Why not a national maximum wage?

[randr]

If we can accept minimum wage standards why not maximum standards?

[BlooInBloo]

1. Because that's stupid.

[Oregone]

2. Why?

[BlooInBloo]

4. Response #3 suffices.

[Hosnon]

51. Bwahahahaha...you must be unfamiliar with the Commerce Clause.

This may be a dumb idea but there's very little that can't be squeezed through that single clause.

[slackmaster]

57. Don't even think about growing a patch of wheat in your own yard

Take it to your local farmer's market and try to sell it, and you are in deep shit.

[slackmaster]

3. Please show what part of the Constitution would give the federal government the power to do that

:shrug:

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. A progressive rate that hits 100% does the job nicely. Totally legal.

If loopholes are closed.

[BlooInBloo]

7. They had a 100% tax rate for certain people in this country at one point....

They didn't care for it so much, I hear.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

12. Fuck 'em.

You're only getting hit with that rate in the millions of dollars of earnings.

They can cry me a river.

[BlooInBloo]

14. lolz

[Oregone]

10. Isn't that Ron Paul's line?

:)

[slackmaster]

46. No, it's a very serious question

If you have a serious answer, I'd like to see it.

[salguine]

19. I haven't seen our lawmakers rushing to check the Constitution before doing much else lately.

[slackmaster]

47. Past excesses do not excuse additional abuses of power

How about a logical reply to my question?

[Toucano]

37. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3: Regulation of Interstate Commerce.

It's what led to the minimum wage as well as the NLRB.

[slackmaster]

48. This is the closest anyone has come to a legitimate answer

The question is, how far can the ICC be stretched before it breaks?

[Toucano]

53. That is up to the courts, I imagine.

I think current court configuration makes any "stretching" unlikely, but I'm not sure how much of a stretch it is to regulate minimum and maximum.

[Romulox]

62. ICC is the jurisdictional hook used to justify virtually EVERY federal regulatory power

Including the federal power to regulate non-economic activity that occurs entirely within one state.

Would be no stretch at all.

[slackmaster]

70. I'm not a Constitutional scholar or even a lawyer, so I realize my opinion holds little weight

I believe many of the present applications of the ICC go beyond what it was intended to accomplish.

[Romulox]

76. "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

-MARBURY V. MADISON, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)

The Constitution means whatever the SCOTUS says it does; you cannot reason your way to Constitutional Doctrine. Constitutional Doctrine is most often constructed whole-cloth out of the Justices' respective pre-conceived ideologies.

My favorite is the argument that despite state laws legalizing marijuana, the Federal Government may regulate the growing of cannabis in one's own home, for one's own consumption, based on Congress' powers under the Interstate Commerce Clause. The theory being that a person is affecting interstate commerce by not buying marijuana illegally on the open market. :eyes: :silly:

All that said, I agree with you 100%

[Leftist Agitator]

71. Where's my PDA?

I will ruin this house with my anger!

[Romulox]

75. "Oh, gee, I'm sorry, is this the movie Thief, music by Tangerine Dream? I don't think so. "

:rofl:

[Leftist Agitator]

78. Well...

I was just saying about the gloves, that the yellow...

[Zynx]

64. It is infinite in scope.

I have yet to see its limitations as far as the courts are concerned.

[Romulox]

67. SCOTUS has found 2 provisions in violation of ICC in our history, IIRC. nt

[Romulox]

61. The power to regulate interstate commerce is CLEARLY sufficient to encompass wage controls. nt

[Winterblues]

77. What part gives them the power to impose minimum wage?

:shrug: I don't buy the concept of limiting one's ability to earn but yours is even worse.

[dkofos]

5. I'd rather we tax the rich at 50% or more.

The govt. does need the money.

[Oregone]

8. But what would cause more equality?

Taxing large amounts (and reinvesting), or created a maximum wage, such that there should be enough money left to pay the lower tier workers better?

[Orsino]

33. Given that money has already been equated with speech...

...the maximum wage is by definition unconstitutional. Progressive taxation is the only one of your options that could stand.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

11. Top rate was 91% not too long ago. (1963)

70% in 1980.
Currently 35% + 2.9% medicare= 37.9%

http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=19

[Selatius]

9. Theoretically, it would destroy motivation to do anything above and beyond what is necessary.

If I could build a better mouse trap, I might not do it if I don't get paid better than the guy who has the current mouse trap on the market.

