What do you think about the maximum wage and do you think we should bring it back?

14 comments

1. Wut?

2. I didn’t know we had this before.

   Added- We’d have to decide what a reasonable maximum wage would be… different cities have different costs of living.

   I think I’d much rather have some sort of limit for what an executive makes compared to the lowest paid workers in the same company. Like CEOs can’t be making hundreds of millions of dollars while the lowest paid worker only makes 10 thousand dollars a year.

3. I’m more of a land value tax guy.

4. No. Bad idea.

   First of all, is this only for wages, or does everyone’s money get capped? I’m assuming this means all income? Either way it’s wrong, but it would be ironic if you are only capping wage workers as some sort of vengence against rich people.

   Second, what happens if someone runs a business profiting above the cap. Do they just have to give that difference to the government? If that were the case, I would downsize and lay people off until I was right at the capped amount. It would be less work to oversee, and could be less risk depending on the business. If I’m making the same amount, then why should I do more? Ironically, this would reduce taxable income and the government would get less money.

   Third. There would be no incentive to grow a business past the cap. Smaller businesses looking to grow would no longer consider it. This means less economic output.

   Fourth, this is just simply taking people’s money. It isn’t a portion of the product of their labor being given as taxes. It is saying all product of your labor past X amount is now ours. It is morally wrong.

5. Heck no!

   Maximum wage (aka wage freeze) is how we screwed up health care in the US. Companies paid for health insurance in order to entice workers to work for them. They couldn’t give more pay because wages were frozen.

6. Bad idea. Stop coveting the wealth of others.

7. Let’s focus on getting a decent minimum wage first

8. Ludicrous proposal that would just be circumvented by accounting.

9. Bring it “back”? We never had a maximum wage. Ridiculous tax rates — as ridiculous as they are — are not wage caps. No, the idea of limiting how much an American can achieve is not something we should seriously legislate.

10. Bad. Discourages innovation

11. No, that’s a really dumb idea that we don’t need here.

12. Seems to me, if we did, there’d just be some legal end-run. Like “that extra million is an annual bonus,not wages” or paying in stock that’s immediately cashed in.

13. No. Terrible idea.

14. For CEOs, sure.