage executives from walking away with such huge payoffs, and instead encourage businesses to keep their capital within themselves, providing more resources for R&D, employee wages, and other reinvestments.

Interesting discussion. However, if the goal was to actually try to help lower income people, then a max wage would be a very bad idea because it would clearly result in lower overall production because you some very useful people (scientists, doctors, executives, small business owners, etc.) would simply say “I will keep working at this new max wage rate, but instead of working 50-60 hours per week, I will simply work 30 hours per week and spend the rest of the time relaxing.” While this would certainly be a nice lifestyle change for the high earners, it would be terrible for everyone else. Imagine if a substantial number of surgeons simply said “ok, I will continue to be a surgeon for $150k as opposed to $300k per year, but I am going to spend four days a week golfing and fishing.” If you don’t think most surgeons would golf rather than do surgeries if they weren’t being paid, then you obviously don’t know many doctors. Or perhaps 20-30% of potential med students would simply say that spending over a decade in college, med-school, and residency just isn’t worth it for only $150k per year. That is why price fixing (i.e. a max wage) causes shortages. The only way to prevent that from happening would be to force the doctors to work as opposed to paying them to work…and once you get there, you have a system of state mandated slavery. So even if you assume no one will leave the US…you will have far fewer total doctor-man-hours under a max salary system…and thus less overall medical care. Apply this same logic to every other high-paid field and you will get the same result. Just because some idiot bankers lost big on some investment decisions does not mean that truly productive people should not be free to keep what they earn.

#67…lod, I was in Paris for two weeks a year ago. I certainly paid more than that for baguettes at fancy restaurants (and less at normal cafes). In fact, Paris was by far the most expensive city for food I have ever visited. If you can prove that there are max prices for food by reference to a website showing that to be the case, I welcome you to do so…but I think you are simply wrong about this.

Socialism has not worked in ANY economy and it isn’t going to work here. If you have max limits on ANYTHING you will have shortages. You think people won’t just become self employed? You think companies won’t just move headquarters away? You think a limit like that wouldn’t crater the GDP? NO, of course you don’t, because you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. But you will, when you get what you think you want.

Wait a minute… this site seems to mix great things with not so great things

Disinfo? I think JHY had hit it on the head…

The problem with salary caps is everyone before the cap is on the top, no way up the ladder anymore, and people with net worth of hundreds of millions curently will own your soul.

think a little harder, sure, caps sound great when aig execs are on big expensive trips and raking in millions, but this is not the answer

A key tenet of economics is that the individual’s goal is happiness. everyone wants to be happy. “The pursuit of happiness” all that. Every one wants to be happy. However, happiness comes with a price. Goods and services cost money, most people agree with this, yes, good. Now who is to say what makes you happy. It is quite simple really if you are driving a used car that is falling apart and you would be happier driving a better car makes and you can afford, it be happy. Well what if you also can afford a better house and clothes and food. It all makes you happy and you work to be happy. Why should you find one day that you can’t make that car payment and your going to foreclose on your new house, because, After working for several years, honestly of course, you were about to be promoted to vice president of the company you work for when suddenly the 200,000 dollars you were going to make is now taxed, you outraged at other people saying that you can’t be happy because you make too much. You step back and think that you can’t work to find happiness if happiness comes at a price tag that just happens to be illegal.

GKR

The “maximum wage” makes over-powerful fascistic rulers happy, but no-one else.

The idea would cause a massive reduction in tax revenues, as the acheivers who bring in the lion’s share of income taxes (millionaires and billionaires) would leave the country and go to other places where they could see the fruits of their efforts. There would be no “land of opportunity” in the US anymore.

@payback: “Better still, we should just seize what is rightfully ours”. Sounds like theft. A claim that something is “rightfully yours”, just out of some greedy “gimme” demand. Not because you earned it, or did one thing to contribue to it.

Socialism and communism are all about greed.

