New finding CEO pay raises 28% this year alone.

[Craig234]

i watched the video.... what i got out of is was: some people have more than you, deal with it

OK, we have nothing to discuss.

It's like talking to a warlord who says, 'ya we rape and kill all the time, so what?'

 

[Craig234]

i'm up 20% this year.... suppose that makes me an asshole, too

No, not realizing that you're in the 99% rather the 1%, and that you are the enemy of those who are helping you get that 20%, is what does that.

 

[Ausm]

I guess they "survived" like anyone else would and made the proper lifestyle changes. I wouldn't know, I've been in the top bracket for only the last two years.

Grats on being in the top tax bracket I've been there for the last 20 years but back on topic then why do the Republican's act like we are killing them/us by raising the top tax bracket to 39% then?

 

[Ausm]

i'm up 20% this year.... suppose that makes me an asshole, too

Nah you would be an asshole in a lower tax bracket too

 

[shadow9d9]

Doesn't matter when its a percentage. Same goes for taxes. 33% is 33% no matter what your pay. Sure the number is larger/smaller depending on salary but its still cutting 1/3 of your legs out from under you.

I disagree. Percentage matters hugely. There is a huge difference from 500k to 640k. Not so much from 50k to 64. In terms of raw money, and raw money is our currency. Can you do more with 140k or 14k?

 

[shadow9d9]

She like many Hollywood Robber Barons support Obama and the left so it's all good.

She may support Obama, but there is only one leftist in the US Congress(Sanders). Obama is a weak middle-right corporate puppet.

 

[shadow9d9]

So lets limit CEO pay to 150k a year. We still have trillions in debt, and 10% unemployment. Now what?

Dismantle too big to fail banks to prevent another crisis. Reimplement glass-steagull. Cut the defense budget by 2/3 and remove empire building bases around the world including Japan and germany. Add a little in tax to the rich. Remove current corporate tax and replace it with non deductible/loophole based flat 10-15% tax. Add incentives to keep jobs here and penalties for moving jobs abroad.

Any other questions?

 

[shadow9d9]

No, not realizing that you're in the 99% rather the 1%, and that you are the enemy of those who are helping you get that 20%, is what does that.

Even if one IS in the top 1%, it doesn't mean you have to support them. My retirement savings is in the top 1% for my age. I am totally behind OWS and am more left than any of our current politicans(not saying much).

 

[1prophet]

Originally Posted by rchiu
Yeah right, when is the last time you see politicians tell it like it is.

American love to hear politicians telling them what they want to hear. That's why you see guy like Obama with his hope and change gets elected. That's why you see these liberals with their PC ideas running around trying to make everyone feels all warm and fuzzy inside.

And that's why America is losing competitiveness and our place in the world. All these adventurous, hardworking and self-sufficient spirit is replaced by entitlement, complacency and blame everyone but ourselves attitude.

Sounds just like upper management in most corporations.

 

[fskimospy]

We had tax rates of 70% in the early 80's too, I prepared tax returns and did planning for wealthy people. Here's how they survived:

1. While the tax rates were higher, those on the left like to forget there were also all kinds of deductions available. Wealthy people availed themselves of these deductions to lower their effective of tax (and of course the amount of taxes they paid in.)

2. Defer income. Wealthy people spent much effort on ensuring they didn't get too much income in any year (even though we did have income averaging back then, another thing that made the tax rate lower that we don't have now).

3. Pursue extreme methods to defer or reduce tax. We have many techniques in law now that arose during periods of high tax rates. I'm speaking of expensive and highly technical legal strategies based upon trusts and other legal concepts ("substantial risk of forfeiture") that defer taxation. E.g., if you were possibly going to receive an extra $100K income, thus paying $70K in tax, it is worth it to hire an attorney for $25K to get out of it. Not so much for $35K.

4. More straight up cheating, evasion, not too mention all kinds of people engaging in highly risky tax positions of their returns. High rates encourage noncompliance.

5. Some people would actually also just work less. I'm serious. If you're a lawyer or physician making a $100 per hr and keeping $75 of it, fine. Keeping just $30 some said "F it" and went home early, it ain't worth it.

