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[-] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Personally, I think the implementation of work and money are highly flawed. As it is, we get employers able to perform casual wage theft, employers deciding what pay people should get, said employers getting +500% of an middle manager's income, stocks and bonds distort the reality of money into something not connected to actual output, and more.

It is my belief that we should create a formal system explictly designed to create and fix expectations for what work pays.

Assuming we toss out existing currency and practices, here is the general shape of what I propose:

0000000

  • All citizens receive a basic annual Universal Income. $10,000 dollars, no strings attached.

  • All people in the nation receive Universal Services. Free food, basic shelter, free fuel and utilities, free electric kei car & bike, basic mattress, free healthcare, and so on. The government gives free basic goods and services to citizens, migrants, and visitors.

  • Money is used to pay for upgrading living standards. That means a bigger house, brand-name items, fancier restaurant meals, ect.

  • The government has a job department that assesses and posts information for available jobs. The purpose of this department is to ensure that companies cannot create 'ghost jobs', ensuring migrants are not being exploited, and so on.

  • Jobs replace the Universal Income with an increased income. Each job type falls into a ranked category. The amount of education, difficulty, and risk of the job determines the rank of a job.

  • There is a fixed maximum of days and hours worked for workers at each job. Further, workers can only hold one job at a time. This prevents executives from holding numerous positions, prevents part-timing exploits by employers, ensures workers have time for themselves, and makes it easier to fix income levels.

  • Leadership roles have their pay rank determined by workers, the workers use voting to decide who has the leadership role, and assign the pay rank. Every 3 months, workers can vote on leadership. If fired or leaving the company, workers retain voting rights for a full year.

  • Student education is treated as a job. Depending on grades, they get $10,000 to $20,000 a year. This rewards learning, and prevents students from being drowned by debt.

  • Entry level jobs have a fixed income of $40,000 dollars each year. Workers nor employers can change the level of income, that is determined by a government board of labor that regulates the job's income rank.

  • There are four ranks of job income, starting with the entry level: $40k, $60k, $80k, and $100,000. By fixing income levels like this, it makes it harder for employers to commit wage theft, and the overall economy cannot inflate nor deflate much, because there are fewer distortions of income. It is easier for everyone, be it the IRS or a family farm, to assess how much money that people are likely to have on hand.

  • Absolute caps on wealth and assets. A citizen has $100,000 for money and owned assets respectively for $200k total, a migrant has $100k total, and non-residents of the land only up to $50k. This means that someone living in Russia can't hold as much land or the like. Anyone exceeding the caps, have the excess 100% taxed.

  • Companies also get caps, based on employee headcount and the income ranks of said employees. Companies that use AI can artificially increase their employee payroll metrics, by paying into an income lotto that is used by government to pay incomes to people whose jobs have been displaced by AI. Companies that exceed their wealth and asset caps, have 100% of the excess taxed.

  • Assorted systems to keep corporations and individuals honest. The local and national government assigns rotating book keepers to companies, so that corporations can't hide their assets or avoid taxation.

00000

There is more to it all, but that threatens to become a wall of text. Maybe another day, if people are interested in weird nuts and bolts. The important thing, is that we should make it easy to understand the wealth levels that people and companies are supposed to have.

this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
653 points (100.0% liked)

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