A question for conservatives on restoring the middle class.

MSI Magus

MSI Magus

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So we have debated trickle down economics to death in the sense of job creation. Conservatives think it works, liberals stand on top of the mountain of facts whistling and letting the facts speak for themselves ;)

Ok ok shots aside though thats not what I am looking for this topic to be about. My quesiton for conservatives is that even if we pretend that trickle down works for creating jobs, its indisputable that its not working as well at evenly distributing the wealth. In the last several decades we have seen the rich in this nation get richer and richer and richer while the middle class has bleed out. Now unlike most liberals I am the first to admit a big part of it is the fault of the middle class. They got lazy and complacent, they stopped educating themselves when they went to vote or did not vote at all. They felt that every member of the family should have a car and a TV in every room! Basically they got lazy, ignorant and greedy. However when you look at the statistics you cant just blame it on the middle class.

So the question is, if we cant tax the rich....what do we do to over the next few decades start rebuilding the middle class. Its obvious that the current low tax system has led to shipping jobs overseas and the jobs at home are ever increasingly walmart/mcdonalds style low wage jobs. Even factory jobs are now expecting more work at less pay from fewer employees. My wifes factory used the recession as an excuse to drop the wages they hire in at from $17 down to $12 and they let half her department go but the work load has not changed.

So again if we cant tax the rich and they wont do the right thing on their own aaaaaand more goverment jobs is not the answer. What do we do to encourage fair wages in this country again?
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']Since when is it the governments job to create different social classes.[/QUOTE]

Well conservatives tend to complain that government workers are paid far too much and given far too many benefits. If this is true then even if it does not create different social classes it at least makes a step in the right direction.

So if you dont think the government can do that, I must ask...why would conservatives then say we need to cut unions and government jobs?
 
[quote name='MSI Magus'] Its obvious that the current low tax system has led to shipping jobs overseas [/QUOTE]

you meant high taxes, right?
 
[quote name='RAMSTORIA']you meant high taxes, right?[/QUOTE]

Well lets see. Historic rates were more around 70-90% so 35% is pretty damn low. Especially when you consider that after loop holes most of these corporations paid, little, nothing or even got money back from the government.

So again Ram how can you claim we have high taxes?

More importantly it would be nice if just for once a conservative at this board would answer the question at hand vs nit picking little parts in the post they dislike and never can seem to disprove(if you can prove tax rates are high right now, be my guest, it would change my whole outlook on things!).
 
the real answer is conservatives don't give a shit about fair wages. If you don't make enough it is because you are stupid, lazy, don't believe in the right God, aren't talented or don't care, etc.

those people have more sympathy for the rich ("Ooo, the mean old media picks on rich people", "they pay high taxes already-whaaaa") than the middle class or the poor.
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']Since when is it the governments job to create different social classes.[/QUOTE]
I'd argue that it's one of government's most important jobs so we don't have just 2 classes: the gentry and the serfs. To imply that they should just allow the gentry to bring us back to feudalism is simple dumb and has no sense of how any society functions.
 
[quote name='usickenme']the real answer is conservatives don't give a shit about fair wages. If you don't make enough it is because you are stupid, lazy, don't believe in the right God, aren't talented or don't care, etc.

those people have more sympathy for the rich ("Ooo, the mean old media picks on rich people", "they pay high taxes already-whaaaa") than the middle class or the poor.[/QUOTE]

Well while I think this is most likely the case and why they wont answer my question, I do think we should give them a fair shot(despite the fact that the first two conservatives ignored the questions and stated falsehoods on other points).
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']Well conservatives tend to complain that government workers are paid far too much and given far too many benefits. If this is true then even if it does not create different social classes it at least makes a step in the right direction.
[/QUOTE]

And it's not true. With exceptions (as there are overpaid people everywhere) government jobs tend to pay a good bit less than what the person could make with a similar job in the private sector.

Benefits do tend to be better, but in my experience not enough to off set the salary difference.


Anyway, higher taxes on high income brackets and capital gains are probably the best bet, in terms of things the government could do, for slowing the growth in the gap between executive and worker pay. And that will only work if they manage to close all loopholes etc.

And even then, there's no guarantee they'll lower executive pay and raise workers wages/create more jobs etc. They're just as likely to invest the money in other things or just move their business overseas to a country with lower taxes.

So there's no easy solution to the problem. It will probably take the system getting to the point of having another great depression and/or a near revolution by the working class for things to ever change.
 
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This operates off of the premise that we should evenly distribute wealth in this country. I don't think that's something we need to do. I'm fine with the kid at McDonald's making less than my doctor. I'm OK with making less than the CEO of a major, billion dollar company. Some people work shitty jobs, some people work great jobs. It's not always an indicator of the person's abilities, but there is a correlation between education level, work ethic, and acquired skills and abilities.

We value some professions and services more than others. The ones we value more should be paid more.
 
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It doesn't operate on that assumption at all. Certain professions should pay more than others. And managers and executives should make more than workers.

The problem is the shrinking of the middle class and the rapid growth of the gap between executive pay in recent decades. Something I read the other day that showed over the past X years (don't recall the time frame) median worker pay had went up like 27% while executive pay had went up over 400% over the same time period.

That's the problem. Not that certain professions pay more than others, or that executives make more than workers. It's a problem of worker pay stagnating over recent decades while executive pay has skyrocketed.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']It doesn't operate on that assumption at all. Certain professions should pay more than others. And managers and executives should make more than workers.

The problem is the shrinking of the middle class and the rapid growth of the gap between executive pay in recent decades. Something I read the other day that showed over the past X years (don't recall the time frame) median worker pay had went up like 27% while executive pay had went up over 400% over the same time period.

That's the problem. Not that certain professions pay more than others, or that executives make more than workers. It's a problem of worker pay stagnating over recent decades while executive pay has skyrocketed.[/QUOTE]

OK, so pay has gone throught he roof. What role does the government play in that? None. The board determines the salary for executives oftentimes. It's most certainly a good ole boy network, but blaming gross salary difference on government inactivity doesn't make any sense. Post tax income would be a better indicator for your point. I feel like those CEOs are making too much. If worked for Nike, I'd want Phil Knight to make less so I got paid a little more, but his value is so much greater to the organization than the guy who uses the waffle iron on soles of shoes, that a large gap should be expected.

Regarding the 400% increase, sure, I think that's too much. But if it's a private company, they can pay however they see fit. If it's generally felt to be obscene and as a worker you don't feel comfortable being part of an organization, you have other employment options. "Vote with your labor" so to speak. Also, when looking at the amount of time that it took for the 400% increase, you should also look at the value of the company. Perhaps through great leadership, that exec led 800% growth. It's a stretch, and I would suspect only occurs a handful of times, but still, something to consider.

