SilverBoat
Posts: 257
Joined: 7/26/2006
Status: offline
|
There have been some interesting and reasonably sound experiments on how people and groups perceive "fairness", and on how they act to impose fairness if they can see how to do that, using various methods to reward cooperative fairness, and to punish cheaters. (Many links were posted in other threads, I forget which ones.)
IMHO, the best compromise of ethics, practice, durability, etc involves setting some baseline for work-and-income that provides a comfortable living for consciencious labor. Sure, sorting out the ranges of ability from ranges of effort could take some doing; how much more or less does a back-woods IQ-80 moron who busts his ass digging ditches 60-hrs/wk deserve in comparison to a silver-spoon IQ-150 dilettante who spends 2-hrs/day tweaking his portfolio? Where do the rest of us, clerks, drivers, engineers, surgeons, teachers, and undertakers fit on that spectrum?
One canard that needs quashing is that there ever is or can be so-called equal-opportunity. Some people simply don't and won't ever have the smarts to perceive the opportunities that other people take for granted. A modest leveling of expectations is all that's really possible. And then there's that whole "entitlement" jiujitsu that the rightwing-wealthy (whose mindset holds themselves as entitled to wealth and power by virtue of superior breeding, aggression, etc) have foisted off as a curse-word onto the mandatory-insurance programs that hundred-millions of less fortunate people were forced to support with payroll taxes.
The only equitable, egalitarian, politics-as-the-art/science-of-the-possible solution, IMHO, is that will always be some differences in income, some of those obviously or arguably less fair than others. The best we'll be able to do is to impose some constraints that keep matters fair-enough to function. Since increased income and wealth provide more leverage to further concentrate income and wealth, control-theory suggests that a progressive negative-feedback is the only workable solution, since the 'markets' for all that obviously don't provide a stable long-term self-regulation.
Here's what I'd suggest: Peg an initial upper-limit on income taxes (on all income/profits/gains/etc) of 50%. Peg a lower-limit those income-taxes at 0% per individual/couple/dependents/etc that's proportioned (probably a small multiple) to poverty-level cost-of-living. That would roughly balance the current US budget. Tweak the upper percentage if needed. Any corporate income retained is taxed as above, any paid as dividends sums on the recepients' returns. Simplicity, transparency. And a 1000% tariff on contracted lobbying of elected officials or gov't employees, all payments to be public record, online, same-day. Same for campaign contributions in cash or kind. No charge for constituent contact with their elected.
Yeah, that simplification would put (hundred?) thousands of lawyers and lobbists out of work, but there's always ditches that need digging somewhere ...
|
RE: Income inequality - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread