Political Memes

It's fantastic for local economies. It's HORRIBLE for big capital though.

The average American drives up to 3000 miles a year just commuting back and forth to and from work. That's tires and gasoline and oil changes and engine work. It's also new cars every few years so the vehicle stays reliable. It's a massive chunk of corporate revenue.

And that worker also needs to eat out, usually settling on fast food, that worker also needs work clothes and supplies, and the offices they work in require massive investment in cleaning, upkeep, computer networking, air conditioning, and so on.

Most of this is done through major corporate companies and that money goes overseas or into huge mega-companies which send it all to some central financial institution that doesn't pay taxes.

Meanwhile, in Work From home environments, you save money and put that money back into your immediate surroundings, which are usually nearby stores. You drive less, and less cars on the road mean less pollution, less wear on the roads and less expenditures from the state. Lower insurance premiums with less driving, and people are generally healthier because they have more time to do things like daily walks before the sun goes down, or cook healthier meals from local markets, leading to healthier people less medical expenses in the long run.

"work"

No no no, when you ask them, they work 200 hours a week. Each of them. At the very least!

Hours.

Huey Long campaigned on a wealth cap back in the 30's on his 'Share our wealth' platform. The excess wealth taxed at 100% was to be used for essentially a universal basic income (Each person to receive the equivalent of $38k yearly).

He was assassinated. The rich elite of Louisiana and the Oil companies he massively increased state taxes on to fund his public programs rejoiced.

Ken Burn's first documentary was on Huey Long, highly worth a watch.

Putting a hard cap on the ratio between the highest and the lowest paid workers in any organisation would help as well.

Alright, let's run a quick model.

Let's say the upper cap is $1000k.

You are a CEO and you get a salary of, say, $10k, plus 1000 shares, each worth $1. So, in total, that year your worth is $120k + $1000 = $121k.

Now, you're incredibly successful as a CEO, you make your shareholders drool for your company's shares. Which makes their price skyrocket. Each share is now worth $1000! Such success!

But wait! No! Catastrophe!

Your worth has just gone up to $120k + $1000k! The share's value on their own hits the upper limit of wealth!

They're not your money, mind you, you can't do anything with them unless you cash them in, sell them.

So, you have two choices - you stop getting any salary and have $0 for spending (hopefully the office cafeteria is well stocked!), or you sell some shares, give the money to charity, and pray the stock price doesn't go up. And if it does, you have to sell again, lose the money, and... oh, but now you no longer hold a controlling interest in your own company - some three dudes who work together bought up the shares, spread them around evenly (so neither of them goes above the $1000k), and they effectively control your own company, telling you what to do with it.

Companies shouldn’t be able to have over, say 1000 employees either.

So, instead of having some large companies, you end up with chains of "totally not the same" companies that just work together. "Oh, we've outsourced our HR to company X, which is Totally Not The Same as our company, they just don't work with anybody else and we have full data transparency with them."

Agreed. Fixing our issues has nothing to do with invading Greenland and Venezuela, but is entirely to do with the redistribution of wealth.

Make one simple change to capitalism: put in. A constitutional hard cap on personal wealth. Anything income or gift or whatever over 1 million goes 100% to taxes

You don't understand where the vast majority of the wealthiest's wealth comes from. There's no "income" or "gift" at that level, it's just the fact that they own things that are becoming more valuable over time. The vast majority of the increase in these people's wealth over time is newly-created; it's value that literally didn't exist before, not an amount of cash money taken away from anyone else.

Speaking of value: net worth is just a valuation, a price tag. It's the market saying "I would pay you $X for a share of this if you sold it". If I buy a rookie baseball card for $5 and the player becomes famous for whatever reason and my card is now worth $100 because the demand significantly increased, my net worth increased by $95, but no one was deprived of $95 to make that so.

A hard cap on wealth is effectively legislating that if something you already own becomes too valuable, you're not allowed to continue owning it anymore. And any sensible person should understand why that makes zero sense.

I have a 35-hour week with flexible hours so I could put it in 3 days if I wished. That seems awful to me though, I can't really focus on my work anymore after 6 hours. All a matter of perspective I guess.

It also gives people more time to organize, work a side gig to pull themselves out of poverty, or go to school for the same reason. Can’t have any of that

They are reusable.