I don't believe in taxing people to equal living standards. Many of those people earning a fat salary are working harder than those making much less, and make far more important decisions than the lower earners. Decisions that impact thousands of lives.
 
It became the government's job to create social classes as soon as people got the vote and realized that having a middle class is completely unnatural has to be done largely by massive state interventions. Hence, except for America, there arent really conservatives in any significant degree in the rest of the democratized world. We are currently dealing with their last hurrah.

Anyway, its all trade policy, not marginal tax rates per se. No matter what the tax rates are, you couldnt go overseas to produce and sell to the American market because those savings were nulled at the border by tariffs. These things were done away with during the 80's and 90's.

On the subject of pay disparity, wages and productivity have scaled together something to the tune of FOREVER. Until the the very same period of the 80's and forward mentioned above. Some people say, well, its technology (e.g. computers), but the scaling managed to survive all previous technological advancements, including the Industrial Revolution. Another thing besides trade that started getting blown up is unionization. They also started deregulating everything they could get their hands on.

Basically, every problem ever leads right back to the feet of Ronald Reagan.
 
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[quote name='berzirk']OK, so pay has gone throught he roof. What role does the government play in that? None. The board determines the salary for executives oftentimes. It's most certainly a good ole boy network, but blaming gross salary difference on government inactivity doesn't make any sense. Post tax income would be a better indicator for your point. I feel like those CEOs are making too much. If worked for Nike, I'd want Phil Knight to make less so I got paid a little more, but his value is so much greater to the organization than the guy who uses the waffle iron on soles of shoes, that a large gap should be expected.

Regarding the 400% increase, sure, I think that's too much. But if it's a private company, they can pay however they see fit. If it's generally felt to be obscene and as a worker you don't feel comfortable being part of an organization, you have other employment options. "Vote with your labor" so to speak. Also, when looking at the amount of time that it took for the 400% increase, you should also look at the value of the company. Perhaps through great leadership, that exec led 800% growth. It's a stretch, and I would suspect only occurs a handful of times, but still, something to consider.

I don't believe in taxing people to equal living standards. Many of those people earning a fat salary are working harder than those making much less, and make far more important decisions than the lower earners. Decisions that impact thousands of lives.[/QUOTE]

My father had to retire before he was 50 from hanging drywall his whole life. He had a pinched nerve that basically runs from his upper back down to his leg. When he visited us a month or two ago he could not even finish a walk with me and the dogs, within 10 mins he was in so much pain I had to help him limp home. My mother luckily found a desk job a few years ago and worked a desk job most of her life, but from her 3 or 4 years as a city worker she irreversibly damaged her foot doing manual labor.

I know so many people with disabilities like this earned on the job. When was the last time you heard of a CEO of a company injuring himself like that on the job? Look I am not saying people who do mental work do not work hard. My wife is in accounting and working towards finishing her second degree(this time for business administration). She worked hard to begin with but adding to it college she is working hard to better herself and earn "big bucks"(which for us will be $60,000-$100,000). Thing is that CEOs even when they work as hard or harder then her still 1. Do not work anywhere near as hard as those doing physical labor, but more importantly 2. Do not do anything to justify 10s or even 100s of millions a year.

These types of people are not paid that much because they deserve it, they are paid that much because they and their ilk have learned how to game the system.
 
[quote name='berzirk']
Regarding the 400% increase, sure, I think that's too much. But if it's a private company, they can pay however they see fit. If it's generally felt to be obscene and as a worker you don't feel comfortable being part of an organization, you have other employment options. "Vote with your labor" so to speak. Also, when looking at the amount of time that it took for the 400% increase, you should also look at the value of the company. Perhaps through great leadership, that exec led 800% growth. It's a stretch, and I would suspect only occurs a handful of times, but still, something to consider. [/quote]

The problem isn't the 400% increase. It's that workers (i.e. anyone not management--not just factory level people) only got a 27% increase in their wages over the same time frame.

There was already a big gap between executive and worker pay before this trend in recent decades, so now the gap had just gotten dramatically larger.

If a company's value goes up, shouldn't all employees get relatively comparable raises rather than most having wages stagnate and only a few at the top who already made huge salaries relative to workers getting big raises?

I don't believe in taxing people to equal living standards. Many of those people earning a fat salary are working harder than those making much less, and make far more important decisions than the lower earners. Decisions that impact thousands of lives.
Click to expand...

Again, no one is talking about taxing people into equal living standards. So quit throwing out that straw man.

EXECUTIVES SHOULD MAKE MUCH MORE THAN WORKERS. The problem is how wide the gap has gotten in recent years and how the middle class is shrinking.

There's never going to be equal standards of living. There are going to be people who do nothing with their lives and are going to thus have a crappy quality of life, others who succeed and become wealthy and live a luxurious lifestyle--with the middle class in between those extremes.

That's fine. What's not fine is seeing the middle class shrink and the gap between the top few % of earners and everyone else widen dramatically. The gap widening is the problem, not just the fact that there is a gap as the gap exists for good reasons. It widening dramatically does not.

Say a company's average worker made $35,000 X years ago, and their CEO made $2 million. Take the 27% worker pay increase and the 400% executive pay increase and that means in the present day the workers average salary has only gone up to $44,450 while the CEO's went up to $8 million.

Thus the gap in that case when from the CEO making $1,965,000 more than the average worker to making $7,955,550 more. THAT is the problem. The gap has always been huge, but it's hard to justify how obscene it's got over the past 20 or 30 years.

Can the government do anything about it? Hard to say for the reasons I said in my earlier post. Likely, there isn't much they can do and it will just take the economy collapsing as companies go under from spending too much of their profits on executive pay rather than expanding their businesses.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']My father had to retire before he was 50 from hanging drywall his whole life. He had a pinched nerve that basically runs from his upper back down to his leg. When he visited us a month or two ago he could not even finish a walk with me and the dogs, within 10 mins he was in so much pain I had to help him limp home. My mother luckily found a desk job a few years ago and worked a desk job most of her life, but from her 3 or 4 years as a city worker she irreversibly damaged her foot doing manual labor.

I know so many people with disabilities like this earned on the job. When was the last time you heard of a CEO of a company injuring himself like that on the job? Look I am not saying people who do mental work do not work hard. My wife is in accounting and working towards finishing her second degree(this time for business administration). She worked hard to begin with but adding to it college she is working hard to better herself and earn "big bucks"(which for us will be $60,000-$100,000). Thing is that CEOs even when they work as hard or harder then her still 1. Do not work anywhere near as hard as those doing physical labor, but more importantly 2. Do not do anything to justify 10s or even 100s of millions a year.

These types of people are not paid that much because they deserve it, they are paid that much because they and their ilk have learned how to game the system.[/QUOTE]

Yah, and my personal story is that my father has been a chemical engineer for years after having to drop out of college for two years to earn enough to finish, now has arthritis in his back from crawling around large paper mill boilers going above and beyond his job in order to do good work. It happens.

