How low should the Average American Income be?

[Moostache]

47. The answer is regulated capitalism

What we live with now is unregulated capitalism run amok. What follows is a bit hyperbolic, but that is also part of the problem...what I have to say SHOULD be radically insane but it is not...

The capitalist system, in pure form, is like an addict shooting uncut heroin...it may be one hell of a high, but it comes at the cost of killing the host in the process. CEOs and Boards of Directors operate in a very, very narrow paradigm, with an incredibly short time horizon. They obsess on quarterly numbers and *MAYBE* a 3 year plan (no one talks about 5 years from now any longer, anywhere), but if the action they take has a return on investment of longer than an average car loan, they cannot be bothered to consider the ramifications of losing long-term stability for short-term gains.

They do this under cover of a "fiduciary" responsibility and the guise of "shareholder value", but in the end all they produce is revenue for golden parachutes and more board positions for themselves to pass around amongst themselves. They churn the positions of authority with regularity that makes Metamucil green with envy. If a CEO is on the job longer than 3 years these days, that qualifies as a senior citizen in the management world. Instead of building businesses, and sustainable practices that matter to an employee or a community that hosts a corporation; the management is busily trying to suck every last nickel out of it, before off-shoring the profits, avoiding taxes, firing the labor and moving the whole thing to another country. Why the fuck would they care? They have no intention of being with the company for 30 months let alone 30 years.

The fundamental model of Global Business is broken beyond fixes or repairs. The shuffle of labor from the US to Europe to Asia to Africa in search of the next $0.05 an hour worker has gone on for decades, abetted by government policies that tout "market-based solutions" when in fact all they really have are slimy back-door deals, slimier 'businessmen' and exploited people in the wake of the capitalist yacht.

There is no more commitment to the community from the corporations that rape the environment, subjugate the populations, cow the politicians and eventually pull up stakes if anyone offers 0.0001% more on the next quarterly report for labor savings. There is no future in the model as it has entered its death spiral over 30 years ago. The capitalist model that worked for businesses AND workers was the one that tied compensation to productivity and wages to output. After the decoupling of these factors in the 1970's, wages and compensation have flatlined while corporate profits and wealth concentration have exploded.

There is no "secret formula" here, no magic bullet. The truth is very simple...for a capitalist system to survive and avoid eating itself, it requires heavily progressive taxation policies that encourage businesses to re-invest in themselves and their employees through profit-sharing and hiring practices that encourage the distribution of money THROUGH the entire system and not TO the top of the pyramid.

A CEO making 10-20 times the salary of a line worker or engineer? Maybe a little excessive, but not a systemic threat.
That same CEO making 400 times the salary of the others? A malignancy that will kill the whole thing in due time.

This is not that hard to figure out. It's not some kind of modern day Gordian knot. If we stay on the current path of exploitation and hoarding by the 0.01% elites, we all DIE. If we want to survive and truly address the imminent disasters in our resource marshalling and environmental crises and face the stickiest questions of what to do with automation and surplus human labor potential in the future, then we can survive. But only if the adults take over the room and send the bad actors, charlatans and clown car riders out of the room first!