Do you think there should be a cap on the amount of money a person can make either per hour, year, or total worth? For example, should somebody be able to make a few million or even as high as a few billion dollars a year or should there be a maximum wage where 100% of what you make that is higher than a certain amount goes straight to taxes? Those who know me will not be surprised that I would be 100% opposed to this.
I am opposed to both. Well at least the latter. As for the former I'm split. Minimum wage is nothing more then a feel good policy. The fact is you should be paid based on your skills. When you put a cap on how little someone can earn, all you do is increase the cost of product. When minimum wage goes up, so does everything else. It's how the business compensates. I'm somewhat for minimum wage and believe what Clinton did was a good thing (Everyone take note here: I do give Democrats credit where credit is due), but every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Sure minimum wage is good for working adults... but how many working adults actually work at McDonalds all their life? All minimum wage does is allow teens to be paid the same wage as adults in the same job, and working with teens I know they don't do near the work an adult does. Because of the teen who has no one to support, the adult gets 1. less hours or 2. less wage. If there is a minimum wage it should only apply to working adults. As for the cap... screw it. If congress wants money, they can take a pay cut and not take it from the rich.
Let's try to keep this on the topic of Maximum Wage though. I made a thread about minimum wage a while back that you can feel free to reply to if you want to elaborate more on that: http://www.generalforum.com/law-political-theory/minimum-wage-good-bad-54960.html
Ok I misread it. There should be no limit to the wealth someone makes. As I mentioned earlier if the government wants money, they can take a pay cut. No one can make too much money. This farce that people who make too much money are somehow steeling it and/or corrupt haven't seen what Uncle Sam is doing to you and your paycheck apparently If you want to talk about greed, one only needs to look at Washington.
So wait... you're telling me that Salary Caps in Sports arent a reflection of this? I mean I can see a resemblance, obviously they arent identical to what was mentioned in the OP but I can loosely see a correlation. Professional Athletes make an absurd amount of money, is it fair? I can recall Manny Ramirez just recently pissing off a lot of people for complaining / throwing a fit over not getting that extra few million on his salary... while the rest of America is suffering through a Recession. Are you telling me that the people who were outraged by that wouldnt be willing to support some sort of concept that would put a hamper on greedy people like that who have made enough money over their career that they dont absolutely need / deserve the amount of money they'll be making next season? Im being serious here... when I see myself struggling to pay for college... and just a Months chunk of his Salary would not only put me all the way through college, but still pay for books and help pay off my truck loan and yet he's complaining that he's not making enough? I can see a case being made off situations like that.
You do realize that at one point in American history there was a 92% income tax on the highest tax bracket, right? I think some people would have found this very divisive. I don't know why you don't think this is a valid issue. I hear people all the time saying things about people who win the lottery, for example like "These people shouldn't be able to win more than $x dollars", or that CEO's of huge companies shouldn't be able to make as much money as they do. The reality is that there are people who support a 100% tax for anything over a certain amount.
I've voted a conditional "yes", because I've been thinking about this lately. I think your salary should reflect the amount of and type of work you do --> Harder work should be paid more. The people that should be making the most money are those who risk their very lives on a daily basis (police officers, front-line infantry, firemen) and creative/extremely skilled positions (doctors, lawyers, etc.) While entertainment is important, it drives me nuts that an athlete plays games for $100,000,000, and a police officer dies for $50,000. There is just something wrong with that.
Wouldn't the solution be to not become a police officer then? If enough people decide to go into other professions instead of becoming police officers then police salaries will have to go up in order to balance supply and demand. Although I do agree with you on that concept at least. Police officers, firefighters, soldiers, etc should be paid more than they are. That is one thing I would be ok with raising taxes for (assuming all the wasteful spending was cut first, and then we probably wouldn't have to raise taxes to pay these public servants more anyway because there would be so much excess). And as for being paid more if your work is hard, that would pretty much kill the "Work smarter, not harder" mentality. Innovation would be dead in the water while people in warehouses made $100,000 a year. Why innovate and become an entrepreneur if you can make more money doing grunt work? I think people should be paid as much as the job is worth. Just because a job is hard doesn't make it worth more and just because a job is easy doesn't make it worth less. Worth has to do with supply and demand. If there is a big demand, and a low supply, the job will pay more and vise versa.
Absolutely 100% no. I am fundamentally against placing caps on wages, and minimums for that matter. The market should set the price for how much people earn.
No there should be no limit on how much a person could potentially earn. There is a big difference, what the OP suggests is personal income, whilst sports salary caps are corporate wage limits. Nobody tells a sports person that they can not earn over a certain amount. Even with salary caps, they are free to earn as much as they like, it is only the companies that employ them who are told that for them to remain in *insert federation* that their total salaries can not excedd X amount.