Regarding the CEO working harder, that's only part of the equation. Let's say Bob the assembly worker screws something up and a batch of widgets are now ruined. That's unfortunate. Now let's say Fred the CEO chose to contract out for an important part that ends up having an unbelievably high failure rate. Now the company is bankrupt and everyone loses their job. The magnitude of decisions they make along with the risks and consequences of their actions is more significant than the assembly guy.

Breaking a sweat doesn't mean you're working hard, but that's a very small part of my point. The larger issue is the relative importance of the decisions a CEO has to make when contrasted with that of a lower level employee.
 
I'm not a big fan of the whole class warfare, blame the wealthy type of attitude, but even I have to admit that left unchecked the vast majority of the wealthy in this country would suck the middle and lower classes dry. Things like a minimum wage, family medical leave act, americans with disabilities act, etc. are the tools the government can use to prevent over-exploitation and at least help maintain a middle class which is exactly what they damn well should be doing.

Frankly, with the minimum wage at $7.25 (or is it $7.50 now?) I have no idea how ANY republican can say with a straight face that there shouldn't be a minimum wage. You better believe with the economy being in the crapper and companies looking to save every penny that if there hadn't been a minimum wage we would have seen sub-$5 an hour wages. This bullshit that competition establishes a minimum wage is just that, bullshit. When the economy tanked and the amount of people looking for work skyrocketed companies could have sat back and paid peanuts because there was no need to pay anything more than that.
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Again, no one is talking about taxing people into equal living standards. So quit throwing out that straw man.[/QUOTE]

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but isn't that exactly one of the suggestions you provided? Higher taxes on the rich? We're talking, in part, of salary inequality. That isn't adjusted by taxes, so instead you have to compare post-tax income. I have no idea how the government can possible structure things, shy of taxing the wealthy at 90%, in order to close the gap between wealthy and poor, or even wealthy and middle class. It's up to the board of directors, not the government, to define salary standards. Blame them.

That was what I was responding to. The quality of life part was my addition.
 
[quote name='berzirk']I'm not trying to be argumentative, but isn't that exactly one of the suggestions you provided? Higher taxes on the rich? We're talking, in part, of salary inequality. That isn't adjusted by taxes, so instead you have to compare post-tax income. I have no idea how the government can possible structure things, shy of taxing the wealthy at 90%, in order to close the gap between wealthy and poor, or even wealthy and middle class. It's up to the board of directors, not the government, to define salary standards. Blame them.

That was what I was responding to. The quality of life part was my addition.[/QUOTE]

Reducing the gap doesn't mean eliminating it. That's why talking about make standards of life equal is straw man.

I don't have a problem with executives making millions more than workers per se. I have a problem with executive pay rising 400% while workers pay rises 27% over the same time.

Higher taxes on high incomes wouldn't make income equal--nor come remotely close to doing so. The executives would still make millions. But maybe having some very high taxes on incomes over a couple million or whatever would give them less incentive to keep taking these obscene raises and bonuses and give the companies more incentive to reinvest that money in their workers, creating new jobs etc.

Sure, it's really up to the board. But the board generally cares about nothing but paying workers as little as possible, and themselves and other executives as much as possible. So we can't rely on them.

And workers have very little power. Union jobs are declining--and were never common in white collar industries anyway. Add in high unemployment and workers don't have much options to just go elsewhere. There's intense competition for jobs and executives thus can even more readily exploit workers than before the economic crisis as for every person who quits over dissatisfaction with wages there are a ton of unemployed people just desperate to have any job.

So I think the government has to play some role in protecting workers from this kind of exploitation. As well as protecting the economy from being hurt when these huge, multi-billion dollar corporations are squandering money as companies like that going under can have a big impact on the whole economy.

As to how they can do that, I have no idea. Taxes? Regulations requiring raises/bonuses to be given out to all employees rather than just execs--so exec gets a bonus of 5% of their salary, workers also all get a bonus of 5% of their salaries.

There should be plenty of options to keep the executives filthy rich while also making sure workers get raises and bonuses as well, and thus keeping the gap between workers and executives pay from growing any larger than it already is.
 
[quote name='berzirk']I'm not trying to be argumentative, but isn't that exactly one of the suggestions you provided? Higher taxes on the rich? We're talking, in part, of salary inequality. That isn't adjusted by taxes, so instead you have to compare post-tax income. I have no idea how the government can possible structure things, shy of taxing the wealthy at 90%, in order to close the gap between wealthy and poor, or even wealthy and middle class. It's up to the board of directors, not the government, to define salary standards. Blame them.

That was what I was responding to. The quality of life part was my addition.[/QUOTE]

You are failing to make the distinction. No one is talking exactly equal.
 
[quote name='berzirk']Yah, and my personal story is that my father has been a chemical engineer for years after having to drop out of college for two years to earn enough to finish, now has arthritis in his back from crawling around large paper mill boilers going above and beyond his job in order to do good work. It happens.

Regarding the CEO working harder, that's only part of the equation. Let's say Bob the assembly worker screws something up and a batch of widgets are now ruined. That's unfortunate. Now let's say Fred the CEO chose to contract out for an important part that ends up having an unbelievably high failure rate. Now the company is bankrupt and everyone loses their job. The magnitude of decisions they make along with the risks and consequences of their actions is more significant than the assembly guy.

Breaking a sweat doesn't mean you're working hard, but that's a very small part of my point. The larger issue is the relative importance of the decisions a CEO has to make when contrasted with that of a lower level employee.[/QUOTE]

This is one of the most ridiculous arguments someone other then Knoell has made. First off your father is a horrible example because with his job he probaly put in the hours that a CEO did as well as the stress but then added some physical labor to it. Of course he deserves to be paid more. Second again no one is saying a CEO should be paid the same as the worker. We are just saying its bat shit crazy to say they deserve to be paid what they do.

My wife is a team leader and makes around $42,000 a year. The people that work under her make $30-$35 a year. Her supervisor makes like $55 and the boss of her department makes around $100,000. The man that runs the whole company makes two to three times that. This all makes sense. My wife must work harder and has more stress then those that work underneath her, she also has a degree and is working towards a second. Her supervisor has to do more then her and the boss more then that lady. The big boss for the whole company is always working, he has to fly around and go meet with other factories etc etc. Each person up the chain has had to work progressively longer hours and worked their way up the chain.

What then makes no sense is that my wifes company is owned by an even bigger company where the boss there makes millions....and then that company is owned by yet another company where the boss makes ungodly sums of money. Do these men have more responsibility? Yes. Did they work harder to get where they were? Most of the time no, a CEO is a CEO. Are they working harder now? No. Regardless though it is not acceptable to have people working similar hours as them and working just as hard and yet being paid a half a % what they make.

