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(12-03-2021, 04:46 PM)mikesez Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-03-2021, 02:01 PM)The Real Marty Wrote: [ -> ]Do Bezos or Musk have anywhere near the power of William Randolph Hearst?   I'll answer that no.  Not even in the same ball park.  

Did Hearst have anywhere near the money of Bezos or Musk?  I'll answer that one also no.  Not even in the same ball park. 

We've always had rich, powerful people.  It has nothing to do with some mathematical construct involving percentiles, shares of wealth, or shares of income.

It's true that not all billionaires try to influence politics.
But it's also true that creating a media empire is not the only way to influence politics. What I'm saying is, bezos and musk don't own newspapers or TV networks, but that doesn't mean that they aren't behind the scenes manipulating our political process.

I'm questioning the idea that inequality is a bad thing.  Getting rich is part of our system of incentives.  It's a reward for hard work and ingenuity.  Everything we have around us- cars, houses, cell phones, are a product of that system of incentives.  

And if anyone says, the bad thing about inequality is that rich people have the power to manipulate our political process, I don't think there is any acceptable way to do anything about that.

There's nothing wrong with inequality. The wealth gap is a problem, though. I think there is something we can do about it, I just think people are too conditioned to try anything new.

(12-04-2021, 08:16 AM)Lucky2Last Wrote: [ -> ]There's nothing wrong with inequality. The wealth gap is a problem, though. I think there is something we can do about it, I just think people are too conditioned to try anything new.

Why is the wealth gap a problem?  

And why is it more of a problem now than it was before? 

And what would you do about it?

I'm not trying to create equality. You're responding to an argument I didn't make.

(12-04-2021, 09:33 AM)mikesez Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not trying to create equality. You're responding to an argument I didn't make.

What or who are you responding to with the above statement?

You're also ignoring the more important question while you relitigate the Cold war.
Does a lack of affordable housing slow down economic growth? Is that a bad thing, if so?

(12-04-2021, 09:16 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-04-2021, 08:16 AM)Lucky2Last Wrote: [ -> ]There's nothing wrong with inequality. The wealth gap is a problem, though. I think there is something we can do about it, I just think people are too conditioned to try anything new.

Why is the wealth gap a problem?  

And why is it more of a problem now than it was before? 

And what would you do about it?

The wealth gap is a problem because it skews our ability to have a functioning democratic republic. The bigger the wealth gap, the more the rich can influence our politicians, regulations, culture, education, mobility... I can do this all day. 

It's silly to point to a period in our past and say, "it was like this then, too," for two reasons. Firstly, just because it was done in the past, doesn't mean that it's not ideal to change it moving forward or that it was optimal. And, secondly, there were problems in the past caused by the same thing. Look at the oil barons and banking magnates. These people gained tremendous leverage in the American system in the early 1900's. This is what ultimately lead to unions, because the people were getting absolutely crushed by these corporations. What makes today different, is the corporate-government merger. 

I've posted before how it would take 12 million Floridians pooling their resources to be able to match the capacity that Bill Gates has to influence politics with his money. That's insane. No man is worth 12 million people. When you consider his individual capacity to fund programs, influence politicians, and create personal agendas (not conspiracy ones), what he wants is WAY more likely to get done than what we want. You can actually see this in real time if you follow politics. These elites are getting their agendas passed, and almost everything that hits the news that's related to them is just unimportant gossip. It almost never delves into the ways they are exploiting our system to make themselves richer.

I have tossed this idea out before, but the way you beat this is to tether the rich to the poor. I would make it so that the highest paid employee can only make 100X more than the lowest paid employee. Once a company or owner of multiple companies has over 200 employees, the highest paid employee can multiply the lowest employees salary by half of his company's population. This can't be spread across multiple companies, but it can include every person from all your companies. Investors or individual business persons can only make 100X the average income in the US. If you want to get paid more, pay other people more. If any of these ideas come into conflict, the person can take the higher of the two options. Any additional money can be either donated to individuals, government projects, or taken by the government. This includes all stocks, perks, and real income. 

So, let me give an example. A small business owner has 35 employees. The lowest paid full time employee makes 25k a year. That owner can make 2.5 million dollars. He starts a second company that grows to 265 employees. You take the total of his two companies, use the lowest paid full-time employee, and multiply it by 150 (because he now has a total of 300 employees spread across 2 companies). His lowest paid employee is making 25k a year, and he is making 3,750,000. 

