We knew when we passed the “Bush Tax Cuts” that they would blow a huge hole in the budget. That’s why they were never meant to be permanent – the numbers just didn’t work out.
Republicans say all the tax cuts must be preserved. So now the Democrats are supposed to “negotiate” to keep the cuts for the richest 1% (who are doing quite well, thank you very much), in order to keep the cuts for the rest of us (who aren’t doing well at all)?
Just say NO. The cuts were a bad idea 10 years ago, and they’re a bad idea now. It will go against one of Obama’s promises, but it’s a step in the direction of fiscal prudence. Isn’t that one of the messages of this last election?
Please share widely!
Let the Bush tax HIKE take effect.
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p>Otherwise I agree.
Obama will own this no matter what the outcome. Rates have been where they fro sometime. Our leaders(?) will have to make a decision between leaving the rates where they are or raising all of our taxes. There will be no raising of over $250K taxes, it will not happen! So if the President signs the bill raising our taxes, then these are “his”… President Obama’s tax increases. If he signs the bill leaving them where they are then he will own the continuance of these rates, but make no mistake, Bush will not get blamed for anything going forward. Even Democrats are saying blaming Bush does not advance the ball.
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p>My vote if for letting the law expire and raise taxes for everyone.
on everyone, rich, middle and poor? There is more to this than just bashing “millionaires.”
But far too often in this country we try to pay for everything off the backs off the people who work hard, work smart, take chances and succeed. We now have a country in which 50% of the people don’t pay ANY Federal taxes. NONE!
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p>How can you have a truly fair debate on taxes and the attention of voters when half of them don’t care what you do since they don’t pay any taxes. Politicians could try to double the tax rates and half the country could be convinced to vote “yes” since 2x zero is zero. Everyone needs skin in this race, no matter how small. If someone makes $15,000 then let them pay $500 in Fed taxes. Then of politicians talk about raising taxes we’ll hear from masses of people who usually don’t give a shit “NO MORE TAXES”.
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p>So while I don’t want more taxes and I don’t want the marriage penalty imposed… I do want all of us to share the burden. We all have to give to help the country and I hope Republicans back up my sentiments. That is also the spirit we are going to need to fix SS, Medicare, our debt…
For someone who is not a big fan of taxes, surely you know that this isn’t true:
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p>
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p>The obvious example is payroll taxes, which in fact hit the lowest-income Americans much harder than those with higher-incomes. And how about excise taxes? Gasoline taxes? I doubt 50% of the population pays NONE of these taxes, as you claim.
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p>How much do changes in the tax tables effect excise taxes, gas tax?
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p>This discussion is sort of a moot point since they aren’t going to be raising taxes on anyone this year, next year or the next year. But when they finally do, and they will, they MUST… then I hope is across the board and everyone feels it.
is that you stated that 50% of the population pays no federal taxes, which is false.
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p>This has direct relevance to the question of federal income tax rates. The federal taxes you failed to mention — payroll, excise, gasoline, etc. — are actually regressive because they hit the poor and middle class much more than the wealthy.
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p>That’s why your saying that somebody making $15,000 should “share the burden” is besides the point. Poor and middle-class Americans already shoulder a good part of the tax burden, so by raising the rates only on the wealthiest, it’s helping to flatten this out.
They still have nothing at stake in discussions about issues like the impending Obama Tax increases. If our politicians are talking about an income tax increase, why in the world would people care if “their” taxes weren’t going up since they don’t pay them to begin with? If there was going to be a vote for free ice cream for everyone tomorrow, but it will be paid for by the “other” people, why wouldn’t everyone vote for their free ice cream. But if all Americans paid Fed Income tax, then even the people paying $500 a year would be concerned about “any” increase and maybe also be concerned with how that $500 is being spent.
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p>And they should pay payroll, excise, gasoline, etc. like everyone does. Do you want them paying nothing?
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p>There’s no answer here for us, we simply disagree.
No, everyone should pay the federal payroll, etc. taxes you mention. My point, however, is that it’s completely misleading to claim that the federal tax structure somehow targets the rich while letting everyone else off scot-free.
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p>Your argument is simply one of strategy — you want everyone to pay extra in income taxes not because it either makes fiscal sense or because it is morally correct, but simply because it will make tax cuts more difficult to pass politically.
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p>That’s fine, but don’t try to dress that up into something other than pure political strategy. It makes little sense from a good governance perspective.
but not the only one. Everyone should have a stake in our government and while you say lower income earners do through excise tax… I’m sure they don’t know it. And “knowing it” is exactly what I want. Many people think the government is “just there” and all the programs, the roads, the military… are “just there”. They don’t know that our tax dollars, both obvious and less-obvious are what pays for it. Federal Income taxes is a way which makes you feel connected to not only increases, but how they are spending it. Watch how people drink at open bars vs cash bars and try to draw a parallel to people living in a system where the don’t contribute (or think they aren’t contributing). I understand your point, I just disagree with it, which is fine.