I am not saying everyone should be paid the same.....but I am saying it is not right morally and it is not right for our nations economic success to have 1% of the population making the vast majority of the money. If you disagree then I am sorry but we will just never see eye to eye. I dont believe in a serf system.
 
[quote name='Msut77']You are failing to make the distinction. No one is talking exactly equal.[/QUOTE]

I dont understand why people react this way. I seriously think conservatives think that liberals believe in a communist socialism model where everyone is the exact same. Every person makes the same or a very similar wage. I dont have a problem with the fact that my wife makes significantly less then her supervisor who makes less then hers and so on and so forth. I do however have a serious problem with the fact that some people are being paid my wifes salary in a year every few minutes and that realistically they are not doing anything to justify it.

Heres another question for conservatives. If people who do that type of work deserve that type of pay...doesnt that mean that we should give congress and the President as well as others that work for places like the pentagon matching salaries? I mean if the argument is the pressure they are under is worth the pay as is the fact that they are responsible for 1,000s of jobs....then shouldn't our elected officials who have the fate of the whole nation on their plate be paid accordingly? Something tells me that you wont agree even though its the exact same logic.
 
Why does the third company make no sense to you?

Yes, the CEO did work harder to get to were they were. Yes they are making decisions that affect hundreds/thousands of families (and yes, in my opinion they do work harder). You aren't describing a serf system right now, you're describing a YOU GOT YOURS WHERE IS MINE system. There is nothing wrong with a company deciding to pay one man ungodly sums of money, as long as the board and stock holders agree to it.
 
Magus, I do think you underestimate the amount of work executives do. Sure, there are some lazy fat cats that do nothing but go to a meeting here or there. But those are the exceptions.

Most are working long hours and having to deal with every issue that comes up as they have the final decision on others. Having to deal with investors etc.

It's just a different type of "hard work" than blue collar, manual labor or the average white collar worker etc.

I used to think desk jobs etc. where easy back when I was doing shitty blue collar jobs like working in a saw mill, doing landscaping, stocking grocery store shelves etc.

But I'm much more tired and stressed out working as a professor than I was in those jobs--though of course I wouldn't go back to them as I prefer the salary and job security I make now. But those jobs, while physically demanding, where pretty low stress and weren't the type of jobs you took home with you. Where as now 40 hours is a very light work week for me, and even when not working I'm thinking and stressing about work.

And the average CEO is going to be even worse on those fronts given their responsible for making decisions for the good of the company and have 100's or 1,000's of employees dependent on them to keep the company profitable and growing.

So I have no problem with them making a lot more than the average worker. But there's no reason their pay should go up 400% while worker's pay goes up 27%. I have no problem with the gap in itself, just without absurdly wide it's gotten over the past few decades relative to say the 1950s when the economy was growing at record pace.
 
Congress isn't a company board, the President isn't a company CEO, and the government isn't there to turn a profit. There is no reason to compare a company to the government, they are completely separate entities.
 
First of all, I'm not defending it, but one must realize that executive pay has gone more towards stock options in the last three decades and there's been a coinciding factor ever since. Your "retirement" used to be invested in the company for the most part. Now that we change jobs an average of 4 times in our professional lives we have travelling retirement plans of 401(k) and such. As less pay was going into company stock for employees, more was left for executive boni.
So, your pay is now tied to company performance from the top down and other investors have sway over you. Used to be that the employees had some sway because they were also investors. So on and so forth. Culturally we've left the "company man" phase and become professional nomads. Also, during the tech bubble years that created for more wealth than was sustainable, an environment of expectation about executive pay came about that hasn't yet changed.

In a very small nutshell without much detail, that's what's happening at the top.

In the middle you have stagnate wages due to the lack of investing. People might actually be earning 50% of CEO salary, but have nothing backing it up in terms of incentive bonus.

How to make that more fair? Get rid of the notion that taxing capital gains and dividend income is "double taxation" and tax it as normal income. The revenue side from that alone will reduce the burden on the middle and lower class, as the current 15% tax rate on that income is below middle class wage based tax rates.
Second would be to quit trying to defund and dismantle Dodd-Frank. What's very strange with most conservative fiscal policy is that they refuse to see down the road very far. It's like putting it on cruise control and taking a nap figuring there won't ever be a turn in the road. With less and less consumer protection at the expense of the investors making profit hand over fist, there will eventually come a point when the top 5,000,000 earners will be the only ones that actually have anything. Once you eventually squeeze every drop out of the working class, there won't be anyone left to buy your profitable crap and that is when things will truly come to a grinding halt.

I consider myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. The problem with most fiscal conservatives is that they start falling off the cliff into the supply side/free market/trickle down mantra and don't realize that isn't at all viable over the long term. Sustainable growth in the low and middle class will eventually turn into even larger profit in the upper class. It's that lack of vision which is most disturbing about the economic plans of your Paul Ryan and that guy from OK (I think) that produced some spending cut only plan to reduce the debt by 9 trillion over ten years. They just assume that less taxes will produce more transactio based economic activity when the last 8 years since the "Bush Tax Cuts" went into effect we've seen the absolute opposite of that. When you look at theory and ignore facts, you can pretty much tell that you're on the Republican side of economic theory at the moment. Hell, Tim Pawlenty's plan basically suggests that we reduce taxes, find magic beans, and suddenly have 5% unemployment and 5%+ GDP growth per year.

So. How to restore the middle class?
Tax all income as income, this increases revenues.
Readjust the tax brackets to put a bit more weight up top and a bit less weight at the bottom.
Another key thing will be to identify "entitlement" fraud to clean up the programs. Once there's less of a bad taste in the mouth by such things, there will be more properly targeted help and less of a stigma.
Keep consumer protection legislation active and on the books.
Elect Nader
 
[quote name='dmaul1114']Magus, I do think you underestimate the amount of work executives do. Sure, there are some lazy fat cats that do nothing but go to a meeting here or there. But those are the exceptions.

Most are working long hours and having to deal with every issue that comes up as they have the final decision on others. Having to deal with investors etc.

It's just a different type of "hard work" than blue collar, manual labor or the average white collar worker etc.

I used to think desk jobs etc. where easy back when I was doing shitty blue collar jobs like working in a saw mill, doing landscaping, stocking grocery store shelves etc.

But I'm much more tired and stressed out working as a professor than I was in those jobs--though of course I wouldn't go back to them as I prefer the salary and job security I make now. But those jobs, while physically demanding, where pretty low stress and weren't the type of jobs you took home with you. Where as now 40 hours is a very light work week for me, and even when not working I'm thinking and stressing about work.

And the average CEO is going to be even worse on those fronts given their responsible for making decisions for the good of the company and have 100's or 1,000's of employees dependent on them to keep the company profitable and growing.

