Really?

You think that restructuring society is a better option than paying people more? Have we become so conditioned to the lie that employers can’t pay people better that it’s inconceivable that they ever would/could?

Corporate profits are at an all time high, as is the stock market. Perhaps smaller businesses would be less able to increase their employees’ pay, but the national companies could pay their people enough to live on those numbers. They choose not to, because there’s nothing stopping them from doing it. If I remember right, Wal-Mart could pay all its workers $15 an hour and it would cost them 1% of their revenues.

What I would agree with is that expecting employers to *voluntarily* pay their people that much is unrealistic. My question is, why is changing that less possible than restructuring society to make it cheaper to live?

To answer your question: 1) Tax income over $1,000,000 a year at 50%. 2) Eliminate the “capital gains” category and tax investment profits at the same rate as the wages of a guy flipping burgers at McDonald’s. 3) Use the increased tax revenue to pay for universal health care, subsidized housing, subsidized job training, and cash assistance to the working poor. 4) Limit executive pay to 100 times what the lowest paid worker is getting, so if they pay someone minimum wage (about $15,000 a year) then they themselves can make $1.5M in total compensation (salary, stock options, bonus, EVERYTHING that the executive earns as a result of his/her employment). $1.5M is plenty of money. If they want more, they can pay people more. (Also, make it impossible to play shell-game corporate shenanigans to cheat the system. Base it on assets received from all sources.) 5) Re-institute the draft and make it very clear that the children of the rich and powerful will not be exempt, so there’s less chance that we’ll invade some oil-rich country on a pretext, and we can quit paying so much for the military. Use the savings to pay down the national debt (the majority of which at the moment is a result of two “wars” started on a pile of lies wrapped in the flag.)