Should a business owner make less than half of what a librarian makes? Should academics be paid more than bankers or lawyers? The Occupy movement says yes.
The “Occupy Wall Street Working Documents” offer amazing insights into the economic theories of the people sleeping under plastic sheets in lower Manhattan. In particular the “American People’s New Economic Charter” reads like something drawn up by people who have never done meaningful work, or lived solely off government handouts, or who are refugees from graduate school seminars. Probably because that’s who wrote it.
Deep in the document is a proposal posted by someone named “RalphM” that establishes “New Salary Range Recommendations Based on Concepts of Economic Sustainability and Right Livelihood.” If you want to know what you will be earning in the new regime, here is the proposed list:
Bankers $20,000
Lawyers $27,500
Realtors $25,000
Doctors $28,000
Nurses $27,500
Teachers/Librarians/Train Engineers/Bridge Maintenance/Ship Pilots, etc. $35,000
Police $36,000
Public Servants $28,500
Laborers $20,000
Other public sector $30,000
Other private sector $29,000
Technical/Research/Academic $36,000
Entrepreneurs/Business Owners $10,000
Congress $30,000
President 40,000
Soldiers N/A
Defense workers $25,000
Note that all of these salaries will be paid by the government, and “all jobs include full health benefit for worker and family, full retirement benefits, full free education for children.” Why defense workers are still being employed when there are no paid soldiers has yet to be explained.
Everyone gets a radical pay cut but presumably prices under the new regime will be controlled to a “fair” level, presumably determined by a government panel of some kind.
A note under the entry for entrepreneurs and business owners contains this loophole: “this annual payment by the government will serve to fund and support private businesses, which, if successful, can create needed and sought-after products. If the products are worthy and valuable, people will buy them, and entrepreneurs will be able to amass fortunes.” In other words it works a lot like capitalism is supposed to work, but for some reason the government will be running things. The note also warns that “products, such as derivatives, will probably not succeed in the new, fair economy.”
The good news in the plan is that income and other taxes will be eliminated. “The only tax will be a sales tax for all goods and services, which will be fixed at: 4%.” At less than half Herman Cain’s proposed 9% tax that sounds like a great idea.
