Amy,

The flip side of this argument is to use a flat tax which is regressive. I absolutely don't mind paying my share of taxes but paying 25% of the salary I made at 21 is a much greater burden than paying 35% of what I make now. Hard work is certainly an admirable goal but without the chance to earn enough to educate yourself and invest for your future, no amount of work will get you ahead.

I believe that CEO's should be well compensated for shouldering the responsibilities they do. But is it true that an executive making $1,000,000 per year worked 28 times harder than a laborer making $35,000 per year?

I know that not everyone will take advantage of the resources provided to allow Americans to improve their standard of living, but in my mind the American Dream is the opportunity to improve. Regressive taxation stunts those opportunities. I recognize the chances I was given by our current structure and I plan to live within my means as I become more successful. When/If I reach that $250,000 (or $100,000 or whatever benchmark is set) level I will not begrudge the requirement to provide more back to the community.

I will also be voting for candidates that believe that economics is not a zero sum game. If we can provide opportunities mixed with prudent judgment there is no reason why our country can't raise standards for all of its citizens.

For what its worth, I'm a firm believer that the Federal Income Tax is unconstitutional and would love to see the whole thing scrapped in favor of a Federal Sales tax of, for instance, 20%. Since that isn't likely to happen this millennium, I'm content to vote for a candidate that believes that success first requires opportunity.

Joe the Plumber vs. Barack the Pickpocket!

But is it true that an executive making $1,000,000 per year worked 28 times harder than a laborer making $35,000 per year?

*Probably. Most definitely, when you take into account the extra years of schooling
executive has put in.

"When/If I reach that $250,000 (or $100,000 or whatever benchmark is set) level I will not begrudge the requirement to provide more back to the community."

*You know, you CAN give back to the community on your own.

I will also be voting for candidates that believe that economics is not a zero sum game.

*You're voting Republican?

For what its worth, I'm a firm believer that the Federal Income Tax is unconstitutional

*Oh boy. Short answer - it is in fact constitutional. Long answer - stop wasting your time reading tax protester websites. Longer answer - http://www.irs.gov/taxpros/article/0,,id=159853,00.html

and would love to see the whole thing scrapped in favor of a Federal Sales tax

*Here here!

Levi - the laborer hasn't agreed to put his freedom on the line for the company. In the present legal atmosphere (especially in a publicly-traded company) the CEO is held legally responsible for any malfeasance by anyone in his staff.

That argues in favor of a higher salary.

I think this puts it nicely.
By RPMDAD at http://forums.somd.com/share-joke/146661-father-daughter-talk.html

-------------
Father / Daughter Talk

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, 'How is your friend Audrey doing?' She replied, 'Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over.'

Her wise father asked his daughter, 'Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.'

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, 'That's a crazy idea, and how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!'

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, 'Welcome to the Republican party.'

If anyone has a better explanation of the difference between Republican and Democrat I'm all ears.

Personally, I would enjoy replacing income tax with a high federal sales tax. No nasty paperwork, no fear of prosecution for making mistakes, no loopholes.

Unfortunately, though, it would be disproportionately hard on lower-income families who have to spend a much higher percentage of their income just to cover necessities.

The usual discussion about executive's pay is humorous and frightening.

We see Company A paying a lot of money to Person B.

A person who wants to preserve freedom and self-determination might say:
- Wow. I want to be like B.
- Horrible. I'm selling my stock in A.
- Is A supported by the government?
. Does it get a subsidy?

A person who feels envy and does not care about freedom, who sees only the use of force as a way to the good life might say:
- Let's pass a law and get some of that.

Also, I can't help wondering if increasing taxation or cutting social programs are the only options. Does anybody here think the money that's actually *in* the annual budget is being spent wisely and efficiently? How much more could we accomplish with the same money if there were some way for the government to be made to exercise a little more financial horse sense?

How much more could we accomplish with the same money if there were some way for the government to be made to exercise a little more financial horse sense?

Thanks for the laugh. You owe me a new keyboard.

The federal government spends billions annually on things it has no business funding. That ain't never gonna change. Our founding fathers are rolling in their graves at the travesty the federal government has become.

I am all for a national sales tax. Not of 20% though, that's absurd. No one below the upper class would ever buy a new item again if it was that high.

If I ever got to $250k a year, or heck even $100k a year, I would not be happy to pony up the extra money for "society". I worked for it, I should keep it. Some lazy worthless drain thinks their back hurts too much to work? Tough crap, I shouldn't have to pay for them.

I think CEO's are way overpaid. We have no one to blame but ourselves though, we give our money to the companies that pay them. And don't even get me started on movie stars salaries. I don't go to the movies, precisely for that reason.

