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Nice, this is great! I now feel like digging in might be productive here. > You've made claims like "this is Germany+" without actually supporting that claim.

Nice, this is great! I now feel like digging in might be productive here. > You've made claims like "this is Germany+" without actually supporting that claim. I wasn't like, making a legal statement or whatever. You're arguing "this is communism with extra steps" and my point generally is that these prescriptions largely exist in democratically socialist, productive, EU countries. There are actually not that many communist countries that aren't also authoritarian so, I don't think the "communist" characterization is super useful. But, either way I'll expound. - Enshrine the right to organize You wrote that the NLRA already created this "right", but it's been hobbled by the Taft-Hartley act [1] and subsequent legislation in multiple states [2]. On the other hand, Germany (like many other EU countries but unlike the US) has ratified the "Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention", which, well it's in the name [3]. - Require equal profit sharing across all employees Profit sharing is pretty common across EU countries, but it takes different forms and certainly isn't equal. The coop corporate structure is closer to my thinking here but, admittedly it's not mainstream yet. - Require significant worker representation on corporate boards We covered this one but, yeah generally the idea here is for workers to have a big say in how their company is run. Definitely not the majority though; my personal preference would be that there were no majority and representation would be equally divided between workers, c-suite/owners, and shareholders, but baby steps. - Heavily tax relatively high salaries, e.g. if everyone makes $1m then 0 tax. If one person makes $100k and 99 others make $1, insane super tax them down to $100 (include tricky stuff like bonuses or whatever) High CEO pay is (variously) subject to tax penalties in Germany [4] [5]. And it seems to be working; their ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay is 136x, just over half the US' at 265x [6]. That's not wonderful and I'm sure there are other factors but, these problems are tricky and one policy probably won't fix it all in one fell swoop. It's also worth saying CEO pay is generally bad and not meritocratic [7]. - Heavily tax nationally high salaries with a progressive income tax Germany's 3rd tax bracket is higher than anything in the US and kicks in around $69k (USD) [8]. - Heavily punish tax dodging Germany does this a little [9] [10] but, obviously not enough. Re: simplify the US tax code, no administration since Reagan has done this, for reasons outlined here [11] [12]. TLDR tax prep is big business, and--like I said before--our tax code does a lot, and changing it creates winners and losers. - Set the minimum wage to a living wage and pin it to the CPI Germany has a comparatively high minimum wage of €9.35 ($11.33), but I don't know enough to say if that's a living wage or not. Something that's nice about their (relatively new, 2015) law is they have to update it at least every 2 years [13]. - Abolish "right to work" I've been wrong about what this is called my whole life. Apparently what I mean is "at-will employment". Mea culpa. But, still the US has it and Germany doesn't. We should get rid of it. --- OK that's my prescriptions. I do feel like what I've described is the natural evolution of democratic socialist policies in the EU, exemplified not just by Germany but other big EU countries as well and definitely don't qualify as communism. But I think a lot of people think democratic socialism is communism so, maybe we just have a definitions problem. I'll quickly respond to your minimum wage point and say that you can peg minimum wage to a State's CPI, and cities can create their own minimum wages. New York/New York City do this, for example. I wouldn't say that States are handling this well; 1 in 4 kids grows up in poverty so, something is off. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Organise_and_Collective_Bargaining_Convention,_1949 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Organise_and_Collecti... [4]: https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/ceo-salary-in-a-gmbh-how-much-is-a-gmbh-ceo-allowed-to-earn/ https://www.firma.de/en/company-formation/ceo-salary-in-a-gm... [5]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11573-020-00978-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11573-020-00978-y [6]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/424159/pay-gap-between-ceos-and-average-workers-in-world-by-country https://www.statista.com/statistics/424159/pay-gap-between-c... [7]: https://www.epi.org/publication/reining-in-ceo-compensation-and-curbing-the-rise-of-inequality/ https://www.epi.org/publication/reining-in-ceo-compensation-... [8]: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/germany/individual/taxes-on-personal-income https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/germany/individual/taxes-on-per... [9]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ubs-group-face-93m-penalty-115611282.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ubs-group-face-93m-penalty-11... [10]: https://www.espn.com/soccer/news/story/_/id/1613004/bayern-munich-ceo-karl-heinz-rummenigge-accepts-fine https://www.espn.com/soccer/news/story/_/id/1613004/bayern-m... [11]: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/why-are-taxes-so-complicated https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/why-are-taxes-... [12]: https://www.vox.com/2016/4/13/11417676/elizabeth-warren-tax-return-free-filing-tax-day-intuit-hr-block-turbotax-automatic-simple https://www.vox.com/2016/4/13/11417676/elizabeth-warren-tax-... [13]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_Germany