So I have no problem with them making a lot more than the average worker. But there's no reason their pay should go up 400% while worker's pay goes up 27%. I have no problem with the gap in itself, just without absurdly wide it's gotten over the past few decades relative to say the 1950s when the economy was growing at record pace.[/QUOTE]

My wife worked as executive assistance for awhile. I do not doubt the work they do. I know that they weekly can put in 12-15 hour days several times a week. I know they must fly all over the place. I know that they have to have a phone on them at all times and are often called at 2 in the mourning to deal with some kind of emergency. Trust me I aint underestimating the work they do. I dont think they are lazy fat cats MOST of the time. I just think that while they do deserve to make vast amounts more then their work force, the difference should be much smaller. Think of income as water. I believe that a worker should be a nice big jug of water, plenty to get you through a whole day with some left over! Meanwhile middle management should be a pool and upper management a lake. Finally you have the big do executives coming in at the size of a whopping lake. I can understand that kind of difference. Currently though its more like workers being a 16 oz glass, just enough to get by, middle management and upper management stay the same...but then when you get to the executive instead of a lake we find a god damned ocean.

They work hard and they deserve their lake...but I dont think they deserve the ocean...no man does.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']This is one of the most ridiculous arguments someone other then Knoell has made. First off your father is a horrible example because with his job he probaly put in the hours that a CEO did as well as the stress but then added some physical labor to it. Of course he deserves to be paid more. Second again no one is saying a CEO should be paid the same as the worker. We are just saying its bat shit crazy to say they deserve to be paid what they do.

My wife is a team leader and makes around $42,000 a year. The people that work under her make $30-$35 a year. Her supervisor makes like $55 and the boss of her department makes around $100,000. The man that runs the whole company makes two to three times that. This all makes sense. My wife must work harder and has more stress then those that work underneath her, she also has a degree and is working towards a second. Her supervisor has to do more then her and the boss more then that lady. The big boss for the whole company is always working, he has to fly around and go meet with other factories etc etc. Each person up the chain has had to work progressively longer hours and worked their way up the chain.

What then makes no sense is that my wifes company is owned by an even bigger company where the boss there makes millions....and then that company is owned by yet another company where the boss makes ungodly sums of money. Do these men have more responsibility? Yes. Did they work harder to get where they were? Most of the time no, a CEO is a CEO. Are they working harder now? No. Regardless though it is not acceptable to have people working similar hours as them and working just as hard and yet being paid a half a % what they make.

I am not saying everyone should be paid the same.....but I am saying it is not right morally and it is not right for our nations economic success to have 1% of the population making the vast majority of the money. If you disagree then I am sorry but we will just never see eye to eye. I dont believe in a serf system.[/QUOTE]

HAA HAA HA! Yup, you're right. I apologize. You do know more of my father's employment history, work, efforts, and struggles than I do. It was insensitive of me to assume otherwise. My dad worked more hours than probably any of us have imagined, worked harder than most people I know. I couldn't give two shits if you believe me, I was countering your crying about your parents with my crying about mine. So who's internet cock is bigger?

And a CEO is a CEO? So when you're born, you have a pacifier in one hand and your business card in the other? In many cases they had to go through the ranks to get to the position they're at. Sure you get the occassional inherited company, but somebody had to bust their ass to make that living and pass it on to relatives.

I've got no problem with executives making a lot of money, again for the reason that their decisions are more important than ours. I think those bank CEOs, car manufacturers, and the folks that got federal money to stay out of bankruptcy should certainly be prevented from huge taxpayer payouts, but if Nike wants to pay Phil Knight, co-founder of the company 100x and their guy in purchasing who buys the leather 10x, that's fine by me.

I think the number of perpetually wealthy (those who do nothing but collect inheritance) negate those who are poor because they choose to be (substance abuse, frivelous purchases on a fixed income, etc). I'm all for finding ways to empower the middle class, because we are the majority in numbers, but I don't see how the government can do anything to facilitate that, especially since most of these politicians are already independently wealthy.

Your wife's boss's boss's boss manages billions on assets, human and capital. That guy is responsible for everything under him. He makes a bad decision, and your wife's company is shut down. Your wife makes a bad decision, and you get an unfavorable audit. Why shouldn't the boss's boss's boss make way more for the responsibility he carries?

And the Knoell blast was a low, low, looooow blow. Nobody is dumber than that guy. That's the only part of your post I take great offense to :p
 
[quote name='nasum']First of all, I'm not defending it, but one must realize that executive pay has gone more towards stock options in the last three decades and there's been a coinciding factor ever since. Your "retirement" used to be invested in the company for the most part. Now that we change jobs an average of 4 times in our professional lives we have travelling retirement plans of 401(k) and such. As less pay was going into company stock for employees, more was left for executive boni.
So, your pay is now tied to company performance from the top down and other investors have sway over you. Used to be that the employees had some sway because they were also investors. So on and so forth. Culturally we've left the "company man" phase and become professional nomads. Also, during the tech bubble years that created for more wealth than was sustainable, an environment of expectation about executive pay came about that hasn't yet changed.

In a very small nutshell without much detail, that's what's happening at the top.

In the middle you have stagnate wages due to the lack of investing. People might actually be earning 50% of CEO salary, but have nothing backing it up in terms of incentive bonus.

How to make that more fair? Get rid of the notion that taxing capital gains and dividend income is "double taxation" and tax it as normal income. The revenue side from that alone will reduce the burden on the middle and lower class, as the current 15% tax rate on that income is below middle class wage based tax rates.
Second would be to quit trying to defund and dismantle Dodd-Frank. What's very strange with most conservative fiscal policy is that they refuse to see down the road very far. It's like putting it on cruise control and taking a nap figuring there won't ever be a turn in the road. With less and less consumer protection at the expense of the investors making profit hand over fist, there will eventually come a point when the top 5,000,000 earners will be the only ones that actually have anything. Once you eventually squeeze every drop out of the working class, there won't be anyone left to buy your profitable crap and that is when things will truly come to a grinding halt.

I consider myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. The problem with most fiscal conservatives is that they start falling off the cliff into the supply side/free market/trickle down mantra and don't realize that isn't at all viable over the long term. Sustainable growth in the low and middle class will eventually turn into even larger profit in the upper class. It's that lack of vision which is most disturbing about the economic plans of your Paul Ryan and that guy from OK (I think) that produced some spending cut only plan to reduce the debt by 9 trillion over ten years. They just assume that less taxes will produce more transactio based economic activity when the last 8 years since the "Bush Tax Cuts" went into effect we've seen the absolute opposite of that. When you look at theory and ignore facts, you can pretty much tell that you're on the Republican side of economic theory at the moment. Hell, Tim Pawlenty's plan basically suggests that we reduce taxes, find magic beans, and suddenly have 5% unemployment and 5%+ GDP growth per year.