Obama says the American Dream is dying, but then he proposes B.S. like over-taxing people who DID achieve the American dream. People who did well in school, went to medical or business or law school, and work their butts off.
What a hypocrite.
Most people are motivated by money when they start a new business or choose a career. That’s just human nature. What’s going to happen if people lose that motivation? I fear we will become a nation of slackers, living off an ever-growing government bureaucracy. Why go to professional school if you won’t make enough money to pay off your loans?

Great idea really. Wy does anyone NEED to earn more than 182 K anyway? The notion that people will only strive and work if they can earn huge gobs of money is a strange one to me. I bust my you know-what as a farmer and I’d guess my income would classify me as poverty-level- which doesn’t keep me from farming or loving what I do.Bring it on! If we had fewer hedge fund managers and insurance company CEO’s and the like who were drawn to their fields of employment solely by the prospect of lucrative earnings and the power achieved by these earnings(or spoils in reality), the better off we’d be. And if medicine or law or whatever were populated by those who were in the field because they truly wished to make a positive difference, we’d be better off as well. I find the bleating of those terrified by this prospect to be nothing short of hilarious!

Anyone who still believes that unfettered greed is a sound basis for economic policy clearly hasn’t been paying attention. Why should freedom to accumulate unlimited wealth be protected? In any society one citizen’s freedom is always limited by the human rights of his/her neighbor. Before the Civil War pro-slavery rhetoric often centered on “freedom,” that is, freedom to own and exploit slaves who were thereby denied the fundamental right to enjoy the fruit of their own labor. Similarly, by what stretch of the imagination does a CEO “earn” hundreds of times the compensation of workers under him/her? CEO compensation in publicly held corporations are set by a board of directors comprised of executives whose salaries and bonuses are set by other boards on which the same executives often sit whose salaries are being set, so the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality irrationally inflates CEO compensation. The gross amounts being awarded are just as much “theft” as the great wealth accumulated by plantation owners on the backs of slaves in the antebellum South. The accumulation of great wealth almost always entails legally sanctioned theft from a great number of people. That is why a 90% tax on amounts in excess of what is a reasonable income makes good sense. The stolen wealth is simply being returned to its rightful owners.

Downsize government. Limit (max) salaries of bureaucrats.
Return to the republic form of government. Return to the people the dignity and freedom they are due from the “creator, god, Fred, Louise, who ever”.

The idea and actuality of democracy is self destructive.

The monopolies that are in place need to be dissolved this includes FED Reserve Bank. The so called health care/drug monopoly.
The education monopoly. Perhaps the monopolies of the labor unions would due well to be examined.

Return to the constitutional law.

Oh require all government officials to tell the truth at least most of the time.

Yep, lets cut the pay of the rich but also we need to tax their wealth, their ill gotten gains. We need to squeeze them till they cease to exist. Then we make a new economy based on the principle that rewards will be based on real effort and need and not on breed and greed.

=

I’m sick and tired of people getting born rich or finagling their way to the top.

Visit these great websites” Z Net, IWW, Technocracy INC.

http://www.sacredchao.net/iww/

How much ignorance I see from dollar-sucking yuppies… But if 48 meant that these limits would be meaningless in a direct democracy then he has brought a good idea to board… Of course in the states you can think of fascists dictators quite easily as it is one of the least direct democracies anyywhere… With only two effective parties for major elections and such… I tell ya… Limiting wealth possession would not lead to fascism if the system were already structured for real direct democracy… And as said before by someone else… Earning for earning’s sake aint the sign of the worthy… Nor those that earn like to see their grandchildren grow into Parises or similiar pariah… And finally… Whoever makes observations from a limited scope of what have allegadly been oversees that in practice many theories have never been implemented, that is the case with most forms of socialism…

