The strong point we have to make is that overpay is bad, is happiness-negative for the overpaid as well as the underpaid. If people see this (and good sense and all history prove it), justice will start looking good to them.
At the moment, most of both underpaid and overpaid are thinking overpay is good. People are thinking in twos, in opposite poles, not seeing the option of the middle as the best alternative. They are thinking: underpay is bad, so overpay must be good - instead of thinking: underpay and overpay are bad, so pay justice is good. Like the Sophie Tucker saying: I've been poor and I've been rich rich is better. But it isn't; what's better and best for prosperity, safety, and happiness is fairpay. Most of the present overpaid is new money, so old money has (with some few exceptions) fallen from overpay and overpower. Rags to riches to rags. The turnover among the overpaid is very high crests don't stay up.
US $40 per hour for all working people including housewives, and students who successfully study in fields society wants studied, is a good but not exact figure for fairpay before the meltdown, and the meltdown takes off around 5-10%, and inflation is running at 4% a year, so the figure is perfectly good. It is a round figure anyway ($100,000 per year means $100,000 plus or minus 20%) and it doesn't matter what the figure is anyway, as long as it makes the point that something like 99% of people are now underpaid, that fairpay is higher for most people than what they get now or have ever got, that extreme pay injustice means most are below fairpay and will be paid more, they deserve to be paid more (they are creating that much substantial wealth (goods and services) by their work). All the work is equal to all the workproduct is equal to all the money, so world-average pay per hour is world-annual income divided by total workhours around $40 US. World annual income is $25 trillion (1987) inflation adjusted global inflation since 1987 has been between 32% and 4% - $25 trillion compounded with global inflation each year since 1987 brings it to $300 trillion (2009). Total workhours is total workers (around 4 billion), times world-average hours per year (around 2500).
No work equals no workproducts equals money worth nothing. Twice as much work equals twice as much workproduct equals money worth twice as much (a dollar buying twice as much).
Our figures are still good figures in the crisis they are not just guesses they are round figures because there are a million minor factors that affect figures to a small extent, and all the figures are constantly changing (a little) all the time - but they are solid within plus or minus 20%.
One thing is absolutely solid when you have super-extreme pay injustice, most people are below the average. The average is higher than anyone imagines and that average is plenty for all. When you have a very skewed graph, with most low and a few very, very, very high, the average has to be well above what most get. The very, very, very high incomes "pull up' the average and we have highest income 10,000,000 times what 90% of people are getting, so they are pulling up the average well above what most people are getting, above what 99% are getting, above what 80% of Americans are getting.
People see many poor, and they understandably but mistakenly think that the average will be below what ordinary Americans are getting that the many poor will pull down the average below the "American ordinary' level. But it is not the "ordinary' American (neither rich nor poor) who is richest. The relatively few, the 1% who are overpaid up to 100,000 times average, pulls up the world average well above the American average. 50% of Americans have less than $2000 net equity (net assets wealth) and 80% of Americans are below the average.
People got by up to 1800 in fact pretty well, worldwide, before the first world imperialism (plunder) went into high gear with industrial technology (guns, trains, etc) and impoverished the third world (after impoverishing most in the first world). And productivity has multiplied 20-fold since 1800 so, again, there is plenty there is super-abundance. If average income in 1800 was adequate, average income (substantial wealth, good and services) today is 20 times adequate.
Our figures are from Sprout and Weaver, International Distribution of Income 1960-1987 Kyklos journal, volume 45 1992 pages 237-258 - inflation adjusted using IMF/ILO inflation figures. You have to compound the annual inflation figures global annual income is now $300 trillion. Since 1987, global inflation went from 15% up to 32% in the early 90s and then down to 4% now. The Sprout and Weaver figures are PPP figures (purchase price parity figures) which adjusts for the fact that products are cheaper in poor areas - supermarkets in poor areas have cheaper prices than supermarkets in "upmarket' areas they take smaller profits (= they steal less per customer).
With pay injustice, the majority are always going to be below the average. The larger the pay injustice, the larger the majority who are below. With the real super-extreme pay injustice, 99% are below. Think of our swimming pool graph if the pay justice level = one metre deep, and in reality 90% of the pool area ranges between 1 cm and 1/10th mm deep, then obviously most of the pool is practically empty and most of the water is up in the thin but very tall (100 kilometres tall!!) needle of overpay. The giant sucking machine of the legal thefts (and the successful illegal thefts) has done its work: we are relatively very close to one person having all (very close to maximal pay injustice).
