TRUTH? It’s likely that I’m a fan of capitalism. I relieve myself of hard-earned dividends to obtain Comics, kicks, gadgets, and other symbols of mass consumerism.
It is a choice that I strategically make and take into consideration factors such as actual necessities like food and shelter, paying bills on time, etc. I’ve been caught up in excess and when I realized it, I actually masterminded the Throwaway Liberation to balance out personal mass consumption.
All of that said, I live within my means — respectable, but, not stellar. Every dime spent is logically weighed (as much as I can get down with logic of spending). What about those cats out there, in particular entertainers, sports athletes, etc who live with excess and don’t have to weigh the costs? Their financial grip on reality is non-existent. The means at their disposal ensures that they can and will pay any price — driving the overall price of everything up.
Think one monkey can’t stop the show? Let this marinate — If I am an entertainer or athelete who is able and willing to get down with a pair of leopard skin briefs for $1500, what is stopping retailers from charging that as the normal price? The impact for cats like me (no, I don’t want leopard skinned briefs — but, if you buy me some….), and you, is that we have to deal with the inflated price.
One way to address this problem is droppin’ a financial glass ceiling on cats who make too much — a maximum wage cap. Did I blow your mind? Are you still with me? Or is your brain bucklin’ under the pressure of that concussion bomb I just hit you upside the head with? Do entertainers and atheletes really need to make that much more than we do? $250k a year seems like a solid cap to me. I know that if I’m pullin’ in that much, I can raise two youngbloods, send them through college, own a home, car, pay bills, buy food, and still get down with a couple of trips during the year while living comfortably in general. Imagine if everyone could get down like that.
I target athletes and entertainers because, in general, quite a few of them are likely not putting that excess towards something worthwhile. If Kobe can make up with his wife that he cheated on with a 4-million-dollar bling, uh, ring, then that lets me know what frequency his mentals operate on. TRUTH? Every once and awhile, you have to bust some caps — why not bust a maximum wage cap on this sphere of consumers?
What keeps things in check is market economics. If there were only one leopard skin briefs maker and no one else had the right to make them, then yes, one bad actor could disrupt the marketplace. In some cases, there are things that are intentionally and clearly priced out of range of the average consumer. That’s a decision made by the merchant - do you want one customer who pays $100,000 for your item or 100,000 customers who pay $10?
A wage cap is an artificial control on the market, and ultimately is in place in some areas of business already, like baseball. What does it accomplish? Instead of top players earning their maximum income potential, it shifts additional profits to…
… the team owners. And not to play the race card, but compare the ethnicity of team players to team owners in the NBA, for example.
If you put a cap on actors, then the studio executives will pocket the profits. Fighting this is what things like the Screen Actors Guild were founded for.
On the other hand, when a wristwatch costs $700,000…
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2131974,00.html
When you see people with so much being so wasteful, it’s tempting to say they don’t deserve it in the first place. But as Chris Penn points out, the money’s going to go somewhere. I’d much rather it go to the athlete or entertainer who’s the attraction than to “management” personally. On top of that, the guys with that much money will just hire accountants and lawyers to figure out how to move the same money into a different column in the spreadsheet so that it’s no longer considered “wages”.
I’m not qualified to answer. I don’t live within my means. I’m a short bus when it comes to money. My underpants come from Target or somewhere. I think. But man… you did make me think.
Athletes? Entertainers? CxOs and such.
Aside: So you don’t care about the young folks, talkin’ bout the young styles?
George, it’s not that I don’t care, bruh — I’ve chosen atheletes and entertainers as a springboard because for me they are the most visible cats out there. They have instant and immediate influence on the minds of many. Their actions can cause a ripple effect that ends in a Tsunami of minds trained in being hungry for excess — simply based on their status. The youngbloods who come up priveleged have an opportunity to exact change by putting their trust-funds towards worthwhile causes, or using their $$ to build an army of clueful rich kids who want to level the playing field with their middle/lower-class peers. Start with the high-priced, high-profile, and build from there.
Chris, I can’t completely subscribe to what you’re saying, bruh — unfortunately I can’t battle the notion effectively due to my lack of pure economics clue. What I can do is question whether or not market economics is really a solid enough levee to bridge the gap. Hopefully I can hit you with solid follow-up on this sooner than later. I have an idea, but, can’t put it into comprehensible concepts at the moment.
Regarding corporate C-suite salaries — this is an area where a maximum wage makes some kind of sense. Since coporations exist at the pleasure of the people, existing only by law enacted by We the People’s elected representatives, we can also dictate through law how officers of corporations may be compensated.
I don’t think there should be an upper limit per se. However, I think that limiting a CEO’s salary (including perks) to a maximum of, for example, to 15 or 20 times the average non-executive salary could be beneficial. When times are bad, execs would have to take a pay cut as well. When times are good, everyone shares the good fortune.
I think a maximum wage should apply to all wage earners.
And I also think it is interesting that nobody spoke out for the workers who manufacture, ship, and sell the stuff. Capitalism prioritizes profit, by definition. The cost of labor is being driven down by a global economy and the availability of cheap transport. This hurts workers, who have lack protections and have only limited mobility across borders. Capitalists (owners of corporations) can work the price of labor down down down to increase their profits and their capital (money that makes more money). If you have to sell your labor to pay your bills, you are sunk (IMHO).
