I’d not heard of the MAXIMUM WAGE idea till the CW meeting yesterday. saw online today that Jello Biafra was one of the first to come up with the idea when campaigning for the Green Party presidential nomination. Heres what he said:
Enact a maximum wage. Great idea. When I got it aired on Politically Incorrect I was roundly booed by audience and guests alike. The host told the viewers I was crazy before he even said my name. People assume they are the ones who will be hurt when the big bad government hits the middle class with another evil tax.
So let’s be generous: No taxes up to $100,000; after that it’s payback time. And emphasize the pay-back—free health care, free education (including amnesty on student loans), free transportation (including air travel), and more.
Revenue will be used for the many costly programs in the Green platform and long overdue public works projects; also vastly increased subsidies for the arts, especially community radio and television; subsidies for independent organic farms, hemp and kenaf farms (to end dependence on paper from forests), and solar and windmill farms to decrease our fossil fuel gluttony.
Urban blight can be further eradicated by legalizing and subsidizing squatters who fix up long-vacant buildings. This has worked well in Europe when given a chance; think of what it could do for places like St. Louis or Richmond, Va. Speed up conversion to electric buses, trucks, a national high-speed rail system; and ,of course, electric cars.
We don’t need a flat tax, but a flattening tax, to truly level the playing field. After all, what causes more damage to the planet, drug addiction or wealth addiction? Hopefully the maximum wage will raise enough money to fill the cups of everyone who makes less than $100,000 so we’ll all be even. And can we please find a clearer, sexier term than ‘single-payer health care’ next time it’s a ballot initiative?
We must close all hemorrhaging tax loopholes that benefit giant corporations, including organized religion.
Taxpayers should also be given a multiple choice of the 10 or 15 major areas of government to decide what percentage of their tax money goes where. My guess is that education and the environment will go straight up, and the arms race and prison expansion will go straight down
Ian Bone 
If you want to tax multinationals – you would have to have world governance – hardly an anarchist aim.
I hadn’t heard the term “loan amnesty” before, so I looked it up. The background being that a lot of youngsters in Britain (and not so young people too) don’t properly understand what being in debt means – and think they’re in debt only if they’ve missed a payment.
I think amnesty means the whole debt gets written off, not just any extra add-ons the moneylenders are trying to charge for ‘administration’ or a missed payment. It’s quite a nice term, ‘amnesty’, because it makes it sound as though the banks have grabbed someone and fined or imprisoned them, and then the bastards are saying OK, we’ll let you go.
The bad side is it sounds as if a petition has been made and the moneylenders are doing what if circumstances were a bit different, they wouldn’t do. It doesn’t push much to erode bankers’ power, FURTHER erode it, and hopefully CONVULSIVELY (thanks Andre Breton) and SUDDENLY (thanks Situationists) erode it until it doesn’t exist.
“Loan amnesty” doesn’t seem to be a very common term: 13000 Google hits, as against 368000 for “loan forgiveness”! (Doffs cap: thank you, THANK YOU Mr Moneylender, Sir). The latter probably being bound up in the US with right-wing Christian views of the poor as immoral scum.
Any word usage or policy that tends to prod people to get together and collectively say why the FUCK should we pay anything back to moneylenders is good…
Debt is probably the most important weapon which atomises the working class in this country.
Got to answer those people in mortgaged properties who say it’s OK to write off payday loans taken out mainly by people in the underclass (which isn’t true, but I reckon it’s what a lot of people think), but what about poor old them…working hard…under the yoke…
(The Gaullists won the general election held in June 1968.)
We need loads of people living in mortgaged properties on our side! 🙂
Which doesn’t answer how, but…
Mortgaged properties? Eliminate all residential mortgages (but introduce 300% tax on “investment properties”) – once the group of people occupying the residence no longer need it, the house/flat gets passed on to some one who does need it.
It’s Green Party policy in the UK too – max income = 10 times the lowest paid http://greenparty.org.uk/policies/jobs-2010/jobs-detail.html
Minimum income guarantee – something like twice the dole PLUS no title to any asset unless (lets start at 5%) yearly tax is paid on the asset.
In other words if an entity tries to hide their assets, such as gold bars or land, then the asset is open to all comers to take. If the asset is registered a 5% tax needs to be paid on it. Just sitting on a non productive asset, like an empty home, would mean a 5% net annual loss.
Another idea – how about an AGA tax of £2000 p/a used to support the first £60 a month equivalent per household’s energy being free.
Hiding assets is a big thing. It’s what trusts are for. How about the compulsory registration of all beneficial or legal interests owned by people who own such interests, either in Britain or abroad, with a total value of £500K or more. Then we can start taxing them! 🙂 Make the law retrospective for the last 30 years, and close the roads to the airports.
20-year prison terms for hiding any interests, or for advising someone on how to hide them, e.g. as accountant, solicitor, or other adviser.
The above is a prerequisite for making a tax work.
Just to make it clear – the 5% asset tax would be per year.
Interested in what people make of the question by other libertarians and anarchos that standing for election might be a waste of the deposit and that 10 grand could be better spent at the time of election rather than standing for election. Personally I think it’s worth a pop but not everyone is convinced.
Well yeah Maria, I guess 10K could be spunked on ‘Don’t Vote’ stickers or an anti-election rally in Hyde Park, a big fucking holiday piss up, or given to the Sally Army or the Autonomists in Hamburg or somesuch. Personally I always think it’s best to do what is least expected, like CW anarchists standing for a bourgeois parliament,and you can’t get much more unpredictable than that!
The only way ,I could see this work is anyone on more than 100k a year,has to ay 99.99% tax