So. How to restore the middle class?
Tax all income as income, this increases revenues.
Readjust the tax brackets to put a bit more weight up top and a bit less weight at the bottom.
Another key thing will be to identify "entitlement" fraud to clean up the programs. Once there's less of a bad taste in the mouth by such things, there will be more properly targeted help and less of a stigma.
Keep consumer protection legislation active and on the books.
Elect Nader[/QUOTE]

*Hugs Nasum*

Damn good and well thought out post. I dont agree it is the way we should go, but I can see why you feel the way you do and I agree with doing much of what you say.
 
[quote name='berzirk']HAA HAA HA! Yup, you're right. I apologize. You do know more of my father's employment history, work, efforts, and struggles than I do. It was insensitive of me to assume otherwise. My dad worked more hours than probably any of us have imagined, worked harder than most people I know. I couldn't give two shits if you believe me, I was countering your crying about your parents with my crying about mine. So who's internet cock is bigger?

And a CEO is a CEO? So when you're born, you have a pacifier in one hand and your business card in the other? In many cases they had to go through the ranks to get to the position they're at. Sure you get the occassional inherited company, but somebody had to bust their ass to make that living and pass it on to relatives.

I've got no problem with executives making a lot of money, again for the reason that their decisions are more important than ours. I think those bank CEOs, car manufacturers, and the folks that got federal money to stay out of bankruptcy should certainly be prevented from huge taxpayer payouts, but if Nike wants to pay Phil Knight, co-founder of the company 100x and their guy in purchasing who buys the leather 10x, that's fine by me.

I think the number of perpetually wealthy (those who do nothing but collect inheritance) negate those who are poor because they choose to be (substance abuse, frivelous purchases on a fixed income, etc). I'm all for finding ways to empower the middle class, because we are the majority in numbers, but I don't see how the government can do anything to facilitate that, especially since most of these politicians are already independently wealthy.

Your wife's boss's boss's boss manages billions on assets, human and capital. That guy is responsible for everything under him. He makes a bad decision, and your wife's company is shut down. Your wife makes a bad decision, and you get an unfavorable audit. Why shouldn't the boss's boss's boss make way more for the responsibility he carries?

And the Knoell blast was a low, low, looooow blow. Nobody is dumber than that guy. That's the only part of your post I take great offense to :p[/QUOTE]

Clearly you must have taken great offense to all my post because if you actually READ it I clearly state that your dad must have worked very fucking hard, physically, mentally and hour wise. I dont know where you get off with that first paragraph pretending as if I said anything different. Christ....seriously no reasoning with some people...
 
[quote name='berzirk']I'm all for finding ways to empower the middle class, because we are the majority in numbers, but I don't see how the government can do anything to facilitate that, especially since most of these politicians are already independently wealthy.
[/QUOTE]

I think nasum had some good ideas above, in particularly these would be a good start:

[quote name='nasum']

How to make that more fair? Get rid of the notion that taxing capital gains and dividend income is "double taxation" and tax it as normal income. The revenue side from that alone will reduce the burden on the middle and lower class, as the current 15% tax rate on that income is below middle class wage based tax rates.

Second would be to quit trying to defund and dismantle Dodd-Frank. What's very strange with most conservative fiscal policy is that they refuse to see down the road very far. It's like putting it on cruise control and taking a nap figuring there won't ever be a turn in the road. With less and less consumer protection at the expense of the investors making profit hand over fist, there will eventually come a point when the top 5,000,000 earners will be the only ones that actually have anything. Once you eventually squeeze every drop out of the working class, there won't be anyone left to buy your profitable crap and that is when things will truly come to a grinding halt.



So. How to restore the middle class?

Tax all income as income, this increases revenues.

Readjust the tax brackets to put a bit more weight up top and a bit less weight at the bottom.

Another key thing will be to identify "entitlement" fraud to clean up the programs. Once there's less of a bad taste in the mouth by such things, there will be more properly targeted help and less of a stigma.
Keep consumer protection legislation active and on the books.
[/QUOTE]
 
- Stop weakening the currency

- No subsidization of foreign operations, ExIm Bank, tax break, or otherwise

- No subsidization of the banking industry - no bailouts, no taxpayer backed "insurance" underpinning a fraudulent system

- End our imperialist foreign policy - not only is it deleterious to spend well over $1 trillion a year to blow up bridges and make enemies overseas, it enriches the MIC (it's peas for Grandma; Haliburton needs new shoes!) and is a front for subsidization of off-shoring and corporate welfare via the ExIm Bank and foreign "aid"

- Eliminate the standing army - nobody is going to invade the United States. A decent Navy and Air Force is all that is needed to defend the country

- Quit paying farmers to not grow food, or to grow crops to use for fuel

- Legalize hemp, can be used for fuel, paper, food, whatever

- Quit the War On Drugs - approximately 1 in 40 children with a parent in prison for non-violent drug offenses sounds like a recipe for success, doesn't it?

- Eliminate the income tax on at least the first 50k of income, preferably the first 250k of income - someone making 250k a year is your friend and ally, not your enemy. Your enemy is the banking class. Eliminating the income tax on these individuals will not cost much in revenue, would be dwarfed by eliminating nearly $1 trillion from our foreign policy, and would give working Americans anywhere from 5% to 30% more money in their pocket. Every paycheck. Economy struggling because spending is down? Problem solved.

- Eliminate the Fed, eliminate the deficit - these go hand in hand. The banking industry thrives off of government debt; the Fed monetizes the debt, funneling more free money to the 0.1%. This money is used for all manner of investment; speculation run wild. As this newly created money works its way through the economy, the value of the money is reset on the market. By the time the working American sees that money, the very best he or she can hope for is to keep up with the increase in cost of living. What happens when the speculation from an overheating of the money supply occurs, and a portion of the investments go bust? The Fed gives them more free money, working Americans get a recession, and those fortunate to retain their jobs watch more of their money go to bonuses for CEOs.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']Clearly you must have taken great offense to all my post because if you actually READ it I clearly state that your dad must have worked very fucking hard, physically, mentally and hour wise. I dont know where you get off with that first paragraph pretending as if I said anything different. Christ....seriously no reasoning with some people...[/QUOTE]

No, the problem is that you keep doing this "oh yah, I know a guy and this happened to him..." as your basis for truths. So out of everyone that MSI Magus knows, this is representative of the entire world and industry, so what his parents, or his wife's boss do, is clearly how the rest of the world operates. It's an ignorant basis for a position.

I've got a raging internet hardon right now.
 
