Forum Post: Demand no more than 10 to 1 income distribution
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 7, 2011, 4:25 p.m. EST by Dave0
(12)
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Hey Occupiers, First off, thank you for everything you are doing; I wish I could be there with you in New York City. My idea for a demand is make Congress pass a law phasing in a system where the highest paid person at an organization can not have an income more than 10 times the lowest paid person. For example, if the CEO of WalMart wants to make $1,000,000 per year, he's going to have to pay the door greeters $100,000 per year. On the flipside, if Walmart wants to pay some of their workers the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour (equivalent to $15,080 per year), then the CEO of Walmart is only allowed to make $150,800 per year.
They will ALWAYS break the rules. one way or another they will find a way around the rules.
I think even 30:1 is reasonable. There should be a maximum wage, tied directly to the minimum wage.
This would be great if a door greeter could do the CEO's job. If the responsibilities of a door greeter were 10 times less difficult as the CEO. Let's take this to a world most people don't seem to mind the gap in pay; the NBA.
So we have a guy collecting tickets at the gate, and a star forward. The ticket taker makes $8.00 and hour. Almost anyone can do his job, no special training or talent is required. He has not spent years refining his ticket taking skills. He does nothing to attract the patrons to the arena. No body knows who he is or cares if he takes their ticket or some other stranger standing at the door. Yet your plan limits the compensation of the one who has spent countless hours working in order to be one of the few who can perform at the level of a NBA player.
If you don't think CEO's are super stars of the business world, that they haven't sacrificed, worked and prepared themselves to take on the duties of running a company; then you need to educate yourself on the real world.
I wonder what iPods would cost if every Apple employee made 1 tenth of Steve Job's (RIP) salary? What about a cup of coffee at Starbucks? LOL.
I totally disagree. The CEO of WalMart deserves every penny. He worked hard to earn that CEO title. He Got an education and worked harder than the door greeter could ever imagine to get there. Income restrictions go against free markets.
Excellent idea Comrade! May I suggest that we first threaten them with fines and then bleed them dry with law suits. If they still don't comply, we can just take their company and throw them in prison to be raped, beaten or maybe even killed!
First things first though, we first have to tax them more so we can pay for all the thugs (I mean government officials) we'll need to carry out this beautiful plan...
Similar provision is implemented in Japan. You can have assets in forms of shares if you are businessman, but your salary should not be 50 times more than the lowest one.
really, I didn't know that. That makes it even easier. Our government could look at Japan's law as a basis for writing a law for here. If Japan can do it why can't we, Japan seems to be doing just fine (relatively) with that law in place.
So, as far as you're concerned, we are no longer a free country? Leave me alone and let me work for my own prosperity!
Ok, then go into business for yourself. As long as you are self-employed, with no employees working for you, this rule would not apply. You can do whatever you want then.
Employees are paid based on their perceived worth to a company. YOu want more money.. quite whining and change your percieved worth. It's called competition... get competitive.
Employees are paid based on how low employers think they can get away with paying them, and whatever pay employees are willing to tolerate.
Comrades, we must continue our fight to divide this country based on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. It is time that we take away the advantages of success, ingenuity, and innovation so that the lazy, uncreative, and ignorant proletariat can once again be on equal footing with the bourgeois.
Trolly, but eloquently snarked. I smell Nietzsche.
And what about merit based incentives? Do we ignore the merit system, and stick to that 10:1 guideline no matter how good or bad someone does? That's such an arbitrary value... I mean, why not 20:1, or 5:1? And how does personal investment of the CEO in small businesses that somehow manage to succeed figure in? Who would want to invest their home and savings into a business, throw it all on the line for the idea they came up with, just to be told they could only have a small fraction of the profit when it became successful? I've known a lot of small business owners who would call bullshit on that. It's too abstracted from real world scenarios to be useful. Too arbitrary, and not considering any of the possible circumstances.
And by the lowest paid person? You're setting a value on one of the most difficult jobs (yeah, I know everyone will moan about that statement, but don't tell me otherwise unless you've actually been a CEO - it's a stressful and non-stop job) to be tied to whatever the lowest paid, least skilled, least involved, least on-the-line jobs is. That's completely nearsighted.
Like door greeter.
I understand that this seems very far out there by today's standards, where the CEO of Walmart make more per hour than some of his workers make in one year. What is that, a 2000:1 ratio? All I'm asking is to bring that ratio down a bit. We can start with mandating a 1500:1 ratio, then a year or two later make it 1000:1. Then 500:1, then 400:1, then 300:1, etc. You get the idea. It may take decades to phase it in to the point that it gets to 10:1, but that is the eventual goal in my mind.
That you are willing to have the government mandate this is a real problem.
The current system needs to be torn down. We can not expect any demands to be met. They are liars and thieves.
