“Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

Businesses can either pay tax, reduce top executive salary, or pay workers more.

Read the whole story

 

[TheFooledGhost]

I can see this sort of thing being interesting if enacted as a national law, but as a city- or statewide law, it's too easy for businesses to simply evade it by voting with their feet and it may end up hurting the local economy more than it helps.

At the national level, you'd still need to raise importation taxes or it all goes overseas.

 

[Ragnarredbeard]

This sounds ridiculously easy to get around. As easy as changing the corporate address to a UPS mail center outside SF.

 

[Biceps]

And watch as senior managers suddenly become consultants, or the cheapest resource get outsourced.

Don't get me wrong, I completely support the intent of this, Senior salaries have got completely out of hand, but I'm also a very cynical person.

Outsource the execs to India

I'd automate. One of my first learn-electronics kits as a kid was an oscillator that would stop on either the 'yes' or 'no' labeled LED when you pressed a button.

I’d sooner consult a Magic 8 Ball than an MBA.

Exactly! Of course this is what the Republicans say about folks with MSc's and PhD's, because the Republicans don't like what THEY have to say. But, hey if denigrating folks with graduate degrees and domain expertise works for them? Why not for everyone, right?

Sorry, but your average MBA doesn't have a clue. I've been in business for two decades, and I can count the number of competent MBAs I have worked with (and I have worked with a lot of MBAs) on one hand.

MBAs are specializations on how to prioritize short term gains over the long term health of a company by culling expertise, institutional knowledge, and nickel and diming customers. Anyone with business experience knows how to do that, but generally avoids it, because they care about employees, customers and the long term health of their company. MBAs default to it, because they are indoctrinated in destructive business practices.

There are a few sustainable MBA programs out there that produce really excellent managers - Thunderbird has a great program, as does Stanford. But most MBAs are dime-a-dozen dipshits who know less about how to run a business than your average liquor store owner, and should be paid commensurately.

 

[Arkleseizure]

If everywhere did this {or something even stronger} then we'd see the start of a more equitable western wold.

But solidarity is a bit like socialism and for some mind bending reason socialist, like Liberal has become a bad word in America.

In the US of A the idea of being nice and fair to people is seen as dangerous.

Even at your best, America, you're still a nasty piece of work.

 

[lyme]

<s>Communism</s>

Actually sounds pretty sensible.

I find it quite interesting how many people are unable to describe the differences between communism, socialism, of which this is neither. This is simply a focused tax, which is capitalism.

Outsourcing will increase, the workers will end up worse off, not better off.

The workers are already worse off. The expectation that continuing to do "nothing" will make things better has been shown to be a fallacy over and over again. Possibly you missed the part of the article that said "A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that in 2019, CEOs at the top 350 businesses in the US "earn[ed] 320 times as much as a typical worker," which is "up from 293-to-1 in 2018 and a big increase from 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989."".

 

[fazalmajid]

Watch as those companies begin relocating.

Charles Schwab, McKesson and PG&E are just 3 of the Fortune 500 that ditched their SF headquarters recently.

 

[Haravikk]

I really wish they'd accompany laws like this with a big fine for people who say that CEO's "earn" their salaries; until a CEO on $10m a year can prove that they work 500 times harder than someone on $20k then it will never be "earned".

They may be awarded or bribed such sums, but it cannot be argued that the value is earned.

Still, it's a step in the right direction; should really be nearer to 20 to 1, but you've got to start somewhere I guess.

 

[C.M. Allen]

If everywhere did this {or something even stronger} then we'd see the start of a more equitable western wold.

But solidarity is a bit like socialism and for some mind bending reason socialist, like Liberal has become a bad word in America.

In the US of A the idea of being nice and fair to people is seen as dangerous.

Even at your best, America, you're still a nasty piece of work.

The anti-socialism mindset is...mindnumbingly absurd. And it's most prominent in states with a local economy largely if not entirely dependent on, wait for it, SOCIALISM. Like Kentucky. The ONLY THING keeping that state afloat is the countless millions of dollars in federal aid, collected from "Liberal" states with functional economies, the state receives every year. Without that, most of Kentucky would be a 3rd world shithole. But that's pretty much par for the course for Republicans -- hypocrisy. Socialism is bad...except when they're the ones getting the money. Or how welfare is bad...except when its being given to corporations.

