Haven't fully formed this idea, looking for feedback...

[Ken Burch]

There have been suggestions of a "maximum wage" law(probably something like the Scandinavian wage ratio laws) and also there's the possibility of doing a "maximum profit" thing as well(or at least that's in my mind)

What i'm wondering is, is it possible that laws like that could lead to a different, more humane form of small-scale capitalism?

That is, if people who were starting businesses knew that they could make a certain amount, but no more, from the enterprise they were creating, might that induce them to create businesses with a more-participatory management structure and more socially humane values, since they'd only be running these businesses for a short time and then would move on to something else?

I'm wondering also if there might be a way to have this reduce the concentration of wealth in general and to reduce the whole "short-term rate of return to the investors is ALL that matters" model that our economy seems to have degenerated into in the last few years?

As I said, these are things i'm just musing about at a fairly nebulous level...so any feedback from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

[hfojvt]

1. here

http://www.cesc.net/adobeweb/scholars/schumacher/scottbader.pdf

[Ken Burch]

5. Thanks for that. It looks interesting so far from what I've read n/t.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. The top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%

Which meant that once you started making huge bucks, much of it went to others. The total effective federal tax rate on the wealthiest was 50% back then, vs. 20% or so today.

And it worked very, very well. Everyone did fine.

[Fumesucker]

3. I grew up in the fifties

My family was doing OK, not great but OK.. I also know plenty of people in my area weren't doing all that well, there was still plenty of poverty in the fifties or else LBJ's war on poverty wouldn't have been necessary.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. Establishing a minimum living standard, as opposed to a wage, would make the biggest difference,

initially.

As taxes and wages rise to meet that standard, upper level salaries and compensation would come down of necessity. But, where you can make the biggest difference on a national scale is to eliminate all generational wealth, and you do that through confiscatory inheritance taxes and eliminating tax exemptions entirely.

Make it so that the earner can pass on a reasonable chunk of capital or property to the next generation and society gets all the rest back so that it can help to make the next great earner. We need more people producing and innovating, while we don't need another generation of useless parasites at all.