Die Neue Zeit
10th April 2010, 23:39
Socio-Income Democracy, Part II: Maximum Wage vs. Direct Democracy in Income Multiples
Pay matters. How much you earn can determine your lifestyle, where you can afford to live, and your aspirations and status. But to what extent does what we get paid confer worth? Beyond a narrow notion of productivity, what impact does our work have on the rest of society, and do the financial rewards we receive correspond to this? Do those that get more contribute more to society? With controversial bonuses being paid out this Christmas in bailed-out banks, we believe that it is time to ask challenging questions such as these. (Eils Lawlor, Helen Kersley, and Susan Steed)
In December 2009, the UK-based New Economics Foundation released a well-publicized report on whether modern pay structures reflect the value of various jobs. Eils Lawlor, Helen Kersley, and Susan Steed examined six jobs: corporate executives in banks, similar executives in advertising, tax accountants, hospital cleaners, child care workers, and waste recycling workers. The first three were found to be destroying value for British society, while the last three were found to be creating value.
Despite this research and subsequent policy recommendations, the report was within the conceptual framework of the maximum wage. Indeed, the draft party program of Die Linke (The Left party in Germany), released in March 2010, called for limiting manager salaries to 20 times the lowest-paid workers in the company, but called for nothing broader.
Earlier I introduced the concept of socio-income democracy when discussing direct democracy in taxation of the various, class-based types of income as an immediate but real, reform-enabling reform. What the maximum wage framework does not take into consideration are property income, normal and windfall profits, dividends, and capital gains. Moreover, its proponents socialists and otherwise dare not venture outside the limits of economism, simply by calling for a single relative limit legislated into law.
Taken to at least an intermediate step, socio-income democracy is also for direct proposals and rejections at the national level and above regarding the creation and adjustment of income multiples in all industries, for all major working-class and other professions, and across all types of income. Thus, the three most prominent bourgeois occupations covered are the corporate executive, the celebrity and any associated formal or informal brands (arising from professional athleticism or general entertainment), and the multi-millionaire investor. It should be noted that the word income is subject to debate, since it should not cover inheritances (discussed elsewhere), and since it may or may not cover things like lottery winnings.
Does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate or threshold demands? That would depend on how one relates this reform to the measure of aligning the interests of agent officials in all political and related administrative offices with the interests of the principal population as a whole by means of aligning standards of living (towards some average standard of living for professional and other skilled workers). Discussion on the former could be a means of facilitating discussion on the latter, or vice versa, but neither measure is really dependent upon the other. No other intermediate or threshold demand is at stake.
Does this reform enable the basic principles to be kept consciously in view? If the maximum wage framework alone is already seen as one of class struggle, how much more is this expanded socio-income democracy? Next, there is the idea within social labour that each individual should contribute according to personal ability and receive personal want according to his work (despite the Soviet distortion of that slogan towards ignoring personal need). Also, the problem of elite emigration poses the need for transnational politics.
REFERENCES
A Bit Rich by Eils Lawlor, Helen Kersley, and Susan Steed [http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/A_Bit_Rich.pdf]
Program of the Left Party (Draft) by Oskar Lafontaine and Lothar Bisky [http://die-linke.de/programm/programmentwurf/]
Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1936) by Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html]
Pay matters. How much you earn can determine your lifestyle, where you can afford to live, and your aspirations and status. But to what extent does what we get paid confer worth? Beyond a narrow notion of productivity, what impact does our work have on the rest of society, and do the financial rewards we receive correspond to this? Do those that get more contribute more to society? With controversial bonuses being paid out this Christmas in bailed-out banks, we believe that it is time to ask challenging questions such as these. (Eils Lawlor, Helen Kersley, and Susan Steed)
In December 2009, the UK-based New Economics Foundation released a well-publicized report on whether modern pay structures reflect the value of various jobs. Eils Lawlor, Helen Kersley, and Susan Steed examined six jobs: corporate executives in banks, similar executives in advertising, tax accountants, hospital cleaners, child care workers, and waste recycling workers. The first three were found to be destroying value for British society, while the last three were found to be creating value.
Despite this research and subsequent policy recommendations, the report was within the conceptual framework of the maximum wage. Indeed, the draft party program of Die Linke (The Left party in Germany), released in March 2010, called for limiting manager salaries to 20 times the lowest-paid workers in the company, but called for nothing broader.
Earlier I introduced the concept of socio-income democracy when discussing direct democracy in taxation of the various, class-based types of income as an immediate but real, reform-enabling reform. What the maximum wage framework does not take into consideration are property income, normal and windfall profits, dividends, and capital gains. Moreover, its proponents socialists and otherwise dare not venture outside the limits of economism, simply by calling for a single relative limit legislated into law.
Taken to at least an intermediate step, socio-income democracy is also for direct proposals and rejections at the national level and above regarding the creation and adjustment of income multiples in all industries, for all major working-class and other professions, and across all types of income. Thus, the three most prominent bourgeois occupations covered are the corporate executive, the celebrity and any associated formal or informal brands (arising from professional athleticism or general entertainment), and the multi-millionaire investor. It should be noted that the word income is subject to debate, since it should not cover inheritances (discussed elsewhere), and since it may or may not cover things like lottery winnings.
Does this reform facilitate the issuance of either intermediate or threshold demands? That would depend on how one relates this reform to the measure of aligning the interests of agent officials in all political and related administrative offices with the interests of the principal population as a whole by means of aligning standards of living (towards some average standard of living for professional and other skilled workers). Discussion on the former could be a means of facilitating discussion on the latter, or vice versa, but neither measure is really dependent upon the other. No other intermediate or threshold demand is at stake.
Does this reform enable the basic principles to be kept consciously in view? If the maximum wage framework alone is already seen as one of class struggle, how much more is this expanded socio-income democracy? Next, there is the idea within social labour that each individual should contribute according to personal ability and receive personal want according to his work (despite the Soviet distortion of that slogan towards ignoring personal need). Also, the problem of elite emigration poses the need for transnational politics.
REFERENCES
A Bit Rich by Eils Lawlor, Helen Kersley, and Susan Steed [http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/A_Bit_Rich.pdf]
Program of the Left Party (Draft) by Oskar Lafontaine and Lothar Bisky [http://die-linke.de/programm/programmentwurf/]
Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1936) by Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.html]