Republicans are completely out of touch with reality. But what do you expect of a collection of people who cannot accept a reality that doesn't include magical sky fairies and an all power space daddy? Reality was *NEVER* part of their lives. Which is what makes them SO easy to dupe into stabbing themselves in the backs. The mental gymnastics it takes for them to make sense of the world leaves them too exhausted to question the lies they're fed by Republican leadership. It's like shooting fish in a barrel...of fish.

 

[vinyl1]

"Employees' salaries are based on experience and on value to a company."

This was a written response because there's no way he would've been able to deliver it with a straight face.

For real. Employee salaries are based on how hard hard they are to replace, which comes from the supply of qualified labor and demand of competing positions. The only time the value they bring comes into it is if that value drops below their pay, at which point, they're out of a job.

This is explains why CEO pay is so high - there are 500 positions in the S&P 500, and only about 50-75 guys are any good. If you have a good CEO, and he takes a job at another company, you're really stuck.

That's not even it at all. CEO pay really took off in the 80s, when executive compensation was mandated to be public information (for public companies). High CEO compensation packages became PR stories, and companies didn't want to be the ones who didn't pay their executives grotesquely huge amounts.

The problem is that everybody does it, then you have to do it too. If a company said this is ridiculous, we'll just have a maximum salary of $500K, someone else would hire away all their good executives by offering much higher salaries.

 

[lyme]

If everywhere did this {or something even stronger} then we'd see the start of a more equitable western wold.

But solidarity is a bit like socialism and for some mind bending reason socialist, like Liberal has become a bad word in America.

In the US of A the idea of being nice and fair to people is seen as dangerous.

Even at your best, America, you're still a nasty piece of work.

There was case posed that the underlying reason why most of the rank and file typically are resistant to bills like this, is due to the subconscious thought/feeling that if they were ultra rich that this would be bad for them. Quite a lot of people have not accepted the realization that 99.999% or so of us will never, ever, be "ultra rich". Nor do many accept the truth that most of the rich to "ultra rich" pay less in taxes and community support than the average person.

 

[Azethoth666]

Do you really want the government in charge of all capital?

No. But the US is currently sprinting in the direction of Jeff Bezos & Mark Zuckerberg controlling all capital, and the government is at least answerable to voters.

Ask yourself: At what point on the road to a Gini Coefficient of 1 (aka one person literally does control all the money) would you say: "maybe this is a dumb way to allocate wealth"? The US has marched very steadily from a Gini coefficient of 0.39 in 1967 up to 0.49 in 2017.

Communism is miles away from how the US practices business, and a step in that direction is a good thing, to perhaps start interrupting the current wealth-accumulation patterns.

That is certainly a coefficient to avoid.

So what allows the CEO to get too much pay and compensation?

Lack of competition. If there was cutthroat competition, there would not be fat profit margins. No fat profit margins, no stupid large compensation.

It is not business that has been failing us it is government. Why do we have shitty last mile internet rules that promote monopolies and zero competition? Why do we allow dumb pipe providers to get into the content business? Why do we allow Google and Amazon to expand into other businesses "because we feel like it and besides our fat profits allow us to do whatever we want including running losses to crush the competition". Why do we allow fat corporations to deny municipalities the simple choice of building out their own broadband? Why is Tesla illegally barred from selling vehicles in all states?

We need to be fixing the true problems, not just rubbing ointment on the symptoms. The Economist has put out some really good articles scientifically identifying areas of the economy with poor competition, therefore stupidly high profit margins, yielding dumb salaries. We just need politicians able to see the problem and fix it.

 

[pe1]

I've long had an idea about how to deal with this problem. It's super simple. Just set a cap on how much compensation (salary, benefits, stock, etc.) companies can count as a business expense. Make it something generous but not outrageous, like $1 million. If you want to pay your CEO $20 million/year, go for it. But as far as the government is concerned, only $1 million of that was a legitimate business expense. You still have to pay income tax on the other $19 million.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Businesses can either pay tax, reduce top executive salary, or pay workers more.

You forgot the last option: Leave SF for somewhere that doesn't do this.

 

[ivan256]

The tax is expected to raise $60 million to $140 million per year.

Let's be real here. If this tax generates any revenue at all, it's going to be from unintended targets. All the big guys will have sufficient actuarial staff to figure out how to avoid paying ever.

 

[MobtownDave]

Hocus pocus is needed to repair the failure of 40 years of Voodoo Economics.

 

[truth serum]

I can see this sort of thing being interesting if enacted as a national law, but as a city- or statewide law, it's too easy for businesses to simply evade it by voting with their feet and it may end up hurting the local economy more than it helps.