And I do think people ill stop working as hard. Why should my DH get his MBA anda 10% raise, if nearly all of that will go to the gov't? When he can work less, and earn almost as much?

For what it's worth and it is probably not possible in most industrialized nations, I would be in favour of a very low flat income tax rate and extremely low corporate tax rate compensated by higher sales taxes. The sales tax could be exempted for necessities such as food and rent. They did just that in Ireland and pulled most of the country out of extreme poverty. Everyone was better off including the poor. Again, not that I think that would ever happen ...

Interesting item from Michael Gerson and the Washington Post:

"Following an electoral victory, Obama is likely to face a massive challenge: The least responsible, least respected, least popular political institution in America – the Democratic-led Congress – would also be the most emboldened. Democratic leaders with large majorities would be pushed by conviction and hubris, and pressured by Democratic constituencies, toward divisive measures that punish and alienate businesses, seek backward-looking political vengeance and impose cultural liberalism. This predictable story of overreach, backlash and bitterness easily could destroy Obama's presidency, even before his first achievements – unless he can suddenly find the ability to shape, tame, even fight, the self-destructive tendencies of his own party."

I think that people like Levi, who feel that they are entitled to the money that other people earn (because it's "fair"), don't honestly believe that people really earn what they make. How else could one justify reaching into someone else's pocket? If I'm rich, and you're poor, it can't possibly be due to my good decisions and your bad ones, can it? Surely, either I got lucky or you got the shaft. Or, I screwed someone like you over: I took advantage of them, or conned them in some way. It certainly couldn't be that the work I choose to do has a high value in the marketplace, or that I've made good investments, or...etc.

I don't believe I said anything about taking others' money. I believe people earn what the market will bear and I don't begrudge that. But I think its absurd to suggest that someone making minimum wage is taking money out of the pocket of someone making six figures. If you have invested well, I congratulate you. But if you earn a salary just above the poverty line, as I did while on active duty with the Air Force, the idea that you have disposable income of any kind is a joke. I know that work translates to money but the old adage that "it takes money to make money" is true as well.

Can all the commenters here say that they are currently in the same tax bracket that they were the day they entered the workforce? If you can't say that then it is disingenuous to suggest that you got where you are without the advantage of lower taxes when you were earning less.

But if you earn a salary just above the poverty line, as I did while on active duty with the Air Force, the idea that you have disposable income of any kind is a joke.

*As if the only path to successs is government subsidy.

*And let's please keep in mind that Obama is targeting FAMILIES that make $250k, not individuals. And that's not indexed for geography, folks. Let's say you're an experienced IT professional in Southern California married to a nurse. Obama is circling the block, if not knocking on your door.

"How many pockets does he have to pick before the people start to turn on him?"

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul's support, so Obama is simply rolling the dice and betting that there are more Pauls than Peters in America today. Sadly, if the polls are to be believed, he's right.

Surely, either I got lucky or you got the shaft.

While I won't say I got shafted, there is a usually some sort of luck involved in success. Sometimes its internal (he worked hard, he was struck by the idea....) and sometimes its external such as my sister getting into the ultrasound business when there were only 100 licensed techs nationwide.

and you'll soon have seed money for a business.

Is there anything wrong with not wanting to own a business? I don't really want to have those headaches. I also don't expect to be paid what the CEO makes. The but in that is that I want to be paid a decent wage. I look at it that having a 1000% split from the employees that actually makes the item to be sold and the CEO really anything beyond greed?

I don't want to use the terms fair, moral or proper and at the same time the CEO who makes $5M, while his general employee is barely above the poverty line just doesn't sit well with me.

And speaking of "spreading the wealth around", Obama has raised $ 600 million since he turned up his nose at federal campaign financing. That's enough to interrupt the World Series for a half-hour infomercial, and to buy up every minute of available commercial air time in some TV markets. Why doesn't he hand over $ 300 million to the McCain/Palin campaign? You know, for the sake of fairness...

"Can all the commenters here say that they are currently in the same tax bracket that they were the day they entered the workforce? If you can't say that then it is disingenuous to suggest that you got where you are without the advantage of lower taxes when you were earning less."
People don't "get where they are" because they pay fewer taxes. Lower taxes don't contribute to one's personal success. One's actions do. Nice try, though.

If Obama wants to lose Florida, all he has to do is fuck with the World Series.

"Voters who benefit from government programs will push for higher tax rates on higher earners -- at least until those who power the economy and create jobs and wealth stop working, stop investing, or move out of the country.