fastball 6y ago
Thank you for the comprehensive response. One overall point I'd like to make is that I think it is much more constructive to cite things that indicate the policies are having a good impact, not just sources showing that the policies exist. I have not done either in this response, however, as most of my questions/responses are about the theory, not the practice. For example, below I talk about CEO pay. You have pointed out that Germany has policies in place that reduce the gap between CEOs and their average workers, but I think first we need to determine why the gap is bad, if at all. Some gaps are fair, some are not. Anyway I have tried to be thorough with my responses, and have condensed our talking points into more cohesive groups when sensible. -- re: unions Right to organize is not the same as "right to force people to join a union". That is what right to work laws prevent. Anyone should be able to join a union. Any group of workers in any industry should be able to form a union. Unions should not be able to force people to join their union. This is a gross violation of individual liberty. Right to organize and right to work are not conflicting goals. If unions need to force workers to join them, they're arguably not good unions. I agree that unions are important. But unions are not universally good – they sometimes have serious downsides. Any push for unions need to be met with a measured understanding of this. Do you have a solution for the problem that unions with too much power are actually bad for the economy in that they stifle competition and decrease efficiency? Monopolies in general are bad, and that includes monopolies on labour. -- re: profit sharing You can start a coop in the US today. But a coop is not the end-all-be-all of business structures. I'm fine with people starting coops. In fact I think that's great. But requiring it has the potential to stifle innovation / (constructive) risk-taking while fixing a problem that doesn't need solving (because labour can already join coops if they want). There are many companies that want to re-invest profits into CapEx or similar, which becomes more difficult with a profit-sharing structure. -- re: co-determination Probably don't have a problem with this as long as it is not majority. Haven't thought enough about possible negative ramifications of such policies though. Want to steel man the counter? -- re: CEO pay I agree that executive compensation seems out of wack, but my real issue is that I don't understand how the problem exists, and am wholeheartedly against slapping band-aids on things until I understand the underlying cause. You seem to be taking the stance that wildly different pay is always bad, which I cannot agree with. Fair pay is pay which is proportional to the value delivered. If you are delivering 100x the value than the average worker, you should get paid 100x more. To be completely frank, I don't even think it is a requirement that people should be paid the same rate for the same work, but that is an argument we don't need to get into, as the aforementioned idea of "fair" comes before that anyway. What I mean to say here is: assuming a free and competitive market, you'd think disproportionate executive pay (disproportionate not to other employees but to the value being delivered by the executive, as to my mind this is what fairness is about in business) would result in a company that is less competitive than one which is not overpaying its executives. So how did this come to pass? To my mind the only options are: 1. markets aren't actually competitive 2. American CEOs actually are delivering 256x the value of their average worker. If 1, my preference would be to find ways to solve the underlying problem and make the market more competitive rather than this band-aid solution. If 2, then again I don't think there is a problem that needs solving. There is a 3rd option that disproportionate (again, wrt value delivered, not wrt other workers) executive compensation somehow makes a company more competitive, but I don't see how that could be the case. -- re: taxes For someone that seems to be a bit of an idealist, you don't seem to be following through here. I don't think "tax prep's lobby is strong" is a good reason to not simplify the tax code. It's a reason it might not happen, but if simplifying the tax code is good we should strive to do that anyway. Everyone in US government always trying to find the middle ground is why we have settled on a bunch of highly mediocre yet expensive solutions to many (most?) of our biggest problems. Hell, the best tax prep is literally helping you avoid taxes, so clearly if tax avoidance is the problem then they are a big part of it. Are you actually talking about tax evasion when you say dodging? If so I agree that this should be punished, but again, this is something the US is already doing. You can serve jail-time for evasion. With regards to progressive income taxes, I stand by my point that we already do this. Sure, Germany's brackets are higher (as are many other places), but in this case I don't think "other people do it" is a good argument. I think the de-facto "fair" way of taxing people is with a flat tax. If you choose not to do a flat tax, you need a good