Forum Post: I will gladly pay you $9.00 per hour while I pay myself $748,800.00 per year!
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 22, 2011, 7:16 p.m. EST by vettezeppelin
(163)
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In 1969 the average CEO made 40 times what the average worker made, now they make over 400 times what the average worker makes. There should be a law that prohibits any 1 individual from making more than 40 times what the average wages are in the organization they are in. You can still make as much as you want through hard work but you will have to take your employees up with you and isn't that true fairness!?! Even with this idea a CEO can still pay people 9.00 per hour on average and pay himself 748,800.00 per year!!
a-rod made 32million this year.
my kid plays baseball too.
wtf is up with the discrepancy.
750K a YEAR? My CEO wouldn't get out of bed for peanuts like that. You are obviously some sort of anti-capitalist commie.
I cannot back a call for a salary cap. It's asinine, and its anti-capitalist. Just tax the rich, including their profits from complex financial instruments and investments. The problem resides in the failure of the rich to pay their share, not their absolute net worth.
Ribis, unfortunately that idea will never work - 1) The CEOs own the politicians, so a law like that will never get passed, 2) It would not address the demoralizing impact of CEOs taking 20% pay rises while the minions get 0% (and aren't we lucky that we didn't get a pay CUT), and 3) Even if we jacked the tax up to 90%, they would just jack their salaries up so that their take home would continue to increase, and they would fire thousands of workers to pay for their raises. Frustrating, isn't it?
Krankie, progressive taxation worked for half a century after WW2, in good times and bad -- a time spanning three costly wars, the space race, the nation's largest-ever infrastructure deployments, and several trade crises. The problem is that we've dismantled too much of our government (most especially whistleblowing, oversight, and accountability functions) and have slashed taxes on the rich to an infinitesimal fraction of their 20th century averages. On your points:
A salary cap directly encourages financial evasion. Someone who wants more is going to find a way to get it -- flatly ignoring human greed as a motive was a crippling flaw of the Soviet implementation. Now, selfless people will obey regardless -- the question is for the selfish. If a selfish person has a choice between breaking the law and paying a 50% tax, many will choose to obey the law. If the decision is between breaking the law and handing almost all of their current income to the government, the law will be broken, frequently and without shame. It's the same reason narcotics prohibitions fail -- too many ordinary people do not recognize the laws as just, and so most people fail to report infractions. The same result would occur here, and it would lead to decreased tax revenues, an increase in financial misconduct, and the subsequent failure of programs dependent on said funding.
Sorry, but I see no problem with someone being rich; I have every problem with someone being rich, but not paying for the societal benefits they exploit. I believe a salary cap would lead directly to massive, shameless (thus essentially uncontrollable) corruption, while our own history shows that progressive taxes are sustainable.
Hi Ribis, I really hope you are right. But somehow, between WW2 and now, the greedy (I won't say the rich, because there are many rich people that want to contribute to getting this country back on its feet) have manipulated the population into thinking that it is fair for super-rich people to pay less tax than they do. How someone that lives in a trailer park and doesn't have two pairs of shoes to his name can get all upset over millionaires having to pay more taxes really beats the hell out of me. But the reality is that somehow they have pulled this off. Sadly, I really feel that politicians on both sides of the government care NOTHING about the wishes of the 99%, so relying on law changes to bring some sanity back to the country is nothing more than wishful thinking. But, as I said, I truly hope that I am wrong.
Our job is to reawaken our friends' and families' sense of self-worth, to let people realize that we need not quietly submit to those who would return us to plutocracy, to the rule of the wealthy we suffered before the Great Depression. Nobody said it would be simple, but what less can we do?
Humanity stands on the threshold of a thousand remarkable discoveries that will dwarf those of the 20th century, if only we can muddle through our wretched bureaucracies, survive our petty compulsions, and somehow keep hope alive for another few decades. For the first time in history, it's plausible to imagine the basic conditions of human life changing within our lifetimes. It's a dream worth dying for; more than that, it's one worth living for.
Ribis, you are quite an orator - have you ever considered a career in the public service?? I don't mean that as an insult - the bozos that currently reside in the corridors of power know (or care) less about public service than I know about brain surgery. I mean REAL public service - people that want to make the world a better place. You would certainly have my vote.
The American Dream is dead! Long live the new American Dream. We can't complain about the injustice of inequality and still hang on to the dream of making a spectacular personal fortune. We need a new American Dream - one in which personal prosperity keeps a mutually respectful tie with collective prosperity and environmental sustainability.
Excellent post. Your idea is great.
Just think, annually the $9/hr ee makes $18,720. If you multiply that by 343, the average multiple of an average worker's wage that a CEO makes today, the CEO makes (I won't say "earns," because we could argue he/she doesn't "earn it") is $6,420,960.
The only way you can make $748,800 per year is if you risk a proportionally larger amount by investing in the company, or have job skills that no one else has and benefit the company a greater amount.
Read the last couple post and your point is proven by all the facts http://therevolutionarytruth.tumblr.com/
It's a novel and radical idea to institute a desired ratio for minimum and maximum wages. Check out www.thewealthcap.org , eventually there will be a proposal for limiting maximum wages to a ratio of the minimum wages on the site among other points of discussion for moving towards limiting the income gap in all its forms and reducing the severity of its effects.
what community based program is your idea ? ! i might be willing to join or help with funding ?
Those SOB's the bankers, the lobbyist, CEO's, George Bush, and the devil himself Warren Buffet. I wish they would stop making money on me.
Roloff. They only make money on you if you give it to them. Why not give it to your friends and neighbors (local businesses) and see how arrogant the SOBs are when us "little people" rob them of their lifeblood - money...
Everyone should make the same amount no matter what job they. Isn't that really the fairest way to do it? A Police officer should risk his life and make the same amount as a shoe sales person. Of perhaps a doctor should make as much as...say a....bicycle repair person. Lets really make it fair and tax the rich more so they are paying their fair share. Now lets tax the 50% of Americans at the same rate that currently pay no taxes. Fair is fair.
And obvious troll is obvious troll.