This might lead to a Star Trek like world actually... May take a few generations... but at the point where the government has most of the money back (because that's what NEEDS to happen for this to work... all money is seized, from EVERYONE)They can provide for the people, much like many European nations. Then, people will have the education to do what the WANT to do... not just for the money. If you made.. say, 40k in this new world, and didn't have to pay for transportation, medical, internet, housing, and only some food and clothing... would you really be that bad off?? I don't think the so called "Higher" professions would go away, some people WANT to be doctors or lawyers.. because its what they like. But as I said.. it may take a couple generations for the "That's how its always been" trend to kick in.
What if no one could earn more than $100,000 a year?
- Thread starter babinro
- Start date
Recommended Videos
And yet each person is treated as an equal.violinist1129 said:
Fair, just and undesirable.
Equality is a lie.
wait, so the more you earn the more tax you pay?
that doesnt seem fair when the lower earners pay less in ACTUAL tax because the people who earn hundreds of thousands are paying them all, because they earn more. and the people who work almost all week for a few hundred thousand work more than the people who work most of the week for a hundred thousand, but get the same.
imagine you work 40 hours and get £40[footnote]these numbers are just the first ones that came to mind so dont point the idiocy of them out...[/footnote], but you actually EARN £50. someone else works 35 hours but gets £40, and earns £40. someone else works 10 hours and earns £15, but SHOULD get £14 after tax, but your extra £10 covers it all, so tax basically gets abolished because the government has all the spare money you arent allowed. is that fair to you? no. is it fair to everyone else? yes, and it gets fairer the LESS you earn.
eventually, the top earners realise "we're working more than that group of people but get the same amount, and we pay all the tax now because we earn so much. let's only work 35 hours, so we only work for what we get." and the whole system goes to shit.
that doesnt seem fair when the lower earners pay less in ACTUAL tax because the people who earn hundreds of thousands are paying them all, because they earn more. and the people who work almost all week for a few hundred thousand work more than the people who work most of the week for a hundred thousand, but get the same.
imagine you work 40 hours and get £40[footnote]these numbers are just the first ones that came to mind so dont point the idiocy of them out...[/footnote], but you actually EARN £50. someone else works 35 hours but gets £40, and earns £40. someone else works 10 hours and earns £15, but SHOULD get £14 after tax, but your extra £10 covers it all, so tax basically gets abolished because the government has all the spare money you arent allowed. is that fair to you? no. is it fair to everyone else? yes, and it gets fairer the LESS you earn.
eventually, the top earners realise "we're working more than that group of people but get the same amount, and we pay all the tax now because we earn so much. let's only work 35 hours, so we only work for what we get." and the whole system goes to shit.
Massive increase to minimum wage to any store that is a chain.
This will at least prevent people who are lazy and worthless from getting hired. It's pretty disgusting to me that the highest paid people are usually the least effective.
Managers who sit around having coffee for an hour, people who stop working to talk with each other because "no one is looking", people who do a piss ass poor job because it required effort to do any different.
If I got paid for the effectiveness and quality of job I do, I'd get paid a LOT more. If anything, my unofficial job is to pick up the slack of all the highest paid (worked there longer*) people.
I generally find it's hilarious when people complain that they suddenly have to do their job... and they're paid by the hour not by results. So for me, I can't understand that. Something falls apart or has to be redone... 3 more hours until I go home. With or without this added chore.
This will at least prevent people who are lazy and worthless from getting hired. It's pretty disgusting to me that the highest paid people are usually the least effective.
Managers who sit around having coffee for an hour, people who stop working to talk with each other because "no one is looking", people who do a piss ass poor job because it required effort to do any different.
If I got paid for the effectiveness and quality of job I do, I'd get paid a LOT more. If anything, my unofficial job is to pick up the slack of all the highest paid (worked there longer*) people.
I generally find it's hilarious when people complain that they suddenly have to do their job... and they're paid by the hour not by results. So for me, I can't understand that. Something falls apart or has to be redone... 3 more hours until I go home. With or without this added chore.
So..... are you rich yet?violinist1129 said:
Your hard work won't count if one of your friends at Princeton gets you into a lucrative job, not at least in the way I meant it in that last post. Of course if you keep forgoing a social life, you just might prove me right, or be one of the exceptions I was referring to.
And I don't mean to belittle your efforts. I'd give you a congratulatory slap on the back if you were by me now.
