Maximum Wage - should we have one? (1 Viewer)

[Denny Oubidoux]

Such a thing never really occurred to me until recently, I read an article about it last week and I have heard Vincent Browne suggesting it several times on his show, I reckon its a good idea. I just saw this article pop up on yahoo about a polish waitress who gave up her job in donegal in order to go on the dole because it was worth more money to her and she could spend her days rambling on the beautiful beaches etc. Apparently she has sparked fury but you rarely hear it mentioned how ridiculous it is that people are allowed to employ you for less than what the state deems to be the amount of money people on welfare need to live on.

 

[therealjohnny]

that article is riddled with inaccuracies and outright lies

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/02/01/ouch-2/

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

jayzis, thats shocking. fucking indo

 

[Squiggle]

Yeah, never believe anything you read in the Independent. I voted yes and then I thought about it a bit more... minimum wage, definitely. It is wrong that someone working full time should be paid less than they need to live on. And those "internships" that have been so roundly abused by employers should be abolished. (Internship stacking shelves in Tesco anyone?) I think we should have a flat tax of 10% or so on all earnings, a much fairer way to approach it than cut-off points and ceilings. That way extra hours and over time would be worth someone's while working for extra cash and people would be more likely to declare their true earnings.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I dunno about that 10% thing. If you're on €150,000, for example, or even €75k, how much more do you really need and can can you get it without having other people on less money keeping you there?

 

[Squiggle]

But 10% of everything would be much less than anyone on the average industrial wage is paying. Why should the people in the middle get screwed by both sides? Imagine if you got to keep 90% of your salary. You could have a much better quality of life even on a lower "salary". In conjunction with caps on maximum salaries (especially in public sector and financial services) it would solve a lot of problems. At present I get to keep less than half of my "salary" and barely earn enough to live on. If I was keeping 90% I could have the same quality of life a a lower cost to my employer, which in turn, would allow them to employ more staff.

 

[ann post]

the flaw is not in the idea, but the practice. if you cap wages at XXXXXX then anyone who can earn more than that from a business will set up a sub office in newry (which is in northern ireland ftw) and pay themselves the difference in sterling, and the economy loses jobs/tax etc. i love the idea to be honest though.

 

[therealjohnny]

 

[magicbastarder]

Imagine if you got to keep 90% of your salary. You could have a much better quality of life even on a lower "salary".

but people on low wages in ireland don't fall in the tax net and as such a blanket 10% tax would leave them poorer.

a maximum wage would be a very difficult thing to justify.

 

[Squiggle]

But, if salary costs to employers were reduced accross the board then they could afford to increase "low end" salaries while decreasing "higher end" salaries.

 

[ann post]

is the text in my previous post too small to read?

but i'm sorta thinking this thread is basically aimed at the high ranking civil servants who earn silly money, because private companies are dealt with in my small post there.

anyways, thinking practically rather than hypothetically. A maximum proportional wage within the CS would be a more realistic solution, like you canonly end earning 5 times the entry wage of someone in the CS - but it would require the entry wage to be a practical salary to start with. i'm not sure entry wages in the CS are all that high.

 

[washingcattle]

What do you deem a fair maximum wage ?

I reckon any wage that allows you to earn the national average lifetime wage within 10 years is fair so for example say your working life is

25-65 and the average wage earned is say ?35K so that's 1.4 mil in a lifetime giving us a maximum wage of

?140,000 per year.

if you can earn the average workers lifetime earnings by the age of 40 you should be fucking grateful. Especially if you're paid by the public.

 

[ann post]

whats the maximum wage for a hawaain ht stone massage hanging out on the beach type existence?

 

[magicbastarder]

i'm not quite sure what you mean by a maximum wage.
take someone like martin naughton, say. his take home may currently be ?100m a year for all i know.
if you had a maximum take home of ?1m a year, that'd essentially be a 99% tax.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I've never heard of this naughton lad before, but rather than taxing him 99% why not cap his salary at, say €250,000 (I dont know how you define what a fair maximum wage is, this is obviously something that would need to be worked out along the way) and use the remaining €99,750,000 to pay all of his staff a comfortable wage with which they could afford health care (or even better tax them and put that towards a proper healthcare for everyone), decent food, decent leisure time etc. if theres still a fuckload of spare cash then why not spread it around. People raise happy healthy families on a fraction of that salary. I don't see what makes a maximum salary so hard to justify. If you're only motivation in working, creating employment and thereby contributing to society is to amass a vast personal fortune then fuck off.

 

[magicbastarder]

let's say that tomorrow i invent a car engine which runs on water. are you saying the main beneficiary of my colossal profits - essentially the sole beneficiary - should be the government?
take yer man dyson as another example. once he hit his maximum salary, he's got little reason to work anymore. it's a big disincentive.
or a popular music combo who are earning €250,000 a year each from their back catalogue, who would not earn a penny more from any future releases.

raising the tax rate is one thing. doing away with any benefit from marginal increases is lunacy.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

It'd be lovely if we all (via the government, i suppose, until such time as we get some other way of doing things) benefited from your inventiveness and enterprise. 40 million in the bank is nothing compared to the well being of the nation.

i still dont see that money can be the only motivation for bands or inventors or whoever. in fact, a cap on their income might be just the thing to keep them going

 

[magicbastarder]

much as it'd be great if everyone was like you, they're not.

 

[Jerry Twig]

you rarely hear it mentioned how ridiculous it is that people are allowed to employ you for less than what the state deems to be the amount of money people on welfare need to live on.

Without having the time to look at your article right now, is what you refer to above not the need to instate a minimum wage?

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Without having the time to look at your article right now, is what you refer to above not the need to instate a minimum wage?

Yeah, the how-little-can-we-get-away-with-paying question does crop up from time to time though, and the other side of it - max wage - doesnt really.

Don't read that article, its shite.