argument for why not. Once you have that argument, it should also be able to justify somewhat specific (evidence/reason based) brackets, not arbitrary ones. -- re: minimum wage I stand by the idea that states can determine their own minimum wage and that this isn't something the US federal government needs to concern itself with. If states are not doing so, residents need to make a change in their own state. To this end though (supporting the idea of states with real autonomy), I do think it is important that the federal government has policies in place (not exactly certain what form they would take) that allow people to more easily "vote with their feet", i.e. move to another state if their current one isn't treating them well. Competition is often pretty great at improving things, and I think that includes competition between states. I'm still fine with a US federal minimum wage, but I don't think it should be pegged to an average US CoL, as again, different regions have wildly different CoLs. Pegged to inflation / purchasing power makes sense though. -- re: at-will employment Disagree strongly with this one. If I can hire someone for any reason, I should be able to fire someone for any reason. Just like you can start a job for any reason and you should be able to quit for any reason. Besides, even when you try to prevent this with regulation, most of the time you end up being able to fire people anyway by finding some stupid reason that's valid, which you just have to sit on for a while. There is no possible way such a policy is good for the economy and therefore society. You end up with HR people who's job is to just find excuses to fire the people that you want to fire anyway, and that certainly isn't productive. It also requires involving more bureaucracy to provide the oversight in judging when reasons are valid or not. I think one of the big reasons Silicon Valley is in California and not anywhere else in the world is Cali's great combination of 1. at-will employment 2. unenforceable non-competes. It is a great combo that supports individual liberty while also encouraging innovation. You can fire me for any reason, but I can immediately go to a competitor and put my skills to good use. Together it is a great balance. One without the other and you have serious downsides: • At-will, w/o non-competes: good. Mobility encourages competition and innovation, relationship between employer/employee is a balanced one. • At-will + non-competes: bad – employers can screw employees even when they're not working for them, violates individual liberty without the worker getting anything for it. • No at-will, w/o non-competes: bad – chilling effect on hiring + training. Employers don't want to invest in employees if they will struggle to fire them without a corresponding incentive for the employee to stay where they are. • No at-will + non-competes: bad – stifles competition/innovation by discouraging mobility of the workforce on all fronts.

fastball 6y ago

Thank you for the comprehensive response. One overall point I'd like to make is that I think it is much more constructive to cite things that indicate the policies are having a good impact, not just sources showing that the policies exist. I have not done either in this response, however, as most of my questions/responses are about the theory, not the practice. For example, below I talk about CEO pay. You have pointed out that Germany has policies in place that reduce the gap between CEOs and their average workers, but I think first we need to determine why the gap is bad, if at all. Some gaps are fair, some are not. Anyway I have tried to be thorough with my responses, and have condensed our talking points into more cohesive groups when sensible. -- re: unions Right to organize is not the same as "right to force people to join a union". That is what right to work laws prevent. Anyone should be able to join a union. Any group of workers in any industry should be able to form a union. Unions should not be able to force people to join their union. This is a gross violation of individual liberty. Right to organize and right to work are not conflicting goals. If unions need to force workers to join them, they're arguably not good unions. I agree that unions are important. But unions are not universally good – they sometimes have serious downsides. Any push for unions need to be met with a measured understanding of this. Do you have a solution for the problem that unions with too much power are actually bad for the economy in that they stifle competition and decrease efficiency? Monopolies in general are bad, and that includes monopolies on labour. -- re: profit sharing You can start a coop in the US today. But a coop is not the end-all-be-all of business structures. I'm fine with people starting coops. In fact I think that's great. But requiring it has the potential to stifle innovation / (constructive) risk-taking while fixing a problem that doesn't need solving (because labour can already join coops if they want). There are many companies that want to re-invest profits into CapEx or similar, which becomes more difficult with a profit-sharing structure. -- re: co-determination Probably don't have a problem with this as long as it is not majority. Haven't thought enough about possible negative ramifications of such policies though. Want to steel man the counter? -- re: CEO pay I agree that executive compensation seems out of wack, but my real issue is that I don't understand how the problem exists, and am wholeheartedly against slapping band-aids on things until I understand the underlying