[quote name='Feeding the Abscess']- Stop weakening the currency

- No subsidization of foreign operations, ExIm Bank, tax break, or otherwise

- No subsidization of the banking industry - no bailouts, no taxpayer backed "insurance" underpinning a fraudulent system

- End our imperialist foreign policy - not only is it deleterious to spend well over $1 trillion a year to blow up bridges and make enemies overseas, it enriches the MIC (it's peas for Grandma; Haliburton needs new shoes!) and is a front for subsidization of off-shoring and corporate welfare via the ExIm Bank and foreign "aid"

- Eliminate the standing army - nobody is going to invade the United States. A decent Navy and Air Force is all that is needed to defend the country

- Quit paying farmers to not grow food, or to grow crops to use for fuel

- Legalize hemp, can be used for fuel, paper, food, whatever

- Quit the War On Drugs - approximately 1 in 40 children with a parent in prison for non-violent drug offenses sounds like a recipe for success, doesn't it?

- Eliminate the income tax on at least the first 50k of income, preferably the first 250k of income - someone making 250k a year is your friend and ally, not your enemy. Your enemy is the banking class. Eliminating the income tax on these individuals will not cost much in revenue, would be dwarfed by eliminating nearly $1 trillion from our foreign policy, and would give working Americans anywhere from 5% to 30% more money in their pocket. Every paycheck. Economy struggling because spending is down? Problem solved.

- Eliminate the Fed, eliminate the deficit - these go hand in hand. The banking industry thrives off of government debt; the Fed monetizes the debt, funneling more free money to the 0.1%. This money is used for all manner of investment; speculation run wild. As this newly created money works its way through the economy, the value of the money is reset on the market. By the time the working American sees that money, the very best he or she can hope for is to keep up with the increase in cost of living. What happens when the speculation from an overheating of the money supply occurs, and a portion of the investments go bust? The Fed gives them more free money, working Americans get a recession, and those fortunate to retain their jobs watch more of their money go to bonuses for CEOs.[/QUOTE]

*hugs FtA* Two people that answered vs assuming that my personal examples were testement of truth*

I agree with almost every point. Funny that it seems liberals and conservatives are finding some very common ground in this topic. Rather refreshing.
 
[quote name='berzirk']Yah, and my personal story is that my father has been a chemical engineer for years after having to drop out of college for two years to earn enough to finish, now has arthritis in his back from crawling around large paper mill boilers going above and beyond his job in order to do good work. It happens.

Regarding the CEO working harder, that's only part of the equation. Let's say Bob the assembly worker screws something up and a batch of widgets are now ruined. That's unfortunate. Now let's say Fred the CEO chose to contract out for an important part that ends up having an unbelievably high failure rate. Now the company is bankrupt and everyone loses their job. The magnitude of decisions they make along with the risks and consequences of their actions is more significant than the assembly guy.

Breaking a sweat doesn't mean you're working hard, but that's a very small part of my point. The larger issue is the relative importance of the decisions a CEO has to make when contrasted with that of a lower level employee.[/QUOTE]

So full of shit.

When Bob the factory worker loses his job for screwing up the assembly widget order he can't find a new opportunity because noone is hiring someone who doesn't already have a job.

Meanwhile the CEO can't go wrong. If he does great the stock price goes up and he makes out like a bandit. If he makes every wrong decision in the book the company goes bankrupt, his golden parachute kicks in, and he makes out like a bandit.

If the CEO cared about the people who work for his company then you might be right. But then you'd be living in Ayn Rand candyland.
 
[quote name='camoor']If the CEO cared about the people who work for his company then you might be right. But then you'd be living in Ayn Rand candyland.[/QUOTE]


Ok, maybe at the Fortune 500 level there is some truth in that. But at Steve's Auto Repair some self employed dude running the joint with a few other guys most likely does care about the success of his crew as it directly impacts Steve.
No on the other hand, Steve Jobs doesn't know Jenny who works in cube 4A in purchasing. If Jenny eats shit on something, it doesn't impact things as much as there are layers of organization preventing that. It's those layers that your CEO manages, either by creating the organization from nothing or by getting hired into the spot or whatever.

Point being, you can't manage an F500 type company on the personal or buddy-buddy level. It simply doesn't work. You guys throw out these generalities of "the wealthy", "CEOs", and various other terms, but not addressing the specifics of what you're really upset about. Are you pissed at CheapyD? Is he resting on his laurels? He's basically the CEO of this organization known as CAG. Different in application but similar in terms of structure and what not.
If you're going to sling shit, make sure your aim is good otherwise you have to clean up misdirected shit and eventually apologize.
 
[quote name='camoor']So full of shit.

When Bob the factory worker loses his job for screwing up the assembly widget order he can't find a new opportunity because noone is hiring someone who doesn't already have a job.

Meanwhile the CEO can't go wrong. If he does great the stock price goes up and he makes out like a bandit. If he makes every wrong decision in the book the company goes bankrupt, his golden parachute kicks in, and he makes out like a bandit.

If the CEO cared about the people who work for his company then you might be right. But then you'd be living in Ayn Rand candyland.[/QUOTE]

Both scenarios require assumptions. I've got a feeling there is a such thing as a compassionate executive. I've certainly heard of golden parachutes, and I fully agree, it's bogus that they would get amazing benefits if they are fired, but again, this is an issue with the company itself. This isn't something the government should be expected to fix.

I see Ayn Rand mentioned frequently, but I sincerely know nothing about her other than people like Ron Paul often get tied to her philosophies.

I'm not surprised that my belief that companies should govern themselves instead of the goverment with respect to wages and compensation is so strongly opposed on CAG, but it seems weird how much passion you guys have for the topic. We're all just giving it lip service. It's out of our hands. What do you all suggest we do as individuals to buck the system? Voting for Nade aside.

I just thought it would be an interesting topic, and I took offense to this notion that CEOs somehow don't work hard, and don't justify significantly higher salaries, and that the government should play a role in closing the disparity in wages. I didn't think that was such a controversial stance.
 
Cap executive salaries and force the money to be reinvested back into the company instead of said company being subsidized by the government. Make it illegal for CEOs to receive multi-million dollar bonuses when stock prices are plummeting and workers are getting laid off to "make ends meet." Some of these top-tier people are conducting economic warfare against the U.S.A. and should be treated as war criminals.
 
[quote name='nasum']Ok, maybe at the Fortune 500 level there is some truth in that. But at Steve's Auto Repair some self employed dude running the joint with a few other guys most likely does care about the success of his crew as it directly impacts Steve.
No on the other hand, Steve Jobs doesn't know Jenny who works in cube 4A in purchasing. If Jenny eats shit on something, it doesn't impact things as much as there are layers of organization preventing that. It's those layers that your CEO manages, either by creating the organization from nothing or by getting hired into the spot or whatever.