I favor a form of market socialism as a matter of record.

[Oregone]

13. Waaah....I can only make 5 million a year now! Waaah...

No, I doubt it would destroy motivation for the common worker, or even the modest CEO.

I guess it depends what you set the maximum wage at though.

[Selatius]

15. That's the point. How do you define a ceiling?

So I guess we would all be better if computers were still pretty hard to use without somebody like Bill Gates making an operating system that is only computer-techie friendly but is not usable by Soccer Mom and Joe Sixpack?

[Oregone]

20. Soccer Mom and Joe Sixpack could just use Ubuntu

:)

You don't need billions to create a friendly GUI OS.

Some people don't need a cent.

[ClassWarrior]

16. At least it would destroy motivation for thieves and moral midgets. But is that so bad?

I'd rather buy a better mouse trap from the person who's selling it because it's good for society than from some criminal who's going to use the profits to exploit me and my fellow human beings.

NGU.

[Selatius]

21. True, but my way covers both bases.

If a greedling and an altruist both have a better mouse trap than what the current dude on the market has to offer, I'd rather the greedling and the altruist both show up to play ball. At least then people would have more of a choice, and if of the two new players one of them has the best model out of all three, how is it we could tell that it doesn't necessarily belong to the greedling?

A progressive tax code with an estate tax is fair enough, IMHO.

[ClassWarrior]

31. The only way the greedling might have the best model is by raping the inventor...

...to steal the rights. And the greedling would be the first to deceive the consumer into think his is the best, whether or not it is.

Sorry, the market just isn't fair, no matter how much Rape-Publicans wail and gnash their criminal teeth about it.

NGU.

[ClassWarrior]

45. You know, this is one of the biggest lies that exists. That unfettered profit drives innovation.

For the innovator, innovation drives innovation. Unfettered profit drives corporate criminals to steal the innovator's ideas and rape the public with it in the marketplace.

NGU.

[electron_blue]

22. Once you get into making hundreds of millions a year, you ain't doing it for the

money, you're doing it for the power.

At any rate, I don't favor a maximum wage, just tax at appropriate levels at the top and make sure this country is taken care of.

[Selatius]

23. In this country, we used to tax people making 100 million/year at 90 percent.

Of course, we had good leaders like FDR back then.

[dana_b]

32. seriously - if people can't live on 10 million a year...

fuck 'em

[greblc]

40. amen

eat the rich.

[slampoet]

50. Doing you really think that money has no motivating factor besides avoiding taxes?

People make money for lots of reasons for making money that have no consideration for tax rate.

[Zynx]

65. $7.5 million a year would be enough to incentivize someone I should think.

[dysfunctional press]

17. the 'maximum wage' can effectively be set by tax policy...

all income above a certain amount could be taxed at 90-99%

[Selatius]

24. It used to be that way in the 1940s, 1950s, and into the early 1960s.

Under Kennedy, the maximum tax bracket was lowered into the 70s percentile range. Under FDR, it got as high as 94 percent if I recall.

[backwoodsbob]

36. tax rate was very high but...

the rich had MASSIVE loopholes back then too.

I would be surprised if they in reality payed over 35% to 38%

What I would like to see is something not tried before.No taxes on your first 50k and at 50k everything AFTER that gets taxed STARTING at 25% and going up 1% for every 10k you make after that.

At 100k you would pay 30%..at 150k you would pay 35% and so on capping at say 65%.The rates would kick in as you reach the level.Also stock options and all other ways to mask income would be counted as income along with bennies like country club memberships and company payed trips.

[Blue_In_AK]

18. I personally think

that if you can't live off of $500,000 a year, you need to examine your lifestyle. But I agree, it would be difficult to enforce such a thing. Increase the tax burden on these people.

[gravity]

25. There is nothing wrong with making money

and it is driver economic innovation. These arguments for taxing the shit out of those who are rich are putting a cap on income is motivated more by emotion than economics and reason.

Setting a minimum wage and providing more social programs to support the working class will promote greater equality in society than punishing the rich. You can pay for these programs by raising the upper income tax brackets to a reasonable level, like 40 to 45%.

