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If one is easily replaceable, one is doing it wrong.
Just because you have a job because you have a degree does not mean it is not easily replaceable. You know how many people out there have degrees out there?
Said everyone with student loan debt and a liberal arts degree.
So there are no people out there with college degrees in something other then liberal arts who can not find jobs? You do realize there are limited amount of jobs in each field don't you?
Just because you have a job because you have a degree does not mean it is not easily replaceable. You know how many people out there have degrees out there?
I never said it was. I don't know why anyone would believe that to be true, anyway. And, FYI, there are people who DON'T have college degrees whose skills, talents, and what they contribute to their employer (or to clients/customers, if one is self-employed) are so valuable that they're irreplacable and also earn a lot of money.
That is not an issue. A CEO can get paid whatever the market offers in the private sector and it really isn't an issue.
Usually they get big pay because they can make a company much more money than their pay unless they suck.
Raising the minimum wage raises the price of all you buy to compensate and also declines your saving by quite a bit by reducing the value of your saved money.
So you get people fired, make far more who try to retire broke and grow the need for government support and higher taxes.
If it were wise to raise the minimum wage, why not $50 an hour?
Because it is a stupid concept.
FROM THE MARKET, what you can get someone to pay you.
Companies are in the business of making PROFIT for their STOCKHOLDERS.
If companies could make MORE PROFIT paying CEOs minimum wage and hiring 354 new employees in his place, they would do it in a NY minute.
The question not asked : what prevents the simple process of hiring labor and reselling its output from being PROFITABLE?
Ans: G o v e r n m e n t.
If all rules, regulations and taxes on labor and industry were abolished, eliminating all the administrative overhead, complications, scams, and write offs, do you think things might get simple?
Side benefit : How long would it take for expatriate industries to relocate back to the US of A, if there were ZERO taxes, ZERO regulations, and ZERO taxes on labor and production? (I stress taxes twice for a reason)
Yup. Common sense says the US of A will have an economic boom, a labor shortage, and a whole new set of problems caused by prosperity.
ARGH.
The fact is if you divide the typical 10-40 million dollar salary be the number of employees that CEO manages you usually find that if that CEO split up all his income evenly among all the employees it would not amount to a hill of beans for each employee. I think shareholders should be looking at CEO comp but it hardly effects the typical worker.
Actually no, I addressed your points quite directly.
The "trend" is massive labor surplus and global competition. Good luck addressing that trend.
But technology has changed the game in the service and retail industries as well. Amazon is technology changing retail. Self-checkout is technology changing retail. Food order kiosks is technology changing service. Robots making hamburgers is technology changing service. Etc etc etc.
If that was the case, the company(s) would already be declining. If capping executive wages and raising the floor of lowest level employees had nothing but upside and no cost, it would already be happening. That it isn't happening naturally means it isn't good business.
And what is the cap? What is the motivation for someone to aspire to be the face and blame for every last minute detail about a corporation, 24/7/365 accountability, and one wrong decision away from the end of their career? 10x the janitor? 20x? Who decides, since it clearly isn't the owners of the business?
Somebody getting something for nothing will make them more invested in their company? And a worker with a voice at the table knows what about the business cash flow, assets, liabilities, depreciable equipment, net income before taxes, earnings per share, operating costs by department, market share/compeition, trends in the industry, etc? When assigning compensation & benefits, knowing these kinds of things over many different timelines is actually kind of important. The low level worker brings what to that table besides "gimme gimme gimme?" Really, a fry cook at McDonalds knows as much as the franchise owner where all of the market forces that dictate compensation are concerned?
I am not focused on any particular union or type thereof. What I was focused on was your absurd "how we can make class warfare work - let's make rich people poor in order to make poor people rich" idea. I was focused on the rest of the world not really caring how socially just our wage scales are, thus ready to undercut us at any moment in order to steal market share. I am focused on your notion of giving ownership to people who did not risk their own money/time/well being to create the company, simply because they work there. If the company is publicly traded and they feel like being owners, they can buy the stock. Why would they need to own anything beyond that?
Here's the heart of the matter. You want to force people, just as I said. Germany doesn't encourage this, they force it by law. We do too, ask Boeing. But no matter how you get around it, your "new labor movement" will require force of law, backed by threat of violence (economic and/or physical), exerted by the government to make everyone comply with your brave new world. The reason force must be applied is simple - you are seeking to run counter to human nature, rules of economics and the laws of the universe. Think of your plan like flying a 747. To get one of those pigs off the ground, you must exert trmemndous force, to keep it in the air, you must exert force. The instant you stop applying force, you find out that the law of gravity never got repealed and is in full effect at all times. Same thing here. Unless you force wage scales, employment totals, blocking movement (again, see Boeing), and all the other things that run counter to individuals doing as they please, nobody will choose to do them on their own. So you must apply force, you must keep applying it, and the instant you stop applying that force, the natural laws you were working so hard against will still be there, still in full effect, and will get their way.
