The image at the top of this blog posting is from The Wall Street Journal (on May 29, 2026). Lest the picture cause any confusion, that newspaper is most definitely not recommending a "Billionaire Tax Now." The Journal identifies the picture as a scene from the California Billionaire Tax Act’s campaign kickoff in Los Angeles in February. Come November, we Californians will get to vote on that billionaire tax idea!
A graph published in the same article from which I acquired the photo was titled, "The Record Divide Between Corporate Profits and Worker Pay." Click the link to read the article. Below, you can see two graphs that were included in the article, and that pretty much sum up its message. The two graphs show that employee compensation, as a percentage of the nation's gross domestic income, is going down. Corporate profits, as a percentage of gross domestic income, are going up.
In other words, as our economy bounds along (or limps), corporations and their stockholders are getting an increasing share of the income produced by the business. Workers are getting less.
Well, isn't that just the way of the world? Well, it is, but as I continually suggest in my daily blog postings, it is possible to change the world - and I am recommending that we do just that with respect to the facts to which those two graphs are alerting us.
One approach is the proposed "Billionaire's Tax," which is why, I feel sure, The Wall Street Journal provided that picture of the rally in Los Angeles. There is, however, another approach that might also be considered (they're not mutually exclusive). What if we decided, by way of a federal law, that corporations would have to pay their workers not only cash money (subject to collective bargaining), but with an actual share of the business? Suppose, when corporate profits increased, not all of those profits would go to those who own the business. Suppose part of those profits had to be paid out to the workers who made the profits possible?
The net result, were this a requirement maintained over time, is that workers - not just the "capitalists," the "owners" who "capitalized" the business - would end up owning a share of the business.
I, personally, think that this would likely be positive not only for the workers, but for the business itself. A "virtuous circle" might well be established. We know about how "vicious circles" work, but there are the "virtuous" variety, too.
I admit that this system of compensation, if made a requirement, would tend to turn "workers" into "capitalists," but even though I am not a big booster of the capitalists (and particularly the "billionaire" variety), this "pay the workers with ownership" approach might well be worth a try!
Excellent idea. There has to be a major shift in the concept of fair and just before our country begins to serve the people again instead of serving only wealthy corporations. Of course the Citizen’s United ruling makes that very difficult to imagine.
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