(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?

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