Now we are getting somewhere. So... If the CEO gets $9M and the rank gets $16K instead of $14K, then we can call that wealth equality right? This also does not take into the effects of lower earnings which would cause lower stock price.
If 450,000 poor people get a 15% raise and 1 wealthy one gets a 0% raise, then that reduces income inequality. That's basic math.
If there is even a remote chance that people would stop whining about income inequality, I'd be all for your plan.
The goal isn't to stop people from whining. It's to help improve the lives of poor people. Your priorities seem misplaced.
1) higher taxes for all or just higher taxes for the rich? The top 1% is already paying approximately 36% of all federal income taxes, and the top 5% is paying close to 60% of all federal income taxes,,, so why should the rich be obligated to foot an even bigger % of the tax bills when the bottom 50% is contributing to only 2-3% of total federal income taxes? 2) Some investment vehicles are by their nature designed for the rich. Hedge funds and VCs all have long investment horizons, that's why they usually have early withdrawal penalties. That's not a problem for the rich but for the lower income individuals that might always have a sudden need for their investment $ due to certain emergencies,, that's obviously a huge deterrent. Personally I think equity crowdfunding is a terrible idea. For traditional VCs, even with their careful investment selection, marketing & management support provided to the startups, give or take 50% of the investments will be complete losses, 20-30% they'll barely get back their investment and the rest 20-30% are successes. 3) For inheritance, the rich were already taxed once when they earned their money so why should they be obligated to pay even higher estate tax than now?
Because they take a larger share of income and control an even higher share of the wealth in this country. The wealthy are the ones who have seen dramatic reductions in their taxes over the last 35 years, they should be the ones who bear the lion's share of returning this country to sound fiscal footing. And this is but one example of the incredible advantage that the rich have over the middle and lower classes. They get lower interest rates on debt, higher interest rates on equity, and own the VAST majority of the stocks in existence. On top of this, people who derive the majority of their income from investments can see MUCH lower tax rates than people in the middle and upper middle classes (see Romney's <15% tax return for your evidence). Everything except tax rates is set by the market, so tax rates should dramatically favor the less well-to-do, which simply isn't the case anymore. The rich person who EARNED the money was taxed, but when it is passed on as inheritance, it becomes INCOME for someone else, once again subject to income tax. There was a time when our top marginal tax rates were north of 90%. Conservatives are fond of pointing out that almost nobody actually paid those high rates, and they are right. However, those prohibitively high top end rates created a situation where CEOs, managers, and owners were willing to pass on more of their profits to line employees because at a certain point, every dollar paid to the CEO became a dime in his pocket and $0.90 to the government. Now that top tax rates are less prohibitive, we are seeing those people pay themselves at the expense of their workers because they just don't have incentive to pass those dollars to their employees. This has created a situation where all of the income gains in the economy go to the wealthy, while median incomes stagnate or recede, a situation which is terrible for the economy at large.
Yes. The whole reason we exist is support a charity that does education work in the Dominican Republic.
Back on topic, the business' goal is not to help the poor - that's society's goal because it makes for a better society. Not because it causes people to stop whining, which apparently is your driving motivation.
No, you call it paying your employees at least a slightly fairer wage. It isn't anything like wealth equality, as you know very well. As for the stock? If that burger chain is making several billion dollars in profits, the stockholders should be quite happy with that.
By that logic, The employee's are also paid billions. As for the stockholders, there would be a whole lotta share holders that aren't millionaires and billionaires that are going to be affected.
If this wasn't such an issue, why this Henry Paulson talk so much about the threat of wealth inequality to the American economy??? In fact he said it was one of four major issues America faced. Oh, in case you didn't know, Paulson was the former CEO of Goldman Sachs who was appointed by Bush (a republican) to be the Secretary of the Treasury and he was responsible for navigating the economy through the financial crisis in 2008. Furthermore, http://www.cnbc.com/id/100589198
And yet, very few make minimum wage. What exactly do you disagree with here? Do you think wealth inequality is not an issue? Do you think paying poor people more doesn't reduce help wealth inequality?
Agreed. This is basic economics and math. If a CEO makes an exorbitant salary and bonus, and the front line workers make next to nothing...the CEO will invest the extra cash. Sure that helps the equity markets, etc, but it does nothing for real growth. If the front line workers make a little more and the CEO a little less, the front line workers will spend that additional money on goods and services, thus growing the economy. In a free economy, there will always be haves and have nots. However, when the difference is an ocean rather than a river, it stifles economic growth.
Connected to this, when the company makes more money, it's the executives that decide where that money goes. And the natural tendency is for them to pay themselves more. In the past, this was countered by strong pro-labor forces, but we've demonized labor and put "job creators" on some kind of artificial pedestal over the last several decades. As we saw with the fast food thread, anytime lower level people try to make an effort to change this, as misguided as they may have been, they are demonized and called losers and told to simply accept their lot in life. As a result, there is no real force to counteract the natural tendency of the wealthy to simply collect all the additional wealth amongst themselves.