If he wants to get paid more, he gives more money to the lowest paid employee. So, now, he gives his lowest paid employee 35k a year. He can make 3.5 million dollars under the first scenario, and 5,250,000 under the second. He can get as rich as he wants so long as he brings his employees up with him. He could also grow his business larger.

Now, let's look at investors or any person who doesn't have employees. You tether them to 100X the average income in the US. This does two things: Firstly, keeps people from "snowballing' income out of the stock market, which I know sounds terrible to the conditioned conservatives here, but let's face... the elites are making BILLIONS from stocks. That's insane. You money should be able to do some work for you, but it should do ALL of the work. Putting a cap that people can make each year will help that. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, it creates early money incentive. Since I said people can take the higher of the two, there is an opportunity for more people to make additional money by investing in stocks, which keeps money rolling into businesses.

So, let's take an investor scenario: Currently, the average is approximately 65k. The total they can make is 6.5 million. Now, considering that the average investor isn't making that much, they would easily be able to add any investments to their income up to 6.5 millions dollars. For example, if the Owner of the business before had 300 employees, and his lowest paid employee was making 35k a year, he could make the 5.25 million PLUS up to 1.25 million in investments before hitting the cap.  Per year. That's plenty of money. That's plenty of incentive.

This really creates opportunity for the middle class in America while simultaneously limiting the wealth cap. Even those these people are making good money, they aren't making more than their employees collectively, nor are they being able to have their money snowball in a way that the poor and middle class could never catch up. Furthermore, because it's capped, I think it opens up a LOT of opportunity for competition, which has gone missing as these giant corporations eat up their competitors. 

Before conservatives freak out and talk about how this is stealing and dis-incentivizing the workforce, let's look at someone like Musk. Musk has 30k employees in the US. According to a Google search, his lowest paid employee makes 35k a year. So, following my model, Elon Musk can make $525,000,000. He wouldn't be able to make a dime from investments. These means he would either need to give the excess to family or friends, invest into government projects, or relinquish all other funds to the government if he failed to do one of the two other options.

Now, it sounds like he's still making a lot of money, but he is currently making 39 BILLION per year. 

Bezos, on the other hand, employs 893,000 people. The median salary at Amazon is 25k, so he would make 11 billion per year. Even though that number is high, he doesn't have more than half the resources his employees do, which is a huge deal. For a measure of how that looks in practicality, Bezos makes 90 billion per year, and his employees make 25.9 billion per year. Bezos has 3 times the financial resources of his collective employees in the US. You can't compete with that. However, if there was less of a gap, his employees could fight against policies that he might want to implement. 

Still, looking at these numbers, a cap could be in order somewhere. I think one of the false premises assumed by conservatives was that if these people didn't do it, then nobody would, but that's just not true. I would have a ton of projects going if I made a billion dollars a year. So would most of us. When the money starts collecting at the top, it restricts competition and innovation. We need to fix that. 

So, there you go. Problem solved. Kind of. Who actually read this?

(12-04-2021, 12:40 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-04-2021, 09:16 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: [ -> ]Why is the wealth gap a problem?  

And why is it more of a problem now than it was before? 

And what would you do about it?

The wealth gap is a problem because it skews our ability to have a functioning democratic republic. The bigger the wealth gap, the more the rich can influence our politicians, regulations, culture, education, mobility... I can do this all day. 

It's silly to point to a period in our past and say, "it was like this then, too," for two reasons. Firstly, just because it was done in the past, doesn't mean that it's not ideal to change it moving forward or that it was optimal. And, secondly, there were problems in the past caused by the same thing. Look at the oil barons and banking magnates. These people gained tremendous leverage in the American system in the early 1900's. This is what ultimately lead to unions, because the people were getting absolutely crushed by these corporations. What makes today different, is the corporate-government merger. 

I've posted before how it would take 12 million Floridians pooling their resources to be able to match the capacity that Bill Gates has to influence politics with his money. That's insane. No man is worth 12 million people. When you consider his individual capacity to fund programs, influence politicians, and create personal agendas (not conspiracy ones), what he wants is WAY more likely to get done than what we want. You can actually see this in real time if you follow politics. These elites are getting their agendas passed, and almost everything that hits the news that's related to them is just unimportant gossip. It almost never delves into the ways they are exploiting our system to make themselves richer.

