Corporate whining - can we close the pay gap?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I like this one.

We could never afford sending kids to school, they told us.
But we sent them anyway, and it turned out that a literate workforce produced more money not less.

But giving women equal pay? This was the road to economic ruin.
But, 30 years on, it was the bankers that screwed our economy , not women factory workers.

And now , we are being told that there is no way we can afford to give more to the workers, or less to the CEOs who get 300 times more than the people who do most of the work. Yeah - I don't believe them either.

http://www.leftycartoons.com/a-brief-history-of-corporate-whining/

It is a cartoon , but I ask you - why can we not fix it so that the lowest paid worker earns at least 100th of what a CEO earns, or even a fiftieth or a tenth?

Socialism doesn't work , some say.
Well, taking the riches money intax and giving it to the homeless doesn't - but that is Soviet style Socialism, and we can do better than that in a democratic society.

Paying taxes to run schools and hospitals ? it works in Canada and Sweden , much better than it does in the USA or UK , in fact. And paying women the same money as a man for working the same job for the same hour? It does not seem to have wreck the economy as much as Casino banking has.

It would have to be phased in. legislate that 3 yrs, a CEO could only earn a certain level. and 3 yrs later, that s/he could only earn 90% of that. I am told that some CEOs get 3oo times the rate the lowest employees get. Now, if my pension has to suffer to pay for a bankers bailout, I want to see David Cameron and his mates sharing my pain with me, I think that is fair. So, phase in a pegged salary. make it no more than the Hed of state's to start with. then review it every 3 years. should we stop at 100 times, or 50 times, or go for 10-20 times the rate of a lowest paid worker? i think we put that to the vote.

Economists told us we could not afford equal pay for women , or abolishing slavery. I think we can confidently expect that they are wrong when they say we cannot abolish a 300 to 1 pay gap between a CEO and the lowest paid worker.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, Soviet-style socialism was shooting the rich, stealing their goods, the state confiscating most all of it for its own agenda, telling the people still starving that the pittances the state provided for them as opposed to itself were the best in the world and disappearing anyone who noted the obvious problems with the whole idea. People who trivialize the real USSR do a disservice to history and to the victims of the actual, real, monstrous Soviet state.

I agree with the cartoon having posted it myself earlier and with the rest of the post, simply noting the one part I see as rather glaringly flawed.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Is this a rerun already (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1210837.html#comments)?

Economists told us we could not afford equal pay for women , or abolishing slavery. I think we can confidently expect that they are wrong when they say we cannot abolish a 300 to 1 pay gap between a CEO and the lowest paid worker.

We can do it. The result will not be economic ruin, but simply less innovation, worse employment, and poorer overall conditions.

Maybe the UK has the ability to do this. Not in the US - we have a 14th amendment right to due process, which means we have a right to enter contracts, a basic tenet of Lochner v. New York.

Your idea of "fair" seems to be rooted not in value, but in perception.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

As opposed to the situation now where we have major unemployment and layoffs

Temporary recession results.

and poor conditions for the middle class, working poor and the poor.

Completely untrue.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

"Give me all your money or I won't create anything new and cool for anyone to make money with!!"

You *do* know how stupid that sounds, right? I hardly think all of the world's current greatest innovations were thought up by billionaires. Er, the World Wide Web springs readily to mind, for starters.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Gotta love that tired old "people get paid that because that's what the contract they signed with their employer SAYS they get paid, and we MUST honor contracts at ALL COST!!"

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

Well, it has sort of been working. Have you seen corporations taking their money out of the US, parking in countries off shore, and moving their production lines to China?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So, according to you, incentives don't matter?

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

People who are safe create, those who are stressed do not.

Art flourishes in peace but not in war.

So innovation isn't likely to be dead because someone had to pay people a living wage. Also given the obscene profits some companies are recording? I call bullshit on the rest.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

It is the businessman's job to make money despite law and regulation, which simply shift the playing field. By asking them to accept changes you are merely asking them to work harder which causes the whining. But as business will do whatever is necessary to make money, the long run consequences of law and regulation won't affect business as much as they will affect the general citizenry. For example, I'll follow these environmental regulations and still make money, you'll get higher prices and if the regulation is actually effective, you'll get a cleaner environment.

It pays to remember that it is ALWAYS the consumer who pays. It is up to the consumer to judge whether the regulation is worth it.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Good point. But, having had that made clear to me by your comments, i have thought it over and still want the regulations and not a free for all.

[vnsplshr.livejournal.com]

"why can we not fix it so that the lowest paid worker earns at least 100th of what a CEO earns, or even a fiftieth or a tenth?"

It's a matter to be decided between the worker, the owners, the board and the CEO. We're not supposed to be involved unless laws are broken. If you want a dog in this fight, go work for said company.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

I work for LUL. I have had a dog in this fight for decades, as it happens. Most of us who are the 99% do far more work than that guy Rush Limbo imagines.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

I wish I could get through to people that corporations do not dictate what people get paid. It's really no different than deciding whether you need a panel truck or a van. I can't dictate either price, just look for the best deal based on what I can afford.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

What does anyone here know about Gini coefficients?

This is the Gini coefficient for the United States from 1994-2010. It measures income between individuals, households and families. In this graph, a measure of 0 would equal perfect income equality, and 1 would be perfect income inequality. This is better information that what the CBO office supplied because a) this includes up to 2010 -- CBO information on income equality only included up to 2007 and b) paychecks are made out to individuals, not households or families.



The gap was larger between individuals and households in 1994 and started going down in the late 1990's. The biggest dip (and where the three groups were more toward perfect equality) was in 2007, the last year of Bush's term. Then the numbers rose again.

This is the Gini coefficient information for major world nations. In this chart, 0 is still perfect equality and 100 is perfect inequality. This charts from WWII to current.

(http://i.imgur.com/CShre.png)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Logical fallacy #5. Try again.

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

I haven't trusted anything an economist has said since I worked with someone with a degree in economy.

He had a genius solution to fix famine in Africa.

Spend billions building giant artificial lakes in the Sahara, pump them full of water so it evaporates and then it'll rain in Africa.

The Sahara desert is North of the Equator, trade winds sweep out from it towards the sea. Somehow I don't think watering the sea is going to help Africa. :P

Regardless, I saw him studying for his degree and most of it was parroting back stuff written based on old flawed views of economics, so basically if there's a flaw in economic theory, it just keeps getting propagated as the right thing, no matter how obvious a flaw it is.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

And the fact that the Trade winds go ~out~ , and not in is the reason we have a desert there in the first place. It seems that people who run the world need to talk to people in other fields than their own.

i would be happier listening to economists if they had some actual rules on how money and markets behave. I mean , you can fly a plane if you know the laws of physics, but economies just keep crashing. Political theory is just as bad. revolutions tend not to work as well as reforms.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that all I have to do to dismiss everyone in a large, complex and highly dynamic field of study is to personally know one person in it who has an exceptionally nutty idea?

Because that would save a LOT of time.

I can now disregard every comic ever.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Spend billions building giant artificial lakes in the Sahara, pump them full of water so it evaporates and then it'll rain in Africa.

Perhaps you could cite a few papers where this idea has been suggested by economists?