I don't remember too many leaving the US (I had some very wealthy do it though), but Europe's rate were as high, if not higher then. Nowadays, I'd expect more people to leave US for a lower tax rate country.

Fern

There's no evidence that people even leave states (example, NJ's millionaires tax) that institute higher taxes for the wealthy, much less the entire country. I'm also sure people did all the things you mentioned. And.... they still ended up paying a higher effective tax rate, which is the whole point. I am also unaware of any evidence that links a decrease in average work weeks for professionals to higher marginal tax rates. Can you provide this?

The United States has some of the lowest levels of taxation for the rich in the developed world. They aren't just extraordinarily low compared to other countries, they are also extraordinarily low compared to our own recent history. We can absolutely increase them, and we should.

 

[Ausm]

Dismantle too big to fail banks to prevent another crisis. Reimplement glass-steagull. Cut the defense budget by 2/3 and remove empire building bases around the world including Japan and germany. Add a little in tax to the rich. Remove current corporate tax and replace it with non deductible/loophole based flat 10-15% tax. Add incentives to keep jobs here and penalties for moving jobs abroad.

Any other questions?

HUGE HUGE :thumbsup::thumbsup:

We see eye to eye on many issues Shadow!

 

[Fear No Evil]

Dismantle too big to fail banks to prevent another crisis. Reimplement glass-steagull. Cut the defense budget by 2/3 and remove empire building bases around the world including Japan and germany. Add a little in tax to the rich. Remove current corporate tax and replace it with non deductible/loophole based flat 10-15% tax. Add incentives to keep jobs here and penalties for moving jobs abroad.

Any other questions?

Not that I agree with most or any of those, but you just proved my point. CEO pay has almost nothing to do with our problems.

 

[Zebo]

Wait, I'm a CEO of not one but two C corporations and my pay did not go up at all. Must be talking about fortune 500 CEOs because main street ones are not seeing those kind of gains but we don't get money at near zero intrest either or can extract it via stock market ponzi scheme either.

 

[shira]

So if I was a CEO this is bad. I am not so it is good. Doesn't make sense when you want to cherry pick who gets to succeed and who doesn't.

If CEO salary didn't go up 28% then neither would the people who work for those CEOs. You can't ask for workers salaries to go up more than CEOs salaries. Does not compute.

We're continually told by the right that the reason that American companies aren't hiring is "uncertainty" about the future. But isn't it interesting that all these same companies have no problem at all jacking up CEO pay in these horribly uncertain times.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Look, I'm not saying there isn't a problem, otherwise we wouldn't have 10% unemployment, but it's NOT a result of CEO pay. It's more a result of the globalization of American companies and ideas. How to fix it, well, that's the quandry.

Let's do a small thought exercise. Let's say you have a company of around 1,000 people making an average of $50,000. You have a CEO. His pay is around 400 times that of the average worker: $20,000,000. Now let's say that instead of getting 400 times what his average worker makes, he only makes 20 times what they make: his pay is down to $1,000,000. That leaves $19,000,000 extra. What happens with that money? One of two things: A, it gets spread out in raises for the other thousand workers (which would amount to an astronomical 38% raise for them), or B., it gets used to hire 380 more employees. Now, realistically speaking, it could be a combination of both: hire more people and give your workers a raise (and your CEO a similar percentage raise, because he's earned it).

The problem is, that's not what CEOs at major American companies seem to be doing. They're billed as "job creators" even when they enact massive layoffs so they can take the money they saved by firing lower workers and pocket it themselves. If they were actually job creators, they'd cut their own salaries and put that money towards, you know, hiring more people. It's not like there's a shortage of potential employees; unemployment is skyrocketing around the country. But they're not interested in creating jobs, they're interested in building wealth for themselves.

