CounterSpin interview with Sarah Anderson on poverty wages
And then I’m very excited about efforts to also use the tax code to address this issue of overpaying CEOs and underpaying workers. And this year, there are ballot initiatives moving ahead in both Los Angeles and San Francisco that would raise local taxes on businesses based on the size of the gap between their CEO and their worker pay, as an incentive for them to either narrow those gaps by lifting up worker pay or bringing down CEO pay, or, if companies refuse to do that, and want to stick with the status quo of having really large pay gaps, then they would pay more taxes into public services and infrastructure that is so needed by so many states and cities because of the federal cutbacks in funding.
Spread the word and support these ballot initiatives if you live in LA or SF!
as an incentive for them to either narrow those gaps by lifting up worker pay or …
Or leave the city…
It’s a good idea but it’s missing the mark.
The taxes need to be on the CEO compensation not the company. The executive teams with huge paychecks really don’t give a fuck about the company. Look at all the CEO’s who accept huge payouts when the company is going bankrupt and they are laying off employees.
It also needs to be based on total compensation, not just the paycheck for everyone. Otherwise companies will start to offer higher pay, but drop benefits like the greedy little fucks they are.
It also needs to be extended to upper/middle management. In most companies 99% of the decisions are made by the level below the executive team. These are the collection of relatives, kiss-asses and a scattering of qualified individuals who hope to eventually make it to the C-suite.
Unless they write it carefully, all a law like that is going to do is further encourage the use of subcontractors as second-class employees.
this is great. there has always been the most paid, least paid thing, but linking tax rate to it is genius.