Forum Post: 9-9-9 ? HELL NO. Do you want to pay off the national debt? Do you want a level playing field? Do you want to see prosperity for all? Well then consider 20 20 20 it’s not what you think and will hit the abusers right where they live, while starting to heal
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 31, 2011, 12:07 p.m. EST by DKAtoday
(33802)
from Coon Rapids, MN
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
20 20 20 is: A concept for health and stability. It goes as follows.
In any business and every business. Public and Private.
1st level management can not be paid ( make ) more than 20% more than the lowest paid employee.
Middle management can not be paid ( make ) more than 20% more than the lowest paid 1st level manager.
Executive management can not be paid ( make ) more than 20% more than the lowest paid middle manager.
All profit sharing must be paid out using the same format. Bonuses, incentives what ever you want to call them. Stock, Bonds, cash etc.
Owners of Business’s that fall outside of this formula as well as the individuals that fall outside the scale can be dealt with as appropriate by the IRS. Those making less than they should ( by the scale ) could be given credit. Those making more than they should ( by the scale ) could be taxed on a 50 cents per dollar for the amount they receive that is over scale. Penalties received by the IRS could be placed into Social Security as well as being used to pay down the deficit. After all how much does one individual need to make in a year. By evening the scale you place more income into a wider base, the wider base is then able to spend more money on other things than just keeping a roof over their head and food in their stomach. More money being spent by a vastly larger percent of the population on consumer goods. Hence greater prosperity for business, greater prosperity for all.
This type of scenario is truly nonsense. It doesn't take into account the job profile.
For instance, let's look at McDonal'ds: Minimum Wage: $7.25
Working Full Time @ Min Wage: $21,112 1st Line Managers: $25,334 2nd Line Managers: $30,401 CEO: $36,480
Look ma, McDonalds failed overnight.
$13920 full time ayear @ Maci and not $21,112
Consider the money McDonalds takes in right now, quarterly profits etc.. If you fairly distribute it, the incomes you relate above are unrealistically low. Why should minimum wage be $7.25/hr. any job that needs a full time worker should pay a living wage.
The problem with the your reply here DKAtoday, is that you're only looking at one very narrow example, rather then the entire system you're proposing. McDonalds only makes the money it does today because there ARE no systems like this in place. McDonalds could only make a fraction of what it could today under a system like the one proposed, and it certianly wouldn't have the room to spread the way it has today (not that this is undesirable). However, trying to take an example from today's economy and make it work in a hypothetical scenario with this system is pointless, because the system described here so different as to invalidate any example you could borrow or try to modify to make it fit here.
Further, after a day's thought about such a system, I fail to see how this proposed system could do anything more then promote Classism..... Not everybody can be CEOs, or Managers.... Most will ahve to be front line grunts. So what happens when the Managers who are making more, even though its capped, accumulate so much that they seperate themselves from the grunts and abuse them (Indeed as is the case today with the current system, just radically more polarized)? Really, this system seems to be just an oversimplified Band-aid version of the current system, with very little real value, particularly as it does not address any kind of Resource Cognizance/Management, or has any provisions for the inevitable inequality it would create..... And I could go so far as to Posit that ANY plan that has 3#'s in the title, will probably suffer the same problems....
We already live in a class society. The proposal looks to provide fairness. If you can't relate to the McDonalds example, you should check into the real life example of Anderson Window and see how they (employers/employees) feel about their set-up.
Im sorry my reply seems to have gone over your head, as you appear to have failed to understand the context of what Im saying..... Ill say it again, NO real Life Example will work when tried to be fit into the very narrow box of the above proposal. Because, no matter what SINGLE company you look at, the above system isn't about SINGLE companies, its about the ENTIRE system, and EVERY company and EVERY person in the nation. If everyone makes the same wage, nobody can out-pay each other. At face value this seems like a good thing, but the problems it invokes are despicable. No free market, no financial competition, you end up dependent on a Communist (IE, everyones equal in the eyes of the state) dictatorial (The state will have to make descions in lieu of the people having any real power, in this case particularly financial) system for the evolution of goods, technology, and the social well being, and for an example of how well that works, go study Mother Russia's little bout of Communism through majority of the 20th Century.
Further, the problem with this red herring, is that the Current MONEY system CAUSED OUR GRIEVANCES IN THE FIRST PLACE! Why do I want to try to modify the current system? I DON"T! I want a New System, a Better System, and this Ain't It! Stop Focusing on the Broken system of Currency we currently have, please?