At the national level, you'd still need to raise importation taxes or it all goes overseas.

The farther the taxation is from the source. The more money is grifted by those receiving the money.

The only time I ever vote on any kind of revenue increase is if it is specifically allocated to be spent on something that does not yet exist. Like a local building project or something. If a measure is put forth to raise taxes for some made up "b..but think of the kids!" reason I slam the "no" button.

The way it works is that even if the additional tax is applied to whatever it is designated for, an equal amount is usually cut in stealth mode from the general fund that was previously going to the existing program. Thus the new 'specially designated' tax is a real world net increase for the general fund which is always grifted six ways to Sunday.

 

[scrimbul]

And watch as senior managers suddenly become consultants, or the cheapest resource get outsourced.

Don't get me wrong, I completely support the intent of this, Senior salaries have got completely out of hand, but I'm also a very cynical person.

This is exactly what will happen.

Outsource the entry level, and consultants will spring up around the company.

Baby steps.

It has been known for some time that with regards to compensation and accounting the term 'core business' needs to have a legal and fiscal definition, and be applied pretty broadly to most corporations in order to regulate and severely curtail excessive abuse of consulting and LLC laws.

For instance for everyone on the Ars forums it's an open secret that IT and tech consulting is probably the next biggest national security risk below Trump himself and toothless oversight of the NSA. If you don't believe me, it isn't hard to prove that Sony, Office of Personnel Management and Ashley Madison nearly all had national security leaks in them solely due to their size and capitalization even if two weren't government sector. Primarily due to consulting.

Say what you will about Snowden and the NSA but a security consultant with the access he did was an objective national security risk even if he was right (I personally agree with him). It's even easier for consulting firms to damage private business or public businesses irreparably specifically because the consulting is nearly always a security risk to the business.

If every company is forced to define things like janitorial work, site security, and IT infrastructure, as core business functions again, you won't get rid of consulting entirely but most workers will have less of an incentive to chase the false holy grail of economic security that is full-time employment by a contracting client firm. It won't eliminate consulting and temp staffing overnight either but rather be rebalanced to be more equitable.

Further, you cannot kill a city economy by just taxing the rich people out of the city. In pretty much every case, compensation, employment skillsets and city social culture all take a positive adjustment if wealthy corporations have to give up on real-estate that ends up getting zoned more affordably, which brings in more tax revenue overall than taxing the 1% and removes housing market distortions.

There are ways to make economic globalization work better for everyone and both careers and regions of the country it should not be implemented at all that make things fairer for everyone without either killing jobs or creating a literal underclass from the income gaps. It's not an either-or proposition to stop trying due to cynicism.

 

[arsreader97]

Here's an unintended consequence of how this tax undermines the general progressivity of both federal and CA tax brackets for individuals:

The CEO's marginal tax rate for employment income is much higher than the marginal tax rate of the median worker of the company. By shifting $X from CEO income to the median workers, both the state and the IRS will end up collecting less in income taxes.

Not for or against this SF tax, but want people to be aware of the direct/indirect effects possible depending on how companies change their compensation structure.

 

[XavierItzmann]

Good idea but this is not something that municipal law should do, what if every municipality set that up, that would be nuts... statewide, maybe, nationwide yes.

But SF getting taxes for an international business having a tiny presence there, that seems kinda ridiculous.

Hint: no international business will have a SF address.

 

[s73v3r]

And watch as senior managers suddenly become consultants, or the cheapest resource get outsourced.

Don't get me wrong, I completely support the intent of this, Senior salaries have got completely out of hand, but I'm also a very cynical person.

Agreed, this is going to lead to more and more low level positions being filled by contractors. I also have a problem with the idea that someone who runs a company of expensive employees should be able to earn more (tax free) than someone runs a company of working class employees.

Of course you do.

Try to replace income with productivity to get a real idea of what a proposal is about.

We are going to tax really productive people if they are more than 200 times as productive as dumb unskilled janitors. Yes, if you dare to get a PhD and work extremely hard, we will punish you because some high school dropout is getting minimum wage.

I look forward to really good green energy policy under president Harris. I do not look forward to the economic ignorance like this.

What is next California, tax Elon Musk 70% of all his stock holdings because "billionaire"? (Real proposal although I may remember the numbers wrong)

It wasn't that long ago (in many of our lifetimes) that the top tax rate (for incomes a few million) was 70%.

Sure, and if you go back further only rich people paid taxes at all. So what?

Do you really want the government in charge of all capital? This is a step in that direction.

