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no but our taxation should be more progressive. It is a simple fact that we are NOT born with the same opportunity or natural ability.
A more progressive tax system can help offset some of the hardship.
Regressive taxation makes life hellish for lower income families i have no idea how anyone could live on 40k even one person with a free house, i still don't know how they could make it and have a comfortable life.
Living on $40k is no problem in low cost of living states. Plenty of places where that salary will be just fine for a single person.
My nephew, who is a highly skilled and compensated Accountant (CPA) at a large company was having an interesting discussion with some poorly paid Accounting Assistants at his office.
My nephew is making about $160K after working in the field for about 15 years and getting his CPA and a Masters Degree in Accounting. He has Big Four experience and has worked at a few highly respected companies in a wide variety of roles in Accounting.
The Accounting Assistants at his employer are graduates of a Community College Accounting Assistant Program and have 5-7 years of experience. They make about $40K a year. They told my nephew that it is unfair that they only make one-quarter of his wage while both doing work in the field. They told him the higher paid Accountants should take a pay cut to help out the poorly paid Accounting Assistants.
Those "Accounting Assistants" sound like bookkeepers rather than accountants.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Going on SS
If there is only a certain amount of money available for salaries...
Your premise is incorrect. It is demonstrably false that "there is only a certain amount of money available for salaries." That is the fixed pie fallacy.
Every individual contributes to the success of the firm or their position would not exist. People should be compensated more if they have advanced training and experience, I agree. But the attitude of many of you is to denigrate the lower level employees rather than recognizing that they have a valuable role to play, too.
I certainly don't denigrate lower level employees. They are compensated correctly for the value they bring to the company and the supply of substitutes for their labor. In the OP's original post, the accounting assistants are bookkeepers. They are not accountants -- just as a Physician's Assistant is not a Physician.
There is a difference.
Lower paid employees are fairly compensated for they value they create.
I hate to be cruel, but they should consider themselves blessed to be earning ANYTHING. Furthermore, they should save as much as possible. Their type of work is headed towards automation. They will be replaced by algorithms. Your nephew is going to be overseeing the algorithms and will absorb a percentage of their pay.
A lot of upper level, white collar jobs are also going to be outsourced or done by computers. A lot of legal work formerly done by Lawyers in the USA, is now outsourced to India, such as document review. A lot of accountant jobs are going to be replaced by automation as well. Robots will soon be doing your taxes, for example. So the lower level employees that you sneer at aren't the only people whose jobs are in jeopardy - not by a long shot. read this article: Reminder: Robots are coming for your accounting jobs.
Call B.S. on this thread topic. Who has that type of conversation in the workplace. A guy making 160k is not going to be sharing that info with assistants. Just not realistic. Middle class and upper middle class. Still in same boat. When are you people ever going to realize this.
Most of this thread is bee ess. People are making up stories to feel superior about themselves. Nobody discusses their salary in the workplace. The only people who know this are usually those who work in H.R. and I'm pretty sure they're not going to go around divulging everyone's salary. I also had to laugh at the fake story that someone made up about the guy who decided to pay everyone at his company the same, 70K and then went out of business because his key players quit. Total bee ess. Even if it were a true story, many businesses go south and it could be for a variety of reasons. Anyway, this is another one of those never-ending threads created on city data for the specific purpose of putting down people who earn less money. Because otherwise, why would anyone care what lower level people think about their salaries? It doesn't affect these posters at all. They just come here to boast about their upper level jobs and higher salaries.
I'll go out on a limb and guess you are not an executive.
]
Oh, you have outed this poster for sure. I'm sure she/he is so humiliated that you have discovered she/he is not an executive level employee. Oh, the shame and horror. You are obviously so much superior to this person.
If he has four times the value to the company, or perhaps four times the experience and education, then maybe. Otherwise, perhaps the difference in salaries is too extreme. But if they want to change, they shouldn't cut anyone's pay but rather when they make new hires hire on the new system - so they'd have to do it in steps. And instead they could freeze pay of others. However, if the salary your person makes is market standard, then they're kind of stuck because he could just go somewhere else and earn the same pay. If it is above market standard, then that is another sign that he is indeed being overpaid.
This is why middle management tends to be culled in layoffs / M&A. If you make several times the pay, and aren't signing your own paychecks, you need to bring several times the value or a non-replicable skill set, and if you don't there's a target on your back if the company comes under fiscal pressure.
Before I take a pay cut I want to see the books and determine how much of a profit there is and whether there's enough THERE to cover a living wage for all. I should not have to subsidize something the owners aren't willing to do themselves. If they cut wages too much for a certain level employee they'll suffer and not get good people...if that's what they want to do and they run the business into the ground, whatever.
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