This article and its ideas show more ignorance and flawed logic than anything I have ever seen in my life. I honestly thought that invading Iraq was the worst idea that would come about in my lifetime. You proved me and the world wrong. If you don’t like living in a capitalist market that rewards risk and hard work then move to one of your utopian socialist societies. Yep, North Korea, that is my idea of a utopian society, or the Soviet Union, or China under Mao. Do you know what happens when you take the reward away from people who take risks? A: They don’t take risks. As in they don’t sit in a garage and try to invent something like “The Personal Computer” with dreams of being the richest man in the world some day. If you could not be rewarded for risk two guys wouldn’t sit down at one of these personal computers and decide to create something called “Google”. Think about it. How would your life be today with a computer and a search engine? On top of that think about what people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet do with their money. Bill Gates is donating almost all of it to charity. He uses enough to live a well deserved upper-class lifestyle, he did after all start that company called Microsoft, and then donates the rest to charities that actually use it to benefit world society. Why do you think that Bill Gates gives his money to things like AIDS relief in Africa and not to the lower class liberal socialists here in America, the country that he lives in? A: Because lower class liberal Americans have the opportunity to succeed, but for one reason or another just don’t manage to do so. Maybe it is because they spend all of their time complaining about their condition instead of working and taking risks to try and fix it. The rest of their time is spent trying to steal money from those who are actually working and are successful by “taxing” them. You know what, if you drop out of high school and are making 24k a year working a labor intensive job you should think hard about that decision you made when you were 16. If you worked hard in high school, got into a decent college, took on risks such as student loans, and are now being rewarded by making 50k+ a year I applaud you and congratulate you on a successful life in a beautiful capitalist economy. If you didn’t, would you please stop slowing down these people who did just that. A fact of life: If you are making 30k a year and a CFO of a multi-national firm is making 3,000k a year; guess what. That CFO is worth that much more than you. He is that much more important, that much more qualified, that much more respected, that much more valued, and that much more vital to the success of the company than you are to your company. I am sorry for your unfortunate situation because just as there are people who are rewarded for taking risks, there are people who are punished. The best example is a lottery: small risk, high potential reward, low reward rate. Capitalism is a lottery with medium risk, high potential reward, and a high reward rate. There are exceptions, especially when the liberals try to ruin the economy. One of the smartest men in American history said “I find the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have” Thomas Jefferson. Think about that when you want to put a cap on the wage.

Even though this is a spoof article, I LOVE it! The whole sham edition made my day!!! Hope to see another edition like this one soon. Some of the articles were definitely thought-provoking. Great job, guys and gals!

Chris(#84)So you’ve drunk the Ayn Rand kool-aid. It doesn’t seemed to have improved your reasoning. You state that “guess what. that CFO is worth that much more that you.” On what basis is he worth that much more? Without workers the CEO can produce no value whatsoever. Is his job a hundred times more difficult or unpleasant? Based on whose judgement? The judgement of the same people whose salaries are fixed by boards he sits on, the same people who brought us the Great Depression, the Savings and Loan mass failure of the eighties, the investment banking failure today, and the greatest redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the richest one per cent of society since just before the Great Depression. Warren Buffet, whose financial accumen is so respected that his investments create their own weather on the market, said “It’s class warfare and my class is winning, and they shouldn’t be.” CEOs should make more than the janitors, maybe even ten times more, but a hundred times? There is no rational justification for such gross over-compensation. If you really believe that unfettered greed is the ultimate human motivation and the only one sufficient to spur innovation and industry, what an impoverished world you must live in. All people should be able to enjoy the fruit of their labor but why should one have the right to profit from the labor of others? The gross accumulation of wealth is the cause of great poverty and should be seen for what it is; theft. It is high time that we reverse this theft and return to a progressive tax that will draw the most from those who can best afford it and have the most at stake, the rich.

Too funny for words. Actually, having a fixed wage cap can’t work. Especially of the fixed cap is less than GNP/population, and becomes interesting when you consider GNP/(workforce*minimumwage).