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p>I don’t like taxes but a big reason (believe it or not) is my total lack in confidence that they will spend it wisely. Many of us have children and would cut a limb off for them, mortgage my house to help them out. But when they don’t spend their money wisely we aren’t so quick to help them out. We “protest” when they ask for more money when you see them flush it down the toilet, while you are almost happy to give them money if you see it being spent is a productive responsible manner.
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p>I will be happy to pay taxes and yes more taxes, when I see it being used in a manner which I think responsible. That is the same feeling I also want the lower income earners to have when they see the government spending “their ” money.
OK, how about a compromise. How about we raise the income of “lower income earners” so that they start paying more taxes? At the same time, we can lower the income of the super-wealthy so they pay less in taxes. Deal?
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p>The income of the not-super-rich has stagnated over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the average income for the bottom 90% of Americans went from $30,941 in 1980 to just $31,244 in 2008. The share of income going to the bottom 90% went from 65% to 52%.
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p>In short, the super-rich are paying most of the income taxes because they’re the ones raking in most of the money!
How would Obama own it? He has nothing to do with it, Bush has it expiring after 10 years. What Obama should do, and hopefully will do is push his tax cut plan.
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p>It’s not that he’s increasing anyone’s taxes, he’s putting a new tax cut plan in place. How do you raise taxes if Bush had it as a temporary measure and that time has expired?
Sure it was a cynical move to sunset the tax cut into the next administration. Too bad.
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p>Taxes go up on Obama’s watch, it is Obama’s tax hike. That’s why they give him the secret service detail and the fancy office with no corners.
It will be difficult, but the Dems need to capitalize on the anger directed at the wealthy. Cynical yes.
I have little confidence that Democrats are capable of managing the messaging to pull it off.
Old tax plan, didn’t work out too well. I think everyone will agree based on the economy. Now the has expired, new tax cut plan. That’s it. Shove it down the Republicans throats, they are the ones who are stopping the tax cut. Obama should push his tax cut plan, period. Let the Republicans stop the tax cut.
Tax cuts (like all budget legislation) has to start in the House, and the Democrats are now the minority party there. The time to shove it down the Republican’s throats was about a year ago.
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p>Unless, of course, we do it during the upcoming lame-duck session.
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p>Hmmm …. it’s insane, but maybe ….
Plus I don’t think Joe Manchin seems like someone who’d agree with it so he might be among other Democrats in the Senate to go along with a filibuster.
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p>No the only choice is the lame-duck and I don’t think the Dems who are going to still be there after January will do anything like that.
The Democrats still have the House for a little while yet. These tax cuts expire during this legislative session. If the tax cuts get extended, it’s likelier to happen sooner rather than later IMO.
If no action is taken by the current Congress all tax rates return to Clinton levels. Then Democrats can propose a middle class cut next Congress and hopefully run with it politically. Yes I know we’ll be in the minority, but I’d rather our minority propose constructive measures even if they won’t pass instead of take the “just say no” stance of the current GOP minority.
The bill will have to originate in the House, and the House is Republican (next year, when the Bush bill expires). The Democrats can propose all they want in the House, but it’ll never come to a vote.
They should still propose it to show the American people whose side their on, then call a press conference asking why the majority won’t act on a tax cut proposal. (Though technically the Constitution only requires that bills RAISING revenue originate in the House; it does not say this about cutting revenue.) I still prefer this strategy to simply voting against anything the GOP comes up with.
If it becomes clear that it’s the only thing Republicans can get, and that we really won’t budge there, we may just get the damn thing through. Remember, Bush got plenty of things done with small majorities, and even when he lost the majorities.
I also don’t have confidence that they will be able to message appropriately.
An alternative which I haven’t heard is raising the threshold from $251K to the “millionaires and billionaires” we hear demonized so much. Seems like raising the cutoff that high would remove a lot of protests from the upper middle class (although how much would that up to?).
about how much it would add up to, but I would wager that the answer is “a lot”. It’s been mostly millionaires and billionaires that have seen their incomes rise dramatically over the past few years, after all.
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p>It’s possible that a good compromise would do what you suggest, JohnD — move the threshold upward (probably to something like 500K for families). No one can claim that 500K is anything but the wealthiest, and you’d probably not be losing much revenue as opposed to allowing the tax cuts expire for couples above $250K.