[Selatius]

26. It'd have to be higher than that to service the national debt and pay for the war and fix...

the nation's infrastructure. Our schools have been lagging for decades now, and our health care system has been a festering problem since the late 1970s. Under Clinton, the top tax rate was at 40 percent, but it wasn't enough to solve these problems.

[gravity]

27. You could be right

and they should just raise the rate to the appropriate level to balance the budget

[Toucano]

42. Yes there is.

American's have been sold this great lie about the wonderfulness of making money.

The current system of executive compensation that evolved from this lie is inherently undemocratic and inherently exploitative. It is a beehive mentality where the queen bee gets the reward and everyone else does all the work. The reward for the drones? The are allowed to live.

It is not possible that ONE PERSON contributes so much "talent" to the company to merit hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation while outsourcing the labor to the world's brown and yellow people and paying them a COUPLE HUNDRED DOLLARS per year! That's not reasonable or economical.

The unchecked greed (unchecked because people believe "there's nothing wrong with making money") creates an unstable society. Those at the top have no vested interest in the society below them. They don't care about schools, roads, crime, libraries, the environment or health care.

From simply a fiduciary perspective, exorbitant executive compensation is irresponsible and wrong because it is funded by the transfer of labor from the company's customer base. When your customer doesn't have a job, your sales don't do so well and it won't be long before your in pretty big trouble. Hello, General Motors.

[yurbud]

28. I like the concept but see how they could get around it with other forms of compensation

[Mariana]

35. Those could also be taxed as income...

Some of them already are.

Plenty of people think people who are paid with stock options get a break and are only subject to capital gains tax on them. It's not so. My husband received stock options for a short time at one job he had. When the options were exercised, whatever we made was considered compensation by the IRS and was taxed as wage income, not as a capital gain. We even had to pay FICA tax on it.

Loopholes can be closed.

[DemoRabbit]

29. It certainly sounds controversial - but I've often wondered about salary caps.

but when you have professional athletes making 30 million dollars for 3 years of playing baseball it suddenly doesn't sound so farfetched.

And don't tell me their careers are shortened so they deserve that kind of money. We ALL know it's crazy for grown men to play ball and get millions of dollars to do so. Mind you, I AM a baseball fan, I just find is gross when a guy can make so much money to play a game while people in this country are in poverty.

Want perspective? If worked 45 years making 100,000 per year (more than MOST people in this country make) I'd still only end up with $4,500,000. That's 4 1/2 million dollars for a lifetime of full-time work... and that's only if I'm lucky enough to start making 100 grand per year at 20 years old and keep doing so until I'm 65.

This is exactly why I have no problem with the top 1 or 2% paying more taxes than the rest of us. You get to a point where you're making so much money that the amounts of taxes you pay, while it may sound like a lot, really doesn't effect the quality of your life... meanwhile, $500 more to the single mom making $25,000 per year could be the difference whether she eats or is able to pay a month's rent.

[randr]

30. A solution may be a cap on interest rates

Usury was once a crime and penalties could be imposed. Also a little accountability of the CEO's that demand these ridiculous salary packages of their complicit boards. Deregulation has taken all the power away from individual stock holders.
No one can tell me that the chair of a company that goes belly up from pure neglect is not complicit. The compensation packages that the CEO's took home were not "earned income", but rather, stolen from the stockholders of these entities.

[Boojatta]

34. What if I want an employee to actually get something done?

Do I have to watch the employee so that I will know how much time it took? Would it be illegal to offer a fixed number of dollars for a particular project to be completed? If the project were finished faster than I had thought possible, then my offer might constitute an illegally high wage.

[Toucano]

38. The tide that lifts all boats

The maximum amount a company should be able to pay an employee should be expressed as a percentage of the lowest wage they pay.

If the board wants to pay the top dog 100 million dollars, that's fine. But they have to pay the janitor a wage equal to 0.25% of that, or 250K.

Every job contributes to the success of the company and everyone should be rewarded.

[bighart]

39. a quick check of tax rates shows

that when maximum tax rates were over 80% minimum tax rates were around 20%. Who do you think this kind of tax rate would hurt most, the minimum wage worker forced to pay 20% income tax or the CEO who pays 80%?