However, that said, what’s wrong with the CEO having a cap that is a factor of the lowest-paid member of the company. Not a problem when you have holding companies. The top-most company contains the C-level management, which then owns the middle-management company, which then off-shores all the actual work. The CEO makes n times the salary/compensation of the lowest C-level member of the company. In the middle-management company where the directors and managers reside, the senior-most employees make up to n times that of the low-level managers. Since they are corporations, all the profits roll back into the company and they just expand the operations of the lower level companies. In each company the most anyone can earn is n times that of the lowest paid employee. If they are worth more than that, they stop working for the low level company and take a position in the next higher up holding company.

I see no real CAP in making $$$ and taxes aren’t a problem

:wink:

come on free marketeers, didn’t you learn anything from your microeconomics 101 class? your principles only work under “perfect competition” - something that has existed only in myth. go back and read your galbraith (Galbraith, John “The New Industrial State” Princeton University Press 1967).

or how about your pareto optimality thesis, that supposedly justifies an inegalitarian distribution of wealth (bullshit “people won’t work hard if their labors aren’t adequately represented in higher pay” arguments). too bad it contradicts with the Law of Diminishing Returns, something that Samuelson got schooled on in the 70s (more contemporary theory here: Schmidtz, David (2006). The Elements of Justice. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53936-6.)

then again, capitalists will always mobilize bullshit neo-classical theory to justify their greed. why else did they need Joe McCarthy and the two red/black scares to push out the all heterodox economic from the academy?

for those of you interested in how to bring real non-capitalist change to the world, check out the JK Gibson-Graham inspired Community Economics website:
http://www.communityeconomies.org/

What are all of the Obama supporters going to think when their taxes go up in 2 months?

One commonly overlooked factor that caused the boom after the Great Depression was WWII and the idea of TOTAL war, where the entire economy was streamlined and used to fuel the war effort. This created jobs and put a spark back into the economy. Today, I cannot imagine the US using the tactic of total war again. Can you imagine if the government enacted rations and issued war bonds for the Iraq war? No one is willing to make that sacrifice in this age of consumption and debt. We’d rather continue to accrue debt than sacrifice our Starbucks.

That being said, I don’t believe that using solely Roosevelt New Deal tactics like a wage limit will have a positive effect today like it did 60 years ago. It is more likely to hurt the economy and the country. But hey, this article is pure fantasy, a utopian dream that will never come true.

At http://www.propeace.net, we have a series of blogs called News from the Future. If you believe in the Law of Attraction, if you believe that we create our own reality, why bring facts and analysis into this discussion at all? After all, it’s not like Code Pink is writing legislation here!

Alice was the first one to notice, and others have mentioned it, too, that incentives don’t work. Before you continue this inane argument about who deserves what, read Alfie Kohn’s “Punished By Rewards.” For those of you who are addicted to research and analysis, you will find the assertion in the title is well substantiated.

For me, it’s clear that this economic system, whatever label you care to affix, only works for a tiny percentage of people. On the population level, its inevitable consequence seems to be a boom-bust cycle that, if shown by an individual, would result in institutionalization or worse.

So let’s take a REAL risk and try something that’s founded on a different set of assumptions. I’m ready to redefine value simply as those things that I can eat, drink, wear, live in, or make love to. And I’m ready to argue that the strongest motivators of human endeavor are the drive for authentic self-expression and a desire to contribute to the enrichment of life. Why not start from there?

Just in case you have forgotten how to dream, here’s the link to News from the Future at propeace.net:

http://www.propeace.net/search/node/peace+category%3A73

Among other things, please be sure to read how the Democratic and Republican Parties reacted when the Peace And Justice in AMericA (PAJAMA) Party took control of both the Executive and Legislative branches of the government - without bothering to comment about “spoiling” elections with “third” parties.

[...] of a team of infamous pranksters, tells of a world gone perfect, one in which the Iraq war is over, maximum wage laws have been enacted and people have collectively decided to stop burning their youths away toiling as [...]

No executives get much salary beyond $1 million anyway, the current tax law already takes care of that.

Executives, hedge fund managers already structure their employment contracts such that they get compensated through equity ownership of their firms (i.e., profit sharing dividends, or stock options).