I have tossed this idea out before, but the way you beat this is to tether the rich to the poor. I would make it so that the highest paid employee can only make 100X more than the lowest paid employee. Once a company or owner of multiple companies has over 200 employees, the highest paid employee can multiply the lowest employees salary by half of his company's population. This can't be spread across multiple companies, but it can include every person from all your companies. Investors or individual business persons can only make 100X the average income in the US. If you want to get paid more, pay other people more. If any of these ideas come into conflict, the person can take the higher of the two options. Any additional money can be either donated to individuals, government projects, or taken by the government. This includes all stocks, perks, and real income. 

So, let me give an example. A small business owner has 35 employees. The lowest paid full time employee makes 25k a year. That owner can make 2.5 million dollars. He starts a second company that grows to 265 employees. You take the total of his two companies, use the lowest paid full-time employee, and multiply it by 150 (because he now has a total of 300 employees spread across 2 companies). His lowest paid employee is making 25k a year, and he is making 3,750,000. 

If he wants to get paid more, he gives more money to the lowest paid employee. So, now, he gives his lowest paid employee 35k a year. He can make 3.5 million dollars under the first scenario, and 5,250,000 under the second. He can get as rich as he wants so long as he brings his employees up with him. He could also grow his business larger.

Now, let's look at investors or any person who doesn't have employees. You tether them to 100X the average income in the US. This does two things: Firstly, keeps people from "snowballing' income out of the stock market, which I know sounds terrible to the conditioned conservatives here, but let's face... the elites are making BILLIONS from stocks. That's insane. You money should be able to do some work for you, but it should do ALL of the work. Putting a cap that people can make each year will help that. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, it creates early money incentive. Since I said people can take the higher of the two, there is an opportunity for more people to make additional money by investing in stocks, which keeps money rolling into businesses.

So, let's take an investor scenario: Currently, the average is approximately 65k. The total they can make is 6.5 million. Now, considering that the average investor isn't making that much, they would easily be able to add any investments to their income up to 6.5 millions dollars. For example, if the Owner of the business before had 300 employees, and his lowest paid employee was making 35k a year, he could make the 5.25 million PLUS up to 1.25 million in investments before hitting the cap.  Per year. That's plenty of money. That's plenty of incentive.

This really creates opportunity for the middle class in America while simultaneously limiting the wealth cap. Even those these people are making good money, they aren't making more than their employees collectively, nor are they being able to have their money snowball in a way that the poor and middle class could never catch up. Furthermore, because it's capped, I think it opens up a LOT of opportunity for competition, which has gone missing as these giant corporations eat up their competitors. 

Before conservatives freak out and talk about how this is stealing and dis-incentivizing the workforce, let's look at someone like Musk. Musk has 30k employees in the US. According to a Google search, his lowest paid employee makes 35k a year. So, following my model, Elon Musk can make $525,000,000. He wouldn't be able to make a dime from investments. These means he would either need to give the excess to family or friends, invest into government projects, or relinquish all other funds to the government if he failed to do one of the two other options.

Now, it sounds like he's still making a lot of money, but he is currently making 39 BILLION per year. 

Bezos, on the other hand, employs 893,000 people. The median salary at Amazon is 25k, so he would make 11 billion per year. Even though that number is high, he doesn't have more than half the resources his employees do, which is a huge deal. For a measure of how that looks in practicality, Bezos makes 90 billion per year, and his employees make 25.9 billion per year. Bezos has 3 times the financial resources of his collective employees in the US. You can't compete with that. However, if there was less of a gap, his employees could fight against policies that he might want to implement. 

Still, looking at these numbers, a cap could be in order somewhere. I think one of the false premises assumed by conservatives was that if these people didn't do it, then nobody would, but that's just not true. I would have a ton of projects going if I made a billion dollars a year. So would most of us. When the money starts collecting at the top, it restricts competition and innovation. We need to fix that. 

So, there you go. Problem solved. Kind of. Who actually read this?

I read it.  Kudos to you for actually dreaming up a scheme like that and writing about it.  Of course, I disagree with that entire approach.  I'll work up enough energy to write out my reasons later.

It's just a bigger government solution.