Pick two numbers: 43* and 50*
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p>New bracket: every dollar earned over $1,000,000* in a single year is taxed at 43%.
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p>New bracket: every dollar earned over $5,000,000* in a single year is taxed at 50%.
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p> * all four numbers: 43, 50, 1mil, 5mil, are arbitrary. The “right” numbers require significant economic analysis, CBO study, etc. The point remains: set up brackets for the uber-incomes.
The protestors would be a much smaller group and they aren’t the type who march on Washington holding signs/posters (but that is a funny thought).
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p>My guess is based on historical data, when tax increases have been proposed, one of the metrics to see whether it is worth it becomes “What all this hassle worth?”. When they ask this question, they usually don’t receive a “high enough” total dollars. So they end up dropping the threshold for who gets an increase.
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p>Reminds me of the joke where a kid asks his father for $50 and the father replies “$40 bucks, what do you need $30 bucks for?” These tax increases based on your suggestion would start at $1M but then they would say we only make $X more in taxes so we drop it to $750K and it still isn’t enough… and we’re back at $250K for it to have any meaningful impact (and be worth the political capitol is will flush).
We’ve been over all this before.
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p>The “millionaires and billionaires” don’t have significant income (unless they want to show it for some reason). Their increase in net worth happens in ways that the GOP vigorously defends from taxation — capital gains being a noteworthy example.
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p>The legislation was proposed by a Republican president, and passed overwhelmingly by a Republican House and Senate. The result was to transform, literally overnight, a comfortable and growing surplus into the largest deficit in U. S. history. The sunset provision was in the original legislation, and was put there to gain Democratic votes. The fact that the party that brought all this insanity to pass is now able to make any claim about being “better on economics” without raucous scorn and contempt from the mainstream media is testimony to the corruption of that media.
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p>In any case, now that the Democrats are again the minority, they should “just say no” to any extension of these fool-hardy cuts.
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p>The cuts — ALL of the cuts — should expire.
Let the wealthy begin paying their fair share. It’s the patriotic thing to do. Republicans always love to run up deficits, especially when it rewards their fat cat friends. Bush cutting taxes while waging wars on two fronts is the equivalent of writing checks on an empty bank account or not paying the minimum on your credit card.
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p>A tax cut is also the equivalent of getting a 50% discount every time you walk into a store. When the store owner puts the price back up to retail, everyone complains because they are used to paying a discounted rate. Problem is, the store is on the verge of going out of business. Why should we cut spending to programs that need money, in order to fund these disastrous tax cuts? They created more jobs overseas than here.
If we do what the President and many Democrats want it’s not a matter of some will keep a tax cut and others won’t. EVERYBODY will keep the lower rate on their first 250K of income, including those making more than that. That’s what the President should emphasize – that there is something for everyone in his proposal.
And it would be good just in an educational sense as well — it’s amazing how many people just do not understand how marginal tax rates work.
I agree it might be nice, but we can’t get it by the Senate.
Reconciliation requires 51 votes and is routine and non-controversial for tax legislation.
For instance during the late 90s the Russian Federation had a top rate over 35% (it had been even higher) while it now has a flat tax of 13%.
You can’t tell me you’re not studying Russian so you can move there now!!
It’s not what I do, it’s what capital does. For instance the USA had a 70% income tax in the 60s and 70s, and yet the Beatles and the Rolling Stones moved here. Why? To avoid the 90% income tax back in the UK.
is a horrid place to live — your mindless worship of the moribund theory low-tax rates notwithstanding.
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p>There are plenty of places with higher tax rates that are much more pleasant.
19% flat tax
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p>
There are beautiful pictures from Sweden and France, too.
I suggest you pick up the book ‘The Shock Doctrine’ by Naomi Klein and see how these free market ideas have worked out for Russia. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very small percent.
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p>Slovakia was always the poor cousin when it was part of Czechoslovakia, but things still are pretty bad.
Social situation in Slovakia still a painful issue
http://www.euractiv.com/en/soc…
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p>”According to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, the goals of the ‘Europe 2020’ strategy – including that of reducing poverty by 25% – are ”illusory”. So too is the notion that the social situation of all Slovak citizens has improved in the decades since 1989. EurActiv Slovakia reports.
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p>Public opinion polls conducted in the Visegrad countries on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union revealed that many people do not believe that they are better off now than they were prior to 1989. In Slovakia, 32% of respondents said their living standards are lower than they were before 1989, and 16% said they are basically the same.”
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p>
Number of Steadily Poor People Rising in Slovakia
http://www.romea.cz/english/in…
Where politically connected people and businesses get assets transferred from the state to themselves. Sort of like the US, aka GM the banks or in Massachusetts Evergreen Solar.
who engaged in war profiteering.