A good idea in principle, but as all good ideas go, they are never a good match for evil designs of human greed.

The most telling thing about this article is how cleanly it divides employers from employees. Those in favor of wage caps, soak the rich tax policies, universal nanny-state, and all other forms of ‘economic justice’ reveal themselves as lifelong employees. They want no risk, no responsibility, and no ability to make a life on their own. I own my own business. I started with nothing and built a business that provides for my family and all of my employees. If I had dreams of legislated mediocrity, I would have gone to work for the government. I cannot imagine how someone can live their entire life hoping for some government agency to legislate them into a successful career.

I would invite any small business owner that is in favor of this plan to make the bold first step and donate all of their ‘extra illicit money’ to the government or to any worthwhile charity.
Any takers?
I didn’t think so.
People who promote these kinds of schemes are the worst kind of citizens. They feel slighted by their own shortcomings and need to punish anyone who is more successful than them. Any individual that manages to succeed them must have some unfair advantage or be doing so at the expense of others. I have some advice for you and your ilk:
1. Grow up. Mommy and Daddy are not here to wipe your nose or make other children be nice to you.
2. Life is not fair. It never was. It never will be fair. It is equitable and you generally get what you deserve.
3. Government is not your friend.
4. Spend more time worrying about how you can make your life and the lives of those around you better, and less time crying because some other kid has a yo-yo and its not fair because you don’t have one too.
5. Get back to work.

And in other news, hypothetical Maximum Wage is coincidentially close to Sentator’s salary…
I almost think there are some real cynics writing this parody. All it’s missing is some Senator blowhards blathering about nothing could be worth more than their jobs.

OK, So say I own a medium sized business. I personally guarantee a million or two in company debt. I take this risk because I like the upside potential, which is greater than Max Wages. If a law such as this were to pass, It would not be worth it. I would liquidate and close up shop. 200 people would be out of work. I fail to see the logic here.

Communism at it’s best!

Again, a dream. I believe Barack Obama would never agree to this.

Chrasshole… Paris Hilton and your average Hollywood star is the consequence of capitalism more than Bill Gates… For pride the guy would have been just as inventive otherwise… What? You think it took free market and capitalism to build Babylonia? China? Japan? You are an asshole when it comes to understanding humanity… And, limiting maximum wages would not limit social movility for the greedy but poor… Nor Mao, Castro and stalin and their followers are of much use to criticize socialism as they merely represent communism, an extremist form of socialism that’s far from what is prsented in here… ASSHOLE

What’s up with the the date, 2009?
It would be really nice if this was real, but I guess is nice to dream.

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(by the way, “opitional”?)

Shouldn’t there be an exception clause for public servants? Wouldn’t a properly grateful and progressive nation want Barney Frank, et al, to be exempt from taxation? I mean, how can the people of this country spontaneously reward his service and yet stand by as the IRS confiscates our payment to him? Taxing him would create a conflict of interest whereby he’d be disinclined to be so brilliant and enlightened with Federal monies.

Would this apply to movie stars and rock stars and professional athletes? Indeed, for the bulk of “the rich” including folks such as the Kennedys, DuPonts, income is a highly flexible thing. They can defer income to off years and even go years without any substantial income at all. That’s because THEY ARE ALREADY RICH. We tax income, we don’t tax wealth. The government cannot tax anyone’s accumulated wealth and doesn’t want to even if it could. Wealth is the engine of our economy. You start handing it over to government, you take it out of the pool of available wealth that our economy needs to operate. Look at it this way, say I own 350 acres of prime developable land, but I’m just a factory worker making less than $40K a year. You want to tax wealth? Okay, but how do I pay that tax? Why would anyone want to buy it from me if they are going to incur a wealth tax penalty? In short, you’ve just devalued my land by trying to tax it. Am I then still wealthy? The question then becomes this: If the already wealthy can manipulate their income to avoid a maximum income and paying a huge confiscatory tax rate, then who are you left to tax? The answer is those who are not yet wealthy. Those are the folks who you’ve just punished with your maximum wealth tax.