The 1000+ billionaires are economically the third richest country in the world. People dismiss the superrich because they are few, and because people cannot really conceive how extreme a billion dollars income per year is, relative to average or "ordinary'. A billion is 10,000 times average and 20,000 times American "ordinary'. ie, taking out 10,000 times what the billionaire puts in to the social pool of wealth by his work. The highest annual revealed income is $30 billion and the highest annual concealed income is higher. Obviously the super-superrich have good reason to conceal, for if people knew the highest income they might wake up to the fact they are being robbed, and take action. Every plutocracy has fallen when things (poverty-wealth, slavery-tyranny) got so extreme that the people finally woke up witness the American, French and Russian revolutions. Unfortunately, even then, the people still did not "get' the absolute essential importance of pay justice, and let it go away again - pay ranged from 1cent to $10,000 per hour in America in the 1880s.
NO ONE is a winner with inequality. The overpaid (both nations and individuals) are constantly falling and being replaced, like the water in a Las Vegas needle fountain because overpay is attacked by both overpaid and underpaid, both internally and externally attacked with intensity proportional to the extremeness of the pay injustice. Both overpay and underpay are stimuli to attack. The overpaid are attacked by both overpaid and underpaid by everyone, including their subordinates, including their families. It stands to reason and all history has no exceptions to this.
People think that more money is always better because they ignore or forget the attack element. They focus only on the money, using selective consciousness, deleting or censoring the reality of the attack element. Conquering is the beginning of troubles look what troubles came to the whites in South Africa what troubles come to America today. Plundering makes enemies, enemies make defence needs, defence needs force more plundering (both internal and external), which makes more enemies (both internal and external). Eventually cost of defence exceeds income and the empire falls. The largest fortune is always smaller than the rest of the world, so it must fall for as long as people have stomachs to feed and need to place their feet on land. The defence needs force robbing the people, so the plutocracy is attacked both internally and externally, by the underpaid within the country and the overpaid and underpaid external to the plutocracy. Pay injustice says to invaders: we have gathered the wealth, and weakened and alienated our people ie, pay injustice causes invasions (eg, illegal immigrants, eg the sicilian mafia).
This idea of ours is just to get people to open their spotlight focus on the money to see also the inevitable necessary attack element in overpay and to see also that there is diminishing marginal utility in more money, which you can see by looking at the fact that the loss of $1000 in income when income is $1000 is catastrophic, and loss of $1000 when income is $100,000 is a very minor difference"still bad but far less bad ie, all income money is not equal. 100 times the income is not 100 times the happiness, pleasure, satisfaction etc. income money is very unequal. Satisfaction waits on desire; when the tummy is full, all food is worthless, more food can add nothing to happiness. The increase of happiness in going from $0 to $1000 is huge, the increase going from $1000 to $2000 is a bit smaller and each additional $1000 income can do less and less, because more desires have been already satisfied the finite limits of desires. A $4000 plate of truffles is not 4000 times as good as a good $1 meatball maybe more like 4000th more pleasurable.
Therefore overpay can do little good and must do harm proportional to the size of the overpay, therefore the net gain in overpay is negative. You gain constant worry over security, constant labour to maintain security, constant cost in life-time, money, and psychological wear and tear. Look at the labour of Hitler, Bush, Caesar, Cardinal Wolsey. Look at Stalin's paranoid desperate activity purging suspected subordinates, Richard III's troubles, the South African whites' troubles, the British Indian Colonial troubles do you think that people had much freedom from troubles when they had stolen so much, killed so many? What does it take out of you when you have to respond to troubles whether you are exhausted or not, respond to the constant eroding energy of the robbed?
That more money is always better has been the simplistic leading idea of humanity for 1000s of years and it is simply horribly wrong and sense and all history shouts so. Violence gets to everyone, gets wherever humans get, and violence is proportional to pay injustice, is caused by pay injustice. Overpay is theft is injury, and injury is always paid back with interest. Injury never fades away it just keeps attacking however it can. It is the golden rule we have never learned: hit people hit back. Kindness (non-injury) is essential for survival and happiness - it is the lesson of history we have not yet learned: Injustice is a vice (a cause of misery). It is love of overpay that is the root of all evils which is good news, because we only have to see this to cut "all evils' (99% of social problems) at the root.
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