Bush,not Obama, enacted TARP and signed the bank bailout into law. GM has paid back a portion of the taxpayers’ money and since they are now profitable, will probably pay of the rest next year.
As it turns out, the Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as “working capital” in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money–government money–to pay back the government loan.
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p>http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/…
Republicans all suck and Democrats are wonderful. Republican related companies are bad but Democratic ones are good. Democrats lost the mid terms because Americans wanted them to go further left but they didn’t, so they are punishing them by electing Republicans. MSNBC is an unbiased network proving the “truth” while Fox is pure propaganda. Do you see trend?
Nice picture, but how about this one from the largest Roma ghetto in Slovakia? There are beautiful places in Slovakia, but they have a lot of problems as well.
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in JohnD’s world.
All your generalized bitching and complaining about Russia is irrelevant, even and especially on your own terms. Since they enacted the flat tax, they had average annualized growth over 6%, and their income tax receipts grew by 10-20% every year. Wouldn’t you all like to have that money to blow? Or would you rather just feel good for sticking it to the rich?
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p>http://www.newworldeconomics.c…
Do you understand that Russia is an oligarchy and that the middle class and poor are being taxed into oblivion? That money is not being reinvested into infrastructure. With the exception of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the country is falling apart. I suggest you visit there and take a tour of some of the slums. Some of us have actually been to the countries that you’re taking about, done business there, and can tell you that your illusions about these places as low-tax, free market paradises are ludicrous.
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p>Not sticking it to the rich at all. Just telling you about REALITY. Low taxes do not mean a better quality of life for the majority in these countries, but that the money is concentrated in the hands of oligarchies. In Russia’s case, this means a handful of billionaires that are connected to the former KGB or Russian mafia families.
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p>You need to get out in the world more…
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On the other side of the world, suddenly your criticisms get off the plane upside down. Do you think Russia should cut taxes more? You would vote for George Bush if he ran for president over there.
Obviously having low taxes for the wealthy has created a huge underclass that can barely scrape by and a rotting infrastructure. The flat tax hurts the poor disproportionately. The average salary in Russia is $545 USD/month. With costs of food, energy, and other staples rising, 13% of $7000 is a lot more onerous than 13% of $1,000,000.
Millions more Russians shunted into poverty
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…
Like the oligarchs would pay the top rate of 45% income tax, like they did back in the 90s right?
Conservatives seem to think that money is measured in happiness.
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p>It isn’t!
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p>Living in a miserable country with low tax rates is miserable. End of story.
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p>Higher taxes can lead to better outcomes. That’s why life in Norway is nicer than life in Somalia.
They also have a VAT tax, which is the main source of revenue in the country. Something like 20%, I believe.
Much better to have a VAT and cut taxes on investment and income.
…don’t distort behavior at all. I mean they don’t have a much bigger underground economy in Slovakia do they? I have spent time in Bratislava and Nitra and there is little there that we would want to copy.
If they’re so disinterested in passing tax cuts that are capped at $250,000k a year (which, btw, still benefits everyone, including the top 2%), then allow the tax cuts to expire. It would certainly be better for the country, and it would be the GOP’s fault.
…if we make it the GOP’s fault in our rhetoric. My faith in the President being willing and able to point fingers like that is minimal at the moment.
Unfortunatelly, whatever happens, the GOP will have a message that will be repeated over and over again…
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p>Taxe cuts expire = Obama raised your taxes!
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p>Tax cuts over $250 expire = Obama raised taxes on the people that keep the economy from collapsing!
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p>Tax cuts stay the same = Would not have happened without the GOP!
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it’s the same old story, and you would think we (meaning leadership) would have learned during the gobsmacking Bush years where up is down, no is yes, rich is poor.
Nancy Pelosi is consistently the only leader up there who’s been right and been willing to say it… but she’s drowned out by the Senate and Blue Dogs who’ve still been able to dominate the airwaves as ‘representatives’ of the Democratic Party.
was brilliant on this last night.
And both houses of Congress had Republican majorities then, too.
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p>And the middle class paid lower taxes than today.
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p>And everyone prospered mightily. All classes.
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p>And we built the Interstate System.
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p>Republicans and Democrats alike had a notion back then that the rich should pay their share. Working Americans were not seen as livestock to be harvested for a few pieces of silver needed for a larger yacht.
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p>We are all, on this post, wasting our breath. Obama seems to lie awake nights terrified that a Republican will call him a tax-hiker or a wimp. Either that or Obama actually desires the results he’s achieving. In any case, there will be no compromise, the infernal thing will be renewed in toto.