(12-04-2021, 12:40 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-04-2021, 09:16 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: [ -> ]Why is the wealth gap a problem?  

And why is it more of a problem now than it was before? 

And what would you do about it?

The wealth gap is a problem because it skews our ability to have a functioning democratic republic. The bigger the wealth gap, the more the rich can influence our politicians, regulations, culture, education, mobility... I can do this all day. 

It's silly to point to a period in our past and say, "it was like this then, too," for two reasons. Firstly, just because it was done in the past, doesn't mean that it's not ideal to change it moving forward or that it was optimal. And, secondly, there were problems in the past caused by the same thing. Look at the oil barons and banking magnates. These people gained tremendous leverage in the American system in the early 1900's. This is what ultimately lead to unions, because the people were getting absolutely crushed by these corporations. What makes today different, is the corporate-government merger. 

I've posted before how it would take 12 million Floridians pooling their resources to be able to match the capacity that Bill Gates has to influence politics with his money. That's insane. No man is worth 12 million people. When you consider his individual capacity to fund programs, influence politicians, and create personal agendas (not conspiracy ones), what he wants is WAY more likely to get done than what we want. You can actually see this in real time if you follow politics. These elites are getting their agendas passed, and almost everything that hits the news that's related to them is just unimportant gossip. It almost never delves into the ways they are exploiting our system to make themselves richer.

I have tossed this idea out before, but the way you beat this is to tether the rich to the poor. I would make it so that the highest paid employee can only make 100X more than the lowest paid employee. Once a company or owner of multiple companies has over 200 employees, the highest paid employee can multiply the lowest employees salary by half of his company's population. This can't be spread across multiple companies, but it can include every person from all your companies. Investors or individual business persons can only make 100X the average income in the US. If you want to get paid more, pay other people more. If any of these ideas come into conflict, the person can take the higher of the two options. Any additional money can be either donated to individuals, government projects, or taken by the government. This includes all stocks, perks, and real income. 

So, let me give an example. A small business owner has 35 employees. The lowest paid full time employee makes 25k a year. That owner can make 2.5 million dollars. He starts a second company that grows to 265 employees. You take the total of his two companies, use the lowest paid full-time employee, and multiply it by 150 (because he now has a total of 300 employees spread across 2 companies). His lowest paid employee is making 25k a year, and he is making 3,750,000. 

If he wants to get paid more, he gives more money to the lowest paid employee. So, now, he gives his lowest paid employee 35k a year. He can make 3.5 million dollars under the first scenario, and 5,250,000 under the second. He can get as rich as he wants so long as he brings his employees up with him. He could also grow his business larger.

Now, let's look at investors or any person who doesn't have employees. You tether them to 100X the average income in the US. This does two things: Firstly, keeps people from "snowballing' income out of the stock market, which I know sounds terrible to the conditioned conservatives here, but let's face... the elites are making BILLIONS from stocks. That's insane. You money should be able to do some work for you, but it should do ALL of the work. Putting a cap that people can make each year will help that. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, it creates early money incentive. Since I said people can take the higher of the two, there is an opportunity for more people to make additional money by investing in stocks, which keeps money rolling into businesses.

So, let's take an investor scenario: Currently, the average is approximately 65k. The total they can make is 6.5 million. Now, considering that the average investor isn't making that much, they would easily be able to add any investments to their income up to 6.5 millions dollars. For example, if the Owner of the business before had 300 employees, and his lowest paid employee was making 35k a year, he could make the 5.25 million PLUS up to 1.25 million in investments before hitting the cap.  Per year. That's plenty of money. That's plenty of incentive.

This really creates opportunity for the middle class in America while simultaneously limiting the wealth cap. Even those these people are making good money, they aren't making more than their employees collectively, nor are they being able to have their money snowball in a way that the poor and middle class could never catch up. Furthermore, because it's capped, I think it opens up a LOT of opportunity for competition, which has gone missing as these giant corporations eat up their competitors. 

Before conservatives freak out and talk about how this is stealing and dis-incentivizing the workforce, let's look at someone like Musk. Musk has 30k employees in the US. According to a Google search, his lowest paid employee makes 35k a year. So, following my model, Elon Musk can make $525,000,000. He wouldn't be able to make a dime from investments. These means he would either need to give the excess to family or friends, invest into government projects, or relinquish all other funds to the government if he failed to do one of the two other options.

