salary structure

[Mehreen]

Does it bother anyone that some people are paid such high salaries and others are paid next to nothing? There is such a huge gap in people's salaries. Something is rotten...

[Nik]

I've nothing against high salaries in private sector. The taxation of salaries as opposed to other sources of income is much easier to administer, as it's usually done at the source by the employer. Extraordinary high salaries in public sector are much more questionable, because it's the public financing them and there need to be correlation between what's acceptable among the public.
Low salaries is, inter alia, the issue of decency. At the very least the minimum wage, in my opinion, should afford its earner reasonable subsistence, while two working spouses, no matter what they do, should be able to finance the living of a family. It was and it still is like this in some countries, but the principle start to erode and often even in OECD countries both working spouses have trouble making the ends meet...

[GR]

I think that's why DT wanted to go back to the 50s. It was a time when everything was affordable--a single worker could pay for a house and a family. I went through higher education in the 50s. At that time, I went off scholarship when I got a job. It wasn't a free scholarship, it was a working scholarship, and I still had to pay for my living. At that time, my tuition cost $300 a semester. My apartment cost $25 a month, and I had enough to put in the Bank each month--I felt rich. Sense the 80s, everything skyrocketed because Reagan deregulated everything through Proposition 13 in California and then as president. And because of it, there isn't any controls over cost. Competition is suppose to control cost, but it doesn't. The trickle-down effect didn't work.

I don't think DT will bring back the 50s. The Powers that be, won't go for it. And, to put controls into place won't get in either. So, we can finally put the 50s to bed. It was a nice period.

[Bob]

The current system of the global economy was deliberately created in the early 1980s. Part of the trick was to encourage top executives to be given share options in their own company. This has led to the upward movement of wealth.
It is now to the point of obscenity.

[Mehreen]

Bob wrote: "The current system of the global economy was deliberately created in the early 1980s. Part of the trick was to encourage top executives to be given share options in their own company. This has led ..."

Couldn't agree with you more when I compare the salary of, say a CEO of a bank with his personal assistant or secretary. It is obscene.

[Bob]

It is also destructive. Humanity is killing itself in three ways:
destroying nature (6th extinction event)
climate change
the global economy.

:)

[Nik]

Mehreen wrote: "Couldn't agree with you more when I compare the salary of, say a CEO of a bank with his personal assistant or secretary. It is obscene...."

But how about top football players or Hollywood movie stars, for example?
Whatever the salary - they are still employees, unless it's the proprietor's paying him/herself a salary, like say - Gates in Microsoft or Zuckerberg in Facebook. I see more problem with business profits spirited away untaxed to save havens, not 'trickling down' to employees and generally accumulated unlimitedly, while for doing so 'accumulators' derail any competition/progress. Less problem with millionaires in my opinion, more with multi - and bills -:)

[Ian]

Nik raises football players and movies stars. I regard them as self-employed. They get a contract, and they have to fulfil it. That is well and good, because we have the willing buyer paying the large amounts, and if the performance drops, so does the income.

I think executive salaries are ridiculously overpaid, because it implies that person could do x times more work, or work x times more valuable, than someone else, and in many cases, they do not. Gates is different again - he effectively founded Microsoft, and much of his income comes from the stock he holds. I think buy taking a salary, and thus a guaranteed income when things get rough, you must also sacrifice some of the income you might have got through things going very well.