Portland's Inequality Tax

You know, I kind of sounded like a dick there. What I mean is I have been arguing for being able to choose to be part of the pool that pays, buying health insurance. I personally do not believe there should be any state involvement in healthcare. Medicare, Medicaid, so on and so forth.

I can see you making a case for the mathematical, but Laissez faire immoral? I find the opposite to be true.

I can see it. I don’t think a conpletely laissez-faire economy is in the best interests of the country or the “general welfare”. However the Left has their head in their ass with what they want to do in my opinion. I can see where treco is coming from.

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Much respect on how you’ve run your businesses.

And laissez-faire economics isn’t defensible from a moral standpoint.

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Who cares?

Why care what anyone else makes?

I love this contradiction from the left. Loving your country is bad and evil, but you better pay for my shit.

As much as they can, given their level of effort and innovation.

Shit analogy, the pie isn’t fixed.

boo hoo.

I run a charity FFS.

No, actually it’s pretty well documented in every authoritative economic text known to man… Is gravity “dogmatic”? How about the earth being round? Is that “dogmatic”?

Because I spend around 3,000 hours a year around people who run businesses, large and small…

But you know, who cares about that.

Lackign this much self awareness. haha

Good lord.

I’ve been employed for 22 years… And I’ve never felt underpaid and not asked for and gotten a raise. Twice the raise has been too small and I got a different job.

At 14 years old I was demanding more money, lmao.

And no, I’ve never been an envious little shit that gets angry because people make more than me…

I’m doing quite a bit better than surviving.

But 30 years ago I would have starved to death if not for food stamps.

What is your point?

Oh… You mean a solid understanding of actual economic theory and human history?

Yeah, we have that.

Garbage post. 100% emotion, 0% fact.

Difference here is those of us that “champion the wealthy” wouldn’t dare belittle Joe like this, but you “compassionate” souls have no problem putting him down and making it seem like he is worthless.

Sure it is. It’s literally the same argument you had against PUSH awhile back and libertarians in general. How small can the government really be in 2016? Same thing. CEO is like the QB of business, and now has more issues to deal with than before, and likely yes, a 1000x more. Globalization, cyber security, social media, more government intervention, so on and so forth.

Also, when the vast majority of the compensation is in stock, not cash, you’re getting into areas of conflation that isn’t going to help any honest discussion.

Plus you’re cherry picking the very highly paid CEO’s of issuing corps. Which isn’t really the bread and butter of any economy.

treco should read Buddy Guy’s auto…

“household” wealth…

If there isn’t an easier spun statistic, I’ll eat my hat.

Then keep doing it?

I mean, if you’re doing your part, what the hell are you so frustrated about?

So forcing people to do things is?

More issues? More things to worry about?Unquestionably. 1000x more of a value add to an enterprise? No.

Certainly, in a number of circumstances. That’s almost the singular component of morality - there is a rule to follow beyond and apart from your individual desire to do whatever you want.

Not sure how you can get to this conclusion. The market seems to dictate that it does… Which means boards do, which means shareholders seem to think it’s appropriate…

Let’s also not lose sight of the fact most the of this compensation you guys are bitching about is in stock options.

Huh?

Morality dictates you can’t just “do whatever you want” if that involves creating a victim. Being moral doesn’t require someone to force you with rules to act that way.

Morality is NOT dictating what people can and can’t do based on some “democratic” means to an unreachable end of “equal outcomes”. (Which is what we’re discussing in this thread).

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But we do force people to act morally because they don’t always do so, and we always have, and the definition of “victim” is not constrained to the impossibly narrow libertarian definition that only sees harm when someone has been physically hurt or lied to.

To your second point, I think it’s right and wrong - an unreachable end of “equality of result” isn’t a moral goal, but morality can certainly be achieved by democratic means.

As for the issue in this thread, I don’t think anyone is saying someone should be forced to provide someone an “equal result” - all I’ve seen are recognitions that we do something (even if by some measure of force, if necessary) to provide for a humane existence in our society.

So define victim then, in the context of income inequality, and CEO pay.

Define what “we” should do to “combat” this boogie man.

It can also achieve the very opposite.

lol, what isn’t humane in our society? (Beyond being butthurt that some people make a lot of money.)

edited.

Specifically to this:

No, this isn’t at all what we do, and goes against the very definition of “rule of law”. We have laws in place that punish (some) immoral behavior. We have regulations that require people to “play by the rules” but we don’t actually force compliance. We put in punishments for noncompliance, and in some cases (such as disclosure laws, etc) we have systems in place to ensure the compliance, but ultimately we punish bad behavior, not control behavior.

While seemingly semantics, it’s important to distinguish.

Because a lot of the whining about inequality are coming down to “spreading the misery around” (because any elementary look at the real world shows this is what happens).

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“Victims” here are people who are contributing to the company’s pie of success, but being rewarded (proportionally) less and less pie. How to fix it? Hell, give them more pie. It’s that simple. No coercion needed - take a cut of the CEO’s compensation, sock it away, and distribute it year end in a big bonus pool, or structure as profit sharing. Give your workers a raise. Imagine the internal rate of return you’d get on that - employee retention, improved productivity, and on and on.

I don’t follow the distinction you were trying to make.