Now, it sounds like he's still making a lot of money, but he is currently making 39 BILLION per year. 

Bezos, on the other hand, employs 893,000 people. The median salary at Amazon is 25k, so he would make 11 billion per year. Even though that number is high, he doesn't have more than half the resources his employees do, which is a huge deal. For a measure of how that looks in practicality, Bezos makes 90 billion per year, and his employees make 25.9 billion per year. Bezos has 3 times the financial resources of his collective employees in the US. You can't compete with that. However, if there was less of a gap, his employees could fight against policies that he might want to implement. 

Still, looking at these numbers, a cap could be in order somewhere. I think one of the false premises assumed by conservatives was that if these people didn't do it, then nobody would, but that's just not true. I would have a ton of projects going if I made a billion dollars a year. So would most of us. When the money starts collecting at the top, it restricts competition and innovation. We need to fix that. 

So, there you go. Problem solved. Kind of. Who actually read this?

So I did read the whole thing.  

I think we're so philosophically far apart it would be hard to discuss your proposal.  

I believe wages should be set by the free market.   If you try to artificially raise wages with a proposal such as yours, you will cause inflation and unemployment.  I also think that regulations such as you propose could easily be evaded by any creative money manager or accountant, or alternatively, the people who wanted to build great things would move to another country where they would not be financially constrained.   It would be a huge incentive to move businesses out of the United States.  

If you think people are making too much money (I don't), the simplest way to deal with that would be to increase the marginal tax rate.  

But I give you credit for creative and independent thinking.

TL;DR: Someone, somewhere, gets the authority to tell a person how much money they are allowed to make with what used to be their private businesses but now effectively belong to the Great Commons. If they make more it gets taken from them by someone, presumably the government, to redistribute as they deem proper. Seems like we've heard these kinds of ideas before.

I think you guys are short sighted. The problem is when political power combines with corporate greed. Almost every problem we are having in the US is due to elite billionaires and giant corporations that are buying our policies. We are starting to feel it, and we are powerless to stand against it. If you think otherwise, you're deluding yourself. Atlas Shrugged is fine and all, right up until corporations get the keys to the government and start using their greed to curb competition. I don't want to restrict what someone earns, but I do want to restrict how that gets leveraged against the people. That should be a key role of the government. I'd be open to restricting how much people can use their money to influence federal policies, except our system is so corrupt and convoluted that I don't think you can even manage that anymore.

This idea I have been working on is born out of an idea that you will always have some kind of class, and if you try let the government create equality, they will just end up stealing your money. People with power will exploit that power to take other people's money. This is human nature 101, and too many people don't give it it's due. Progressives foolishly believe the government will be altruistic and transparent, and conservatives think that corporate greed will be checked by the free market. Well, the government is corrupt and the free market isn't free. At some point, you guys need to stop being ideologues and start recognizing the harsh reality of the situation.

This idea I am toying with solves a lot of problems without giving the money to the government to be siphon off by the elites, incentivizes citizens and business to be innovative and productive for their own business, and minimizes the disparity of power that comes from money funneling upwards, all way pushing more money down to the workers who are used to carry out the visions of the companies. If we don't find someway to balance corporate greed with human welfare, we are going to end up in a bad place. This stuff ALWAYS spirals out of control to the detriment of the common man.

(12-05-2021, 08:47 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-04-2021, 12:40 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: [ -> ]The wealth gap is a problem because it skews our ability to have a functioning democratic republic. The bigger the wealth gap, the more the rich can influence our politicians, regulations, culture, education, mobility... I can do this all day. 

It's silly to point to a period in our past and say, "it was like this then, too," for two reasons. Firstly, just because it was done in the past, doesn't mean that it's not ideal to change it moving forward or that it was optimal. And, secondly, there were problems in the past caused by the same thing. Look at the oil barons and banking magnates. These people gained tremendous leverage in the American system in the early 1900's. This is what ultimately lead to unions, because the people were getting absolutely crushed by these corporations. What makes today different, is the corporate-government merger. 