--Are people really going to do that? Or is it just going to suck to be somebody who works hard and does something with your life?"

I am already planning on it. Now granted, I don't care very much about making more money or accumulating wealth. My plan to work less and earn less, while it jives with my desire to pay less in taxes, is not purely motivated by the tax factor.

I work in IT and am studying and gaining experience to be a Java developer. I just saw an ad placed by a recruiter looking for a Java developer, and they are willing to pay $88 an hour for someone with 3 years of experience. So I could make a lot of money! But I'm not going to. I'm going to work as a contractor and take time off between contract assignments to take trips on my touring bike(which is the real motivation for my plans) and keep my income low.

It certainly has occurred to me, as I look at the mounting federal debt, increased government spending, and the looming bankruptcy of several major entitlement programs, that if I made $185K a year I would be a ripe piece of fruit for the government to squeeze dry. So, since I don't need that much money and would rather have more time off anyway, I'm simply not going to make that much money. I will keep myself in a much lower tax bracket.

Right now I am getting closer to my goal by pouring every extra cent I make into paying off my condo instead of investing it. The government would have to come and take my home from me, brick by brick, which won't be nearly as tempting for it as grabbing my investments. I really don't trust them to maintain the tax protections that have been promised me through IRA investing.

"I don't want to use the terms fair, moral or proper and at the same time the CEO who makes $5M, while his general employee is barely above the poverty line just doesn't sit well with me."
When the general employee is qualified to run a multi-billion dollar, publicly traded company, he'll be worth $5m, too.
It's rude to count other people's money, you know.

The debate over executive pay usually centers around a common economic error: the intrinsic value fallacy. Because of the diversity of human ends, goods are not valued by reference only to properties of the good itself.

This was a mystery even in the ancient world. Aristotle wondered in the Oeconomicus why diamonds were so expensive yet inessential, while water was free yet absolutely vital.

Goods are valued in a total order relative to other goods. In other words, a good's value is ordinal not cardinal. Money, as a cardinal quantity, is therefore not a measure of value. Price is not value. The money-value of a good is a scale, or a measure, of relative value. To confuse prices with value is analogous to confusing inches with the length of wood measured.

For example, a plumber saves more lives than a doctor simply by preventing the many diseases that plagued city-dwellers until the late 1800's. A plumber makes a lot less than a doctor because the supply of doctors is much more limited. In fact, the supply of doctors is kept artificially low by the AMA for the very purpose of raising the prices for the services of doctors. Intrinsically, the plumber does more for public health than a doctor, but the lower supply of doctors lets them charge more.

Some here have claimed that the levels of education of executives make them intrinsically more valuable. This is false. Education functions as a barrier to entry, lowering supply and raising prices. Intrinsically, two years of actually administering a company is far superior to two years in a classroom studying how to administer a company. I know this from personal experience on both sides. Empirical evidence suggests the same. Education functions more as a barrier than as a measure of skill. In this, it functions like all formal qualifications.

It's peculiar how Americans value educational "experience" over actual experience. Business is a practical activity more akin to a sport than a theoretical subject like mathematics. We would never think football could be learned in a classroom, or that two years of classroom study of football would equal two years of full-time play. But I digress...

ahw,
Richard Fould over the course of his career at Lehman made some $600 million dollars. Franklin Raines of Freddie Mac made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Please don't give me the crap about how they were qualified to run multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies. Did you mean to say run them into the ground, and lose their owners, the shareholders, billions? And, cost the tax payer's hundreds of billions.
There's ability, then there's luck, then there's fraud, corruption and friends in high places that support you.
When CEOs are earning not 28 times, but 100 or 1000 times what their base employees are earning, there is something wrong with executive compensation.

Belle wrote,

Please don't give me the crap about how they were qualified to run multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies...When CEOs are earning not 28 times, but 100 or 1000 times what their base employees are earning, there is something wrong with executive compensation.

Executive compensation is set by corporate boards. Corporate boards are elected by limited liability shareholders. These investors do not own the company in any way resembling private property ownership. The investors in a corporation are essentially paying executives with other peoples money (OPM).

Here's the twist. Executive pay is inflated for the same reason college textbooks are so expensive and for the same reason medical costs are so high. The people who select the services and products don't have to pay for them. A college professor selects the text, but doesn't suffer the cost. The patient and doctor decide medical treatment, but the government pays for it. Boards decide executive compensation, but it's OPM.

The legal structure of the modern corporation distorts labor prices at all levels.

So those sucking on the public teat will finally outnumber those who pay taxes? There is no going back: in a democracy, the taxpayers can revolt all they want - they are the minority. This reads like a bad distopia novel...