The figures are median. I included an average reference point for experience multipliers.violinist1129 said:
I cited my source.
I'm not going to do your research for you.
Your assumptions about my figures are incorrect.
~30K is average non-graduate earner.
~50K is average graduate.
Median specialist Doctor $160K.
Median EXPECTATIONS of a Medical student: $150-200K.
None of these are "starting salary", they are median. Yes, it is possible to earn more. Yes some plastic surgeons to the rich and famous earn a hell of a lot more, but I don't think the OP was really using "losing plastic surgeons" as his worst case scenario.
Long story short, at $100K, you're impacting nobody in the bottom 96% at all.
Top 4% of HOUSEHOLDS earn over $100K, so if there's 2 income earners, you don't impact them either until one or both earn over $100K. Estimates for that come out to around 1.5% (making many assumptions unfortunately, but erring on the high side).
Then you take from that people whose incomes are not derived entirely from salary That churns that final 1.5% to 0.3%. CEO's impacted by a lot. (Cuts their salary average in half). Median impacted by under 8%, though there's exponential growth with CEOs so upto 50%.
So. What are we basically saying?
It'd do hardly anything. It impacts hardly anybody and people who don't know the demographics (or are already in the outliers) will go ballistic. It has no real point other than to be divisive.
Anything else?
If you're talking income for persons AND businesses then the economy would be pretty much screwed, but if you're talking just personal income then only anything that costs upwards of ~$10 million would be screwed. So you can forget luxury housing, luxury cars, and pretty much anything luxury, really. Oh, and multi-million dollar privately developed projects or technologies would also be bust. So, yeah. Bad stuff. As easy as they are to hate on, we sort of need all of those luxury item makers and those who buy their stuff, because they have some pretty massive workforces and quite a few jobs to offer.babinro said:
99% of us can't be Genius', Professional Athletes, Gifted Musicians, Business Moguls, Celebrities, or Successful Entrepreneurs.
Why would limiting their wealth make us feel better?
Yes, there is a stupidly huge divide, yes it is fraught with questionable politics and practices, yes some are born into it. So what?
The bottom line is, people saw an opportunity to get stupidly rich and they took it. It's the price of capitalism.
What's more, the tools are there for you to exploit as well. If you want a piece of their pie, earn it yourself.
While it's easy to say that they could use some of their money to mend the worlds woes, why is it just their responsibility and not ours. Hell, this stupid reoccurring economic crisis is largely due to the 99% going into ridiculous levels of debt over things they can't manage to afford. All because we envy the 1% who have it so easy. If people took more financial responsibility for their own lives, we all wouldn't have to be dealing with lower paycheques and less work. But no, lets beg the rich to fix it all. The people WE made rich by consuming their wares. WE created the monster and are frustrated that it wont come to our aid when we need it.
The blame lies in all of you.
Why would limiting their wealth make us feel better?
Yes, there is a stupidly huge divide, yes it is fraught with questionable politics and practices, yes some are born into it. So what?
The bottom line is, people saw an opportunity to get stupidly rich and they took it. It's the price of capitalism.
What's more, the tools are there for you to exploit as well. If you want a piece of their pie, earn it yourself.
While it's easy to say that they could use some of their money to mend the worlds woes, why is it just their responsibility and not ours. Hell, this stupid reoccurring economic crisis is largely due to the 99% going into ridiculous levels of debt over things they can't manage to afford. All because we envy the 1% who have it so easy. If people took more financial responsibility for their own lives, we all wouldn't have to be dealing with lower paycheques and less work. But no, lets beg the rich to fix it all. The people WE made rich by consuming their wares. WE created the monster and are frustrated that it wont come to our aid when we need it.
The blame lies in all of you.
Society, both in the real world and in the hypothetical example, does not function this way.TrilbyWill said:
High paying salaries are not usually paid "by the hour" with some exceptions.
(Consultant style work and freelance work).
Hell, some are even charged by the hour to a client "My Quantity Surveyor did 20 hours of work, you owe my company 20 hours of service", but the average QS gets a fixed, no overtime, salary. Where is your outrage that the company charged for 20 hours, yet paid the QS no extra?
What about the concept of bonuses which are usually not backed by any meritocratic standard being a major component of many incomes now? All this "lets say you work 40 hours" is such a small part of the puzzle, it becomes meaningless.
Your bonuses. Your commission. Your tips. Your chance of promotion. Your chance to reduce your workload. Your retirement fund. Your benefits. Your respect. Your employment (if you won't put in the hours, you will be replaced with someone who will).