Who is making the same pay? Each business would be as different as their product/service and on their individual success. As far as Mother Russia's ( as you put it ) situation. It can not be compared to a free trade and truly democratic society. Unless you point out the fact that they were ( are ) as susceptible to abuse from on high as we are, that is unless we in this democratic society stop taking the abuse and make positive changes..
"his democratic society stop taking the abuse and make positive changes.." AH! You finally said something I can agree to! kudos dear friend!
That said, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that you are incorrect about ours being a "Democratic Society". We are in fact a Representative Republic, and if you can't take that, go look up the words in a dictionary, or better yet go take a Politcal science or any Middle School level Civics Class, at the very least, try asking a teacher, as anyone with the ability to comprehend the use of dictionary should be able to figure this out.
As as who is making the same pay? Right now? Nobody.... But what you're proposing would eventually cause that. Why? Because if you have 2 companies, one's pay scale starts at $7.25, and the other starts at $10.50, (Both per hour), NO ONE is going to accept working for the lower rate unless they're forced to. Thats why we have a Minimum wage in this nation.... Not to mention, another failing of this plan is quite simply that it fails to take something as simple as "Education and Qualification" into account.... Not to mention Hiring Practices. Until the problems in the education system are sorted out, this proposed system could never work.
But further, and you've yet to respond to this, how is this proposed system anything more then a Band-Aid on a Broken Rib Cage of an economic system? Aside from all its other problems.... Riddle me that, and we might get somewhere. I will stop debating the problems this system has until you or someone with apparently more experience, can answer this.
It is a democratic system. The problem is that we currently allow our elected officials to do what they want for their own benefit, instead of recalling them from office for non compliance to our needs.
As to your 7.25 & 10.50 example. A person in need of employment/income/food/shelter is going to take what they can get until they can find better. Meanwhile the company paying 7.25/hr. to start will pay more as they become more successful and will maintain parity as long as they don't wish to be paying heavy taxes on their individual income due to pay inequity.
As for band-aid? I don't think that you have given this proper thought or consideration. Achieving wage parity in business assures the proper sharing of success. Higher individual wages in the front line (bottom line) employee assures more money circulating freely in the rest of the economy, instead of being locked up doing essentially nothing with the much fewer rich individuals. More higher contributions being made to society by a vastly larger group of people than today and without the same struggle to just get by one more day. It also encourages employees to do all that they can to see the business succeed prosper grow.
The rich will always be rich, but the poor "in comparison" do not need to be destitute.
Yes there is much to be fixed and education is in the top of the list. But to make swift positive change you need to start by freeing up the resources. Waste and Greed need to be resolved positively.
Not only is a federally mandated pay scale a dumb non-starter to begin with, but this particular one is outrageously stupid. You're saying that a CEO should not be able to make more than 73% more than the lowest paid employee at the company?
Get real.
Basically your happy with things the way they are today. So what are you doing here?
Basically, you seem unable to recognize that there is a wide range of possibilities between supporting the status quo and calling for a restriction on CEO pay to 173% of the salary of the lowest paid employee.
It would be bad enough if you just saw everything in black and white. Instead, you seem to see the only choices as black and puke-green.
Glad to see you have something to contribute. Oh wait a sec. Throwing stones without offering something of your own. Is just a waste of time. Log off and play with yourself and at least you might enjoy your uselessness.
You can look at dozens of constructive posts I've made in this forum to see what I offer as a path to a better world.
If you think this absurdly stupid proposal counts as "offering something", you're even more stupid than I had thought -- and I did not have reason to hold a very high opinion of your intelligence beforehand.
SisterRay = Stone thrower? Or just the run of the mill abuser. Go hang out with the republicans. They are also a standing joke.
The truth is, I would rather hang out with an open-minded Republican than stand in the puke you present as "thought". Good bye, dummy.
I agree with much of your sentiments SisterRay, and I understand your unhappiness over proposal's such as this. But if I could make a suggestion towards a more positive course of action?
