From the Detroit Metro Times:

Rep. Tlaib teams up with Sen. Sanders to combat ‘excessive’ CEO pay

That’s great.  Now who decides what’s excessive pay for the responsibilities of the CEO.

How about we look into the ‘excessive’ pay of useless members of Congress who grift off their offices with book sales and speaking fees.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Barbara Lee teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders to introduce legislation Wednesday aimed at curbing the disparity in pay between CEOs and rank-and-file employees.

That sounds like something Congress really needs to address.

The Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act would impose tax penalties on companies that pay their CEOs more than 50 times the median salary of their employees.

The legislation, introduced in the Senate and House, comes as the pay gap between CEOs and workers continues to widen. Nearly 80 percent of CEOs for S&P 500 companies received more than 100 times the pay of the median employee in 2018, according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies.

A typical employee at the 50 publicly traded companies with the highest pay gaps would have to work at least 1,000 years to earn what the CEO makes in a year, the study found.

So the fuck what?

Given the number of times I’ve had a McDonald’s employee fuck up my order the first time, I’m sure those workers are overpaid at minimum wage.

The legislation calls for imposing graduating tax penalties starting at 0.5 percent and rising to 5 percent for companies that pay their CEOs more than 500 times the rate of their workers. 

“Corporate greed is a disease that has long inflicted this country — income inequality and the pay gap between CEOs and their employees are just two of its symptoms that are harming everyday people,” Tlaib, of Detroit, said in a news release. “In 2018, for example, General Motors’ CEO made nearly 300 times more than the median income of an employee there. We have had enough. The Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act will help ensure there is more fairness in the workplace when it comes to wages. It’s common sense legislation on the path toward justice for all.” 

Corporate greed is a problem.  We can talk all day about industries bought out by holding companies for the purposes of gutting them for profit.

But going after CEO pay is a red herring.

A CEO who can make and keep a multinational, multi-billion dollar business profitable is a unique skill that commands a lot on the open market.

“In America today, ordinary workers at some of the richest corporations are making poverty wages. Meanwhile, we’ve got a class of corporate CEOs who make hundreds — sometimes thousands — of times more than their employees,” Sanders said in the new release. “The last time I checked, corporations got by just fine when CEOs made a million bucks a year — one-tenth of what they make now. All around the world today, large, successful businesses manage to be profitable while treating their workers with dignity and not handing out obscene pay packages to their CEOs. If America’s corporate boards can’t understand the absurdity of paying their CEO friends — in one year — more than their workers will earn in a lifetime, then the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act will help them figure it out.”  

Sanders made millions writing a book praising socialism, profiting off his failed Presidential campaign.  He can go fuck himself with a crosscut saw.

In the 1970s, CEO salaries averaged about $1 million a year, or 20 to 30 times more than the average pay of their employees. Today, the average annual pay of a CEO at a Fortune 500 company is about $20 million, or 200 to 300 times the average pay of an employee, according to research by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). 

Adjusted for inflation, a $1 million salary in 1970 would be worth $7 million today.  The CEO of McDonald’s had a base salary of $1.3 million.  His total compensation was $15.8 million, but most of that was in stock value.  So taking inflation into account, the CEO of McDonald’s had  a lower base salary than a 1970s CEO and only double the total compensation, not 20 times the amount.

Either Sanders is stupid or lying.

The issue is that bottom rung salaries have not gone up, and that is due to global competition.  An unskilled, borderline competent worker in the US is not any more useful than the same unskilled worker in Bangladesh at $1 per day.  Wages are market driven.

Here is my question: when the law taxes companies that pay CEOs more that 50 times the median wage of thier employees, how will that work?

Is it base salary only, or does stock value count?

Do they realize that median pay for some companies can be higher than they think?

Median pay at McDonald’s is $54k per year because it includes corporate management, buyer’s, marketing professionals, etc.  The CEO would be allowed to have 50 times their  wage, or $2.7 million, not 50 times the wage of the fat bitch behind the counter that can’t get your order right.

Do they expect CEOs just to take less money?  Or maybe raise the wages of their employees?

I’m sure this will cause US companies to invert to other countries that don’t have this stupid rule or to fire low paid employees.

As CEO of McDonald’s, I’d be happy to fire every single minimum wage employee to raise the median salary and increase my earnings.  Then I’d work with Boston Dynamics and iRobot to create an entirely robotic workforce.

Until they gain sentience, I won’t have to worry about my robot burger flipper getting into a fist fight with a customer over a milkshake and knocking her boobs out of her tube top.

If the current pay trends continue, the legislation would raise roughly $150 billion in new taxes over the next decade.

No.  It won’t.  This law is begging to be hammered by the law of unintended consequences.

It won’t raise new tax revenue.  It won’t raise bottom rung employee salaries.

It will cause bottom rung employees to be laid off and replaced by robots and companies to invert offshore to avoid regulation.

I know this because I’m not stupid.

Sanders and Tlaib  are Socialist idiots.