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This is actually why a lot of people say the left and the right are the same and just give up - I'm one of those people. They're different in different ways, a

This is actually why a lot of people say the left and the right are the same and just give up - I'm one of those people. They're different in different ways, and crazy about different issues, and lie about different things, however the methods are the same. CEO salaries are actually not that high. All these claims of the high salaries lie by calling total compensation "salary." Some of that is options, some of that is stock. Bernie is great at that, making inflamatory tweets designed to make people angry - like claiming trillions were made by the top 1% during covid. And this angers people. What he doesn't say is that he's lying. Some stocks went up. Heck, the value of my used car during covid went up. Did I make money? Heck no. What we're talking about here, is taxing unrealized capital gains. What the left does, is lie to a bunch of financially-a-doorknob cashiers, teenagers, and poor people to make them angry and violent. Well guess what, after some of these stocks went up during covid, they crashed. So are we giving back billions in tax refunds after taxing those unrealized cap gains? Bernie seems to be suspiciously quiet about that. Instead he's now yelling how oil companies are making record profits. Of course when the left says "record profits" that means they're comparing them to some other periods of profits - and they are. They are comparing them to the profits oil companies made during covid lockdowns, when an oil barrel had negative cost because no one was driving or flying. There are huge compensation difference between the average worker and CEO. The reason CEOs are given huge stock options, is because their income then depends directly on the company value, so it's in their interest to drive it up. The compensation of a cashier does not depend on company value, so he doesn't get those options - he gets minimum wage. Then the left goes "you can't live on minimum wage" - and they're right. And the cashier doesn't have to. He's a 16yo kid who lives with his parents. People under 25 - school and college, make up half of minimum wage earners. Of those, only 5% of teenagers made minimum wage, and only 1% of people over 25 do. Keep in mind, minimum wage federally, is a lower bound - it's what you get in a small town in iowa where rent is $400 for a studio. In other places where it costs more to live, local minimum wage laws make it higher - like $15. But that's not how it's presented. It's presented like minimum wage earners are supporting families, and make $7.50/hr in NYC. This is a lie. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm But let's say it's not. Why is it up to a corporation to make sure people make enough to support themselves? Why is it up to a corporation to pay for a mother's time off when she has a kid? What in the world does a company making gaskets have to do with Wendy having a baby? These tasks are up to society, which needs to redistribute money so no one is in dire need, and no one is left behind. Taxes need to go up - not just on the rich CEOs, but on the middle class and especially the corporations. And the corporations need to be left alone to pay employees their market rate - even if it's $3/hr. Our issue is, we are assigning social support tasks to corporations making gaskets, and social support is not a company's responsibility. Neither is making sure the CEO compensation is closer to the average worker's. They're a private entity, they can do whatever they want. The gov shouldn't dictate to a company who should get paid what. They need to tax that company, put the money into a pool, and distribute it back to the people to make sure we are all well.

cycomanic 3y ago
I don't understand your argument, somehow you are saying the claims are conflating salary and compensation. But the very article we are discussing quotes Singh: >"At the very same time, the CEOs of the companies they work for are making more salary, making more compensation than they've ever made before." Moreover to claim that other compensation (you call it unrealised capital gains, how do you know they are unrealised, at least part of them are realised), is not contributing to the" pay gap" seems to me a much bigger lie. And yes the pay gap has largely increased because execs are given much higher stock packages, but it is still an increase in compensation, effectively they are being given more value while normal workers salaries have stagnated. So you argue that the CEO salary depends on stock options so he is interested to drive the company value up. Well lots of exec emails claim that all those workers should be doing their best because they are crucial for the company, but they are never given the same sort of options. Why should regular workers not get stock options amounting to potentially 100s of times their regular salary, just like the CEO?
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  I think there is a very obvious reason to not give the rank and file stock options, which is that the hard work of Janitor #1654 no matter how much they make urinals sparkle is not going to make a meaningful difference to their compensation or bottom line. It's only as most of your compensation becomes stock options, and you have great influence over the future of the company, where being paid in stock options instead of salary ought to have a real effect on behaviour.
solatic 3y ago
I mostly agree with you, except: > Taxes need to go up... especially [on] the corporations This is a bit complicated. What does it mean to "tax a corporation"? Do you tax revenue (even on unprofitable companies)? Do you tax profits (when Finance can instead divert profits to stock buybacks etc.)? Do you tax assets (even illiquid ones)? It's difficult to touch this without unintended poor consequences. It's better to tax personal assets above an exempted minimum, plus capital gains taxes. Allow tax-free: up to x acres of land, 1 apartment up to $x million (indexed to inflation) in value, x% ownership in enterprises valued at $x million or less, etc., then tax the rest annually at x%. As a matter of policy, balancing this against the illiquidity of assets is then a question of the size of the assets, asset types, cash flow of the illiquid asset, other liquidity in an individual's portfolio, etc. Does this mean that some of those assets will need to be sold or diluted to either pay or reduce the tax bill? Yes, but that's the societal good, because it dilutes the concentration of capital.

cycomanic 3y ago

I don't understand your argument, somehow you are saying the claims are conflating salary and compensation. But the very article we are discussing quotes Singh: >"At the very same time, the CEOs of the companies they work for are making more salary, making more compensation than they've ever made before." Moreover to claim that other compensation (you call it unrealised capital gains, how do you know they are unrealised, at least part of them are realised), is not contributing to the" pay gap" seems to me a much bigger lie. And yes the pay gap has largely increased because execs are given much higher stock packages, but it is still an increase in compensation, effectively they are being given more value while normal workers salaries have stagnated. So you argue that the CEO salary depends on stock options so he is interested to drive the company value up. Well lots of exec emails claim that all those workers should be doing their best because they are crucial for the company, but they are never given the same sort of options. Why should regular workers not get stock options amounting to potentially 100s of times their regular salary, just like the CEO?

faeriechangling 3y ago
I think there is a very obvious reason to not give the rank and file stock options, which is that the hard work of Janitor #1654 no matter how much they make urinals sparkle is not going to make a meaningful difference to their compensation or bottom line. It's only as most of your compensation becomes stock options, and you have great influence over the future of the company, where being paid in stock options instead of salary ought to have a real effect on behaviour.

solatic 3y ago

I mostly agree with you, except: > Taxes need to go up... especially [on] the corporations This is a bit complicated. What does it mean to "tax a corporation"? Do you tax revenue (even on unprofitable companies)? Do you tax profits (when Finance can instead divert profits to stock buybacks etc.)? Do you tax assets (even illiquid ones)? It's difficult to touch this without unintended poor consequences. It's better to tax personal assets above an exempted minimum, plus capital gains taxes. Allow tax-free: up to x acres of land, 1 apartment up to $x million (indexed to inflation) in value, x% ownership in enterprises valued at $x million or less, etc., then tax the rest annually at x%. As a matter of policy, balancing this against the illiquidity of assets is then a question of the size of the assets, asset types, cash flow of the illiquid asset, other liquidity in an individual's portfolio, etc. Does this mean that some of those assets will need to be sold or diluted to either pay or reduce the tax bill? Yes, but that's the societal good, because it dilutes the concentration of capital.