Instead of calling names, try to reason with them, not for their benefit, but for your own. Use disagreement as a Devil's Advocate to experiment with, and evolve, your own arguments. Alot of times in life you will find that when two people argue/debate on their own, no real progress is felt or made. But what I have found, particularly in open forums like this, is that if there are those to witness the arguments being made, these people will listen in and possibly absorb the information, there by disseminating your information. Not everyone will agree, but some will, and someone might even have an idea to improve upon your own, and this is good. Someone might have a better counter argument to the opposition, someone might have an improvement that makes it more acceptable to more people, someone might have a solution to any problems your own idea comes with, but you'll never know unless your idea isn't constantly shared and re-hashed over and over in a public place. In Math, Science, and most Collegiate forums this is called "Peer Review", but the difference between those and what were doing here (which IMHO could be best described as Contemporary Socio-economic-philosophical debate), the closest we get to Peer Review is to share our ideas, as often, and to as many people, as we can. This is the basis of democracy (No uninformed people can be considered to be anything beyond a Mob), and absolutely required to face something as indoctrinated as our current financial and political systems.....
Good Luck!
Solong!
Yea, because plans with 3 #s in the name are the solution to all our problems.....
I don't disagree with Wage Caps on the ultra wealthy, partiuclarly in the form of Taxes, but federally mandated pay scales will start to look like communism real quick.... People do have to have a place to go, or there will be no drive to excel. Why be a Manager if I like where Im at and Im only making 20% less? Not to mention to make a plan like this work, wed have to rebuild EVERYTHING around it, not just governement, but resource value and management, value of money, etc etc, thats not gonna work in a global economy.....
Looking at things today. Rebuilding is exactly what is needed. The sooner we start the better off we will be. As with any job the longer it is put off the bigger and more difficult it becomes.
I am neither happy with the way things are today (Where do you get the idea to imply that the Ultra Wealthy HAVE wage caps today?), nor against rebuilding from the ground up. I just disagree that an overly simplified system like the one described above is going to fix anything....
The more complicated a mechanism is, the more things there are to break (the greater likely-hood of failures, not single but multiple). This is just as true for legislation as it is for a machine.
Thats all fine and good, but if you think a simple solution is going to work for 300 Million people, you might as well go back in time to Nazi Germany, they're about the last people that tried to push "Large scale simple systems for the Social good"...... This is going to be complicated, and its going to be messy..... People will disagree with each other, and accomodations and compromises will have to be made..... Anything else is fiction.....
True it will be messy. But the longer we wait to address issues the messier it will be. Accommodations/compromises ? Why? To Who? For what possible reason?
Why? Because people have issues that must be dealt with. You can no longer expect people to be mindless automatons just for your system. Everything from Educational differences, to physical/mental dissabilities that afflict some, to geographical location, to the type of job being filled, etc etc etc the list goes marching ever on.... If you're honestly naive enough to have to ask what you have here, I suggest that your education is a prime example of what Im talking about, and I wish you better luck in fixing that deficiency then the Public School System.....
Good luck with that.....
You reply points out what we are currently going through, because of no change being demanded. As for your schooling. Perhaps you might want to consider that your own education to this point has been limiting your creativity and ability to try thinking outside of the box.
I could make a wiity response here about a box having 4 sides, and your plan here only having 3 numbers, but I will refrain.....
After that though, how is a 3 Number plan new, innovative, creative, or "outside the box"? Guess what, about 6 months ago, someone propsed a 9-9-9 plan for taxes... And before that Ive seen 7-7-7 plans, and even as jokes 6-6-6 plans.... Because 3 # plans are really original ideas now, 10 years or more on since they've been floated publicly, and Im sure they've been thought of before.... Guess what, simple plans are created by smart people, trying to sell you simple solutions for your support in exchange for selling you a dream of fixing your problems. I have yet to find one that actually worked when tried, or indeed even began to reassure me that it had a chance of working.
Your response, which would seem mean I should be "Dumber" then I am? To understand your plan? Is another reason why your arguements will never convince me, nor I dare say anyone with an iota of brain power, that this plan has a chance of working.... With that, and that you failed to answer the question I posited in my other post, I am done with this thread. Have fun flailing on about a useless idea....
Please do go elsewhere. You offer nothing but thrown stones. If you don't have the intelligence or creativity to explore new ideas and perhaps contribute something positive to an exchange of ideas. Then you would be truly appreciated in going somewhere else to stew in your negativity and apparent support for the status quo.
In case you were wondering or confused :
status quo (plural status quos)
Basically your happy with things the way they are today. So what are you doing here?
Wow. Things are messed up - but this type of draconian enforcement of wage servitude smacks of pure government control.
The problems we face today in the wages is a direct result of the failed and corrupt political systems. Period.
We expect corporations to try to make their bottom line the lowest - but we never expect our government to collude.
The problems we face today have everything to do with the stock market and corporations controlling the government and the public letting them by opting out.