I just had an image of a certain Senator wincing when he got to the word ‘yacht’ in your comment.
Great comment.
Annual hauls by selected talkers:
Rush Limbaugh $58.7 million
Glenn Beck $33 million
Sean Hannity $22 million
Bill O’Reilly $20 million
Jon Stewart $15 million
Don Imus $11 million
Keith Olbermann $7.5 million
Laura Ingraham $7 million
Stephen Colbert $5 million
Arianna Huffington $5 million
Chris Matthews $4.5 million
Rachel Maddow $2 million
Jon Meacham $2 million
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p>This is who JohnD thinks work so hard and smart:
“But far too often in this country we try to pay for everything off the backs off the people who work hard, work smart, take chances and succeed.”
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p>These people don’t work hard. These people talk, talk, talk. Today, JohnD ate food picked by a migrant worker who sweated more today than Rush Limbaugh does in year of sitting in his radio studio. Migrant workers work harder than Rush, and harder than JohnD does. The people who dry clean Rush’s suits sweat more in a day than Rush does. The people who drive trucks and buses work harder than Rush does. The custodians who mop the floors in the schools where JohnD’s kids learn–those custodians work harder in a day than Rush Limbaugh does all week.
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p>JohnD is messed up when says these “talkers” are the people who keep this economy going and need a tax cut.
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p>The people who are hurting in America today need help. It’s time for the people who make good money to chip in and help their fellow Americans, after 11 years of Bush tax giveaways.
I said
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p>Working hard is only one component and probably not the biggest. Working smart and taking chances are also very big. I don’t know of many jobs in the US where people get paid on how “hard” (or hahd as I pronounce it) they work. Does Gov Patrick work harder then the migrant workers you mentioned? Does Barney Frank sweat as much as the people who dry clean his suits? Does Mayor Menino work as hard as a guy digging a hole in the street in February? How about Sean Penn and the rest of the Hollywood scene, work harder then migrant workers? How about Jonathan Papelbon, works an inning every few games for lots of dough. Need more examples?
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p>Hell, how many people here on BMG use their brains to get paid what they do vs. their braun? We don’t pay people based on sweat, they hire people from the neck …UP!
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p>We pay them based on some other formula regarding supply/demand, skill levels, successfulness and other metrics. Those people sweating for their money will also tell you they want to keep it and are trying to someday be the ones you scorn.
But remember, John, that Bush borrowed the money for these tax cuts. And that the largest share of these cuts went to rich people. Republicans love to call Democrats taxers and spenders, but it’s the Republicans who borrow and spend. Sometimes they spend that money they’ve borrowed by giving it to rich people. They claim to do this to stimulate the economy, but that has proven to be a falsehood. When you give a tax cut to a middle class person they spend it here in America. Rich people just put that money in their pockets. The best thing to do for the economy is to keep middle class tax cuts in place and to let the rich people’s tax cuts expire to reduce the deficit that Republicans claim they want to reduce.
You said…
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p>Taken from an earlier post by me…
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p>You can try to spin this so your remark about the “rich people” was using “as a percentage…” but the fact is 85% of the money from those cuts go to people making under $250K.
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p>So, letting these tax cuts expire will generate $238 Billion in tax revenue. Extending them to cover the “middle class” will save $36 Billion and extending them to cover everyone making under $1 million will save $31 Billion. Do you now agree that the largest share of the cuts went to NON-rich people?
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p>But the plan being pushed by many Democrats will cost the country $202 Billion and I’m wondering how Democrats are going to pay for this $2+ Trillion addition to the national debt.
if we pull this money from middle class households, it will make the economy contract even further. Since middle class households spend most of the money they have, they support the economy and therefore help to keep us afloat.
This also contributes to sales tax revenue, and small business success. The highest income earners do not spend all of their money, and apparently do little investing in the economy, as is apparent by our current state of affairs. It’s like throwing good money after bad.
There is no economic benefit to extending the tax cuts to wealthy. There is huge economic benefit in extending them to the middle class.
lower that “rich” bar and you’ll find that more of those 85% will be reclassified as going to the rich. Just sayin’.
That people who work with their hands should pay relatively less taxes? And people who use their backs to lift heavy things perhaps at an even lower rate?
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p>I think John is right here: we live in a money-based economic system, not a sweat-based system. Unless your proposal is that people should get paid, and taxed, based on the amount of physical labor that they do (and how, just out of curiosity would you measure that), then his broader definition of labor is probably more apt.
although the wealthy keep trying to portray themselves as the smartest and hardest workers. The point is the value of the work. It seems in today’s world it’s acceptable to denigrate and minimize the value of the store clerk or the building maintenance guy. Yet take away both of those workers and you have the owner of the store, the millionare, standing at the cash register, or the owner of the giant Health Insurance Company, mopping the floors. They are of no less value to our collective success than the ones making millions of dollars.