In short, this is the stupidest, most unworkable economics idea that I’ve ever heard. It shows that we have a woeful state of economics education in this country. This idea is too stupid to even consider a fantastical pipe dream.

In further news, Congress is considering a new, ’split’ pay system, in which there is a maximal wage, set for Congressmen, the President and their staff members, and a minimum wage for everyone else. This is being considered to extend a compassionate message to all citizens that you are, truly, all equal now.

Except some are more equal than others.

Awesome. All specialist doctors will only work 6-8 months a year. Have fun waiting 2 years for that brain surgery. But at least we will have a lot of time off, since there is no way we are working for free. As soon as we hit that paycheck, we will be off for the year. AWESOMENESS!

What amazes me is that there are actually Americans so stupid that they think this would be a good idea. It is just mind boggling. No wonder something as shallow as “hope and change” can sweep an unaccomplished nobody to power. Democracy - just not as great an idea as we all thought when your population is full of stupid people.

I work 80 hours a week at my practice, and I earn $300,000/year.

If I maxed out at $150,000/year, I would stop working so much. I would see exactly as many patients as I needed to see to make $150K, then close my doors. Since doctors all over the country would be doing the exact same thing, you would all be hosed.

You might say, “Well, I’ll just go see an altruistic doctor who would never do such a thing!” Well guess what–the demand for that guy is gonna skyrocket. You’ll have to schedule appointments a year in advance. Good luck with that.

I hail this proposal. Just think of what this will do for tort reform. No more 33% fees for multi-million dollar verdicts. No more suing at the drop of a hat. The only ones that may then fear litigation will be the legal profession. I’m quite sure they won’t want to wind up with two thousand billable hours at $75.00 per hour. All hail Great Leader Obama. However, this is just a pipedream. Everyone knows that Congress would provide loopholes around such a law for their faves, the trial attys, Hollywood, and their buddies on Wall St. I’ve known socialists like Gianfranco. They are very generous with other people’s money.

Of course, in the real world, “honoraria” would be excluded from the calculated maximum wage. Congress always ensures that laws do not apply to them.

The cap could be set at 100 or 150 times the minimum wage and still be effective. As the doctor above pointed out, highly productive members of society with lots of education would be punished by a $180k cap. I am an engineer, I make less than half of $180k a year but some of my colleagues probably get close to that. On the other hand, corporate VPs, CEOs, CFOs, controllers and the like who have much less education than the doc or I can rake in $10 million a year? Please explain to me how one person could possibly be worth that much? The good ol’ boy system has to go.

Wow! Great idea.

It sure beats 8 years of no minimum wage raises at all. Imagine CEO having to think about the employees and product quality instead of how much money he could loot from the company.

“When C.E.O. salaries remain stable thanks to high taxation of high salaries…”

…there is no incentive for people to take those jobs, a salary cap, taxes through the roof.

Some version of a maximum wage law was in effect until 1980. Before 1964, income over $400,000 in today’s dollars faced a 91 percent federal tax rate, and the top-bracket tax rate never dipped below 70%. Under Reagan, the top tax rate slid down to 28 percent — a shift that is now understood to have been one of the prime contributors to the mortgage meltdown and other market failures.

BULL!!! The government forcing lenders to make risky loans to low/no income earners and then the fact that they weren’t able to PAY them off and defaulted…

That’s what caused this mess. Government mandates!

