With wealth inequality and billionaire control over American society growing ever more obscene, it’s well past time to implement a maximum wage limit.

  • Burninator05@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    My limited understanding is that once you’re super wealthy your actual income doesn’t matter. They take loans against their wealth to pay for whatever they want.

    We need to tax both capital gains at a rate higher than labor and tax loans as income if they use stock as collateral.

    • Tetragrade@leminal.space
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      6 days ago

      Yes but this is an article aimed at a casual audience of wage-laborers, who undestand wealth as the thing you get for a job.

      And the details of the demand don’t really matter that much, because at this point it’s clear that even a milquetoast request like this will still prompt the US oligarchy to have the secret police fire on protesters. Imo if anything you want the demands to initially be as mild as possible, makes them look more unreasonable. Once people are onboard you can push for more important goals.

    • DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I think we need to decide, if unrealized gains are real gains. How you can loan using unrealized gains as collateral if from tax purposes it’s not real money.

      If you can loan money using unrealized gains a collateral you should be taxed. I am not saying you tax unrealized gains, but taxing when get money “from” it.

      But loan is considered a loss and you even get a tax break.

      Also need to limit tax write-offs to really business needs, like rich people can get a huge car like a Mercedes G class on their business and write-off the cost for instance. The rich have a lot of loopholes. Incentives should be limited to people and companies making a X sum. If your company makes billions, I don’t think you need a tax incentive.

  • teolan@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Maximum wage laws don’t make sense because the ultra rich get their wealth from investments, not wages.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      At some point, we decided that people who work and make $100K a year get taxed 50% more than people who make the same money from investment. Income is income. Get rid of capital gains special status.

      And this loophole of borrowing money against stock value is income, and should be taxed as such. If we did this, everyone’s income taxes would be much lower, national debts would be in reduction.

      But the Wall street dicks consider taxing on investments “getting taxed twice”, and hedge fund managers still pay NO income taxes, only CGT.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      7 days ago

      Nailed it.

      What we need is a securities tax: a tax on every stock, bond, and other financial instruments in their portfolio. No need to liquidate it; the shares are simply transferred to the IRS annually. They’ll liquidate those shares slowly over time.

      Natural persons are exempted on the first $10 million of their portfolio. No exemptions for artificial persons.

    • GuyLivingHere@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      I’m in favour of maximum ratios of total compensation. Stock values, dividends, salary are all added together to get a total compensation value.

      Start it at something like 50-1, then gradually lower it as the actual workforce is allowed to control an increased share of the company.

      There is still incentive for growth; the growth is simply distributed more equitably.

  • nibble4bits@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    They already play a shell game with wages, so they don’t pay income taxes. Most of the really rich and successful people have their incomes derived from capital gains and then use the talking point that it’s already money that was taxed through their business so it shouldn’t be taxed further.

    TAX CAPITAL GAINS.

    • syreus@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      We do tax capital gains. It’s just at a lower rate than regular income and the first $50k or so is 0%. Some states tax capital gains as regular income.

      They do a shell game by using their losses to offset their gains.

      This would be something anyone could do but most people don’t have the ability to let stocks sit for over a year before taking the capitol loss strategically.

      The system is built for the wealthy to have less risk.

    • Nikls94@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      “It’s maximum wage. I don’t receive any wage, I receive a dividend”

      “It’s maximum wage. I don’t receive any wage, I receive rent”

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    I predict we’re going to see our first trillionaire by the end of the decade. It’s beyond obscene. If you “earn” (lol) more than 5 million dollars a year, you should have that part taxed at 100%

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

  • verdi@feddit.org
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    7 days ago

    That won’t solve the borrow, die, repeat. It’s a great idea and should definitely have been implemented yesterday to modify the incentives of middle management but we REALLY need to start taxing people on a “personal GDP” after a certain level.

    Space Kare pays proportionally 1\10 of the taxes I pay without having a “wage”.

    “Oh, you want to buy twitter for 50b, here’s your M&A property tax of 25%”

    • SupahRevs@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Yes. If congress really had their shit together, they could implement something at the IRS where each really wealthy person is audited and taxed on their personal GDP. Auditors could present their findings of wealth and a committee could tax the value at an appropriate level.

  • minorkeys@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    We need maximum wealth, maximum power and maximum influence laws, enforcement and strict punishments for corruption.

  • BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz
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    6 days ago

    This article is TERRORISM (according to Trump’s Republican Administration!)! If you would like to NOT be Terrorists please SHOOT UP A CHURCH IN A MAGA HAT instead!

  • NeilBrü@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    “It’s not that I must always have a lot. I must always have more than everyone else. Forever. And everyone else must show their enthusiasm about me having the most.”

  • NotACIAPlant@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Money is simply the ability to command labor-power. Money is an abstraction for what is in actuality class society, Financial reform around money and taxes cannot change the nature of class society. They are obfuscations designed to distract you.