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p>We are an ecosystem, in a sense, and when you devalue and compromise the very people that support the wealth, you will destroy the wealth.
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p>I guess we have to have that happen before some of the “smartest” people in the country finally use their intelligence and change direction of this country.
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p>The problem here is that the tax rate based on percentages is way off balance and it needs to be fixed. We are all equals, at least I’ve always believed that to be true. Much of the wealth today is taxed at 15%. So now I hear the false concern that if we raise that tax it will hurt seniors and homeowners. What a bunch of baloney. That tax can be graduated too so that not a single senior or modest incomed person would be affected. This tax rate is a huge loophole that increases wealth at the top disproprotionately to the savings at the bottom.
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p>So it really has nothing to do with how much actual physical labor is involved, it’s about paying relatively equal taxes on our income and all money acquired throughout the year.
…proportional raises at all levels of a company, either by capping CEO pay at 100x the lowest associate or requiring that if a CEO gets a raise all employees get a raise of the same percentage because they helped make it happen.
It will never happen nor should it ever happen. Remember the discussions of how much money Tom Brady makes compared to the hot dog guy in the stands? Oprah vs. her camera man? So if “Bill” in shipping makes $35K, you want the CEO to be capped at $3.5M even though the CEO may have raised the market value of the company from $6B to $8B helping stockholder make $2 billion dollars? That’s what the company’s Board of Directors do. Let’s not have government stick their noses where they don’t belong.
should not be making $35,000 while the CEO is making 3.5 million. Bill should be making much more than that. I could care less what the CEO makes. He can make 50 million and I could care less, but when the people who support that wealth live in near poverty because of it, then I care.
You hire the guy in shipping at the lowest possible cost to get the job done satisfactorily. Bill in shipping is like buying paper for the copying machine, the cheapest you can buy which meets your standards. You don’t suddenly pay more for the copy machine paper because your company got more successful. People who work at companies that make a difference get rewarded while people who don’t don’t get rewarded. Some people are looked as a “commodities”. If you ran a company you would do the same thing and if you didn’t, you would not be competitive and would probably go out of business.
That concept is soooo 19th century, when we had plantation slavery in the South and wage slavery in the North. Interesting insight into your view of humanity; I’ll be sure to remember that. The CEO is not single-handedly responsible for stock increases. Stocks increase when the company does well, which can’t happen without everybody at all levels doing their jobs. Besides its exactly this mentality that makes me tempted to just want to get rid of the stock market. No more investors. The only owners of a company should be those whose name and reputation is invested in the company, not a bunch of anonymous shareholders with nothing at stake but their own bank accounts.
OH MY GOD!
It’s actually quite consistent with, albeit maybe a bit more explicit than, other comments he has made over time.
It is not my view of humanity, it’s my view of how the workplace is in our country. As a matter of fact we hear about these complaints on BMG often, just think WalMart.
I agree that this is the workplace that thirty years of Reagan-esque philosophy has produced. It is the workplace that Alex Keaton sought in “Family Ties”. Now, twenty years later, it is a sad reality.
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p>There are, however, alternatives — some of them very successful, especially if we focus on the “triple bottom line”.
Well, in a market-based economy, yes they are.
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p>Reimbursement for CEOs on the other hand is not set so much by market mechanisms because of the unseemly entanglements of Compensation Committees and top brass.
Excellent, JohnD! Now you’ve opened up the conversation and we are getting to the root differences between liberals and conservatives. With liberals, every human being is a human being. With conservatives, some human beings are things, cogs in the machine.
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p>And btw, you say liberal attitudes can’t run successful corporations: our newly elected state Treasurer Steve Grossman has run a business successfully for years, and always treated his employees as human beings.
Conservatives ask, “What’s in it for me?”
Liberals ask, “What’s in it for us?”
is hardly a model you can point to as an example of how to run a company. Point to a company that makes something, manufactures something.
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p>Why not point to Google who just announced 10% pay increases and certainly have amazing employee benefits. But remember, Google, like many other companies, hires people for their brains. They take things like cafeteria, shipping… and other service related functions and contracts it out. Because that “work” does not add to their value (it’s a commodity). AND, when Google finally gets some serious competition, watch those benefits drop like bricks. Competition will force them to pay what the market will bear and if business drops then they’ll pay below market.
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p>It’s not personal, it’s how they survive.
