Fair enough, but then what encouragement is there for entrepreneurs and the like who can earn way beyond that amount from doing anything productive, which disbenefits us all?
So where do you draw the line then? If its unlimited what happens when say 5% of the population own 99% of the globes wealth. Do you honestly believe that people like entrepreneurs will just sit on their hands and say to themselves nah I cant be arsed as i could only make £5mill? All I'm advocating is to reduce the gap between the wealthiest on the planet and everyone else to a manageable level.
Below is the wealth ration between the highest paid member of a company vs the lowest paid employee of the same company from 1965 to 2013. The CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 29.9-to-1 in 1978, grew to 122.6-to-1 in 1995, peaked at 383.4-to-1 in 2000, and was 295.9-to-1 in 2013, far higher than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. As you can see in 1965 the head of a company (lets call him or her an entrepreneur) earned 20 times the salary of his or her lowest paid employee. In 2000 he or she earned just under 385 times the salary. If you apply this trend globally and incorporate its impacts on the costs of living, housing etc etc you can quickly see where it has all started to go wrong. THIS is what I believe is the root cause of the global issues we face today. This and of course religion.
Yes. If I was taxed 100% on income above X, I wouldn't bother doing any work after I'd made X. Don't see any rational reason for anyone to work for no remuneration. A more equal society would be great but it has to be done by bringing up the poor, not dragging down the rich. Reduce taxes on staple goods (if they are taxed), raise the income tax threshold. More importantly, improve health and education.
Unfortuntely there is not enough wealth in the world to make everybody rich and todays levels, however there is enough wealth to stop people being poor. Besides wealth is relative anyway...............if you lower the mean earning to a £1 a year and someone earns £10 a year they would still be considered wealthy provided it was achieved on a global / level basis. It is just a question of setting that level. Dont forget that it is the 99% of the population that create the excessive wealth for the wealthiest anyway. We just dont realise that we have the ability to collectively redress the balance onto a more even playing field. I'll give you an example: Take petrol prices. All prices per litre are relatively similar throughout the country. We keep on paying the prices set regardless as we have become dependant on the product and there is little option than to pay the going rate.Ergo they can increase their prices and their profits on a whim. However, if collectively, we all decided to boycott say BP and only use the other retailers for a period of say 6 months this would mean that: 1) BP's share price would hit the deck. 2) They would be at risk of a hostile takeover from one of their competitors. 3) They would go bust. or they would have to drop their prices to a certain level until we started or agreed to use them again. At that point everyone then switches to BP at their lower price, thus boycotting all the others in the process meaning they too have to drop their prices. Now, you apply this principle to every corparation around the globe and we are soon able to redress the balance of wealth to a manageable and acceptable level. We have so much power yet are continually screwed and beaten towards poverty by the very people we have made very wealthy. Maybe its time for change?
It's hardly the same thing. You're suggesting all high earners have their wage/wealth capped. How long do you think people will stay in this country if their wealth is capped to £1m/£5m/£10m? They, and their high taxes, go with them.
Im advocating that anywhere in the world wealth is capped at a set figure, coroprations capital holdings are capped at a set figure and all other capital is pooled for global distribution.
There'd be no incentive for anyone to do anything beyond the wealth cap! Look what happens when you put high taxes on high earners- they reduce their output. Doing that on a global scale would be madness. What would be the point of investing in R&D, producing new drugs, new products, new anything?
Because wealth would then become relative. You are baseing the value of wealth on figures you understand .................ie current rates. So when the ratio of the highest paid entrepreneur was only 20 times the salary of the lowest paid worker in their organisation back in 1965 there was no investment and nothing happened? Of course not. I am simply advocating a return to a more realistic level of wealth distribution as I genuinely think this is where it has all started to unravel. Obviously any caps would incorporate the investments you list. But there would be global social responsibility and empathy and no need for an individual to personally hoard wealth greater than that of a small country!
No they dont.............they simply employ inventive accountants. Pug it off shore, reinvent themselves as a company a la Wayne Rooney, utilise aggressive tax avoidance schemes etc etc etc
Because wherever you set the level you'll either be too high for it to affect a significant number of people or so low that it won't be workable and you start seeing similar problems to those in the USSR during communism- huge levels of corruption, stowing away of wealth etc. End of the day, most rich people are rich because they're talented at something and work hard at it. The rich will almost get richer quicker as an economy grows but that's just a symptom of economic growth. The fortunes of the poor are, generally, improving, and a lot of that is down to innovations or improvements coming from the wealthy.
You're right, I don't live in a ghetto, like Didcot. Uncharacteristically bitchy post Col. Had you read my post closely you would have noticed that I was talking specifically about Syrian refugees, of whom the UK has gallantly coped with next to none while much poorer countries have taken in millions. I do think it is churlish to moan about something that hasn't happened. Our opinions on the benefits or otherwise of immigration are different. It does need to be managed. The floods of people being displaced by war, terror and poverty will only be sorted by sorting out the wars, terror and poverty. Which obviously isn't going to happen. We either have to withdraw from the world and build a wall around ourselves or find a way to muddle through based on our alleged 'values' of tolerance and humanity. In the meantime Boris has put forward his negotiating strategy for the EU - we should reject whatever Cameron gets offered on the grounds that the EU will then come back with a better offer which we would say yes to in a second referendum. The possibility of us being told 'OK, **** off then' doesn't seem to have crossed his mind (an admittedly short journey). Anybody who thinks real negotiations are this simplistic and confrontational should never be allowed near the negotiating table.
Boris isn't that thick. End of the day you don't get where he is in life without having something about you. I tend to agree we should reject the first offer. If they did turn around and tell us to **** off, which I think has incredibly little chance of happening, we've not got much to lose anyway.
yeah right....................the banking elite are so clever they managed to crash a global economy! most are not talented ..............just corrupt.
Greece tried the brinkmanship yesterday and got shafted. Obviously, we're more valuable to Europe but it would be better to negotiate sensibly rather than arrogantly...
The two latest Royals to be born didn't have to do much to be incredibly wealthy................just existing appears to be enough! A lot of wealth is inherited.................... how hard is that for the heirs? We seem to be going off track a little Watford. I have suggested one way to begin to eliminate the problems would be a cap on wealth to bring the gap between highest paid and lowest paid to around the 1960's levels......................... what would you propose? Or would you rather wait until say 5% of the worlds population own 95% of its wealth and we are all at war as a consequence?