No, it fucking isn't. Not even close.

If you want to be taken seriously, it helps to actually think about the topic for 2 seconds.

 

[s73v3r]

Businesses can either pay tax, reduce top executive salary, or pay workers more.

Or leave.

Unless the business completely relocates, in which case they'll have to hire an entirely new engineering staff, which would be extremely costly, time consuming, and lead to stagnation and defects in the product as the new staff ramps up to unfamiliar code, that won't work.

 

[nimelennar]

Its 2020. Do you still believe that businesses pay tax? They don't. Their customers pay it for them in the form of increased prices.

As opposed to the source of all of the other money that a business pays out.

The CEO's marginal tax rate for employment income is much higher than the marginal tax rate of the median worker of the company. By shifting $X from CEO income to the median workers, both the state and the IRS will end up collecting less in income taxes.

Yes, but the median worker is more likely to spend that money, so it goes to a business, which pays tax and pays its employees, and they go out and spend it, and that money goes to a business which pays tax and pays its employees, and they go out and spend it...

It may not completely offset the amount of revenue they'd have received before, but the increased economic activity from putting money in the pockets of the middle class should at least contribute somewhat in that direction.

 

[s73v3r]

Businesses can either pay tax, reduce top executive salary, or pay workers more.

You forgot the last option: Leave SF for somewhere that doesn't do this.

In order for that to work, the entire company has to leave. You can't still have an office in SF, as many of the tech giants do. So now, you have to hire an entirely new staff, and deal with the growing pains of a new team getting accustomed to an unfamiliar product, and being unproductive while they ramp up.

 

[HamsterExAstris]

In order for that to work, the entire company has to leave. You can't still have an office in SF, as many of the tech giants do. So now, you have to hire an entirely new staff, and deal with the growing pains of a new team getting accustomed to an unfamiliar product, and being unproductive while they ramp up.

These companies have just spent the last 8 months proving that work-from-home isn't an issue. They can close the office but still retain all of the talent.

Well, the white-collar talent. The custodians and secretaries are out of a job now.

 

[hp57]

If this isn’t the dumbest thing to come out of SF it’s not far off.

 

[truepusk]

No, it fucking isn't. Not even close.

If you want to be taken seriously, it helps to actually think about the topic for 2 seconds.

Substance (and maybe a touch of civility) over pure emotions and profanity please. Why is it you start to recognize certain user names for consistently decreasing the signal to noise ratio on article after article?

 

[Sajuuk]

And watch as senior managers suddenly become consultants, or the cheapest resource get outsourced.

Don't get me wrong, I completely support the intent of this, Senior salaries have got completely out of hand, but I'm also a very cynical person.

Agreed, this is going to lead to more and more low level positions being filled by contractors. I also have a problem with the idea that someone who runs a company of expensive employees should be able to earn more (tax free) than someone runs a company of working class employees.

Of course you do.

Try to replace income with productivity to get a real idea of what a proposal is about.

We are going to tax really productive people if they are more than 200 times as productive as dumb unskilled janitors. Yes, if you dare to get a PhD and work extremely hard, we will punish you because some high school dropout is getting minimum wage.

I look forward to really good green energy policy under president Harris. I do not look forward to the economic ignorance like this.

What is next California, tax Elon Musk 70% of all his stock holdings because "billionaire"? (Real proposal although I may remember the numbers wrong)

It wasn't that long ago (in many of our lifetimes) that the top tax rate (for incomes a few million) was 70%.

Sure, and if you go back further only rich people paid taxes at all. So what?

Do you really want the government in charge of all capital? This is a step in that direction. No it's not a great outcome. Vote getters do not have the same skill sets as profit getters. The Soviet Union collapsed for exactly that reason.

There is an obvious solution: simply tax and spend in moderation so your budgets are balanced and you don't have to try and squeeze blood out of rocks like this.

The USSR collapsed from a combination of ridiculous defense budgets, foreign intervention (read: wars), the extreme concentration of wealth in a practical aristocracy/oligarchy, and the extreme alienation of the average citizen. Hey...wait a minute.

 

[real mikeb_60]

Watch as those companies begin relocating.

Charles Schwab, McKesson and PG&E are just 3 of the Fortune 500 that ditched their SF headquarters recently.

PG&E's way behind the curve there. The phone company relocated to San Ramon while it was still Pacific Telephone, then after a series of buyouts they ended up as part of SBC nee AT&T in Texas. San Ramon is still there, though, for the few regional staff who haven't been offshored yet.