Point being, you can't manage an F500 type company on the personal or buddy-buddy level. It simply doesn't work. You guys throw out these generalities of "the wealthy", "CEOs", and various other terms, but not addressing the specifics of what you're really upset about. Are you pissed at CheapyD? Is he resting on his laurels? He's basically the CEO of this organization known as CAG. Different in application but similar in terms of structure and what not.
If you're going to sling shit, make sure your aim is good otherwise you have to clean up misdirected shit and eventually apologize.[/QUOTE]

I don't think CheapyD is reaping enormous profits at the expense of the average CAG user, nor has he ruined lives through the destruction of hundreds of well-paying jobs. It's not entrepreneurial success that is the enemy, rather it is the entitlement culture that says it's OK for businesses to be purposely run into the ground by a select few. Folks at the top should be held to the highest standard of accountability and should face the greatest liability if the business fails.
 
[quote name='berzirk']Both scenarios require assumptions. I've got a feeling there is a such thing as a compassionate executive. I've certainly heard of golden parachutes, and I fully agree, it's bogus that they would get amazing benefits if they are fired, but again, this is an issue with the company itself. This isn't something the government should be expected to fix.

I see Ayn Rand mentioned frequently, but I sincerely know nothing about her other than people like Ron Paul often get tied to her philosophies.

I'm not surprised that my belief that companies should govern themselves instead of the goverment with respect to wages and compensation is so strongly opposed on CAG, but it seems weird how much passion you guys have for the topic. We're all just giving it lip service. It's out of our hands. What do you all suggest we do as individuals to buck the system? Voting for Nade aside.

I just thought it would be an interesting topic, and I took offense to this notion that CEOs somehow don't work hard, and don't justify significantly higher salaries, and that the government should play a role in closing the disparity in wages. I didn't think that was such a controversial stance.[/QUOTE]

Ayn Rand wrote a book with economical philosphy that conservatives have turned in to political reality for years. It basically states that if you are poor its because you do not want nor deserve to be rich. If you are poor its because you have not worked hard or because you are too stupid to accomplish anything. The rich are saviors, hard working folk who provide for the rest of the nation. If your not rich you are just a leach sucking blood from the rich.

This is not an exaggeration, this is what she preached.

As for why people here are so passionate. Because at the end of the day we do not like to see people fuck over other people. At the end of the day it does not matter if its the CEO of a company or someone like yourself backing them it literally disgusts us that people can be so cold and cruel.
 
[quote name='Indigo_Streetlight']I don't think CheapyD is reaping enormous profits at the expense of the average CAG user, nor has he ruined lives through the destruction of hundreds of well-paying jobs. It's not entrepreneurial success that is the enemy, rather it is the entitlement culture that says it's OK for businesses to be purposely run into the ground by a select few. Folks at the top should be held to the highest standard of accountability and should face the greatest liability if the business fails.[/QUOTE]

True and sadly this is just not the case. People like berzirk like to talk about all the pressure CEOs are under yet most of the time when a company goes under they get a nice fat severance package while the workers get screwed. If you truly believe that the CEOs are under that pressure then they should be held over the fire when they fail.
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']True and sadly this is just not the case. People like berzirk like to talk about all the pressure CEOs are under yet most of the time when a company goes under they get a nice fat severance package while the workers get screwed. If you truly believe that the CEOs are under that pressure then they should be held over the fire when they fail.[/QUOTE]

Right. Because the CEO wasn't working hard, or under great stress with the realization that all of the employees would be out of work if the company folded based on his direction as the leader. The thing about CEOs is that every single one of them is like a mix of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons and Bill Lumbergh from Office Space.
 
Berzirk- methinks you are grossly overestimating the value of executives. For starters I would ask are exec working harder today than they were 30 years ago? 10X harder because they are making 10X more.

Secondly there is a cult of personality with exec. The belief even in the face of facts, that CEO deserve the pay because , doggone it, they work hard. And that board need to pay top dollar if they want a good leader.

Not all CEO are deserving of the pay.

201031wbc001.gif
 
[quote name='Indigo_Streetlight']I don't think CheapyD is reaping enormous profits at the expense of the average CAG user, nor has he ruined lives through the destruction of hundreds of well-paying jobs. It's not entrepreneurial success that is the enemy, rather it is the entitlement culture that says it's OK for businesses to be purposely run into the ground by a select few. Folks at the top should be held to the highest standard of accountability and should face the greatest liability if the business fails.[/QUOTE]


so where's the tipping point then? When does some guy with entrepreneurial success turn into asshole CEO that is the cause of the world's ills? After an IPO?
 
[quote name='berzirk']Right. Because the CEO wasn't working hard, or under great stress with the realization that all of the employees would be out of work if the company folded based on his direction as the leader. The thing about CEOs is that every single one of them is like a mix of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons and Bill Lumbergh from Office Space.[/QUOTE]

*points to the numerous positive things he has said throughout*

Again the reason I compare you to knoell is because someone will say 10 things 1 of which is negative and you will focus on the 1 vs the nine. You so far have been incapable of looking at the whole of the argument and instead nag on small comments making them seem bigger and more extreme then they are.
 
[quote name='usickenme']Berzirk- methinks you are grossly overestimating the value of executives. For starters I would ask are exec working harder today than they were 30 years ago? 10X harder because they are making 10X more.

Secondly there is a cult of personality with exec. The belief even in the face of facts, that CEO deserve the pay because , doggone it, they work hard. And that board need to pay top dollar if they want a good leader.[/QUOTE]

That's the whole thing, I truly don't know how hard they work, and I would assume it varies greatly from company to company. The one thing in all of this that I feel is a fact, is that they have greater responsibility than anyone else in the organization. They are the leader. They can be an active leader, or a passive leader, but ultimately, if a company goes out of business, they are to blame. It's like sports. If a team full of crappy players is crappy, the coach is gone, not the entire team.

Edit: That list is crazy. The one thing I would say though, is that who saw the BP oil spill coming? The despicable ones are the ones who during times of bad business, are negotiating great buyouts. When business is good, of course they're going to negotiate these huge settlements. When would you go to your boss for a raise? After a terrible quarter of sales, or after the company hit record numbers?
 
[quote name='MSI Magus']*points to the numerous positive things he has said throughout*

Again the reason I compare you to knoell is because someone will say 10 things 1 of which is negative and you will focus on the 1 vs the nine. You so far have been incapable of looking at the whole of the argument and instead nag on small comments making them seem bigger and more extreme then they are.[/QUOTE]

I think that's ridiculous. I've discussed multiple points you've brought up. If you chose to ignore them, that doesn't mean I didn't address them. My position is that the government should not be tasked with restoring the middle class, because it's not their business, they can't run themselves without collapsing in debt, and there are times when the wealthy are wealthy because they deserve it, and the poor are poor because they deserve it. (not all of the time, I'm not from the Ayn Rand school of though! Haa haa)

You call it cold and uncompassionate, but I say what part of business is compassionate? It's the sale of services or products people want for a profit. The only control the government has in this is how they elect to tax.
 
Do current American CEOs work several times harder than their counterparts from 30 years ago? Do American CEOs work several times harder than their European or Japanese counterparts, even those that manage larger companies?
 
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