In our earlier scenario, where CEO pay was not hundreds of times greater than the average worker, we had a more equitable distribution of wealth. You still have people earning millions of dollars, but it's tempered by them reinvesting potential earnings into increasing pay for their workforce and growing their company through hiring more employees. That's a model for success that was in place during the most prosperous years in our country. The trend over the past few decades to emphasize concentrations of enormous wealth in the hands of very few at the expense of average American workers' wages and jobs is disturbing and untenable. Now we're seeing the aftermath of decades of policy that have emphasized that trend, and it's exactly what you would expect; the majority of Americans are experiencing the depressed economy while the top earners who have hoarded all the wealth are sitting pretty. No wonder people are upset.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Let's do a small thought exercise. Let's say you have a company of around 1,000 people making an average of $50,000. You have a CEO. His pay is around 400 times that of the average worker: $20,000,000. Now let's say that instead of getting 400 times what his average worker makes, he only makes 20 times what they make: his pay is down to $1,000,000. That leaves $19,000,000 extra. What happens with that money? One of two things: A, it gets spread out in raises for the other thousand workers (which would amount to an astronomical 38% raise for them), or B., it gets used to hire 380 more employees. Now, realistically speaking, it could be a combination of both: hire more people and give your workers a raise (and your CEO a similar percentage raise, because he's earned it).

The problem is, that's not what CEOs at major American companies seem to be doing. They're billed as "job creators" even when they enact massive layoffs so they can take the money they saved by firing lower workers and pocket it themselves. If they were actually job creators, they'd cut their own salaries and put that money towards, you know, hiring more people. It's not like there's a shortage of potential employees; unemployment is skyrocketing around the country. But they're not interested in creating jobs, they're interested in building wealth for themselves.

In our earlier scenario, where CEO pay was not hundreds of times greater than the average worker, we had a more equitable distribution of wealth. You still have people earning millions of dollars, but it's tempered by them reinvesting potential earnings into increasing pay for their workforce and growing their company through hiring more employees. That's a model for success that was in place during the most prosperous years in our country. The trend over the past few decades to emphasize concentrations of enormous wealth in the hands of very few at the expense of average American workers' wages and jobs is disturbing and untenable. Now we're seeing the aftermath of decades of policy that have emphasized that trend, and it's exactly what you would expect; the majority of Americans are experiencing the depressed economy while the top earners who have hoarded all the wealth are sitting pretty. No wonder people are upset.

I heard an anecdote about my workplace that apparently happened before I started. We have about 600 employees. Apparently, one year, benefit costs really shot through the roof. In many of the staff meetings, the executives pulled out the standard "Benefits are so expensive, yada yada yada, you're lucky to work here, yada yada yada, you get a minimal raise this year, yada yada yada" speech. People later found out that the President of the company got a raise GREATER than the increase in benefit costs for the rest of the staff. Not 100% sure if the story is true but it wouldn't surprise me and in a nutshell, that it what is wrong with executive compensation.

 

[Ausm]

Let's do a small thought exercise. Let's say you have a company of around 1,000 people making an average of $50,000. You have a CEO. His pay is around 400 times that of the average worker: $20,000,000. Now let's say that instead of getting 400 times what his average worker makes, he only makes 20 times what they make: his pay is down to $1,000,000. That leaves $19,000,000 extra. What happens with that money? One of two things: A, it gets spread out in raises for the other thousand workers (which would amount to an astronomical 38% raise for them), or B., it gets used to hire 380 more employees. Now, realistically speaking, it could be a combination of both: hire more people and give your workers a raise (and your CEO a similar percentage raise, because he's earned it).

The problem is, that's not what CEOs at major American companies seem to be doing. They're billed as "job creators" even when they enact massive layoffs so they can take the money they saved by firing lower workers and pocket it themselves. If they were actually job creators, they'd cut their own salaries and put that money towards, you know, hiring more people. It's not like there's a shortage of potential employees; unemployment is skyrocketing around the country. But they're not interested in creating jobs, they're interested in building wealth for themselves.

In our earlier scenario, where CEO pay was not hundreds of times greater than the average worker, we had a more equitable distribution of wealth. You still have people earning millions of dollars, but it's tempered by them reinvesting potential earnings into increasing pay for their workforce and growing their company through hiring more employees. That's a model for success that was in place during the most prosperous years in our country. The trend over the past few decades to emphasize concentrations of enormous wealth in the hands of very few at the expense of average American workers' wages and jobs is disturbing and untenable. Now we're seeing the aftermath of decades of policy that have emphasized that trend, and it's exactly what you would expect; the majority of Americans are experiencing the depressed economy while the top earners who have hoarded all the wealth are sitting pretty. No wonder people are upset.