cause. You seem to be taking the stance that wildly different pay is always bad, which I cannot agree with. Fair pay is pay which is proportional to the value delivered. If you are delivering 100x the value than the average worker, you should get paid 100x more. To be completely frank, I don't even think it is a requirement that people should be paid the same rate for the same work, but that is an argument we don't need to get into, as the aforementioned idea of "fair" comes before that anyway. What I mean to say here is: assuming a free and competitive market, you'd think disproportionate executive pay (disproportionate not to other employees but to the value being delivered by the executive, as to my mind this is what fairness is about in business) would result in a company that is less competitive than one which is not overpaying its executives. So how did this come to pass? To my mind the only options are: 1. markets aren't actually competitive 2. American CEOs actually are delivering 256x the value of their average worker. If 1, my preference would be to find ways to solve the underlying problem and make the market more competitive rather than this band-aid solution. If 2, then again I don't think there is a problem that needs solving. There is a 3rd option that disproportionate (again, wrt value delivered, not wrt other workers) executive compensation somehow makes a company more competitive, but I don't see how that could be the case. -- re: taxes For someone that seems to be a bit of an idealist, you don't seem to be following through here. I don't think "tax prep's lobby is strong" is a good reason to not simplify the tax code. It's a reason it might not happen, but if simplifying the tax code is good we should strive to do that anyway. Everyone in US government always trying to find the middle ground is why we have settled on a bunch of highly mediocre yet expensive solutions to many (most?) of our biggest problems. Hell, the best tax prep is literally helping you avoid taxes, so clearly if tax avoidance is the problem then they are a big part of it. Are you actually talking about tax evasion when you say dodging? If so I agree that this should be punished, but again, this is something the US is already doing. You can serve jail-time for evasion. With regards to progressive income taxes, I stand by my point that we already do this. Sure, Germany's brackets are higher (as are many other places), but in this case I don't think "other people do it" is a good argument. I think the de-facto "fair" way of taxing people is with a flat tax. If you choose not to do a flat tax, you need a good argument for why not. Once you have that argument, it should also be able to justify somewhat specific (evidence/reason based) brackets, not arbitrary ones. -- re: minimum wage I stand by the idea that states can determine their own minimum wage and that this isn't something the US federal government needs to concern itself with. If states are not doing so, residents need to make a change in their own state. To this end though (supporting the idea of states with real autonomy), I do think it is important that the federal government has policies in place (not exactly certain what form they would take) that allow people to more easily "vote with their feet", i.e. move to another state if their current one isn't treating them well. Competition is often pretty great at improving things, and I think that includes competition between states. I'm still fine with a US federal minimum wage, but I don't think it should be pegged to an average US CoL, as again, different regions have wildly different CoLs. Pegged to inflation / purchasing power makes sense though. -- re: at-will employment Disagree strongly with this one. If I can hire someone for any reason, I should be able to fire someone for any reason. Just like you can start a job for any reason and you should be able to quit for any reason. Besides, even when you try to prevent this with regulation, most of the time you end up being able to fire people anyway by finding some stupid reason that's valid, which you just have to sit on for a while. There is no possible way such a policy is good for the economy and therefore society. You end up with HR people who's job is to just find excuses to fire the people that you want to fire anyway, and that certainly isn't productive. It also requires involving more bureaucracy to provide the oversight in judging when reasons are valid or not. I think one of the big reasons Silicon Valley is in California and not anywhere else in the world is Cali's great combination of 1. at-will employment 2. unenforceable non-competes. It is a great combo that supports individual liberty while also encouraging innovation. You can fire me for any reason, but I can immediately go to a competitor and put my skills to good use. Together it is a great balance. One without the other and you have serious downsides: • At-will, w/o non-competes: good. Mobility encourages competition and innovation, relationship between employer/employee is a balanced one. • At-will + non-competes: bad – employers can screw employees even when they're not working for them, violates individual liberty without the worker getting anything for it. • No at-will, w/o non-competes: bad – chilling effect on hiring + training. Employers don't want to invest in employees if they will struggle to fire them without a corresponding incentive for the employee to stay where they are. • No at-will + non-competes: bad – stifles competition/innovation by discouraging mobility of the workforce on all fronts.