This debt CANNOT be paid off, sorry
I see it...thanks for your pov, That's what the 99% is all about, A true Democracy! Some may say we don't know what we are doing, but considering we are starting over from day one, or it seems like that--do you think our founding fathers got it right in 2 months? Just wait till a year from now! We will show them who's boss once again! Our Vote! Our power!
1/20% = 5 Manager can make x5 what their employees make
5^3=125 (direct management < Middle management < Executive management)
Executive management will make 125x what employees pay
I believe that there is something wrong with your calculation.
Lowest paid employee + 20% = lowest paid 1st level manager + 20% = lowest paid middle manager + 20% = lowest paid executive manager + 20% = owner. This would represent a total of 80% separation highest to lowest.
yep I misread what 20% meant
I thought the lowers level servant would get a minimum of 20% of its lord
I've got one. How about you stay the fuck out of what I get paid, what my boss gets paid, and leave that to the two of us to decide.
Apparently you are not one of the many who are being raped by their employer. You must also be pretty popular at work.
Has nothing to do with either. I don't need the rest of society having a say in an agreement I make between myself and my employer. Having at various times worn both the employer and employee hat, I can see both sides of the situation.
Well not very clearly if you can't see the rampant wage inequality.
You are only worth what someone is willing to pay you. Either A) get some skills that you can sell for more money or B) resign yourself to what you make. I pay $4/sq to lay tile. I do not need the nanny government coming in and telling me that I MUST pay $8/sq to lay tile. Around here the going rate is $4/sq. If you want more money, you're going to have to obtain a skill that pays more. Pretty simple logic.
Yes like all wage-slave-masters. Leave it to someone doing the job that keeps you in business to figure out whether they can make it on what you pay or go to a new boss who is the same as the old boss. Fairness begins in paying or earning a real living wage, not in seeing what you can get away with. Every full time worker deserves a living wage. Sooner or later American Business will have to wake up to the fact that they just can't keep replacing workers like they would a burnt out fuse. Sooner or later it will show-up in their quality and efficiency. They will have an increasingly hard time making their bottom line and in keeping their customers/consumers happy.
"Every full worker deserves a living wage"
No. Perhaps you haven't met some quite as dumb or useless as I have then. And if the time should come that businesses have issues with the bottom line, they will change or go out of business. You are worth what someone is WILLING to pay you and not a dime more. When did society get this whacked out notion that just because some exists, they have value?
Work on your spelling, and if a person can't do a job what are you paying them for in the 1st place?
I'm paying them what the job is worth. If I can get 100 people to line up and do the job, the skill is not that rare and therefore not that valuable. If I have to hunt and carefully search out a skill, then I'm going to pay for it. Retail clerks are a dime a dozen. You have to remember, the money you earn doesn't say anything about you as a person, but it does say something about the value of your skills. Don't confuse the two.
And yet without that dime a dozen person you would then be doing what, that job yourself? That person doing the as you call it no skill job is allowing you to do what? Nothing or something?
I'll tell you what. When you actually own something in this world, something you had to bust your ass for, then you can talk. But until you personally take that risk, do not speak of what you do not know. Until you can show ne your scars where you bled for your craft, sit down and shut up. You know nothing of which you speak. Own a successful business you built from scratch, and then you will earn your place in this discussion.
Look. you desire some made up world where everything is all roses and bunnies. I prefer the real world where it's dog eat dog. Care to guess between the two of us who is more successful and why? And would you care to guess who has more numbers on their side?
Your obviously on the wrong web site. You should get together with Rush.
And those that work for me are compensated at market rate for the services they offer. And how is that a bad thing? Isn't that not capitalism at its finest?
just drink the kool-aid,everything will be just fine.
Riiiiight. Because running your own business is such a freaking cake walk. I couldn't possibly contribute a gosh darn thing. Not like it's my life and everything I've worked for on the line.
And gee I don did it all myself.
Yet the logic that my labor is worth more is still indisputable. I pay the market rate for labor because my customers are not going to pay more than market rate for the product. You find a way to get customers to pay me more, and THEN we can talk about wage increases.
Not necessarily. If your like many managers that I've seen. You probably do next to nothing and take the credit for your employee's contribution. There is also mark-up, so who are you trying to kid.
I could do the job, but that would not be a very efficient use of my time now would it? They cannot do what I do, but I can do what they do. That simple logic is why I as the business owner make many times what they as a general labor do. Never mind the fact that I hold all the risk and liability. If someone wants to sue my business, I'm the one holding the bag; not the $7/hr monkey.