I've posted before how it would take 12 million Floridians pooling their resources to be able to match the capacity that Bill Gates has to influence politics with his money. That's insane. No man is worth 12 million people. When you consider his individual capacity to fund programs, influence politicians, and create personal agendas (not conspiracy ones), what he wants is WAY more likely to get done than what we want. You can actually see this in real time if you follow politics. These elites are getting their agendas passed, and almost everything that hits the news that's related to them is just unimportant gossip. It almost never delves into the ways they are exploiting our system to make themselves richer.

I have tossed this idea out before, but the way you beat this is to tether the rich to the poor. I would make it so that the highest paid employee can only make 100X more than the lowest paid employee. Once a company or owner of multiple companies has over 200 employees, the highest paid employee can multiply the lowest employees salary by half of his company's population. This can't be spread across multiple companies, but it can include every person from all your companies. Investors or individual business persons can only make 100X the average income in the US. If you want to get paid more, pay other people more. If any of these ideas come into conflict, the person can take the higher of the two options. Any additional money can be either donated to individuals, government projects, or taken by the government. This includes all stocks, perks, and real income. 

So, let me give an example. A small business owner has 35 employees. The lowest paid full time employee makes 25k a year. That owner can make 2.5 million dollars. He starts a second company that grows to 265 employees. You take the total of his two companies, use the lowest paid full-time employee, and multiply it by 150 (because he now has a total of 300 employees spread across 2 companies). His lowest paid employee is making 25k a year, and he is making 3,750,000. 

If he wants to get paid more, he gives more money to the lowest paid employee. So, now, he gives his lowest paid employee 35k a year. He can make 3.5 million dollars under the first scenario, and 5,250,000 under the second. He can get as rich as he wants so long as he brings his employees up with him. He could also grow his business larger.

Now, let's look at investors or any person who doesn't have employees. You tether them to 100X the average income in the US. This does two things: Firstly, keeps people from "snowballing' income out of the stock market, which I know sounds terrible to the conditioned conservatives here, but let's face... the elites are making BILLIONS from stocks. That's insane. You money should be able to do some work for you, but it should do ALL of the work. Putting a cap that people can make each year will help that. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, it creates early money incentive. Since I said people can take the higher of the two, there is an opportunity for more people to make additional money by investing in stocks, which keeps money rolling into businesses.

So, let's take an investor scenario: Currently, the average is approximately 65k. The total they can make is 6.5 million. Now, considering that the average investor isn't making that much, they would easily be able to add any investments to their income up to 6.5 millions dollars. For example, if the Owner of the business before had 300 employees, and his lowest paid employee was making 35k a year, he could make the 5.25 million PLUS up to 1.25 million in investments before hitting the cap.  Per year. That's plenty of money. That's plenty of incentive.

This really creates opportunity for the middle class in America while simultaneously limiting the wealth cap. Even those these people are making good money, they aren't making more than their employees collectively, nor are they being able to have their money snowball in a way that the poor and middle class could never catch up. Furthermore, because it's capped, I think it opens up a LOT of opportunity for competition, which has gone missing as these giant corporations eat up their competitors. 

Before conservatives freak out and talk about how this is stealing and dis-incentivizing the workforce, let's look at someone like Musk. Musk has 30k employees in the US. According to a Google search, his lowest paid employee makes 35k a year. So, following my model, Elon Musk can make $525,000,000. He wouldn't be able to make a dime from investments. These means he would either need to give the excess to family or friends, invest into government projects, or relinquish all other funds to the government if he failed to do one of the two other options.

Now, it sounds like he's still making a lot of money, but he is currently making 39 BILLION per year. 

Bezos, on the other hand, employs 893,000 people. The median salary at Amazon is 25k, so he would make 11 billion per year. Even though that number is high, he doesn't have more than half the resources his employees do, which is a huge deal. For a measure of how that looks in practicality, Bezos makes 90 billion per year, and his employees make 25.9 billion per year. Bezos has 3 times the financial resources of his collective employees in the US. You can't compete with that. However, if there was less of a gap, his employees could fight against policies that he might want to implement. 

Still, looking at these numbers, a cap could be in order somewhere. I think one of the false premises assumed by conservatives was that if these people didn't do it, then nobody would, but that's just not true. I would have a ton of projects going if I made a billion dollars a year. So would most of us. When the money starts collecting at the top, it restricts competition and innovation. We need to fix that. 

So, there you go. Problem solved. Kind of. Who actually read this?

So I did read the whole thing.  

I think we're so philosophically far apart it would be hard to discuss your proposal.  

