Solution of the Day: Income Limits

I must admit that this isn't an original thought, but it is original to me. This is perhaps, one of the most controversial ideas I've had in a while. I know it's controversial because I'm arguing with myself over the issue, in my own mind. I was thinking about the greed that permeates American financial culture and I wondered; why? At some point, the money has to become irrelevant. There's only so much money you can earn and it mean anything. At a certain point it has to become a venture in acquisition of power. What exactly is this power that encourages a person to keep wanting MORE? I imagine it must be nice to know that anything you conceive of, you can make a reality because your resources are limitless. For some, I'm sure it's all about the sense of conquest over others - knowing that other peoples' fates are directly tied to the whims of your moods. It mus feel good to be praised, deservedly or not, simply because no one wants to put you into the wrong mood and thereby cause you to act out in anger - deploy your limitless resources against them. I'm sure that this is what happens with most eccentrically wealthy people than not.

This disturbs me. I believe, like most people, that you should be able to acquire as much wealth as you are capable of WORKING for. When I think about it however, the fact is that no one is capable of earning millions or billions of dollars all on their own; it is impossible. It takes an enterprise of people and resources to develop, distribute and maintain anything that could generate that amount of resources. If that's true, how then is it possible that one person, not everyone involved in developing, distributing and maintaining those products, can become so wealthy? It's simple; the redistribution of the wealth that is generated by the work of the many is lop-sided and skewed towards the benefit of the few/one.

Take for example, Oprah Winfrey. No one can dispute that Oprah is a gifted talk-show host and brilliant business person but think about it; does Oprah actually earn the billions she's worth? The answer is a resounding, NO! It is impossible. There aren't enough hours in the day and she doesn't have enough hands to do everything necessary to earn the income she brings in. Oprah's show, her magazine and every other thing she does, is successful because the work of tons of people. So why is it that as Oprah's business interests became more successful, the people involved in actually making that success possible, didn't all become as rich as Oprah? Again, this is an issue of inequitable redistribution of wealth. Everybody earned it but one person took the lion's share. Most business people would argue that it's her business with her name attached to it - she assumes the lion share of the risks and liability - she should therefore, receive a lion's share of the rewards. I'm sorry but Oprah didn't assume billions of dollars worth of risks and liabilities because she didn't have billions of dollars until the COMPANY earned it. She assumed more risks and liabilities, perhaps, and presumably the original concept of her ventures are her intellectual properties from which everyone involved benefits, but for Oprah to be a billionaire and her workforce to just be "doing well" is inequitable.

Oprah is just an example, and perhaps, a bad example sense she doesn't seem to be like most people who acquire her level of wealth - corrupt. The point I'm trying to make is that there should be some equitable formula for distributing the wealth generated by a successful venture, to everyone involved in making that success possible. The controversial solution I have conceived is to institute a limit on the amount of wealth one person can acquire. There would be many benefits to limiting wealth. First and foremost, it would force the head of the enterprise to give back the wealth earned to the people who earned it while not preventing that person from being adequately rewarded for their own efforts. Some people think that some jobs are so valuable that there shouldn't be a limit to what they can earn but can you think of anything you can do in this world or conceive of, short of an elixir of immortality, that would be worth being payed billions? Another benefit to income limits would be the circulation of money and value of the dollar that is often stifled by the hoarding of money. When a hundred people do the work necessary to earn riches but the vast majority of those riches are rewarded to only ten of them, the circulation of money throughout the economy becomes stifled because ten people will buy less than one hundred people. Therefore, the money sits there waiting for those few people to need it - which they really don't because they have so much. Therefore, more money has to be printed because the money isn't being circulated well enough and as we know, the more money you print, the weaker the value of that money.

A cap on income would also be a direct attack on the corrupt mind-set that develops as a result of having too much wealth and power. Capping income would also force everyone to stay engaged with the "real world" and keep their feet on the ground. Currently, the ultra-wealthy have erected a walled-in world of illusion, elitism and superiority that has them removed from the truth. People are numbers on pages to them. Nature is as valuable as the resources they can extract from it. Suffering is a word used by lazy people, from their perspective. We got to see just how detached from reality this group of people are when the economy collapsed and they had to come to the the "people" for help. They were still paying out multi-million dollar bonuses to each other, booking lavish and unjustified vacations and jetting around in private planes that they could no longer afford to pay for. These people are poster-children for why no one should be able to amass that much wealth. Lastly; there are many things that have exorbitant costs simply because there are people with exorbitant wealth. Back to Oprah for a moment. Oprah vacations, from time to time, in an exclusive hotel in South America where she spends HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars per night for the room! Just hearing such a nonsensical thing irritates the hell out of me. How many people's annual incomes and well being are being thrown away every time she wants go on vacation for a few days? It's ridiculous!

There may be a better way of ensuring the equity of our financial system but I can't think of one. It's sounds ugly but the truth often is. We need caps on income.