Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act

[dudalb]

Yeah, that's a tall assumption.

They are mostly efficient at lobbying and getting bailouts.

And I suggest many goverment bureaucracies are pretty buth the same; they are good at getting their budgets increased, not so good at doing what they were set up to do.

 

[dudalb]

Do you really think our government prudently and efficently spends the tax money it already takes in? Why should we have to pay higher taxes because our government is inefficent and incompetent?

You have a point, b ut dodge the issue that huge companies are not paying nearly their fair share.
And trickle down economics is a joke.

 

[lobosrul5]

It is a surface-level look. It doesn't fully account for the quality of the jobs, how many people stopped looking, what type of employment, etc. It can be an indicator, but it is given way too much weight.

The BLS does keep stats on all of that. If by quality you mean what the job pays that is. Also the industry.


https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

I see that people have convientely forgotten we have tried systems that try to eliminate profit and have everything ran by the state; and that they have inevitable failed badly.
Yeah one thing I am not is an Anti Capitalist. I think we need to protect against abuses and guarantee a minimum standard of living; but that can be done without the state running everything .,

There is an area between "eliminate all profit" and "just let the rich take whatever they want".

personally I'd see high taxes on any payout to persons above a certain limit (say 200000 euros / year or so) and low taxes on any profit used to strengthen a company by reinvesting the profit into research, worker benefits, cleaner infrastructure etc as a fair compromise.

That way, if you vote yourself (for example) a 11 billion bonus at least some of that will also be used to re-invest in the nation that allowed you to get to that point and pay for healthcare/infrastructure/unemployment for those you laid off to make the company more 'efficient'

 

[The Great Zaganza]

And I suggest many goverment bureaucracies are pretty buth the same; they are good at getting their budgets increased, not so good at doing what they were set up to do.

no.

because of Republicans, there have been countless investigations into US agency efficiencies, and by and largest they are run better than any company of similar size of employees - they have to, given that every few year they have to survive a Shutdown.

it is a well researched fact that is is not bureaucracy that costs money, it is things that are completely unnecessary to start with.
Most Means Tests for government support costs way, way, waaay more than just giving everyone who asks for support under the program the money, even if that would include some who would not be eligible.

Most subsidies are clearly just Pork to get a vote in Congress.


But, most importantly, the Military is a complete Black Box with zero accountability and tremendous waste.

Are you worried about that, dudalb ?

 

[3point14]

More so than large governments.

Can you demonstrate this?

 

[3point14]

You think that huge Government Bureaucracies are efficent?

I didn't say that.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Under Reagan, top tax rate was 90%.

This was explicitly to disincentize very high salaries, with the logic that someone working as a CEO isn't doing a 1,000x better job than someone working on the factory floor.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Under Reagan, top tax rate was 90%.

This was explicitly to disincentize very high salaries, with the logic that someone working as a CEO isn't doing a 1,000x better job than someone working on the factory floor.

And now we are told it's "communism" to suggest CEOs don't deserve a hundred million times the salary of the workers.

 

[dirtywick]

efficiency is an interesting term. is there anything efficient about excessive ceo pay?

 

[Brainster]

Under Reagan, top tax rate was 90%.

BZZZT! The top marginal tax rate was 90% until 1963, when it was reduced to 70% (over two years) by Kennedy (who, unusually for a Democrat, ran on a platform of cutting taxes and increasing defense spending). Reagan cut the top rate to 50% in 1982 and 38.5% in 1986. Since then it has stayed in the thirties.

 

[Random]

Under Reagan, top tax rate was 90%.

This was explicitly to disincentize very high salaries, with the logic that someone working as a CEO isn't doing a 1,000x better job than someone working on the factory floor.

It wasn't really meant to discourage high salaries, it was based on the assumption that income past a certain point could be taxed at a very high rate without affecting the rest of the economy. It was basically free money for governments.

The Progressive tax system is based on three simple ideas:

1 - Governments need to raise revenue to do the things we want governments to do. You can argue over what you want the government to be doing or not, but if it is doing anything, it needs cash.

2 - Taxes should have as little impact on the person paying them as possible. This just seems to be common sense to me.

3 - The more money you have, the less each individual bit of money matters to you. A hundred dollars a day is tip money for Bill Gates. A hundred dollars a day is a life-changing amount of money for a man living on the street.

Put them together and a Progressive tax system just seems reasonable, and a high tax rate on absurd levels of income allows the government to raise revenue without affecting the lives of the wealthy that much. Sure, they might not be able to buy that fifth luxury yacht, but how many luxury yachts do you really need?