I believe wages should be set by the free market.   If you try to artificially raise wages with a proposal such as yours, you will cause inflation and unemployment.  I also think that regulations such as you propose could easily be evaded by any creative money manager or accountant, or alternatively, the people who wanted to build great things would move to another country where they would not be financially constrained.   It would be a huge incentive to move businesses out of the United States.  

If you think people are making too much money (I don't), the simplest way to deal with that would be to increase the marginal tax rate.  

But I give you credit for creative and independent thinking.

I could agree wages should be set by the free market if there was a free market. There isn't, though. We have a bunch of captured institutions that work to benefit only a few people at the expense of everyone else. It's not because they are more productive or brighter, as some people suggest. Many of them just settled into the right experience by fate. Even if they are bright and productive, a myriad of factors needed to occur for them to be successful. You could take any intelligent person on this board, give them a billion dollars, and you would see that money work for them.

There's no evidence a policy like this would create inflation. That's not how that works. I have thought about how people might exploit this via our current tax laws, but that would be easily fixed with something like a fair tax, and harsh penalties for trying to circumvent the law, like having your business buy employees houses or yachts without declaring that as part of their income. A potentially bigger problem might be a lack of incentive to invest at higher dollar amounts, but I think that's it's own problem right now. 

Now, I've thought about the idea of people moving to another country. We need to let them go. There is not a shortage of talent in this country, and the sooner people stop being afraid of losing billionaires, the better. I haven't thought of the best way to address this, but I think you just make it to where businesses who don't operate here can only make the maximum money per year per their corporation. So, for example, if Nike decided to move out of the country, but still wanted to sell their stuff here, they could only take out of the country 6.5 million dollars after factoring in their expenses. It's not a perfect solution, but it addresses the issue at least. You don't think another Nike will form here in the US? Of course it would. It would do well, too. Give people freedom to start their own ideas and the money and incentive to do it, and it will be done. 

That said, the real problem is the military industrial complex. It's the only industry that could cause real problems if it left. It needs to be addressed, but I don't know how.

As does giving more power to any government for any reason.

The government already has the power. Increasing taxes, like Marty suggests, only gives money AND power to the government. You are watching corporations capture regulatory bodies in real time while poo-pooing an idea that keeps money from going TO the government. Getting more money into the hands of the people without it going through a middle man (the government) gives the people MORE money and power, and that is the better way to look at it.

The problem, I feel, with most conservative/libertarian ideology is it is so easily exploitable. The followers are so principled that progressive thinkers can easily move around them. Conservatives desperately need proactive thinkers.

(12-05-2021, 06:46 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: [ -> ]The government already has the power. Increasing taxes, like Marty suggests, only gives money AND power to the government. You are watching corporations capture regulatory bodies in real time while poo-pooing an idea that keeps money from going TO the government. Getting more money into the hands of the people without it going through a middle man (the government) gives the people MORE money and power, and that is the better way to look at it.

The problem, I feel, with most conservative/libertarian ideology is it is so easily exploitable. The followers are so principled that progressive thinkers can easily move around them. Conservatives desperately need proactive thinkers.

Proactively surrendering your principles isn't helpful.

Maybe I should have said stuck in the mud. You have already been bypassed.

Progressives are running a slant with Kupp and you guys have Wingard out there covering him. Time to put Cisco in and see what happens.

(12-05-2021, 07:03 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe I should have said stuck in the mud. You have already been bypassed.

Progressives are running a slant with Kupp and you guys have Wingard out there covering him. Time to put Cisco in and see what happens.

If your answer is more government then your proposal IS progressive.

I agree with a lot of L2L's diagnosis but I think it would be a nightmare for the IRS to compute his solution.
If the market isn't free, let's free it up by breaking up big businesses and punishing collusion.

Yeah, this is something a lot of conservatives don't understand. It takes government to break up big businesses that take advantage of the people. The founding fathers knew this. They always thought the government would have to break up monopolies. We can't see it because the LLC hides the investors the top of these giant corporations, but a lot of these businesses are all falling under the umbrella of a few corporations comparatively.

As to the IRS, I just said it would be need to be coupled with a fair tax or something similar. The IRS can't handle all these loopholes as it is. Cleaning up the tax laws and clarifying what qualifies as income is the key to this success.