 

[johnsonwax]

Mostly comics. Joe Rogan and his whole crowd. People are slowly moving out, and one day it'll just collapse. It's going to be a sudden drop, like when the USSR (not that Cali is that) collapsed as a result of liberalizing and overnight their member states left.

Thomas Sowell would be a good source for the economic theory, and actual data behind it.

I see. You seem to have overplayed your hand.

But what /will/ California do without its highly essential, not to mention astoundingly lucrative, stand-up-comic industry!

And for every comic we lose, we gain, what, 50 Youtube/Twitch streamers? That whole industry largely operates out of LA. In terms of economic output, it's more than exceeded both the lost comic but also the lost porn industry (everyone forgets how our condom law destroyed the CA economy when porn moved out of West Hollywood).

Look, CA pumps about as much oil as Alaska, but we've added half a million green energy jobs in CA which exceeds the number of oil jobs by an order of magnitude. Losing jobs/industries is not some kind of inherent failure if you are replacing them with some other, better industry. Yes, it sucks if it's YOUR job, but it doesn't mean that the policies are going to wreck the state.

But yeah, we lost Joe Rogan. How will we ever recover?

 

[coslie]

"Taxing rich people can't possibly work, they'll just avoid it."
-Rich People

I mean they sure put a lot of energy into complaining and lobbying over "futile" taxes that they are "too smart" to pay.

 

[pacocornholio]

The trigger should be earning 100 times the maximum overtime compensation paid to a San Francisco city employee. See how the sheriff deputies handle that one.

 

[truth serum]

And watch as senior managers suddenly become consultants, or the cheapest resource get outsourced.

Don't get me wrong, I completely support the intent of this, Senior salaries have got completely out of hand, but I'm also a very cynical person.

Agreed, this is going to lead to more and more low level positions being filled by contractors. I also have a problem with the idea that someone who runs a company of expensive employees should be able to earn more (tax free) than someone runs a company of working class employees.

Of course you do.

Try to replace income with productivity to get a real idea of what a proposal is about.

We are going to tax really productive people if they are more than 200 times as productive as dumb unskilled janitors. Yes, if you dare to get a PhD and work extremely hard, we will punish you because some high school dropout is getting minimum wage.

I look forward to really good green energy policy under president Harris. I do not look forward to the economic ignorance like this.

What is next California, tax Elon Musk 70% of all his stock holdings because "billionaire"? (Real proposal although I may remember the numbers wrong)

It wasn't that long ago (in many of our lifetimes) that the top tax rate (for incomes a few million) was 70%.

Sure, and if you go back further only rich people paid taxes at all. So what?

Do you really want the government in charge of all capital? This is a step in that direction. No it's not a great outcome. Vote getters do not have the same skill sets as profit getters. The Soviet Union collapsed for exactly that reason.

There is an obvious solution: simply tax and spend in moderation so your budgets are balanced and you don't have to try and squeeze blood out of rocks like this.

The USSR collapsed from a combination of ridiculous defense budgets, foreign intervention (read: wars), the extreme concentration of wealth in a practical aristocracy/oligarchy, and the extreme alienation of the average citizen. Hey...wait a minute.

The U.S.S.R collapsed because you can't central plan an economy, but I digress.

This case in S.F. is unique to San Francisco. The place is an apocalyptic hellhole when you look at the foot of it's ivory towers. There is so much money being generated out of the region there is no excuse for the place to be in the state it is in for the people at the bottom.

To the companies being effected, this tax is nothing ...less than nothing. Relocating out of the city would not come close to worth it for any company making enough money to pay it's top execs 100x the median pay scale.

The only question is what is the city of San Francisco going to actually do with the money and will they be able to use it to help the people at the absolute bottom of the economic ladder and clean up their city.

 

[test6554]

Businesses can either pay tax, reduce top executive salary, pay workers more, **or leave SF**.

 

[interars]

City leaders also said the new tax "would allow the City to hire hundreds of nurses, doctors, and first responders."

A cynical interpretation:
"Now the government benefits from in-equality and have a twisted motivation to increase it. Didn't they want to fight it?"

But actually, I support this initiative. Hopefully, these 0.4-2.4% will help to curb such practices and are will not be taken from workers' salaries.

Well the same could be said of any tax used to influence behaviour, like nicotine taxes to reduce smoking, or "no jab no subsidised daycare" laws to discourage anti-vaxxers. Similarly a carbon tax is widely agreed to be the only realistic way of shifting society's behaviour away from fossil fuels.

