from Verse Seventy-SevenCompulsive largess leads to lack of proportion; and if the portions of those above are not fixed, the ambitions of those below have no end.~ Wen-tzu: Understanding the Mysteries ~
For those of you who don't want a leftist political perspective mixed with your readings of the Wen Tzu, you might wish to skip this one. ;>)In the US, we have this mechanism called the minimum wage. It represents the lowest hourly amount that an employer may pay an employee (with a few exceptions). It's supposed to be factored in such a way as to provide a subsistence lifestyle for the earner. Unfortunately, the minimum wages regulated by the federal government and many states have not kept up with the rate of inflation, so most people who work at minimum wage still need to rely on some form of government assistance.
While much of the political focus in this country has been on the minimum wage, those of us with a leftist perspective believe what we really need is a maximum wage. Each year the government could decide what the maximum wage shall be and then the minimum wage would be set as x percent of that figure.
Seems to me that Lao Tzu would give such a strategy a big thumbs up!
This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.
Well, maybe. I don't trust the government to do anything, and certainly not how much I am allowed to make.
ReplyDeleteWe need to govern ourselves.
Someone I know intimately, recently promoted to a good position, gave up his salary increase so that he could hire the most promising candidate for one of the positions on his staff. It wan't a lot of money really, by current "maximum wage" standards, thinking of the failed caps on bailout-executives' pay, made little difference to him (he said he gets "enough") but it did make a difference to the staffer.
But then, this is a rare individual.