Yes my eyes are now open. I can see that you must truly be a very beloved person. If only in your dreams. Yes so warm and fuzzy. I can picture you at work. You trip and fall breaking your hip and I can see all of your employees running ... running to hide so that you can't see who is around to help. Did you remember to wear your life alert?
Might as well just shut down the world with this lame idea. Why would I risk opening a restaurant or any other business if I could never get the investment back?
You would get back the investment, and have a loyal and hardworking staff. You just would not be able to be as freely gluttonous while doing it.
How does one get back the $600,000 investment in a restaurant if I can only pay myself $30,000 a year? I'm not even break even for 20 years.
Oh and you should also ask the employers and employees at Anderson Window how they are doing.
What you pay yourself is your choice. You just need to keep in the guideline with the rest of your staff or pay extra in taxes. The pay scale has not changed your sales it has only added fairness to those who work for you, so that they too can have a life.
Seriously, don't waste time writing posts like this. You don't understand business. Use your efforts and energy elsewhere
The solution is a more progressive tax. No way should someone who makes 250k a year pay the same percentage of some one who makes 250 Million a year.
There should be higher tax brackets for the ultra rich. And that tax collected should by mandate pay down the debt.
Maybe have an attractive tax break for companies that Hire within the USA for once.
Also a mass program to control out populations. 7Billion and counting... We would need something around 20 earths to give all 7 billion a middle class life... Impossible.
Either we trim our populations through birth control or war and disease will do it for us.
Well you started off OK. But you went out into the twilight zone with the population nonsense.
lol I know man. But the reality is all solutions we come to will ultimately hit this brick wall.... We just don't have enough earth to sustain us all with some standard of living.
We can take from a group all we want. This money is fictitious it represents an ability to use real resources... water, fuel, wood, food, land, metals, plastics, etc..
We can equally distribute this money all we want. But ultimately we have a hell a lot more money the resources. So what you will see is an insane depletion of our planet ( that was the 20 earth refrence).
It would take roughly 20 earths to give every person on earth a lower middle class standard of living. We have doubled our population in the last 30 years. Will double it again in another 50... That's what 40 earths by then? That consumption is unsustainable.
We are the 99% in the USA.... but we are the 1% on earth. What happens when everyone wants to join the party?
You need to shift your paradigm. This is exactly why things can not continue as they have. We need to restructure and reevaluate how we do business.
The key isn't to mandate what people can or can't be paid, it's to learn to be neighbors again. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to pass a law than to teach someone the art of respect.
Basically your happy with things the way they are today. So what are you doing here?
Think about what this could do for Pro Sports - NBA, WNBA, NFL, NHL etc.
Create sign and send petitions. The more inputs we have the better. http://occupywallst.org/forum/create-sign-and-send-petitions/
A site to submit issues have them collected, collated and submitted. www.lobbydemocracy.com
OUR BANNER/OUR CAUSE
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. July 4, 1776
The fundamental problem we have today is not that many people have no jobs. It is that too many people are earning too much. If we cut them down to size then that will create jobs.
"LEVEL PLAYING FIELD', 'WAGE CAP"..........how absurd!! I worked ny ass off in school, got excellent grades in a marketable major, again worked my ass off in corporate America, so I can 'share' with the great unwashed!!! Hell NO!!!! Thinking like this is why I choose to spend a portion of my income on a huge house in a provate community w/ a security gate. Why I send my children to a private school, belong to a private club and have an alarm system at home The most ridiculous posting I have heard!
So pitmaster by your statement you should understand why the people would like to take back government. To put an end to the ecstatically happy abusers such as yourself. You should also check your spelling before posting, so that at least that part of your message won't make you look like an idiot.
I do apologize for the spelling; hard to drive my big gas guzzling SUV, poke fun at all these post and text correctly. I was educated better at the private university I attended; perhaps I need an even newer Blackberry. That would certainly be a good use of some of my excessive disposable income
Please keep sending you are a positive motivator for this movement. Even today it's good to have a constant reminder and example of why this country is in such poor shape as it is.
I'll have to take your word on how bad it is; from my white, wealthy, conversative, private gated community, it looks pretty good. Gotta go now; equity market closing, need to see how much more personal wealth I created today. Thanks for reinforcing my prejudices.
Please stop back we need more self-centered individuals to provide up to the minute incentive to take part in regaining the government.
Spoken like a true fascist
Offered like a true bigot? smartguy?
Coherency is your friend.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgKS4i-u0OM
http://www.reverbnation.com/Killumination
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