We need to withdraw our money from Wall Street and take back our portion of the economy. Its the only way to change the system.
Ok, so withdraw your money from Wall Street, but where would you put your money instead? What exactly is "our portion of the economy?" I'm not arguing against you, I'm just trying to figure out what ideas you have to solve our current crisis.
Boycott Wall Street!!!
Local non profit credit unions. To help strengthen our communities.
I personally would like to see the 99% create a national non profit bank(credit union). Nonpolitical. This could be turned into a powerful lending institution. By the people and for the people.
At this point in time we should be having conversations about this movement could actually be effective. We cannot work with the current system. It is corrupt and untrustworthy. Taking our money back and making it work for us is the only way to make a dent in the situation.
I agree with you on that point. All of my checking/savings accounts are with Credit Unions. I don't understand why anyone would keep their money with Bank of America/Chase/Citi/etc.
I understand you are trying to punish the greedy. But what about someone like me. I made $11,000 last year. I had very little disposable income, and yet I still found time and money to donate to the community, to support causes I saw as good. I sent blankets and first aid kits and tarps to tornado relief, I donated to Japan relief. If I had a job in which I made a lot of money, even amounts a lot of people consider exorbitant, you're damn right a whole hell of a lot would go right back to the community, I would be funding research and donating to charities. If I was making a lot of money would you want to punish me?
I don't see it as punishing the greedy. I see this as paying low level workers closer to their fair share of the value they produce for a company. How does a corporate executive "make money?" They are the idea men, they make tough decisions. However, they need the low level workers to do the carry out their plans. It is hard to determine how much value any one person brings to a company because they all need each other to work together to produce a successful company.
10 to 1 is a little more in line with what executive/worker compensation is in Japan (actually about 11:1). But I don't know if that's because of legislation or just plain old fairness and less greed. A family of physicians I worked for and I went to Sam's Club after Katrina and loaded up our SUV's with $3,000 worth of supplies they bought to ship to NOLA. They couldn't have done that on what I made although I was paid generously. Some wealthy people deserve what they make. But some of those CEO bonuses are so outrageous it boggles the mind. Especially when you consider they got them for driving their companies to (or over) the brink of bankruptcy. One of those physicians told me that after the Bush tax cuts went into effect, he got a tax break but his lab assistant didn't. Go figure.
But you're still saying that no one's job will ever be worth 10 times someone else's in the same company.
Yes. I am saying that no one person's time is worth more than 10 times another person's time. If the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, there is no reason someone else deserves to get paid more than $70.25 per hour.
Who gives anyone the right to say what another "deserves"? Of course you have free speech and can say what you want. But what is disturbing is that you are advocating using the force of government to take from another. It sounds like you are advocating a tyranny of the majority.
This article from last year gives a good picture of what people might actually prefer as a fair distribution of wealth in America, as well as their misunderstanding of the current distribution:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/25/poll-wealth-distribution-similar-sweden/
What about stock holders?
Aha! Therein lies the problem Take healthcare, for instance. We bemoan the fact that medical care costs so much in the USA, but most of the reason for that is for-profit insurance companies, who are the real culprits. If that insurance company is one you own stock in, then you're one of the reasons the cost is so high. The company is accountable to you, the stockholder. So I might suggest that if you own stock in a company you feel is screwing you, the next time somebody says "go screw yourself" just say "I already did." Check out this website, put together by a doctor in San Francisco. http://truecostofhealthcare.org/
Are you referring to paying executives through stock options? There are many solutions that could work. Either you could enforce the same 10:1 ratio for stock options (i.e. for every 10 shares of stock given to executives, at least 1 share of stock options must be given to workers), or you could require that companies give out year end bonuses to all workers to balance things out at the end of their fiscal year (i.e. if it is determined that the total compensation to the CEO after stock options and bonuses was $500,000 at the end of the year, a company bonus must be paid out to everyone so that the lowest paid worker ends up making $50,000 that year).
I just feel that if someone invests their own money in something with no guarantee of a payout... they shouldn't be subject to the 10:1 ratio...
But it might be better to require a minimum amount of profit to go back to employees in the form of bonuses still following the 10:1 ratio.
This idea has nothing to do with the potential profit of investing in a company's stock. The stock price will still be completely determined by market forces. This law is just a redistribution of a company's labor expense line item. It may turn out that companies that follow this rule end up more profitable, resulting in higher profits to shareholders.
Obamas' 2012 Finance Director is the son of BANK OF AMERICAS former CEO.... the guy who got us in this mess!!! Keeping it all in the Family
There isn't any money left they took it all. Now it just gets passed around amongst the elite. They will use the extra money they have now oversees and in a few years before we rush washington they will flood the economy to shut us up. Either that or we end up in camps. Case closed.