Taxes are probably the best social lever govts have. Maybe because they have the option of just sucking it up and paying the tax/paying more to keep doing what they do, people feel less coerced and there's less protests that their freedoms are being infringed.

 

[Red Pill Green]

So what is this other than a cash grab by the city? It won't help the low level workers get paid more. If anything they will shed frontline jobs to compensate, relocate, or find creative ways to avoid the tax.

I think forcing some of these businesses to relocate may in fact help the city by bringing property values back down to more normal levels that regular people can afford.

 

[interars]

For real. Employee salaries are based on how hard hard they are to replace, which comes from the supply of qualified labor and demand of competing positions. The only time the value they bring comes into it is if that value drops below their pay, at which point, they're out of a job.

This is explains why CEO pay is so high - there are 500 positions in the S&P 500, and only about 50-75 guys are any good. If you have a good CEO, and he takes a job at another company, you're really stuck.

You're right that only a small proportion are any good, but this is true of any job though, in the Sturgeon's law sense that "90% of everything sucks". For example, there are N jobs for programmers/artists/personal assistants/middle-level managers, and only N/10 of them are any good either. Mid-level managers and programmers are (relatively) well-paid, but artists and personal assistants are not. So the quality ratio between amazing and meh is not the reason.

The only difference is the employer's belief that a good CEO can increase company value by an order of magnitude or more, therefore they're worth gambling high compensation on. And once it starts being highly paid, it can't stop because everyone has to keep up with the Joneses.

edit: clarified ratio not the reason

 

[freaq]

Good idea but this is not something that municipal law should do, what if every municipality set that up, that would be nuts... statewide, maybe, nationwide yes.

But SF getting taxes for an international business having a tiny presence there, that seems kinda ridiculous.

Hint: no international business will have a SF address.

Yeah think again, also if any employees live in SF it still applies.

 

[Random_stranger]

People have been predicting that companies would flee CA for low-tax Kansas or Alabama for decades. Not only has it not happened, more companies have moved to CA.

If your primary focus is on your tax rate, you deserve to go out of business. Paying a lot in taxes is suggestive that you're doing things right - look at Apple. The highest US taxpayer for like 20 years running. Your focus should be on talent and growth, and that's why companies still choose to set up in the most insanely expensive and tax heavy California - because those taxes are doing a LOT of work for employers. UC and Stanford is still the top engine for worker talent in the US. CA's infrastructure isn't wonderful, but it's better than anywhere else in the US, and we're actively investing in it now rather than trying to avoid that.

CA is the top agriculture state, top manufacturing state, and the tech capital of the world. And since the 70s everyone has said we're fucking this up. Uh huh.

You also forgot to mention that California has the fifth largest economy in the world...and that's comparing to entire other COUNTRIES!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... tes_by_GDP

Cali's economy is collapsing. The major businesses are moving to Texas for the 0 to near 0 tax rate.

Show your work. Cite your sources. If this were true, we would all be interested. We'll wait.

Mostly comics. Joe Rogan and his whole crowd. People are slowly moving out, and one day it'll just collapse. It's going to be a sudden drop, like when the USSR (not that Cali is that) collapsed as a result of liberalizing and overnight their member states left.

Thomas Sowell would be a good source for the economic theory, and actual data behind it.

Good for him. What a great loss for us. Not.

 

[Random_stranger]

If everywhere did this {or something even stronger} then we'd see the start of a more equitable western wold.

But solidarity is a bit like socialism and for some mind bending reason socialist, like Liberal has become a bad word in America.

In the US of A the idea of being nice and fair to people is seen as dangerous.

Even at your best, America, you're still a nasty piece of work.

There was case posed that the underlying reason why most of the rank and file typically are resistant to bills like this, is due to the subconscious thought/feeling that if they were ultra rich that this would be bad for them. Quite a lot of people have not accepted the realization that 99.999% or so of us will never, ever, be "ultra rich". Nor do many accept the truth that most of the rich to "ultra rich" pay less in taxes and community support than the average person.

But even then, it's more (as recently explained by "there is always a bigger fish") is that the rich being on top and making gobs of $$ is the "natural" order of things, so it has to be maintained that way. No one should get ANYTHING they didn't earn. And the poor didn't earn a decent place to live, a nice car, etc, so it's a crime to help them get those. Especially if you have to "steal" from the rich, who now have less wealth/power than before. You're artificially upsetting the "natural order". Whether that's darwinistic, or religious in origin.