Watch the movie Antz. It is a great allegory that speaks to this issue.
Usually, I’m down with your comment Clarence but not on this issue. The economics of a capitlaist society simply does not work this way. Supply and demand keeps everything in check. When supply is up, and demand is low then prices drop. Look at gas prices.
The global supply of gas has not changed, but demand has gone up. Therefore prices are up. There are many reasons why oil supplies have not increased, but at the root of it all demand is exceeding the supply. Therefore we pay more.
I feel your basic sentiment, but your solution is a little off on this one.
Pen-e, the hustle that I posit isn’t a solution. It’s a beginning. I think that market demand pushes the boulder up the hill so far — there are other factors that come into play (and I’ve taken one of many into consideration).
I’m definitely digging all the feedback here. For the love of money, right? Maximum wage does hold water. Apply it to a subset of cats out there who can make solid $$ to a point and then lets see how we can shift things so that the excess capitalism can be spread out to a larger population.
Thinking about these type of final fantasy tactics can go a long way towards levelling the playing field where so many others are impacted on a daily basis. I agree, this isn’t the end all, however, it should be a part of the plan.
If not maximum wage, what sort of strategy would you suggest? Who and where would you apply it? Or, are you content to just let the smaller percentage of dollar-holders hang on to what possibly could and should be yours too? Let it marinate.
Crap. My main points have already been tackled.
Oh well. S’what I get for coming to the party late.
Capitalism prioritizes profit, true, but there’s a point at which the market will not tolerate absolute lowest price if absolute lowest price is unsafe - such as what’s happening with imported goods from China (cough syrup, beef, Elmo toys are the three most recent cases).
Who will speak out for the worker? The worker had better. That was the point of unions, was it not? Only in an age of a global economy, the labor union in America that stands up to management risks getting downsized completely.
How do you compete with someone who will do your job at one-hundredth the cost?
I’m late in here but a paraphrase of the old boyu Karl Marx seems in order.
‘If the capitalists win the class struggle to push wages down and labor effort up, raising the rate of surplus value, then a capitalist economy faces regular problems of inadequate consumer demand’ aka the crisis of capitalism cycle.
thats kind of what we’re talking about here?
E
The idea of a maximum wage actually has roots that go deep into American history. In fact, a President of the United States once proposed what amounted to a maximum wage.
Back in 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent tax on all individual income over $25,000, about $315,000 in current dollars. Congress didn’t go along with FDR’s 100 percent rate, but lawmakers did set the top tax rate at 94 percent on income over $200,000, and that top rate hovered around 90 percent for the next 20 years, decades that saw the greatest upsurge in middle class prosperity in U.S. history.
More maximum wage history at http://www.greedandgood.org, the Web site for a book I did a few years ago that’s now available to read online.
There’s so much going on here, not sure where to start. The arguments posited in the comments all fall apart upon the weight of one serious logical fallacy.
Capitalism is based upon the free exchange of value for value. We trade dollars (but it can be anything, even barter) that have an implied value for something else of value - goods and services.
The entire process works ONLY if consumers have value to spend. This is bulletproof. It is not in the interest of producers to either 1) Raise prices to a level where customers can NO LONGER BUY, and 2) Limit availability of their goods and services so that consumers can NO LONGER BUY them.
Call it greed, or self-interest, or simply human nature, but this is the process and it is not complicated. If we are all serfs and cannot purchase “luxury” goods like XBOX 360’s and hot kicks at the mall, the entire idea of an affluent class goes away. There would be no LeBron James salary to even cap. There wouldn’t likely even be an NBA (there was no NBA in the Soviet Union, there is no NBA in Cuba).
Whether it offends your sensibilities or not, these ridiculous salaries fuel jobs. Baron Davis’s HUMMER H2 was built in Mishawaka, IN at a factory that employs 15,000 people. Even the “rich” dentist down the street from you, the guy that makes $300,000 a year…he employs 10 people. Those jobs did not create themselves. Ask yourself, how many jobs have you created from zero?
If I run a small business that employs 25 people, and my income is capped at $250,000, what incentive do I have to open a new location and create 25 more jobs? Why work harder? Why push? Why elevate my game?
On to tax rates…
Guess what happens when the top bracket goes to 94%? The smart money simply structures their business so that they’re no longer earning salary at the top bracket. Instead, they show (on paper) a lower salary and pay the rest of their profit out as a dividend.
So the solution then becomes a 94% rate on capital gains, right? Sure. You can go that route, but likely the smart money will simply relocate to an area that fosters a more business-friendly environment. Then you’ve completely lost the game. (Note the State vs. State battle that currently exists for business investment in the United States. Companies move their entire operations to save 5% on employee income taxes. Also note the extraordinary economy of Switzerland, which had a 1.9% unemployment rate in 2003.)
It is only in affluent countries like the United States that have so much excess value thrown off by the marketplace that people can forget how they got to this spot in the first place, have zero respect for it, and still drop $500 on a cell phone.
No offense to you, Clarence. I like debate and discussion, as well as controversial ideas.