Universal Maximum Income & Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

In the article "UMI for the Wealthy" by tinorozzo August 26, 2017 he states "Without the estate tax, super-wealthy families would be able to hoard that wealth in perpetuity, becoming ever more powerful in the process." He has shown a basic reason we all need to explore a Universal Maximum Income, and why it should be considered a real and viable option.

People have become "...ever more powerful..." regardless of an estate tax. How much money was the estate tax supposed to prevent families from amassing? Exactly how much power was this tax intended to curtail? I know of a few families who have the wealth and power of a small nation. Because of those observations I would say that the estate tax is totally ineffective in its intended purpose. The Bill Gates: $75 billion, Amancio Ortega: $67 billion, Warren Buffett: $60.8 billion, Carlos Slim Helu: $50 billion, Jeff Bezos: $45.2 billion,
Mark Zuckerberg: $44.6 billion, Larry Ellison: $43.6 billion, Michael Bloomberg: $40 billion are all examples of people with the wealth of nations.

All of these people affect government policy in one way or the other, and in ways that are not available to people without such wealth. In effect that situation is a de facto overlordship by the wealthy over the poor. Indeed this control exerted over government policy by super wealthy persons has set up a system of "welfare for the rich" and "rugged individualism for the poor". The ever shrinking middle class gets stuck with paying for it all. Then by the time the middle class die they have nothing left to pass down because the cost of their final days eats up their wealth. All the money they saved for a lifetime gets soaked up by medical expenses and/or nursing home costs. What's more is that by the time the middle class person is put in the ground, their final expenses put them into so much debt that the debt collectors start putting liens on the family home and other assets. The middle class and poor don't get the luxury of passing down anything because the richest persons have figured out how to influence government to make policy that transfers the wealth from the poor to the wealthy.

I have thought about the concept of a basic minimum level of sustenance, or Universal Basic Income (UBI) for our people. I like the idea and think it would solve a lot of problems. One problem it don't solve is the massive power over everyone else the super rich maintain. It occurred to me about the idea of a Universal Maximum Income (UMI), but not until now did I ever see the mention of it anywhere else. I'm starting to like the idea of a UMI even more all the time. I think it is the implementation that is problematic.

For starters, there is the problem of lobbyists and influence peddling by the very people that a UMI would affect. They would not want their wealth or power limited in any way. They are going to fight any such UMI policy tooth and nail. They are going to use their wealth in an attempt to crush any such ideas. They would use force of arms, lies, murder, payola or any other means to maintain the status quo. Even if such a policy as UMI were implemented there would be a massive outflux of super wealthy persons to other countries which didn't have a UMI policy.

We already have a problem with people stashing their wealth in places like the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes. I doubt the same persons would be hesitant in pledging allegiance to some flag that catered to their wealth building desires. In order to prevent that option the implementation of a Universal Maximum Income would have to be global in scale. To get other nations to implement a UMI policy of their own severe economic sanctions would have to be levied against any country who didn't follow suite.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

How much is too much? How much is not enough? On the low economic end the basic should allow for proper shelter, water, food, healthcare, transport and clothing.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs can be useful in figuring this out. It is all about motivation. When people are having a hard time providing for basic needs, that is all they are going to think about. Their only motivation becomes fulfilling these basic needs. If they have these basic needs guaranteed, their motivation suddenly turns to fulfilling other needs higher up the hierarchy. They are going to see other people who have moved beyond the basic needs level, and are not going to be satisfied being left behind. Because their basic needs are taken care of, they are going to have the resources and time to better themselves. All their time and motivation moves away from scratching out bare sustenance.

On the upper end of the economic scale, what limit should be placed there? Our Constitution proclaims that we all should have "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". There is nothing there in the Constitution that also proclaims that each person is entitled to amass so much power and wealth that they can dictate policy in government. That particular power is reserved for all the citizens and is supposed to be without regard for wealth. Taking the hierarchy of needs into account again we see that self actualization is the goal of fulfilling these graduated needs. What is self actualization?

self-ac·tu·al·i·za·tion; noun

the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities, especially considered as a drive or need present in everyone.

Money is a poor replacement for, or measure of, the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities unless that fulfillment means amassing power only. A person "Amassing power for what?" then becomes a real concern for everyone else. So the Universal Maximum income would have to strike a balance between realizing one's talents and potentialities and doing so without harming the efforts of everyone else in their own efforts at self actualization. At what level should the amassed wealth be capped in order to allow for that?

I would think that level of maximum wealth/income should be something that would maintain a luxurious lifestyle. Not the lifestyle of royalty because we fled from monarchies and had a revolution in order to remove ourselves from such vices. The UMI would be something which is desirable enough to cause people to reach for that, but not so much as to cause a family to wield undue influence over our democratic system of government. When a person has a bank account they've managed to bring up to $10 billion dollars, what is the point of a goal to raise it to $20 billion? How is that a real measure of one's talents and potentialities? Even a criminal can do that. More often than not it is the honest person who doesn't care much for all that wealth and the criminal at heart that does.

A further question would be, what to do with the excess wealth produced by the people on the high end of the economy? What other ways can these super wealthy persons be motivated other than the amassing of unreasonable levels of wealth and power. If their focus can be moved away from one-ups-manship on numbers of dollars to philanthropy, or numbers of people lifted up, everyone can get lifted up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.