…for precisely this reason. Grossman Marketing DOES make things. You may accurately describe how things often do work, but the difference between you and me seems to be that you accept it; I don’t.
Why aren’t CEOs also commodities? After all, is it really clear that CEO Adam is $x better than CEO Betty?
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p>I find it strange that you de-humanize the folks on one end of the pay scale but not those on the other, given that there are plenty of people one could drop in either group without a noticeable difference in company performance.
I’ve always said that once these guys make it into the “CEO circle”, they end up getting moved around from company “A” to company “B” regardless of their performance at company “A”. Why do you think it is that even some smaller companies pay the big bucks for someone to come in and run things. Very surprising. But nonetheless, that’s what they do and I think they have the right to do that as members of the board.
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p>The “de-humanization” is tragic. That group of people could be replaced without any regard for their replacements or then their replacements. Maybe of because of the lack of power in this lower income group while the CEO level does come across the stars every so often (or often depending on your bias) and these people turn companies around and/or make them famously successful.
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p>Good question.
Chances are he has a high school education or maybe not. Make his wages more expensive and he won’t have a job.
at that wage it takes about three full paychecks to meet a mortgage payment, or two full paychecks to pay the rent. So that leaves 1 or 2 paychecks to pay utilities, healthcare, food, transportion, and more. I think it would be better for the overall economy if the CEO earned a little less and the worker supporting that CEO earned a little more.
It’s outrageous that they can make multimillion dollar contracts while teachers are lucky to get into the high five figures. The latter are much more valuable to society which to me prove that simply relying on that idol known as “the Market” is flawed to say the least.
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p>BTW, ever heard of Steve Grossman, the guy we just elected Treasurer? I don’t know what the ratio of his salary is to his employees, but he knows how to run a business. He treats his workers right; his shop has been union for 50+ years and has never had a strike, lockout, or arbitration. It’s been a very successful business and isn’t exactly headed to the poor house. It CAN be done, especially if you put your values ahead of your profits.
there’s some serious distortion on that market.
Oprah vs her chauffeur (100X salary?)? How about Hollywood… Angelina’s salary vs. the “Boom guy” on the set? Bono from U2 vs their Roadie? 100X?
John is dillusional to think that the CEO single-handedly raised the value of the company. It was a collective effort by all of the staff. Perhaps the guy in shipping had to push himself harder to increase productivity yet still managed to handle those packages in an outstanding manner and get them to their destination on time and in perfect condition. This increase in productivity without losses from poor performance is what raised the value of the company. It was the shipper who did the work to make it happen. That shipper should most certainly receive an equal amount of benefit from the rewards.
Next time the Red Sox win the World Series, remind me to go thank the guy who changes the oil of the limousine that drives John Henry to/from the games since he is integral to the team’s success in the “collective effort by all of the staff”. And if John Lackey, Boston Red Sox is making $ 18,700,000/year then the grease monkey changing the oil should be making a nice ($ 18,700,000/100) or $187,000… Sweet!
…he can ditch the limo and drive himself. Of course, he probably gets his oil changed at Jiffy Lube like the rest of us so he’s not part of this equation. Again, using a professional sports team is a non-starter for me.
You know, the Brits actually have a free market for their pro soccer teams. Anyone with capital can start a team and compete for fans.
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p>But in America, wealthy owners demand lots of taxpayer subsidies. Like George W. Bush did to the city of Arlington Texas. He was a president’s son, then, and he rolled over the property rights of the ordinary people who lives where he wanted to build a stadium for the Texas Rangers, using his government connections to avoid paying those little people the fair market value of their land.
There is also the fact that so many people are willing to pay such high prices for tickets (then turn around and complain they don’t want to raise taxes a few cents on the dollar to fund public services).
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p>I’ll take a Lowell Spinners game over Red Sox any day. It’s good family fun for a lot less money and hassle and still a great game. Would that more people had that attitude.
I do agree a lot of CEO’s are way overpaid – but there a few who are worth their money.
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p>Steve Jobs comes to mind in particular or Bill Gates. These companies created billions in wealth, for their employees, staff and stockholders. Would it had happened with another person – probably not.
You don’t seem to know very much about either man, the history of their companies, and the opportunities that could have been.
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p>In mid 1982, the United States was decades ahead of the rest of the world in high technology, computing hardware and software expertise, networking technology, and virtually every other domain touched by these two men. Virtually every significant patent and technology was held by Americans.
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p>Steve Jobs created a culture at Apple that ferociously fought to acquire and maintain absolute control over entire industries. When Apple launched the look-and-feel lawsuit against Bill Gates, the effect was to squander America’s commanding lead in the world’s technology arena.