Seriously, go work in any company that doesn't pay overtime. People still put in overtime. A lot. A hell of a lot. I've seen 40 hour contracts stretched into 60-80 on a regular basis. Your representation of human psychology suggests this simply would not be happening, yet it is. Therefore, you have made a mistake somewhere along the line.
There are two key mistakes in your post.GigaHz said:
"It's the bottom 99% taking out debts".
No. That accounts for 20% of the problem.
The derivatives market. Investment Banks taking out debt equal to 30 times their assets. Fraudulently selling derivatives they knew were going to fail. Etc.
That accounts for the remaining 80%.
"What's more, the tools are there for you to exploit as well. If you want a piece of their pie, earn it yourself."
Buying a lottery ticket, or spinning a roulette wheel gives people a "chance at success". Would you advise those courses of action?
It is exponentially easier to take risks when you can spare that risk.
You are effectively pointing at lottery winners and going "look! You can do it too!", somehow pretending that "Possible is good enough. Sell your home. Risk your assets. Buy that ticket!".
The tools are not there to exploit. You want to trade stocks? Great. Lets say you have $1. Start at 20 years old. You'll get a 7% return after inflation. You'll die with $30.
How much money do you need to put into the stock market in order to make an average wage? $25'000. Assuming you spend none of it until you die.
How many Americans have that much in savings? Well right now the average is about $400 per working year. "You have the tools too" is entirely misleading. It is "You have $1. You can buy that ticket".
By economics: The value of money would scale back to the point where the ceiling wouldn't matter.
If you locked 100,000 people in a self-contained city (isolated market with all living essentials, and some luxury goods), and gave them the same pay rates, the same initial salary, and told them that they could run their own businesses as efficiently as necessity dictates, you would that over time just by statistical variance in the value of their goods/services ALONE you would eventually end up with a very small, wealthy elite who essentially controls/owns the majority of poor who do most of the actual labor/work.
And that ignores the variation in the general competency and motivation of the workforce. Or the subjects of greed, morality or popularity within that population beyond that which directly influences the value of their work.
In the proposed example, the government would become the new face for the elite and wealthy, nothing more.
Even if you idealized a communist regime to the point where "everyone's voice is counted", you would still end up with votes being heavily swayed by influential public figures and their organizations within the population (think political parties).
Why? Because people want others around them that share their views and opinions. They like to feel secure in their decisions by affirmation from others. It's a social instinct.
Thus, the system would ultimately fail to address the social-economic problems that create the massive gap in power between the wealthy and the poor (well, for long), because our own methods of organization/preparation are no match for how that system responds to problems (or does work) in practice.
The initial balance WILL be skewed, no matter what. And when it does, the rich get richer, the poor become poorer, unless there is some avenue for universal growth such that both rich and poor can grow without bound (and that simply doesn't exist as a constant; one may find periods of great growth following terrible loss but these are temporary at best).
If you locked 100,000 people in a self-contained city (isolated market with all living essentials, and some luxury goods), and gave them the same pay rates, the same initial salary, and told them that they could run their own businesses as efficiently as necessity dictates, you would that over time just by statistical variance in the value of their goods/services ALONE you would eventually end up with a very small, wealthy elite who essentially controls/owns the majority of poor who do most of the actual labor/work.
And that ignores the variation in the general competency and motivation of the workforce. Or the subjects of greed, morality or popularity within that population beyond that which directly influences the value of their work.
In the proposed example, the government would become the new face for the elite and wealthy, nothing more.
Even if you idealized a communist regime to the point where "everyone's voice is counted", you would still end up with votes being heavily swayed by influential public figures and their organizations within the population (think political parties).
Why? Because people want others around them that share their views and opinions. They like to feel secure in their decisions by affirmation from others. It's a social instinct.
Thus, the system would ultimately fail to address the social-economic problems that create the massive gap in power between the wealthy and the poor (well, for long), because our own methods of organization/preparation are no match for how that system responds to problems (or does work) in practice.
The initial balance WILL be skewed, no matter what. And when it does, the rich get richer, the poor become poorer, unless there is some avenue for universal growth such that both rich and poor can grow without bound (and that simply doesn't exist as a constant; one may find periods of great growth following terrible loss but these are temporary at best).
That's true, probably why its not a good idea YET to attempt getting more money to the government/larger corporations because it wont go back to who it needs to..Signa said:
