luke bretherton has written a good reflection on the occupy movement at st pauls
rowan williams piece in the financial times was wise and thoughtful as ever
and jonathan bartley of ekklesia muses on why the danger isn't over
the greed creed at asbojesus is still probably the most insightful of the lot!
the only thought i have to add to the debate is a naive one…
why not just cap salaries all round? does anyone need to earn say more than 200k in a year? set the level at whatever level you like – equivalent to the prime minister's salary maybe (150k)? or 400k if that makes life simpler? that would shift everything. footballers, bankers, investors, etc etc would all be able to earn enough in a year to buy a small house – does anyone need that anyway?! and there would be huge amounts of money to invest in the poor, in employment, in the arts, in charities and non profits and so on. i know it's naive but we have to address the fundamental problem of obscene disparity and greed. why not have a society that values something other than individual 'success' and 'achievment'?!
Sounds a great idea. We need a catchy phrase (cf. Robin Hood Tax) with which to promote it.
You dreamer!
I am sure it must be naive but I can’t understand why. Perhaps if you earn more than £200k the reason becomes obvious!
Business profits would increase dramatically. This would also need a greater tax on large business profits to get the money from businesses to where it’s needed, and also tighter regulation of what counts as a ‘business expense’.
Communism didn’t work, but neither does rampant consumerism. We need a new political party to rise up and champion this idea.
Not naive but unfortunately perhaps more of a dream
than potential reality
Bill Gates gets my vote for showing the super
rich how to re distribute wealth
pip, bill gates and warren buffett are held up as examples that people with obscene wealth can do good with it. well so they should and i’m glad they are!!! but how about the rest? what are they doing with it? i don’t think those examples are enough to justify the immorality that they as individuals can accumulate that level of resource. an idea i’d quite like to see explored in relation to this is that as incentive for entrepreneurial activity high earners could have some say in the next 200k or whatever of income to assign it to areas of investment – education, charity, arts etc.
Research has shown societies are much happier when there is less disparity between the highest and lowest salaries. Community (tribes) used to be our worldly security, we have lost that so people put their security in houses and money.
the reason why it is naive? Because private enterprise would grind to a halt, private sector employment levels would collapse, government tax receipts would collapse and so public sector employment levels would collapse
Other than that, great idea