Greed

Greed is not good. Greed leads to more and more greed because the rich want to be richer, or become the richest. The quest to be the richest is almost criminal and most bend the rules to obtain the greatest profit. The rich lose touch with the overall effects of capitalism and fail to understand that every million dollars they make is a thousand dollars that a thousand other people lose. To say greed is good is like saying that suffering is good, or crime is good, or war is good.

Greed has gotten so excessive that 47% of our nation’s wealth is in the hands of the top one percent of our population. The only solution that I can envision to limit greed is to outlaw excessive greed. I think it entirely reasonable to annually restrict the richest individuals from keeping any more than 100 times the minimum wage. That is not proposing socialism, for socialism proposes that everyone be paid the same. 100 times the minimum wage rewards individuals who are especially valuable. 100 times a minimum wage of $5 an hour would be $500 an hour, which equals a salary of $1 million a year. If someone made more than that in a year, they would have to give the rest to the government. An excessively greedy person would loose any incentive for doing anything vaguely criminal, since they would have to give up the money anyway. That would help to eliminate corporate greed, because it levels everyone at the top. Anyone who tried to cheat and keep more than that limit, would loose all of their savings and could be dropped to working for the minimum wage, so they could experience the other end of the pay scale.

For those that say $1 million a year is not enough incentive to make the best executives achieve more, I say that the focus for them should be other than greed. Corporation could pay their workers more, making them more popular. Corporations could pay larger dividends, making them more famous and spreading out the wealth, instead of concentrating it to a select few. Those that ended up giving millions to the government could be viewed as the greatest benefactors of our nation.

For those that feel they couldn’t live on $1 million a year; they would be forced to try to increase the minimum wage. If the minimum wage was $6 an hour, the richest could keep $1.2 million a year. If the minimum wage was $10 an hour (something closer to a living wage), the richest could keep $2 million a year. If this law came to pass, suddenly the richest individuals would be working very hard to raise the minimum wage, instead of trying to keep it down. Also, if the minimum wage were a wage that people could live on, more people would be willing to work. Note: For the greedy that need $1 billion a year, they would need to raise the minimum wage to $5000 an hour, so that they could get 100 times that amount, $500,000 an hour. That is the amazingly greedy goal of the super rich.

Why 100 times as much? Because 100 times as much as the minimum wage would mean that the richest would earn in one year, what the poorest earn in a lifetime or two. To me, that is about as much as I can imagine as reasonable. Any more surely must be a definition of greed.

What would the government do with all of that additional money? Those that had to give up that money might have a check-off box with a few choices as to where they would like the money to be spent. Health care, education, budget deficit reduction would be a good starting point. Perhaps funding of renewable energy sources, cleaning up the environment, and funding more scientific projects would also be something to invest in. In addition, how the government spent the money would need to be publicized, to prevent corruption. Without the criminal motivation of greed, intelligent decisions would be more likely to occur.

     Although there would be problems in an income limit, many of those problems might bring benefits, i.e. some doctors would make less, but they might be sued less; drug patents might end sooner, so new drugs might cost less. Perhaps we would spend less on the military (Can anyone tell me why the most powerful nation, which spends more on the military than all other nations combined, needs newer jets, newer submarines, and space based weapons? The only answer I come up with is fear fomented by greed.).

I realize that this “simple solution” for greed is not a perfect one. But if fifty of the best minds went to work on it, then I think it can succeed. I also want to point out that this idea will face tremendous opposition, by the forces of greed. Whenever someone criticizes this solution, just keep asking yourself, why does anyone need to make more than $500 an hour? Also remember that doing nothing will allow the top one percent to accumulate even more than 47% of the wealth, leaving the other 99% of us to share an ever shrinking piece of the pie.

Greed is not good. It is a disease that we need to find a cure for, as that disease is contagious, out of control, and causing tremendous harm to our nation and our world.