[JustAnotherGen]

41. How would it work for a writer?

Would we cap them at earning $1 Million dollars on blockbuster book?

[Toucano]

43. That writer doesn't have an employer and is not paid wages.

He or she is a free agent who produces and sells a product. Income and wages are not synonymous.

If the writer forms a holding company and has a board of directors and employees, then we have a different set of issues.

I can assure you, there is not a writer in the world who works for such a company who even approaches the hundreds of millions of dollars executives are being paid these days. Union wage is about $75K per year.

[JustAnotherGen]

44. So like Stephen King

He only makes $75K a year?

[Dr. Strange]

49. 'Bout time!

Stephen King has been screwing the poor for far too long!

[Toucano]

55. Stephen King is not paid wages.

Wages and income are two different things.

We're talking about a maximum wage.

As I said, he is an example of an individual who produces a product and sells it directly (to his publisher). He does not have an employer. He is self-employed.

$75K is a typical WGA wage for writers on staff for Paramount, for example.

[Dr. Strange]

63. Congratulations.

You just found a loophole that destroys this idea.

All of a sudden, CEOs are no longer employees; they're producing a product (business plan) and selling it to the company. They're self-employed. And can continue to rake in millions.

[ileus]

52. Should be Obama's first order of business in Feb.

Show us he's for the little people first thing.

[slackmaster]

56. How would imposing a maximum wage help "the little people"?

?

[Naturyl]

54. I'm for the equivalent...

..A return to high top marginal rates - starting at pre-Reagan levels and going up from there.

[Dreamer Tatum]

58. Nothing personal, but that is a stupid idea and here is why

If I could earn $10 million, why would I do that when I have to hand 100% of every dollar after $5mm to the government?

Suppose you had a 50% tax on all income after $5mm...then you'd theoretically collect $2.5mm in revenue.

Would you, as the tax man, want 50% of something, or 100% of nothing?

[randr]

59. One flaw in your proposition

You assume that those taking these large compensations actually have to more work to do for their earnings.
As far as I can tell the higher the financial ladder one goes the less work they do.

[Egalitariat]

68. What about entrepreneurs whose income is determined by how

much is left over after all the bills are paid -- as opposed to a salary/bonus being set by some compensation committee?

[randr]

79. Competition

One of the problems, apparently, is that these institutions are too large and need to be broken up into smaller more manageable companies. That would introduce a concept long lost in all the deregulation orgy, competition.
Who ever can get the job done for the least amount of money will succeed.
As a building contractor those are my rules and they work just fine.

[Hugabear]

60. I have long been in favor of a salary cap

The salary cap should be indexed to what the lowest paid workers of a company get paid. If a corporate CEO wants to raise his own salary, then raise the salary of everyone working below him.

[mmonk]

66. No.

CEO wages aren't the underlying problem, ideology is. Besides, they would just give out more stock options that manipulate the price and or gigantic annuities in light of wages.

[nichomachus]

69. It's called "restraint of trade" and you don't want to do that.

You can, however, institute graduated tax rates, so that those making obscene amounts of money pay much higher tax rates. It used to be about 90 percent on income over a certain amount.

[unblock]

72. because a billion dollars in one year is not a big enough incentive for some people.

:sarcasm:

[quispquake]

73. I remember Jello BIafra proposed that...

A few years ago on Politically Incorrect...Even Maher looked at him like he was crazy...Personally, I agree with the idea...I liked what Ben & Jerry's used to do...the top person in the company can only make 10X what the lowest paid person makes...that seems fair to me...and it spreads the wealth...

[whopis01]

74. I think the problem is that there are too many inherent loopholes to make it effective.

At least without changing all sorts of rules on how money and investments work.

When you are talking about minimum wage workers, the only way that they get compensated is through their wages. So by setting a minimum wage, it is (relatively) easy to place a control on the minimum compensation which they receive.

On the other end of the payscale, things are not so simple. Equity, stock option, benefits, use of company vehicle, other perks. Basically, there are too many loopholes and ways around a maximum wage to make it feasible to implement simply. That is not to say it could not be done by overhauling the entire compensation/tax system, but it just isn't as easy as handling the minimum wage issue.