You don’t care what they excel at? Pay a genius salesman a hundred times what you pay a talented teacher? Because he “excels”?
But they still would get rewarded. It’s just if they belong to a strata that is advancing faster than everyone else in the country they get slightly higher taxes and everyone else gets slightly lower.
That doesn’t do away with the fruits of their labor. It still makes sense to work if your take-home income goes from 900k to 825k, doesn’t it?
We used to have a 70% top rate and people still excelled. I’m not saying to go back there, I’m just wondering if society as a whole should rise together.
Well I’d just say the goal is find a balance somewhere. The people through government have a right to make sure everybody has some benefit from our system, while those who are more productive should gain greater rewards. I think financial incentives are necessary, but the system seems to be somewhat out of balance right now.
So I would agree that the system should strive to lift everybody to some extent, and prevent people from runaway gains without being productive, but not in the sense of fixed amounts or percentages, just rules that consider social fairness, and don’t allow people to profit simply by playing the system instead of being productive.
The trouble is defining what is fair, and what is productive. Marx’s concept where each contributes according to ability and benefits according to need would be wonderful, except that it is totally unworkable. You can’t get everybody to agree on what one’s abilities and needs are. I prefer our system where these things are ever changing and resolved in the political process. It’s just not working quite right now, IMHO because we have weakened the political process through the undue influence of money in politics, and the lack of competition and reasonable regulation in the marketplace.
I said it’s an ideal. Obviously the devil is in the details. But it at least gives us something to aim towards.
I also want to add that I don’t advocate an absolute meritocracy. I feel there should be a safety net at the bottom. A certain minimum that nobody falls below even if society had to outright give somebody enough to keep them above that minimum.
On the contrary, it’s nearly inevitable unless you do something to redistribute the wealth. People who already have wealth tend to accumulate more wealth; if nothing stops the process they will eventually own virtually all the wealth in the particular culture. “Opportunity” is meaningless compared to already having wealth and connections to the economic elite. And someone who has vastly more wealth and power will win regardless of how fair the rules are.
That’s just as idealistic and impractical as Marx’s “abilities and needs” line. In the real world, the people who excel aren’t generally rewarded; the fruits of their labors go to those with more wealth and power than them. You would need some kind of major government intervention to even approximate some connection between achievement and reward.
I’m not sure “motivation to be productive” can be created like that. Some people, like myself, just seem to inherently lack the motivation that comes naturally to most of the population. Motivation is an almost completely alien feeling to me.
But something always stops the process. If nothing else, revolution will when the majority of people realize they’re not getting enough out of the existing system to keep them alive. The haves have to share enough of the goods to keep the have-nots willing to accept the overall system.
I’d like something a little less brutal than blood in the streets however.
So would I. And more to the point, so would the people whose blood would be in the streets. So their self-interest will cause them to avoid coming close to the point of mass starvation.
It doesn’t matter what they excel at as long as they don’t cheat the laws or steal. First you need to eliminate opportunities for fraud and crime.
A person will be compensated in direct proportion to what they produce in the economy. If they fill a societal need for a difficult or less desirable job, they will be paid more. For example, the starting pitcher for the Orioles is a difficult to fulfill job.
Also those that are more productive are rewarded (ideally. Unions make that difficult.), so the starting pitcher of the Yankees will be paid more.
You have to think how these people got their wealth. They get it by fulfilling a societal need. Think of the “worst” capitalists of all, the robber barons. John Rockefeller filled the need for cheap oil. Carnegie provided cheap steel.
This is true everywhere. The neighborhood mmmhmm dealer fulfills the need for that good shit. The Federal Reserve fulfills the need for cheap money. Wait that’s another topic.
Competition breeds increased productivity. This lowers costs for everyone and increases the standard of living. As an earlier poster noted, this is how wealth should be measured, by the quality of life.
When has the free market demonstrated a tendency to consolidate wealth in the hands of the few while not also rising lower strata of society?
And John Rockefeller Jr got rich by fulfilling the societal need for a son to John Rockefeller Sr. And John Rockefeller III got rich by fulfilling the societal need for a son to John Rockefeller Jr. And John Rockefeller IV got rich by fulfilling the societal need for a son for John Rockefeller III. And John Rockefeller V got rich by fulfilling the societal need for a son for John Rockefeller IV.
It’s admirable the way one family has kept earning its wealth generation after generation. I’m content because I know that wealth only goes to those people who have earned it. If John Rockefeller V is richer than me it must be because he worked harder than me. Because the only way people get rich in America is by earning it. There’s no other possible way to be rich.
I lived the first 16 years of my life in a country that was founded on this kind of idiocy. I left as soon as I could. No thanks.
Thats a good point.
That is one way wealth is not earned. I don’t see anyway you can get around that though. I mean of course charity starts at home.
If they do not excel at anything, that wealth will diminish. Most likely they will invest it. This will fulfill the need for capital in the economy. Or maybe they’ll just consume and fulfill the need for consumption in the economy.
You assume that they think that will ever happen. If the threat of mass unrest was enough to deter such people, then such unrest wouldn’t have happened so often throughout history.
Primarily by fraud, corruption, psychopathy, or at best by leeching off of people.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Nor does “increased productivity” necessarily benefit ordinary people.
Right now.
What makes you think that? All you need to make money is to have money. You don’t need to “excel”. Nor do you need to excel to make lots of money in the first place; more likely if you excel that just means you’ll make lots of money for someone else.
Estate taxes. People who made the fortune get to keep it for their lifetime. But their children and their grandchildren and the great grandchildren didn’t work for the money they received. They just had it handed to them. I say put the money back into circulation and let the entrepreneurs of today have a shot at it.
But estate taxes horrify the wealthy. Even more than other taxes. And the reason is clear. Because most of the wealthy realize that what I said is true. They realize they could never build a fortune through their own efforts. Their entire life is dependent on hanging on to the family fortune their more capable ancestor created.
But if wealth alone is enough then what purpose do the wealthy serve? The capital will still exist and be part of the economy. Nobody is suggesting we burn all the money.
The only argument to be made in favor of the wealthy investing the wealth is the assumption that they are better investors than the non-wealthy. But there’s no reason to think that’s true. The first John D. Rockefeller might have been a business genius but there’s no reason to assume the sixth John D. Rockefeller is any better at investing than you or I are.
But I never denied mass unrest happens. I was disagreeing with your claim that mass starvation is inevitable. My argument is that we will reach the point of mass unrest before we reach the point of mass starvation.
That’s what we’ve got now in theory, and what I’m always hearing RWs say we’ve got now in fact, and in case you haven’t noticed, what we’ve got now sucks. You must have noticed that a lot of people have noticed recently.
What do you think TARP was for?
Or another possibility, as some rich guy said, “You can always get half of the poor to kill the other half”.