Rationalskepticism,lol part III.

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

His value to the company is 1909 times as great as the average worker's.

What utter bullshit. Any number of competent managers could do the same job.

Um, if they could then why don't the shareholders fire him and hire "any number of competent managers" to do it on the cheap? The reason they don't do so is because that's not how big companies work, and big companies have spend hundreds of years refining the system by which they appoint leadership in order to maximize their profits by maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of the leadership.

The Soviet Union attempted your "any number of competent managers" scheme and it failed utterly. They tried worker's councils as the operative leadership and what they ended up with was utter chaos and paralyzing inefficiency and infighting and what resulted was a despotic centrally-planned economy that eventually collapsed.

Just like an army, a big corporation needs structure and leadership and the CEO is the commander in chief who makes the ultimate decisions about how the company is operated. If you want a real goat-fuck, try running a company of any size by committee. It's been tried in the US before and it's failed utterly each and every time. It's been tried elsewhere and has failed each and every time. There is not a high-functioning socialist corporation-by-committee in existence anywhere on the planet.

Sure, it does require some higher level skills, and is perhaps worth even 50 times more (at the most). But he does not deserve 1909 times more than his average workers, who would be putting in at least as much physical and mental effort as he does. The only reason why these top CEOs are payed these ludicrous amounts is that the warped society they parasitise is structured to allow it.

And who the hell are you to tell him how much he's worth? His compensation is set by the Board of Directors, and they are elected by the shareholders. What he "deserves" is whatever the shareholders are willing to authorize the Board of Directors to pay him that he is willing to accept. Private corporations are not government, so there is little parasitism because that saps profits from the shareholders, who will not tolerate that.

You make it sound like a CEO sneaks into the building and occupies the top office and leeches off the company without providing any value. That's simply not the case.

If you want to control how much the CEO makes, then buy a majority share of company stock and you'll get to dictate terms to the Board of Directors. Until you do so your opinion is simply a manifestation of jealousy and envy that you don't have the skills and abilities to persuade someone to pay you $150 million per year to run their company for them. That's simply a matter of your own deficits and inabilities, not an indictment of corporate structure and operation.

[Seth]

Many technological visionaries have their inventions and dreams stolen.

So what?

Steve Jobs didn't climb to his height by being a boyscout.

Indeed.

What makes a good CEO? Some business acumen and a lot of luck. It's like they won a lottery that just keeps paying out.

And you know this because you are the CEO of what Fortune 500 company exactly?

[JimC]

Hermit wrote:

What I do object to is the power wealth confers on its owners. The Murdochs an the Packers of this world have repeatedly boasted how they have toppled democratically elected governments. Other tycoons do that sort of thing without publicising the fact.

And of course, the main use they have for the power that wealth allows them to wield is to subvert the democratic process by applying vast amounts of money to buy good media pressure for economic directions that will benefit them, and by outright bribery of politicians. This lets them maintain and extend their position...

[Seth]

Without Larry Ellison there wouldn't be an Oracle, which he founded in 1977 along with two partners and an initial investment of $2000. It was privately held till 1986, when it had an annual revenue of 55 million. He changed the computing world. By 2014 their annual revenue was 38.3 Billion. He had been CEO continuously from 1977 to 2014 when he stepped down. Oracle employs over 135,000 people worldwide, with historical earnings measured in multiple trillions.

I'm not buying "any competent manager".

A start-up guy is in a different position. If you create an entirely new enterprise from scratch, and it takes off, you will (and should) do well, mainly by owning a lot of shares in the company you start. What is over the top is the huge salaries and stock options given to people who take over as CEOs of established companies. Yes, they need to be on the ball, and competent, and probably should be paid well, and have some additional incentive rewards if they grow the company faster than average. But their current renumeration levels are simply obscene.

Why? Because you don't make that much? That's what I suspect is your best argument in support of that comment. Grow up.

[Seth]

I'm personally not against people getting rich and enjoying their riches. That is, if you own the company.
What I don't like is the gigantic salaries being paid to people who DON'T own the company, didn't start the company, but just got themselves into the chief executive's job, or a job on the board.

They get there for the very good reason that they are very good at what they do and in doing so they create profits for the shareholders.

What happens is that the old boy's network exchanges these jobs for similar favours. You get a job on the board, and then, get someone else a top directorship, and in return, you get a directorship with their own company. Before you know it, you have a little backroom club going, everybody scratching each others backs, and nobody else gets a look in. And it's not just the jobs. It's the level of salaries that they vote for each other. That's why boardroom salaries have gone through the roof, compared to workers salaries.

