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Let’s Set a Maximum Wage for the Rich | The Tyee
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One of the challenges is of course that the wealthy don't get paid. They own and control assets that appreciate in value.
What if we ended private ownership of businesses. I don't mean ending ownership of businesses, but that every business became publicly tradeable. No more private ownership of businesses.
I'm not actually advocating this (yet), just curious what people think would happen if we did this.
The same as now
The people that own it privately will have controlling public shares. Can’t force them to sell at a given value and if you did they would just have a diverse portfolio that they swap between each other
I think finding a private company that brings people the levels we are talking about here are not an issue
Profit sharing works better, after x earned, everything is divided up between workers
Taxing profits is a good idea but they'll figure out some creative accounting to avoid making them.
I think we just need to straight up take ownership of a portion their shares that increases based on how little tax they are paying.
What i said is closer to what you are saying than it is to taxes
Enshittifcation would be mandatory via forced infinite growth to profit shareholders.
Instead, we can make the employees up to middle management and lower own a minimum of 60% shares of every company that way they're not constantly getting fucked and they actually have a voice.
I would have 100% of voting shares be inalienably attached to all workers in the firm. Non-voting preferred stock can continue to be free floating property rights @canada
If employees own 60% then they should invest 60% of a company capital.
They are. With their time, whether that probationary or goes away if you do + some other obvious grey areas. This whole "business owners are taking all the risk so they have more money they can ever spend" nonsense is costing us, costing the government, and costing the environment. Shit has got to go.
Open your own business.
I wasn't born with money stolen via exploitation. Not an option for me and 95% of the planet.
You don't need much money to open a business. You just need to pay a small fee to register a company, anyone can manage that.
Does this small fee include cushion money for not turning a profit in years?
Wut?
On average, businesses do not even break even for 18 months, and don't turn a profit for 2 or 3 years, up to 5 for restaurants if they don't fail. How should I pay for things during this time? What happens if I fail, where does the money come from to take care of any debts from taking out loans for the business as that would be the only way for me to achieve the amount of money required to do this?
It's not the same playing field, and to act like it is is just ignorant.
Too bad for you, I guess.
Agreed, but it could be better everyone and I hope you also strive to make that happen. Take care
Not sure if that would really lead to any significant change. Most billionaires "own" publicly traded companies. In fact, most billionaires became billionaires when their companies initiated an IPO.
The problem is that rich people can use their stock as collateral for huge untaxable loans. What we need to do is figure out a way to classify and tax these loans without taxing things like mortgages.
imho I think this is the wrong way to go - there are some companies out there that continue to exist and thrive because they're not jerked around by shareholders. Valve, being a great example.
tax the fuck out of every asset imho, but no private business? eehhhh extreme solution that doesn't really fix the problems.
Probably better to limit ownership to directly interested parties, like workers and maybe customers
There's something to be said for mandatory stock awards to all employees (with no contractor sub-contractor loopholes) calculated to enforce a controlling interest among current staff.
Of course, arguably, I just described a union with more steps.
Edit: I think this won't necessarily need to be mandatory, after current shareholders wise up that their current crop of CEO's aren't actually serving their interests.
But, if it works, there's an argument to be made for making something mandatory to set a baseline expectation for human decency.
Which I suppose amounts to crowd-sourcing to staff things not currently handled by OSHA.