I never called you a liberal, and I don't really care. But your revolution in the labor world simply cannot occur without loss of freedoms and a lot of force being applied from many directions to many people.
Communism has nothing to do with what I wrote either. I said you need to bring Stalinsim or Maoism to America, neither of which is communism. Your "can't we all just get along, everyone happy to make pretty much what everyone else makes, to each, from each?" labor movement is closer to the communist ideal from Mark's manifesto, where the society evolves to perfect egalitarianism. The thing is, reality and history say you need Stalinism/Maoism/force_violence to get there, because such utopian fluff requires absolute contradiction of human nature and all natural law. And this is not the same as calling unions communist, so don't go there. What I am doing is properly framing this goal of yours, where everyone stops acting in their own interests and all of a sudden goes all Roddenberry hippie where everyone works like dogs solely for the benefit of the community.
Blah blah blah, unless your idea involves the government forcing all this at gunpoint, it's pure nonsense that will never happen. And I don't feign depression. I work, study and advance my skills so I EARN more, rather than demand more solely from having a pulse. I never saw my salary as a function of the CEO's, but rather as a function of my ability to provide value to my organization. Apparently, my services are valued quite well, my employer and I made a deal about how valued that is, and everyone is all smiles. I didn't need a union, you, Karl marx or the fairy godmother to help me either. Just having skills, proving my work ethic and value over many years...yep, that pretty much did it all.
What you need to do is admit that your idea has no possibility in reality without a ton of strong arming from the government, and even then, people will get around it. And you also need to send your memo about the wage cap and floor to professional athletes and entertainers, who make CEO salaries look pitiful by comparison. LeBron made $16 million just from the Heat. You think there isn't at least one Heat employee making minimum? Not one janitor in the arena, low level food server, whatever? So give LeBron, Kobe, Peyton, Albert Pujols et al the memo that they are no longer allowed to earn such gaudy salaries compared to the lower level employees in their organizations. Tell Tom Cruise he can only make 20x the lowest paid carpenter apprentice on the set or the coffee gofer. Tell every person invested in any market...you can't own more than 20x the amount of stock owned by the lowest level fry cook.
Making all those rich people poor helps poor people how again?
Feel better now?
Boeings fly. Engines work. Societies make laws and place limits on individuals and their selfish desires. And that is a GREAT THING!!!!
Last time I checked, the airline industry wasn't falling apart simply because the law of gravity still exists and is "natural".
Last time I checked toddlers were trained to NOT cr*p in their pants even if this comes "naturally" to them.
Last time I checked, tons of men remained faithful to their wives (and didn't bust while doing so!) even if monogamy doesn't come "naturally" to males.
And last time I checked, I was able to train myself to NOT punch in the face people with deep and static certainties about human nature, even if this is what comes naturally to me. ;-) (But this may have just changed).
Not everything that is natural is socially desirable in its raw form.
Not everything that is natural is un-trainable or un-controlable.
Not everything that is natural should be left in its original form, when civilizing the instinct would be in the best interest of the majority.
What are you implying?
That humans are "naturally" selfish animals - driven STRICTLY by their own rugged self-interest, while not giving a s**t about anyone else?".
What proof do you have of that?
All history suggests otherwise, with humans exhibiting way more tribal/communal/cooperative behavior than lone wolf/individualistic practices.
Humans are born with different "natures" and just because some are the "aggressive/self-centered" types, many with psychopathic tendencies, does not make this UNIVERSAL human nature!
Even if you were right that all humans are, at their core, driven strictly by self-interest (which they aren't!) - the answer would be "so?"
Why should the majority of humans want to continue to suffer in such a society when the self-interest model clearly only favors the very few to the detriment of the majority in the end?
Even if we were all driven by self-interest and nothing else, there is always very little room at the top, no mater how you slice that top; so a few predators who are best at following their self-interest should overwhelm everyone else?
Please come up with a rational argument as to why the majority should abstain from passing laws that limit the otherwise unbridled avarice and self-interest of a few?
Conclusion: quit formulating axioms about "human nature" and having illusions that YOUR definition of "human nature" applies to humans everywhere.
PS: And if those of us without the nerve and indecency to imply that "capping CEO salaries = turning them poor"...sent "that memo" to Tom Cruise too, would that make it OK?
The fact is if you divide the typical 10-40 million dollar salary be the number of employees that CEO manages you usually find that if that CEO split up all his income evenly among all the employees it would not amount to a hill of beans for each employee. I think shareholders should be looking at CEO comp but it hardly effects the typical worker.
So a 1.6 billion dollar bonus is an 'anomaly'? - thank God for that!!!
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