So what? Workers get paid exactly what they agree to get paid. If they don't think it's enough, they can go start their own company.

It's the modern mafia.

Nonsense. The Board of Directors of any public company is elected by the shareholders, who are those who have invested in the company in expectation of a return on their investment.

But if you started the company, and built it, then as far as I'm concerned you deserve to pay yourself whatever you like. It's your money.

And you can sell your company, or hire someone to manage it for you so you can enjoy all that money, can you not?

I would however, take almost all of a dead person's estate in tax. Dynastic mega-wealthy families, living on inherited wealth, don't do anybody any good except themselves.

And they are morally required to do anybody else any good how, exactly? It's their money, not yours, and neither you nor anyone else is morally entitled to a single dime.

The death tax is pure unadulterated Marxist progressive theft and nothing else.

Take it in tax, and use the money to educate the poorest kids.
That way, people would have a more equal start in life. Which I consider important.

Then give them YOUR money. Don't be a thief and take other people's money must because you think your agenda is "important." Every thief thinks his well being is more important than anyone else.

[Brian Peacock]

For productive class read monied class. For many their 'productivity' is an inherited resource. The wealthy always say they earned their money on merit, and indeed that their access to that resource denotes that fact outright. The principle being avoided here, the one outlined by the IMF and others, is that securing and enhancing the concentration of wealth in the monied class is detrimental to the wider economy - not that this seems to bother the rich of course. You don't have to be a political liberal to accept the evidence, just as you don't have to be a political conservative to ignore it.

[Seth]

mistermack wrote:

I would however, take almost all of a dead person's estate in tax. Dynastic mega-wealthy families, living on inherited wealth, don't do anybody any good except themselves.
Take it in tax, and use the money to educate the poorest kids.
That way, people would have a more equal start in life. Which I consider important.

I think that could be on a sliding scale. Up to (say) a million, no estate tax. After, tax at a higher and higher rate for every million over...

Why? Because you want the dead man's money? It's not yours, so fuck off with your support of government-sponsored thievery. That estate has been taxed and taxed again, every single year that the decedent was alive. Why should an additional tax be imposed just because he died?

Pure, unadulterated greed and envy is why. The death tax was created by Woodrow Wilson and his progressive to soak the rich to pay for World War I, and it was supposed to go away once that debt was paid. But once you let cocksucking Marxist progressives, socialists and other liberal scum get their filthy fingers into your pocket you have to kill them to make them stop.

[Seth]

For productive class read monied class. For many their 'productivity' is an inherited resource. The wealthy always say they earned their money on merit, and indeed that their access to that resource denotes that fact outright. The principle being avoided here, the one outlined by the IMF and others, is that securing and enhancing the concentration of wealth in the monied class is detrimental to the wider economy - not that this seems to bother the rich of course. You don't have to be a political liberal to accept the evidence, just as you don't have to be a political conservative to ignore it.

Fuck the "wider economy" and the IMF and others. They are just thieves cloaked in government power and nothing else and they need to be taken out of the equation entirely. If it ain't yours, it ain't yours and nothing you can say can justify using the Mace of State to steal what you want from someone else. It's theft plain and simple and people need to defend their right to the fruits of their labor and their property with whatever degree of force is required to fend off thieves.

[Hermit]

The richest pay the most tax

Not in percentage terms they don't

Oh yes they do. The top one percent pays something like 40 percent of taxes collected.

You're holding your binoculars the wrong way around. The richest pay the less tax per income dollar than the next 80% of income earners.

Example:

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

[Seth]

Um, you are aware that the yacht fairy didn't provide that yacht, a legion of craftsmen and workers did, and got paid for building it, aren't you?

Um, yes, I do. Furthemore, a boat like that probably requires a dozen or so permanent employees to keep it afloat and going places. Additionally, there are flow-on effects, such as the driver of the trucking company that gets paid for a few hours a month to supply it with fuel or the people at the chandlery who pick, pack and deliver the victual and so on. Originally named "the horse and sparrow theory" late in the 19th century (The more oats you feed the horse the more of it passes through its gut, which leaves more shit for the sparrow to feed on). It's been revived in the 1970s. Tax cuts for the rich were supposed to mean better income for the mass of their employees. That is not what happened.

Of course it's what happened. Everyone is better off because the tax cuts induced investors to invest in new businesses and products, which means more jobs for people and more and better consumer products for them to enjoy.

