What do you think about earnings?

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1817753]

Comments

[kerrypolka.livejournal.com]

Ha, so far this is the least controversial poll I've ever seen on your journal!

[laplor.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm concerned, everyone from CEOs to drug addicts deserves to make enough money to pay for a modest apartment and decent food.

Anything above that should be performance based and subject to a maximum cap. The maximum should be fairly high, but really some salaries are so obscene that that they cannot be justified by any performance.

Yeah, I'm a socialist.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't talk in terms of a maximum amount people are allowed to earn, but I am very sympathetic to the idea that there should be a maximum-wage-earnt-in-company to minimum-wage-earnt-in-company cap. Although how you stop people outsourcing all their cleaners etc / playing silly buggers is quite a hefty exercise for the reader.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

"There should be a maximum amount that people are allowed to earn in a year" - NO.

In your enthusiasm to clamp down on executive pay you basically ignore the existence of the self-employed. Go back to the drawing board.

As for why I'm opposed to a cap -- consider for example a self-employed musician who manages to somehow achieve a once-in-a-lifetime #1 hit. Are you going to cap their income for that year, when it's around 30% of their lifetime income and their entire pension and is achieved after years of struggle and penury?

Yes, it's an extreme case. But those of us who are self-employed go through good years and bad years, and there's nobody around to carry us when things are bad. (Just try claiming social security benefits of any kind if you're self-employed!)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I think you mistyped.

"There should be a maximum amount that other people are allowed to earn in a year."

There. Fixed that for you.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat in favour of a maximum "share" of earnings someone is allowed to take home from a company (in the sense of, is a CEO really contributing 200x as much to the company as Joe Lunchpail?) but not of an absolute cap.

-- Steve thinks that somethings are indeed best left up to the market, even with the absurdities that sometimes arise.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think any cap on pay would have to be per hour worked.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I think policing maximum pay would be very difficult.

Share options would present a particular difficulty.

SEWIWEIC

[0olong.livejournal.com]

The culture of people in a position of power (specifically, in this instance, bargaining power) expecting to earn something close to the amount of money they make for a company is toxic, with a range of vastly negative side-effects, and ethically questionable at best.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

There should never be a maximum amount, just an increasing percentage of the marginal pound taxed. If you're an annual billionaire, you can still get up in the morning looking forward to a 10% raise, it's just that 99 pennies of the last pound you get are taxed. But you *will* get that last penny, and probably for doing less work than I do for my last penny. And it adds up to another million pounds for you, even if 99 million does go into the public coffers.

A hard cap is so unnecessary, that it makes me wonder who's putting it around that that and unlimited compensation with low marginal top tax rates are the only two possibilities on the table.

[bookzombie.livejournal.com]

My problem with setting ceiling amounts is: who gets to decide? Trying to get an objective decision would be almost impossible. Though I do like the idea of fixing the relationship between the chief executives' pay and other employees...

[calum]

I wouldnt set a maximum salary, but I would set a minimum tax level payable - regardless whether its from shares, income, capital gains, etc. If its your money to spend, pay tax on it.

No more tax avoidance - you earn a million quid a year, you damn well pay 40% tax on most of it.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I'm out of step on 1 because 'part' of 'some people's' is awfully vague. Which part? Whose? If an employer is doing his job he'll be selecting the most competent worker, and incentivising them with interesting/challenging work rather than money.

And where do football players stand?

I'm not in favour of blanket maximums because I know too many actors who've been assessed for taxes on high-earning years at times when they're out of work.

But it's all very difficult. *Flails*

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Dead easy.

The state has no business whatsoever interfering in contracts between private individuals and private companies. On the other hand I have much less objection to a cap on public sector pay. Oh, and tax rates should be as low as possible and as flat as possible.

But then I'm a liberal.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

The cases where it's genuinely sensible to base pay on performance are few and getting fewer as automation eats in to commodity-producing piecework. Certainly at the executive level it's a mug's game of cat-and-mouse around the principal-agent problem.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

I voted no on the "maximum amount per year", because someone like J K Rowling seems to have earned every penny, by a very simple transaction (but let's tax that income, of course!). However, I also think that a lot of people who are very highly paid are only doing so because they work close to money and that makes it easier for them to get hold of it.

In all the discussions about CEO pay, nobody (on either side) seems to be saying "Well, what's happening is that they can get a lot of money, so they do. What's strange about that?" I'm not sure it's helpful to demonise that motive, and the many debaters on the left seem to be very keen to do that.

[ajax-nz.livejournal.com]

Use the national median income.(not average)
Base a tiered tax rate on multiples of that.

Means rich *ankers have a big incentive to make everyone else richer too.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

A way round the issue of lumpy pay for artistic or scientific output might be base income tax on life time average earnings.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I ticked "no limit" to what people can earn - but that isn't necessarily strictly the truth.

I don't think there should be a statutory limit, but I do feel there should be a moral limit, based on the lowest paid person in an organisation. Maybe 10 or 20x.

I also think that shareholders should have more balls and determine pay.