Michael Lissack money brings security and freedom from a host of petty worries. It often yields power, influence, and at least the illusion of popular esteem. It signals personal achievement and bolsters feelings of self-worth. In the face of widespread poverty and deprivation, and with money to address these problems in such short supply, one cannot read about the soaring incomes of so many executives and professionals without wondering whether these vast earnings could be better used to help meet urgent human needs. The complexities of our modem economy cast doubt on whether theories drawn from a simpler age can justify the earnings of successful professionals. With so many successful students flocking to management consulting organizations and corporate law firms, one has to ask whether money has become too dominant in shaping the career choices of talented undergraduates-and whether the nation is being poorly served as a result. Setting a maximum wage of $1 million each year will do wonders in changing the pursuit of cash in this country. It will change our ethics, change our greed, and I believe make us all better off. In 1932, on the floor of the United States Senate, Huey Long proposed that the tax laws “be so re- vamped that no one man should be allowed to have an income of more than one million dollars a year” and that no one person should inherit in a lifetime more than five million dollars without working for it. What is a man going to do with more than $1,000,000? Long asked his Senate colleagues. “If we could distribute this surplus wealth, while leaving these rich people all the luxuries they can possibly use, what a different world this would be.” The plan Long proposed included a ceiling on the income and wealth of the very rich that would create a floor of decency for everyone else. One early version of the plan proposed a 1 percent tax on all individual wealth between $1 million and $2 million, with that tax rate progressively increas- ing until it reached 100 percent on all fortunes over $100 million. The effect, said Long, would limit “the size of any one man’s fortune to something like $50,000,000” and allow “millionaires to have more than they can use for any luxury they can enjoy on earth.” What To Do: Enact the Long Plan
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