Screw that. Let’s make everybodies wage $100,000/year and if they’re extra lazy, give ‘em and extra $50,000 bonus. Now that’s REAL equality. (Do you remember working for $1.25/hr?)
No, no, no. You need a B.I.G. Basic Income Guarantee. Everyone gets $50,000. If you earn more, it’s returned to its rightful owner in taxation.
yeah, that’ll work.
It’s no longer equal opportunity. It’s no longer income inequality. It has become Equal outcomes!
(and yes, I worked for $1.25/hr, too)
I worked for $0.50 and hour................
“Do you remember working for $1.25/hr”
Yep, that was how much I was paid for my first job,which was picking up the broken bricks left behind after the brick masons finished brick-veneering houses.
I worked with an all-black crew of laborers, guys I grew to love. Most were broken-down alcoholics. Otto was a convicted murderer who had served seven years (the average sentence served for murder at the time in that state) in the state pen for murdering his wife. Our consensus was she probably needed murdering, though since she wasn’t around to tell her side of the story, we were probably a bit biased towards Otto. Herbert was an ex-navy cook, but that’s all I ever got out of him. Given his age, he almost undoubtedly served in WWII. Herbert chain-smoked and eventually died of lung cancer. His talent was perfectly squaring and planing footer ditches after they were dug by a backhoe, which the rest of us pretty much just shoveled out the loose clods.
My boss laughed his ass off when he handed me my first paycheck, which included the attached paystub which listed all the deductions. I was 17 then.