This is a perfect example of the reason that the founding fathers originally restricted voting to property holders. In modern times, it would be different: anyone who pays zero (or less) income tax should be prohibited from voting.

No, what all the free market bullshit that expects labor to be able to negotiate without the strength of an union behind them fails to consider is the importance of human resources.

Without us working slobs to make the products the CEO's sell, flip the burgers, take out the fucking garbage, hire the plumbers and the doctors, without us, you'd fucking starve to death.

When the talk here was about the assholes who scam the system instead of working even when they could, I agree with you 100% but now it seems to have gone to attacking the working poor who work harder than most executives. That's right harder.

Let's crack down on companies hiring illegals and farming out jobs to foreign countries so the regular working slob can make a decent wage.

You all wring your hands and cry boo hoo why should I work so hard. So do like Pirate Jo and slow the fuck down then if you don't think it worth it. Boo fucking hoo if you won't.

What you don't seem to realize or care about, working at unskilled labor also has to be worth it. It's rapidly getting less and less so.

And that's coming from someone near retirement who has some job skills albeit low value ones and has been honest and hard-working all her life, never considered herself "entitled", etc.

That's Obama's popularity. He appreciates that we low wage earners are also necessary and not as easily replaceable as privileged assholes tend to think. He values us and it's a refreshing change after 8 years of robbing the poor to pay the rich which is what McCain wants to continue.

I don't think either he or I are referring to irresponsible people who scam the system but rather those who work hard for the money but it still doesn't go as far as it should.

Thank you, Levi. Absolutely. I resent it when I do see someone scamming the system and I resent bailing out Wall Street and people who took out mortgages they couldn't afford when I can't even get one but the working stiffs cannot afford to pay as much taxes as Joe the Plumber. Talk about feeling entitled! There's an asshole who does if there ever was one.

TG - Consider what raising the price of "unskilled" labor would do to the costs of many goods. Why do you think so many leftists turn a blind eye to the maltreatment of the illegal worker? Because they don't want to pay $5 for a head of lettuce either. So they talk about "living wages" with a wink and a nod, knowing that the people that are being snuck across the border to pick the lettuce will never have the opportunity to avail themselves of the mandated higher wage.

That's Obama's popularity. He appreciates that we low wage earners are also necessary and not as easily replaceable as privileged assholes tend to think.

He appreciates no such thing. He knows full well that the price of arugula would go up dramatically if he did what the working stiffs want and closed the border after sending all the illegals home. Which is why he has no plans to so do. He talks about "punishing" the rich and "spreading the wealth" to get you to vote for him, while planning to fuck you up the ass once he's in power.

If you weren't so replaceable, then why are we even having a discussion in this country about "guest workers" and immigration?

Levi - "I believe that CEO's should be well compensated for shouldering the responsibilities they do. But is it true that an executive making $1,000,000 per year worked 28 times harder than a laborer making $35,000 per year?"

It doesn't matter if they worked harder, if matters if they were worth what they were paid. I could have worked 50 times as hard as Michael Jordan and still not been worth a fraction of what Jordan was paid. Obviously a company that is paying the CEO twenty times what a normal worker bee is making believes that the CEO is worth twenty times a worker bee to the bottom line of the company. I think it would be hard to argue in most cases 1) that they weren't correct, and 2) that outside of the shareholders and employees, it is anyone's business who gets paid what.

A CEO who only shows up to work 1 day a week could be worth an enormous amount to a company, assuming that CEO makes decisions that grow the company and increase the wealth of shareholders. That CEO would be worth much more than a CEO that worked 80 hours a week and ran the company into the ground.

Levi- "For what its worth, I'm a firm believer that the Federal Income Tax is unconstitutional and would love to see the whole thing scrapped in favor of a Federal Sales tax of, for instance, 20%."

While I'm strongly in agreement on taxing consumption as opposed to wealth creation, the 16th Amendment clearly authorizes the Federal government to tax income.

Unskilled workers are, by definition, limitlessly replaceable and interchangable. There will always be someone glad to take out our garbage. People living IN garbage dumps in India, scavenging them for food and scraps to sell, would think it paradise. At $5 an hour.

If the poor really want better wages, they should stop reproducing. End the limitless supply of unskilled workers, you'll get valued. And I say that as a woman who's family of soon-to-be-6 lives on less then $50,000 a year. And we're not poor, actually. And I agree with everything Joe the Plumber said. And with nothing, absolutely nothing, Obama has said. Which is why I went and early-voted for McCain today.

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