64. Corporate Executive Pay Cap Reform: Top executives of publicly held companies should have the total compensation (wages, bonuses, stock options) capped to no more than fifty to one hundred times the mean average wage of all employees within the given company or holdings. Fiscal end 2007, record compensation packages of a few corporate executives have exceeded 243 times that of mean average wage of employees. This excessive pay program detracts from the wage growth of employees to the benefit of a few people. This policy would promote increasing mean wages of millions of employees. Employee wage growth has stagnated during the past twenty years, due to excessive executive greed. “Predatory capitalism is characterized as the following: Profit-seeking corporations can be a great force for good in the world, creating and providing wonderful goods and services that would be unavailable by any other means. But we also recognize that if they are unregulated, they harm the public these five ways.”
• 1) NOT PAY TAXES -In order to maximize profits, they always seek to avoid or minimize their taxes.
• 2) ELIMINATE COMPETION -In order to maximize profits, they always seek to eliminate or control their competition.
• 3) CUT WAGES AND SALARIES - In order to maximize profits, they always seek to reduce their labor costs.
• 4) DISREGARD THE ENVIRONMENT - In order to maximize profits, they always seek to avoid all environmental restraints.
• 5) SELL DANGEROUS, HARMFUL PRODUCTS - In order to maximize profits, they may tempt to sell dangerous or harmful products. (McGinnis)
Comments (6)
Straw-man argument. You have clearly shown ignorance about what capitalism is. Go read a little Milton Friedman before you blather. Understand who employs workers that pay taxes, not government worker parasites.
The coming depression will crush most if not all trade unions. Everyone is taking pay cuts to keep their job, while our government is keeping prices artificially high by excessive issuance of unbacked electronic currency. We the people are tired and unable to make ends meet because the system is truley messed up. Meanwhile our congress gives tax incentives to ship our jobs over seas, and allows business to hide profits in offshore accounts. The only reason why congress caved to the $5 billion dollar lobby effort to kill glass-Steagall Act was becaues they found that they shipped all there old campaign contributors over seas, so making one great big swirling pool of cash via creating of derivatives sounded great. They broke the economy and will never own up to it.
I degress, we the citizens of America were the most productive people on the planet. We took very few vacations, saved very little of our incomes, worked multi jobs, became the atomic family where mom and dad both worked, and for all our hard work we will be destitute because our 401(k) flopped, our equity crashed and employment left our country.
Great idea. Would have to outlaw obvious end runs, like contracting out the services of low-paying employees.
This proposal is way too generous to the rich and greedy. I think you have to start at the bottom. Change the minimum wage law to a living wage law and peg it to the cost of living to be reviewed every 90 days. Then have a maximum income law that would be no more than 10 times the living wage (personally I'd by much more comfortable with a factor of 3, but 150 is much too generous). Just think of all the wealth that would make available at both ends of the spectrum.
Minimum wage increases has been the off and on again policy of the past forty years. It does work in the short term until prices stabilize to higher values. It is a form of inflation. Meanwhile, the economic disparity between the high and low ends of the population will continue to widen. Capping executive wages to a multiple of a unit of standard such as average wages and benefits would help decrease this disparity.
If this is ever passed, companies will change business format to hire consultants and separate business activities to a multiple segmented industrial model. This would instill a decentralization of business that would less economical by design. It would reduce unemployment and increase business growth due to the need to separate business activity. Since a decentralized business model is less efficient variable costs would raise and the end product would become more expensive to produce. This decentralized business model is inherently more expensive to pursue and would not remain effective in a competitive world. Cheaper to just give employees a raise.
cool!