Keep rubbing your "Voodoo Economics" Doll because some day it will come a Trick'lin down

 

[shadow9d9]

Not that I agree with most or any of those, but you just proved my point. CEO pay has almost nothing to do with our problems.

Nope, it is simply one of many problems. No one problem will solve EVERYTHING if fixed. According to your perspective, nothing should be fixed because nothing is a magic bullet.

Additionally, it helps morale of the country, to know that there is some degree of fairness and less cronyism and corruption.

 

[halik]

Dismantle too big to fail banks to prevent another crisis. Reimplement glass-steagull. Cut the defense budget by 2/3 and remove empire building bases around the world including Japan and germany. Add a little in tax to the rich. Remove current corporate tax and replace it with non deductible/loophole based flat 10-15% tax. Add incentives to keep jobs here and penalties for moving jobs abroad.

Any other questions?

So raise taxes on the bottom 30-50% and give the rest a tax break?

 

[irishScott]

So by the laws of competition these companies should eventually fail as other companies with wiser spending habits come along no? That or the CEO can net that pay bump without loosing ground, in which case that makes the company pretty damn successful, which is usually good...

 

[Fern]

CEO pay has exactly zip to do with this country's problems.

If it's a problem for anybody it is the shareholder who would be overpaying for exec talent thereby suffering an under-performing stock investment. Otherwise, it just serves to make Progressive types all angry and jealous.

A few hundred people making too much money in some peoples' opinion? FFS. Big whoop.

Fern

 

[woolfe9999]

CEO pay has exactly zip to do with this country's problems.

If it's a problem for anybody it is the shareholder who would be overpaying for exec talent thereby suffering an under-performing stock investment. Otherwise, it just serves to make Progressive types all angry and jealous.

A few hundred people making too much money in some peoples' opinion? FFS. Big whoop.

Fern

I actually more or less agree with this. The issue of CEO pay for me has only one relevant aspect in the political arena: the argument that corporations are not hiring more workers/expanding production because of supposed "uncertainty" about taxes and regulations under a democratic POTUS. It seems awfully odd to me that corporations that are supposedly tight fisted over "uncertainty" can vote their executives such massive pay increases.

 

[HumblePie]

CEO pay has exactly zip to do with this country's problems.

If it's a problem for anybody it is the shareholder who would be overpaying for exec talent thereby suffering an under-performing stock investment. Otherwise, it just serves to make Progressive types all angry and jealous.

A few hundred people making too much money in some peoples' opinion? FFS. Big whoop.

Fern

I personally don't care that they are making more money. It's what they DO with that extra income is what I care about.

A CEO that takes that extra income and reinvests it back into his/her company so it can grow, diversify, expand, and become more profitable is all well and good. Even one that just goes on a shopping spree and spreads money around stimulating the economy. Also all great.

A CEO that uses that cash to influence politicians to create or remove laws that allow them to do shady things to take even more wealth from others... That I have a problem with. THAT is the problem we are facing today Fern. From fall of Enron, the "bubbles" we keep having, the banksters, and the politicians all trying to line their pocket at the expense of the American public is what I am upset about.

Much of what they have done is "legalized" theft because they have been "too big too fail" and it has hurt us.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I actually more or less agree with this. The issue of CEO pay for me has only one relevant aspect in the political arena: the argument that corporations are not hiring more workers/expanding production because of supposed "uncertainty" about taxes and regulations under a democratic POTUS. It seems awfully odd to me that corporations that are supposedly tight fisted over "uncertainty" can vote their executives such massive pay increases.

This x 1000. Also, as a shareholder in many of these corporations via my 401k, it pisses me off as well.

 

[child of wonder]

This x 1000. Also, as a shareholder in many of these corporations via my 401k, it pisses me off as well.

Same.

I don't care what the CEOs get paid, but the ridiculous severance packages are what piss me off. They're not held accountable.

Perhaps legislation could be passed that would tax every dollar of a severance plan over $1,000,000 an additional amount.