I pop in and out of this section, so I apologize for assuming too much about you.

I just find it strange that you can call yourself a conservative but still think you should be able to force people to pay a certain amount. I don’t see the morality in that at all, especially when policies like this start denying people the chance to succeed.

You stated what kind of opportunities you want to see for people, which I mostly agree with. You didn’t really answer my question about where opportunities come from in the first place.

Is it fair to assume that you think more opportunities like that will be generated when the government is forcing people to pay a certain wage and/or penalizing people who earn too much?

If so, how?

The federal minimum wage is $7.25, irrc, so 3x that is $21.75. You really think someone flipping hamburgers should make $43,500/year? That’s insane.

In MD the minimum wage will be $10.10 by next year and the company I work for pays $.75 over the minimum. The increase this year plus the compression of wages caused by this (something most people have no clue about) plus benefits (about 25%) added over $2,500,000+ in operational labor costs, alone. Our entry level folks stand in a location, pick products, and put them in shipping containers or on our conveyor system. The is exactly zero chance we could pay them $43k and remain profitable.

Is this actually happening though? Are people not being paid what their efforts are worth?

Health Insurance is always going up, and most people won’t take a job without it. More and more PTO is becoming the norm. Flex time is becoming the norm. There is a whole host of non-cash increases that are actually figured into salaries, including non-employee controlled, like increased FICA limits, SUTA and WC insurances for example.

Based on what? Just being employed? Showing up everyday? Or performance?

I will tell you most people aren’t doing anything more than the barebones job description and will turn around and drop shit in the middle of a project the instant their 8 hours is up. And that is OKAY. If people value their work-life balance to the degree they aren’t doing any more than required, okay.

Does that person deserve the same piece as someone married to their job?

Spread how? And most of the exorbitant salaries, again, are stock.

401k matches are pretty standard.

Don’t you talk about incentive in the next post?

You make this sound like a 5 or six people sit in a board room and laugh at how little they pay everyone else. That isn’t how it really works.

And what happens when the next recession comes along? Are the employees going to put money back into the company to help the flow of operation? Are they going to accept the same reduction in pay the CEO had to accept a couple of years ago?

It’s the difference between intensions and actual results. The intent is to “control behavior through incentives” but the result is often alternate behavior that still accomplishes the original goal. Which leads to more laws to “control the behavior” which leads to more creative ways around said law.

So you’re going to sit there and start instituting laws to prevent someone who literally works 24/7, and could be fired or tank her business at any moment for a tweet, or a donation made to a non-SJW approved cause 8 or 10 years ago… And expect these people to what? Just roll over and be like “I’ve had a good run…”

No. They are going to figure out how to get MORE before you can take that away too. No one wants to go backwards in pay…

All these pie in the sky equality laws sound great on paper. Just don’t come crying to me when they figure out how to get more of this “pie” once you put them in place.

@treco did the right thing without being forced, and I know plenty of companies who do the same, plenty. So maybe the onus should be on those angry about the situation to start voting with their dollars and feet, rather than some new regulation to navigate?

In full disclosure, every new rule you guys write makes me $. So feel free to keep writing them, but I get paid on both ends. Compliance and work around, lol.

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Freedom is immoral but theft is righteous.

(Oh you Libertarians don’t live in the real world. Blah blah blah.)

If I had to guess, he’s including compassion within the framework of what is or isn’t moral. And basically saying without an appropriate amount of compassion, you are immoral, and others become victims. (which begs the question of who determines what is compassion, and who or what sets the amount of compassion as appropriate?)

As I mentioned up thread, I was just installed as head of my Blue Lodge’s charity recently. It’s small, and nothing compared to what the local churches do, but it’s a direct interjection of “compassion” into my local situation that helps as many people as it can. Is that enough compassion? Or should I be forced to hand over some of my salary too?

So what is the dollar amount that one shouldn’t be able to earn about. The single dollar. Like if CEO make 400k she’s okay, but the one who makes 400,001 a year is a greedy immoral cocksucker that needs to not make as much. What is the line in the sand for you guys?

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Even some professional athletes smoke… My position is probably more aligned to educating to the benefit of increasing compensation. Not sure how to best ‘force’. Here is a 2 minute read.

Some of these opportunities come from enforcing our border policy against illegal aliens which oversupplies the low and mid income workforce, and lowering the legal immigration in the STEM fields.
Some opportunities would be achieved having our government actually protect our private industry with trade agreements that have reciprocity, protection against dumping, and against currency manipulation.
Additionally the govt has excessive regulations that stifles job creation. I have come to think @anon50325502 idea of eliminating corporate income tax is appealing. I would like to see flat or fair tax, including passive income.

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More so than what you posted above, two things that would help your cause:

  1. Lobby for tax credits tied directly with wage increases. This would be simple with firms like ADP & Paychex etc. The tax credit is equal to the amount of increased revenue the IRS will get from the wages, and have the credits top heavy tested, like 401k’s so you can’t just pump up the salarys of middle management and call it a day.

Make it a refundable credit, and you’ll see wages tick way the fuck up

  1. Create a PAC that invites companies to disclose how fairly they pay employees, and educate consumers to spend with those companies. Costco for example…
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