What happened instead was that wealth concentrated at the top end of society at an even faster rate than before. I think the wine glass analogy I linked to before illustrates that pretty well.

Try running your numbers WITHOUT the economy-stimulating tax cuts that spurred investment. What happened when the profit potential disappeared due to overtaxation is that both companies and individuals simply stopped spending money and the entire economy floundered in a recession that lasted a long time.

You see, capital flees taxation like water flees altitude. The more you tax the faster the money moves somewhere taxes are lower, as it should.

What you're bitching about is the fact that YOU don't have as much wealth as someone else

You know that how? I am 62 years old and own my four bedroom house with attached granny flat outright. Between 2002 and today I have worked for pay for one 18 month period, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to. What am I supposed to bitch about? How to spend my time defending my 10 billion dollar empire from some rival tycoon's predatory attempts to drive me out of business? Not bloody likely. While I am happy not to be in your shoes, what with having frittered the proceeds from the sale of dad's farm away, and having to move into a trailer because you cant afford the rent for a house, I have no hankering for the billions of dollars others play with. What I do object to is the power wealth confers on its owners.

The Murdochs an the Packers of this world have repeatedly boasted how they have toppled democratically elected governments.

That sounds like complete bullshit to me. Got a cite for us?

Other tycoons do that sort of thing without publicising the fact.

You mean like George Soros?

[Seth]

Hermit wrote:

What I do object to is the power wealth confers on its owners. The Murdochs an the Packers of this world have repeatedly boasted how they have toppled democratically elected governments. Other tycoons do that sort of thing without publicising the fact.

And of course, the main use they have for the power that wealth allows them to wield is to subvert the democratic process by applying vast amounts of money to buy good media pressure for economic directions that will benefit them, and by outright bribery of politicians. This lets them maintain and extend their position...

If you can prove this you'll win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

But of course you can't because it's a lie.

[Seth]

The richest pay the most tax

Not in percentage terms they don't

Oh yes they do. The top one percent pays something like 40 percent of taxes collected.

You're holding your binoculars the wrong way around. The richest pay the less tax per income dollar than the next 80% of income earners.

Now you're just playing jiggery-pokey with numbers.


Example:

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

[/quote]

You too can conform your earnings to take advantage of tax reduction opportunities offered by the government. Just because you don't know how to do so, or don't want to bother to do so doesn't make doing so immoral or illegal.

[surreptitious57]

Why should an additional tax be imposed just because he died

Because death is inevitable then it is just an easy way for the state to get extra revenue but it is morally indefensible. That is because non taxable income
belongs to the individual so they should be free to spend it how they like long as whatever they do spend it on is legal. Sometimes the children have to sell
the family house in order to pay the inheritance tax after the parent dies. This is entirely unjustifiable and is a reason as to why it should be scrapped. The
state can tax an individual up to fifty per cent during their life but once they are dead then it must stop. I say fifty per cent because no one should have to
give more to the state than they are allowed to keep because it saps incentive. For you end up effectively working for the tax man rather than for your self

[Seth]

Why should an additional tax be imposed just because he died

Because death is inevitable then it is just an easy way for the state to get extra revenue but it is morally indefensible. That is because non taxable income
belongs to the individual so they should be free to spend it how they like long as whatever they do spend it on is legal. Sometimes the children have to sell
the family house in order to pay the inheritance tax after the parent dies. This is entirely unjustifiable and is a reason as to why it should be scrapped. The
state can tax an individual up to fifty per cent during their life but once they are dead then it must stop. I say fifty per cent because no one should have to
give more to the state than they are allowed to keep because it saps incentive. For you end up effectively working for the tax man rather than for your self

Yup. Been there, done that, got ass-fucked by the Progressives.

[Hermit]

Everyone is better off

No.



You get this instead:

capital flees taxation like water flees altitude.

That's not what happened when the income tax rate for people on an income of $250,000 or more was 92% or when corporate tax was set in the 40 to 50% range

The Murdochs an the Packers of this world have repeatedly boasted how they have toppled democratically elected governments.

That sounds like complete bullshit to me. Got a cite for us?

The Sun is the UK's biggest selling paper. It's one of Rupert Murdoch's. He's the one who told one of his editors: "I give instructions to my editors all over the world – why shouldn’t I in London?" The day the 1992 UK election results came out this is what the front page said:



There's more of that stuff, but I don't feel like spending more time on digging the links out again. The point is sufficiently made.