Dispersion of wealth, limiting the maximum while increasing the minimum (drastically) will eventually set the level of our people to a some what equal amount. Weather someone wants to work harder to get a head would still allow those with a steady drive to get ahead. Limiting how little others make will still keep allow for a separation of classes. It’s a fair way to work things. Not to mention Luxury items would inevitable work their way down in price, still allowing those with a higher standard of living to work for these things and have them. We can’t help how lazy or driven people are, but we can help to bring those who have been given a disadvantage in life a leg up. No reason a construction worker breaking himself 40-60 hours a week should only be making 35-60000 a year while ceo’s who put in much less work make millions. everyone has a niche in life and people should be equally paid for their skills, no matter if they are lawyers or brick masons. It’s this lack of site that keeps our society casted. granted there are many other problems with this country (education specifically) that need to be fixed. But taxing the rich and pumping that money back into other areas of need would begin to fix these problems. Our system will fail if people don’t take equal responsibility in maintaining all of it’s parts. Or we could just let it fail and revert to a mix of feudalism and anarchy, who knows.

[...] Rice si scusa e ammette che le armi di distruzione di massa non sono mai esistite; viene fissato un tetto massimo alle retribuzioni dei manager; è stata scoperta una soluzione concreta e applicabile all’inquinamento”. Il NYT di quel [...]

Simply maximize salaries at some multiplication of average worker salary in a corporation, and tie bonuses stricly to company performance. THEN we’ll see some real innovation from companies being forced to engage that kind of work and change from their failing companies. This should be a law relegated by the SEC for publicly held companies, of course.

Oh wow, I didn’t realize this was fake at first.

What a grossly non-capitalistic idea - welcome to the new USSR - F’ing idiots!

One alternative to a maximum wage would be to require everyone to make their own way. No inheritances, pay your own way through college, no mommy and daddy setting you up in business. No string pulling to set up junior in a big Wall Street job. The pretend libertarians and pretend conservatives squawk, whine and throw fits about this idea. It would force people to produce and not just be parasites off of something granddaddy stole. This would eliminate a lot of the need for regulation. Require people to work for what they get and produce. To hell with the paper shuffling financiers and marketeers and especially the trust fund babies and mama’s boys living off their family name.

I personally am happy about the Maximum Wage cap. I find that I haven’t been spending enough time with my family, and I have always wanted to learn to play the guitar. I haven’t really had to much time to do these things since I’ve been so consumed by work. As a Radiologist I rake in slightly over 300 K a year ( I know right!!!). However, I could easily make 185,000 by just seeing less patients. Or, maybe just forget all that nuclear physics I learned in my fellowship and focus mainly on basic internal medicine (much less demanding). Honestly, the job I work is crappy: I had to learn a painstaking amount to become qualified, I have long hours (sometimes reaching 100+ a week), and I have to deal with death and disability on a constant basis. The ONLY reason I continue to do it is because I get PAID an incredible amount. If I wasn’t able to make as much money as I do, I would quit. So would most of my colleagues. This would result in a lot of unnecessary death. In response to Harry Canary’s statement about not being able to inherit wealth; I’m 57, I have enough to comfortably live out the rest of my natural life. The only reason I’m still working is so that I can leave something behind to my two daughters.

Does Obama know about his pay cut?

what’s up with the time stamps??? nov. 12, 2008? am i missing out on the publics availablity to time travel? how do i apply?

[...] of maximum wage and it has been forgotten about in the last 20 years. According to the NY Times, a salary cap was placed on CEOs in July this year. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with the concept of maximum wage, maximum wage and America [...]

Jimbo MD (#119), maybe what you could leave behind for your daughters are memories of time spent with their dad.

hmm, and what do the government officials make? what will obama make? still the $400,000 that the president makes now? people, open your eyes. do you really trust the government with all the things that the yes men want them to control? no matter what, people are selfish and greedy. one way or another, the government officials will find a way to take advantage of the citizens. why would you allow the government to control how much you make? is that really freedom? if human nature is inherently selfish, which i really do believe, then it is better to be free and live for oneself rather than live for a government that views you as nothing more than a tool to keep it running smoothly. the government does not care about you. accept it. the idea of true socialism is a fantasy. don’t be so naive.

Greed is greed my friend, We are taught to never take more than we need. The greed of this world is evident on all scales of life. The notion that money buys some sort of humanness is absurd. I will leave my two daughters a strong sense of self and respect for nature and human life.Only when the the last river is damned, the last land paved over will we realize we cant eat money. We are all related,we will fall together. If you fall near me or mine you may find a hand to help you up.

