Posted on 01/24/2007 1:59:36 PM PST by Graybeard58
Bloated CEO salaries – subsidized by taxpayers – undermine American values. Congress needs to reform the tax code.
The new Democratic-led Congress has already made great strides on its ambitious legislative agenda. From hiking the minimum wage to cutting interest rates on student loans, Democrats have won impressive bipartisan support for their legislative goals.
Not included on the agenda, however, is any proposal designed to address what may be the most fundamental problem facing America right now: an alarmingly high degree of inequality.
Currently the top 10 percent of income earners in the US own 70 percent of the wealth, and the wealthiest 5 percent own more than the bottom 95 percent, according to a Federal Reserve Study. The ratio of average CEO pay to worker pay in the US shot up from a mere 301-to-1 in 2003 to 431-to-1 in 2004. The average CEO now earns $11.8 million per year, versus the paltry $27,460 for the average worker. As America tries to grapple with soaring healthcare costs and lack of universal coverage, UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire received an obscene $124.8 million in compensation in 2005. He's just one of many grossly overcompensated kingpins of the US economy.
Adding insult to injury, taxpayers actually subsidize these bloated CEO salaries. The federal government gives tax breaks to corporations for those salaries, to the tune of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.
We used to call this by another name: the Gilded Age.
Income disparity hurts democracy
The level of inequality and unfairness has risen to such eye-popping levels that it is attracting attention from unlikely sources. Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Board chair, has called rising inequality "a concern in the American economy." Mr. Bernanke's esteemed predecessor, Alan Greenspan, has said that disparate income distribution is "not helpful for
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
I would like to read more articles rebutting Webb's economic populism/Marxism. No body is really challenging him and the other democrats on this nonsense.
Far after your historical example, corporate classes were vastly changed and expanded to accommodate the changing economic arenas.
And that too id old history.
Far after your historical example, corporate classes were vastly changed and expanded to accommodate the changing economic arenas.
And that too id old history.
My point was that the press makes little uproar about it being a symptom of the greed of American society. It's just treated as a sideline issue.
Ah yes the dollar ruse, but how far would 7.5 million Apple shares go? Backdated for better price of course.
Steve "Joobs" annual salary remains at $1 per year (though he does get bonuses and other executive perks).
Corporations are not real beings and can do squat by themselves. It is the CONCRETE LIVING people who conduct business.
The legal construct of the corporation is to make a profit for its owners.
If it were so, the society in general should not be burdened with maintaining this curtain. If your way of looking at the institution of corporation prevails this institution will perish same way as old aristocratic privileges did. Once they stopped to serve useful social purpose (aristocrats risked their lives to provide safety for the whole society) it was matter of time before they were gone.
It has nothing to do with the common good--that is Marxist language.
What do you know about "Marxist language"? Have you read Marx or Lenin?
Greed is no where near as common an evil as envy. Leftists complain everyone seeking a profit or accepting a higher income is greedy, when leftists are actually projecting their envy. Greed is not involved.
Is a basketball player greedy if another team owner offers more money they don't need, and they accept? Greed may be involved in cases where the player breaks a contract they already signed, but that isn't normally the case.
I haven't seen any evidence that Republicans believe in the free market in years. Compared to the Democrats, they look okay (though just barely), but they are hardly Capitalists.
Not true. You can have free market capitalism WITHOUT special SHIELDING from PERSONAL responsibility.
This shield is to benefit the society as a whole (for example by encouraging risk taking). It is a PRIVILEGE and not right.
Steve Jobs salary at Apple is $1 per year.
I would have a large exemption - say $200K - any unearned income above that, subject it to the individual portion of the medicare tax.
Underlying the Marxist belief that capitalism would lead to Marxism was the assumption that capitalism would not only make the rich richer, it would make the poor poorer. As it turned out, everyone got richer, and no developed capitalist country suffered a Marxist revolution.
People will just move their wealth abroad, only hurting the country. If you then go after those tax shelters, they'll move themselves abroad as well, and remain out of reach.
This is more tricky. Until Stalin most of Marxists stood on the position that Communist revolution should take place when capitalism exhausts its creative potential (when overabundant means of production will make workers redundant and create misery in the midst of plenty).
Definitely backward Russia was not supposed to be place of the Revolution, yet it happened and Lenin explained it by theory of the "weakest chain of oppression" and as Trotsky asserted Russia was to be a mere springboard for revolution in most developed countries. Then when revolutions in the West failed Stalin presented doctrine of forced industrialization to build socialism in one country (to preserve it for later world expansions)
After WWII Communism took other "weak links" ( China) and Soviet Russia became a superpower. It led according to Marxist interpretation to the division of the world into three world - the First World (where the revolution should have happened), the Second World (where revolution took power but was forced into difficult task of replicating capitalist development) and the Third World where the Second was undermining the control by the First.
This division prevented the spread/outsourcing of Western capital (it was too risky to invest money into the Third World as the Second would use it for the expansion).
The overcontentration of capital in the First World and fear of revolution lead to the development of welfare state and redistribution of wealth from the rich to the middle class (New Deal etc ...)
In this scheme the failure of Lenin's experiment and integration of the Second World with the First open way for the outflow of capital into the Third World and return to the track originally predicted by Marx. The revival of free market ideology and practice plays into this perfectly.
The true alternative (hated by Lenin) is a way of social solidarity like safety net, trade unions, partial redistribution, government regulation of the market etc ... The way of New Deal or European Social Democracy. Or in other form the Christian social doctrine in the most developed form presented by papal encyclicals.
RERUM NOVARUM - ON CAPITAL AND LABOR
Centesimus Annus - Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum
"we tax traditional wages too much in the US, and unearned and passive income too little."
Please consider what you are saying. If you have never studied finance or the markets then I would suggest to enroll in a night course on business finance. The statement you made is non rational. You are proposing that the looters taxed everything higher. Do you think they will ever lower the tax rates? Republicans did a slight refund. Democrats will never lower taxes.
I am not making a political statement about the actions of a particular party.
all I am saying is - wage earners, people who have to go to work to earn income - are taxed too high in this country, in comparison to those who earn income through passive sources, unearned income, etc.
taxes need to be paid by someone - the issue is, how you structure it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.