Wealth Gap and Corporate Law

I hear a lot about the wealth gap. Here is a link to some information. I am currently not making any claims to its veracity. I am just starting into this subject.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/America/Wealth_Divide.html

I have pondered the concept of a wealth tax. Is this article correct in saying this exists in Europe already? If so, what nations?

My problem with the wealth gap is that it basically begins to create tiers in our economy. The lower wealth people basically become superfluous to the upper class economy, thus separating them from needing to consider lower class jobs and pay scales as part of their own personal finance. Thus you see today, where the economy is tanking, they take little personal responsibility or initiative to fix things. They merely sit on their wealth and wait out the storm, while others suffer.

Still, this solution of a tax is only marginally effective. I am of the opinion that big government and big corporations are basically just two different flavors of the same evil. The real crux of the matter in my opinion is not that some people have great wealth, but that we have a system that encourages the accumulation of great wealth into the hands of a small minority. This is the result of the protection of corporate law, which allows massive assets to be handled by relatively few, and protects their personal assets from being effected. Couple this with the lack of ability for workers to influence the company they work for, and what you essentially have is almost feudalistic. Instead of owning the land, the corporations own the job market. The people become job tenants. Democracy has been circumvented by corporate law.

The solution for that is that part and parcel of forming a corporation should be distributing stock to each and every employee. The more employees, the more stock should be owned by employees, until a company comes to the point where it is no longer controlled by the original owners, but by the mass of employees.

I am wondering where people stand on ideas of this nature.

Another interesting link.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/housing/2006-11-24-luxury-homes-usat_x.htm

billwald said:

This situation will never be changed without a shooting revolution which will be impossible because we don't know whom to hang. The rich people who are in the public's eye are mostly new rich with paper assets and so far down the food chain that they don't matter.

Second, because the old people control the money and the old people always vote. Nothing since the Russian Revolution, maybe the French Revoliution has reversed the flow of assets from the working class to our real owners.


because our

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Dang, the Men in Black came and got her mid sentence!

I hear you, and to an extent I suppose I agree, but given the slow and steady progress of the past few centuries, it is up in the air to me. I also have the disadvantage of believing in a religious apocalypse too though...

Still, as long as we still have elected officials, I feel obliged to try for some reason. I mean, why not?

What you've illustrated is a slow drain of money away from the wealthy and their progeny, which is sort of the opposite of my concern. Even if it took a few generations, if money did tend to flow back into the general economy I might be tempted to think it was not a big deal, but it does not. They don't spend that money they take out of their excess. The use it to buy up things and then force the rest of us to pay a premium that increases their already bloated savings. When hard times hit and people can no longer afford to pay, rather than risking any significant outflow of their resources trying to reignite the economy, they sit on it and wait for everyone else to get desperate enough so that wages go down to match the reduction in the economy as a whole.

Coupled with the fact that the recent economic downturn is the direct result of criminally negligent behavior on the part of many very wealthy people in the housing industry, I think it is long past time to start looking for culprits and stop giving the crooks handouts. In the meantime, all of the wealthy should be paying wealth taxes at the very least until unemployment starts going down again. The wealth should be given out as checks to taxpayers below a specific wage, say 120k families and 60k individuals, scaled so that the poorest get more than the people closer to the upper limit.

"Oh, it's so unfair, taking form the rich to give to the poor!" So is the economy tanking because smug overpaid administrators wrecked the global economy.

"It rewards laziness!" How industrious do you have to be to cook up a scheme where people's house payments increase after two years, you repossess their house and resell ad nauseum? Too bad you can't sell for a profit when your own stupid scheme causes the economy to tank because so much wealth has been sucked into so few hands that no one is left that can pay for the houses you're trying to flip continually.

Ultimately we're on about the same problem, but I think the regulation has to go towards things like corporate law, and that if any of it is tax related it needs to go instantly back out into the economy, not to government programs.

They work for another billion in many cases out of greed, in some cases out of motivation, but in all cases because they consider the extra power for some reason important.

I can't imagine how you got a positive spin on Bill Gates! LOL. Caught red handed trying to monopolize the internet.

But as far as going deeper than money, that's true. Point being, the money portion can still be addressed. There is no compelling reason to just sit by and allow people to amass wealth that puts the entire world economy in danger. Money is for circulating, not for hording. If you want to save, save goods, not cash and stocks and so forth. Heck, even saving goods can get ridiculous after a while.

We have the same land as we had when the economy was good. We have food, water... people enough to provide all the essentials and more. What we lack is a willing investor, so by necessity we should begin to motivate them to invest even if it is against their will.

In the long run it is as much to their benefit as everyone else, to avoid cataclysm and worldwide chaos. The whole situation is transparent, and would be silly if it were not so serious.