Reading some comments defending the status quo, defending the growing gap between the rich and the poor, defending a system where the top 1% makes 50% of the income is because they don’t know the facts. Special interests, those profiting from the status quo, have hired so many lobbyists they outnumber lawmakers 6 to 1.

And they are flooding the airways and internet with disinformation. Had a friend email this email he had fallen for. It said the Health Care Reform Bill would have parents be forced to take Parenting Classes that would teach the ‘Obama Way’of child rearing. Including which religion you must teach and there would be gestapo style storm troopers traveling the Country enforcing that things are being taught the Obama Way.

All this was the spin put on the part of the bill that would cover voluntary parenting classes to those who wanted them. And times have changed since the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s. Parents had better safety nets, not so many kids were having kids. The chances were better of having a stay at home mother. Many modern parents could use a hand. And that’s all the Health Care Reform Bill was offering. But that’s not how opponents to reform would have you believe.

The fact the Reform Bill would cover end of life discussions with the doctor of your choice being covered by the Bill. Somehow became death panels and euthanasia, killing off the elderly was how Big Insurance would have you believe.

People are bombarded with so much disinformation coming at them from so many angles it’s very easy to become confused. And that is compounded by the anxiety of high unemployment, bank foreclosures and the worst recession in 70 years. People are understandably worried and confused. And the forces opposed have hired people that are very professional, very good at selling whatever they want to. And they can get people to act against their own best interests.

I remember back to the 1980s when Boris Yeltsin [Soviet politician] came to the USA for the first time. He visited a supermarket in the Houston area. His reaction to the massive amount of products that we as Americans take for granted caused him to break down and cry. His explanation for this display of emotion was saddness for the fact that his people had been denied this. So all of you folks that like to
tell us to read some book written by some so-called intellectual to help us educate ourselves, would do well to recognize the realities and true histories of socialism vs. capitalism and thier actual effects on real peoples lives. History is our best teacher. Not philisophical theory.

This is communism, plain and simple. Our freedoms are being taken away under false pretenses and no one seems to care. Take your ideologies to Venezuela if you like communism so much.

Is the American Dream the dream to be wealthy and superior ?
By the way what should I put on my application for Bank Teller where it asks me…what salary range are you looking for. It has 1) Minimum 2) Maximum. And then Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, yearly.

You do relize that most CEO’s get $0 annually, most of thier income is from Stock Shares, if the company does good, they do good, if not, they get squat.

I find it funny that this article hits the front page of Google when you search for maximum wage. Heh, maybe the search algorithm is a secret libertarian.

@ndn: If you’re concerned that at the end of the day your bills will be worthless, then look at the Austrian perspective of the Federal Reserve and fiat money. No one is going to chop down all the trees for roads or dam every river because it’s not practical or economical and it’s a bit hard to do that on other’s private property. Well, unless you’re the government, in which case you can use eminent domain to take what you need.

hi

8=====================D

Change its the only constant, nice site! Keep up the good work, Im coming back. /Bob

This is fantastic! The focus here was on incomes but we should also tax a LARGE CHUNK of the mountains of wealth that the wealthy accumulate and bequeath to their survivors.

What a wonderful idea. When wageearners have to live on small salaries and work 3 jobs to make ends meet it is frankly disgusting to know that executives and others at the top have exorbitant salaries and bonuses. Capitalism sucks

its a good acrtile to read and talk about it

ilove you bebe so much hahahaha jk

[...] question did you ask? And how do you feel about the Maximum Wage? The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia Maximum wage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Doug Smith: The Maximum Wage

[...] http://www.nytimes-se.com/2009/07/04/maximum-wage-law-passes-congress/ – This may have already happened? – Probably not enforced. This entry was posted in Uncategorized by brandonlarkey. Bookmark the permalink. [...]