We need to force the leaders of industry to recognize that they are LEADERS, and to hold them accountable for GREEDY behavior.  Put a cap on the amount of assets executives can take from a company, proportionate to the amount the workers are paid.  Force them to have a conscience.  Cap Executive pay so they can’t make more than 20 times what the lowest paid employee in their company is paid. 

Our founding fathers tried to write tax laws based on “fairness.”  Fairly paying EVERYONE well will make our whole country’s economy stronger. 

Apply the cap to firms of all sizes.

My husband works for a large US corporation where the CEO rewarded himself with a multi-million dollar bonus for boosting profits on the company books.  He boosted those profits by cutting benefits for all its clerical middle-class employees!  The workers took a pay cut and a benefit cut – and the CEO was rewarded with millions for taking it from them.   

In 2007, I was a payroll temp for a medium-size business where the two owners paid themselves more money than the total amount they paid all 67 of their employees, combined.  Their full-time family-supporting employees worked 50+ hours a week, were paid wages below the poverty level, and no benefits.  Then at Christmas, I was instructed to tear up the employee’s Christmas bonus checks, because the owners decided to buy themselves new sports cars, instead.

Just because a worker is less skilled, doesn’t mean they don’t WORK just as hard, and don’t deserve to be compensated a living wage for it!