AMOG said:

I disagree with the post above that says those making 100k a year and less will never pay off the house/cars/credit cards still tithe, etc. That happens ALL the time. Go listen to Dave Ramseys Radio show. It isn't easy, but man is it good for you.

That said, I hear a lot of people here carping about how the system is unfair. Really? If you live in the USA why not just start your own company. That's how those bright folks who move here get wealthy in less then one generation. Open a resturant, a convenience store, a dry cleaners. ALL of those business routinely produce first generation millionaires. The government owes you nothing but a chance to get out there on your own and succeed.

For those of you in other countries... move to the US, start a business, thrive off those lazy Americans who can't figure out how to rise above their company pay grade.

Sorry if I'm harsh, but there is no excuse for not doing it if you want it bad enough. Oh, yeah, you do have to work. Hard. Sorry about that.

Read "The Millionaire Next Door" if you don't believe me.

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I used to think as you do, AGOG. Certainly any complaint against the status quo can begin to come across as leftist, but I am not up for money being taken by the government and given to those who are not even willing to work.

Still, unemployment is growing daily. Even in good times, just opening a restaurant is not something that tends to make people "1st generation millionaires". Furthermore, if we are to speak of things owed and things not owed, no one owes their labor to those who own resources. A society that seeks to enslave its population by withholding necessities unless you work for someone else, granting them the lion's share of the fruit of a laborer's efforts, repeatedly invites revolution of one sort or another. This own country has repeatedly returned to that method, from slavery to the company store to the modern exportation of slavery to places like China, where we pretend there's nothing anyone can do about how the Chinese treat their people even as we simultaneously destroy our own economy again by stratifying incomes and classes due to making use of their insanely low wages.

I've been in business for myself, I have worked for others, and I have seen exactly what the problem is. People look at what is unfair and unacceptable and just shut their eyes to it.

The economy should be structured around rewarding fair work for fair wages. It should not be specifically designed as a lottery that automatically pushes wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

In exchange for corporate protection against liability, all corporations should have, built into the law governing incorporation itself, a method for the workers to look at the books and negotiate as a group for their wages and benefits. People should not have to pay organized labor extortion just to be able to negotiate on an equal footing with the board. We are all of us equals, and no one deserves some sort of inside track where business policy is concerned.

It has to be said from time to time that America's system is a good system, AGOG, and I agree, but what has happened recently ought to convince even the most stubbornly conservative that things could still be improved, and should be.

That's where I am heading anyhow, as my thoughts develop over the years.

It seems immoral to me to doom those of below average intelligence to poverty. I believe what has been lacking for generations now is a proper professional class whose interests truly dovetail with those of the common man.

This begins to go back to things billwald has said concerning morals, but I am not convinced the time is now come to simply give up on the possibility of a revival of sorts concerning Christianity and morality.

Spooky to me, actually, to see someone so up front about their lack of concern for others simply on the basis of intelligence. Need to collect more quotes like this. It proves a certain point about the attitude of the upper classes that needs to be reiterated, as so many claim that there is this nobility to rich that is somehow innate, as if we all owe our own well being to them.

oldwiseguy said:

Wow. Lots of assumptions here.

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I don't think so. Part of the marketing even to the wealthy is a continual droning of how, "you deserve it." I think it's incredibly obvious that there is no good reason at all for anyone to be making even ten times the average wages, much less the hundreds, and even thousands of times the average, let alone amassing the wealth that so deeply tips our political and justice systems over into injustice.

AMOG said:

there are PLEANTY of good reasons for one person to make WAY more then another person. The person who takes the RISK should reap the reward. The person with the tallent to take a team to the SuperBowl deserves to reap the rewards of his sacrifice and dedication to his sport. The person who can pull the same thing off in business deserves the money he/she makes.

If a CEO can add billions in value to a company he/she deserves millions in compensation. If you think just anybody could do it you are terribly nieve.

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CEO's do not add billions to anything. Their best ideas still require the team to execute. Transparency and record keeping would show that much like a football team, if you don't have the talent, you can't pull off the win. We also need to realize that in a society we do not have the luxury of only providing for the most excellent among us.

There is no safty net for stupidity. At least there shouldn't be.

I also firmly belive that a worker should be paid in alignment with what the market will bear. In other words, if I can find someone willing to do the job for 5 dollars an hour, why should I pay someone else 10 for the SAME OUTPUT?

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Because the Lord has told us this is not acceptable behavior.

Mal 3:5

5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages , the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.
KJV

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James 5:1-6
5:1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

4 Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth : and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.

5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
KJV

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Not to mention a whole slew of Sabbath days and sabbath year laws, the Jubile, etc.

It's not acceptable to treat people in this way. The economy exists for people, not the other way around. Money is printed and laws passed for the benefit of us all, not to be gamed so that a paltry few have power far beyond their due.