The Maximum Wage

The Maximum Wage

There was a time when the American dream meant a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Remember, we are a nation of immigrants, many of whom came to this country with little more than the clothes on their back. For them, it was enough to build a safe life where their children would never face the hardships that brought them to our shores. That was the American dream.

Today, however, the American Dream is one of mansions and private planes. It is a dream of wealth, fame and power so limitless that it can never, actually be achieved. This dream has created a new generation of Robber Barons who are willing to do almost anything, destroy the environment, enslave workers in the most oppressive conditions, and even start wars in order to add one more million to their already bloated bank accounts. And we have allowed them to do it.

It’s time for that to end.

For years, we have had a minimum wage in this country. I think we need a maximum wage as well.

I propose that we limit income (salary and bonuses) to one million dollars a year. That’s it. That’s all you can make. I don’t care if you’re a big movie star, a baseball player or the president of Pepsi. One million. No more.

Does this sound un-American to you? Does it stink of socialism or communism? Well, how American is it to have people going to bed hungry? To have parents working two and three jobs to pay for their children’s medical expenses? How American is it to support dictators and fight wars over oil?

Does this mean I’m against people getting rich? Absolutely not. I believe that success, hard work and innovation should be rewarded. If you bring a company from bankruptcy to solvency, write the great American novel or design a better mousetrap you should definitely make good money.

The question is, “how much money, is good money?” Right now, according to our society, the answer to that question is, “as much as you can possibly get.”

The truth is one million dollars a year is a shitload of money. It’s enough for mansions and Rolls Royces and first class trips around the world. In other words, you’re going to be just fine.

But there are a lot of people making one hell of a lot more than that. For instance, over the last three years, the top 5 executives at 20 financial institutions (all of whom received bailout money) had combined compensations of over 3.2 Billion dollars. Do the math. That’s 100 guys averaging over ten million a year whose companies were inches away from bankruptcy.

All I’m suggesting is that they get a pay cut from dirty, stinking, ridiculously rich down to just very, very rich.

We stand at the brink of both economic and environmental collapse. We are all going to have to make sacrifices and if that means that some CEO is going to have to settle for last year’s Lear Jet then so be it.

So what am I suggesting here? Am I talking about massive taxes or automatic garnishing of the wages of millionaires? No. All I’m suggesting is a simple salary cap. How the company chooses to spend the millions they will be saving is up to them.

But, here are a few suggestions.

Lower your prices.

Sick of all those fees your bank is charging you? What about your cellphone bill or cable company? How about the interest rate on your credit card that just skyrocketed? You can’t afford to pay for health care but the CEO of your insurance provider can afford to buy his own private island.

Pay your employees more.

In 1981 the average CEO made 42 times more than his average employee. Today that average is 431 to 1. WalMart CEO H. Lee Scott received $29.7 million in 2007, which is 1,314 times the salary of the average Walmart employee. And, of course, those are American wages. If you compared CEO salaries to offshore employees where wages are often set at pennies an hour, those ratios would be in the tens of thousands.

Treat your employees better

And it’s not just salaries. We’ve heard the excuse over and over, “We can’t afford to give our employees health care/Better working conditions/child care, etc. Well, we’ve just put a few extra million dollars in your coffers to do just that. And again, the offshore situation is far worse. Although I wont go so far as to say that we use slave labor to build our products, it’s not that far from the truth. Policies which we would find abhorrent in the US, child labor, unsafe conditions, massive hours etc. are common practices at American run companies all over the world.

Treat the environment better

Again, we’ve heard the excuse, “We can’t afford to clean up our factories.” Well, I for one believe that if you’re taking home 20 million dollars and you’re still poisoning our planet, you’re not trying hard enough.

Be a better citizen

If corporations are to be given all the rights of a citizen (as the supreme court just mistakenly ruled) then it’s time for them to take on the responsibilities of a citizen. None of us live in isolation. We all have a shared duty to take care of our communities, our children, our planet and our people.

You might say that the maximum wage would only provide a small fraction of the funds we need to solve the massive problems of our time and you’d probably be right. However, this isn’t just about the money. It’s about the motivation. With salaries capped, our business leaders can no longer benefit from some of the destructive and dangerously short sighted policies they have used in the past.

These are people in positions of tremendous power and power, as we all know, corrupts. We cannot eliminate the consequences of that corruption but we can, at least, rein in the rewards.

The truth is I believe in capitalism. I believe that hard work, innovation, and even good luck should be rewarded but I also believe that the unrestrained quest for wealth is dangerous and if we’re not careful it might just transform the American Dream into the American Nightmare.