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p>For two decades after that 1988 filing, the primary goal of software development in the United States was to emulate the Macintosh look and feel without getting squashed by Apple.
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p>Bill Gates succeeded, with Windows 3.0, because he was even more of a sociopath than Steve Jobs.
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p>Now, twenty years later, the world will never know what the technology created at Xerox PARC in the 1960s and 1970s might have done for America and the world had it not been commercialized by the two most voracious robber barons since the Gilded Age.
I agree software patents are garbage but Jobs and Gates are robber barons ?
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p>Regarding gates – he saw an opportunity and created a huge company out of nothing – IBM screwed up.
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p>Jobs V1.0 I’m not impressed V2.0 I am – Iphone the new mac’s are all impressive products. He has pushed his product designers to create really beautiful usable products.
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p>DEC and Wang didn’t have the foresight to see where things were going. Olson even questioned the need for a personal computer and his company failed. Wang got stuck in legal word processing.
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p>Xerox didn’t commercialize their products.
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p>Apple, Microsoft, DELL and EMC prospered.
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p>Open source is threatening everyone, it’s just creative destruction.
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The technology world that we take for granted today was largely invented by Xerox at PARC. Overlapping windows, personal workstations, graphical user interfaces, the ethernet (yes indeed, the real thing) — all were invented at Xerox PARC. Significant additional innovations came out of Bell Labs.
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p>Bill Gates, in particular, did nothing but exploit the inventions of others for his own gain. Please name even one significant advance the Microsoft has offered the industry, comparable to those I cited above. You won’t find any, because that’s not what Bill Gates does. He is a parasite, and the company he created is a parasite.
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p>Apple had the technology and opportunity to wipe out Microsoft between 1984 and 1988. The nation’s offices and retail banking platforms were filled with green-screens (PC-compatibles and older 3270s) that an army of dissatisfied users desperately wanted to replace with Macintosh’s. Apple thought they were in the hardware business, and refused to unbundle Macintosh software so that it could run on non-Apple hardware. This suicidal decision demonstrated their stark denial of the reality that any purchasing agent who proposed buying Apple hardware in, say, 1987 would have fired.
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p>I know for a fact that Apple had the technology — I created it and my company sold it to them. Apple chose to instead bury it. Bill Gates jumped on this suicidal decision, and deployed Windows 3.1. Rather than blow away the hopelessly clumsy “Windows” product with the overwhelmingly superior Macintosh product, Apple instead filed their look-and-feel lawsuit in 1988.
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p>The birth of the workstation industry — Sun, Apollo, MassComp, etc. — was hamstrung by the need to waste effort avoiding legal harassment from Apple. Bill Gates again jumped on the resulting opportunity.
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p>Today’s Apple look and feel is built on essentially the same Unix foundation that my company sold Apple in 1984. That is the same foundation (Unix and Linux) that enabled the entire workstation market.
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p>Today’s technology world would be a far better place if all of those machines had used the same Macintosh look and feel (with its subsequent refinements). Linux itself, the heart of the open source community, would have been unnecessary. There would have been no “Internet Explorer” or “Windows Media Player” so tightly wired into the desktop that it squeezed everybody else out. Computer viruses and malware would be a far smaller problem, because the “Virus Development Platform” (Microsoft Windows) would have died an early and deserved death.
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p>Not to put too fine a point on it, but Bill Gates would have a whole lot less wealth, and a great many other people would have a whole more.
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p>Plus, we would have all been spared the talking paper-clip, “Bob”, and Vista.
Xerox didn’t market/commercialize the ideas, Jobs did, also I think Jobs realized that the hardware (at reasonable costs) could handle windows interface before anyone else. Obviously Jobs is a marketer – but he has pushed his designers and staff to create some really amazing products.
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p>MS created a pseudo open environment with their DOS OS. Using AutoCad you could have a reasonable workstation for 5K and it was a somewhat open environment. With a Unix workstation – you needed staff in white lab coats and 30K workstations with 3K software maintenance contracts. We bought the AutoCAD workstation and are quite happy.
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p>BTW I’m not a huge supporter of Microsoft, version 1.0 of any product they make usually stinks and it’s only taken them 25 years to have a true multitasking OS. Quatro Pro was better than Excel – Wordperfect was better than Word and Windows 3.11 stunk. Because of their huge user base they eventually catch up and refine the product until it’s superior.
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p>I’m not sure apple would have ended up in the banking industries – IBM had a huge (and I think still does)lock on the back end. It was a completely different world which I didn’t even understand.
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p>Luckily “Paper Clip” bob has gone to meet his maker đŸ™‚
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