Why do American CEOs get paid so much?

HAHAHAAA!! No, if low taxes equaled a thriving society, CA would be a utopia. Remember Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes and was supposed to make CA a utopia of low tax burdens on homeowners? Well, guess what? The low and declining property taxes mandated by Prop 13 have forced the state and all local governments in CA to give exorbitant, increasing, and unsustainable subsidies to landowners -- as proved by the astronomical land values there. THAT is what has caused the high taxes on everything else. It is those extravagant landowner subsidies that have caused the extreme inequality and social problems that have required increases to all other taxes, in order to make up for the fact that property taxes can't be increased. It is the low land taxes that have created the social problems in CA that require high government spending to ameliorate (it won't solve them), and thus high taxes on everything else. Compare TX, which wisely has high property taxes and low taxes on everything else.

Which all dates from Prop 13 and the forced increase in subsidization of landowners. In 1978, the year Prop 13 passed, CA schools, roads, etc. were among the best in the country, and housing was affordable. By almost any measure, CA was one of the best places in the country to live. Then CA committed suicide by passing Prop 13. It will continue to be a basket case until Prop 13 is repealed. Take it to the bank.

Nope. Only high taxes on economic activity do. Not high land taxes. See TX and other high-property-tax states. Only when property taxes get really high, as in Detroit (~4%), do they become harmful, as at such high rates they crush land value and end up falling almost exclusively on improvements.

 

Not mathematically possible. Nowhere in your rant did you mention spending and mismanagement. Our low ranking schools has nothing to do with the spending per student. Charter schools have produced better results with the same money. CA spends more than double per mile of road than the rest of the country and I drive these torn up roads every day. Politicians are spending like thieves with stolen credit cards and you see the problem as the credit limit being too low.

Sorry to ruin your HAHA moment, but results speak for themselves.

 

Wrong. You are quite the font of misinformation, aren't you?

<yawn> You mean my calm and thoughtful identification of facts you refuse to know?

Wrong again: Prop 13 is not merely mismanagement, it is the worst public policy blunder committed by any US state since the Civil War. And because Prop 13 forces the state and all local governments in CA to give exorbitant, increasing, and unsustainable subsidies to landowners, it has the effect of making everything more expensive. They seem to be spending a lot, but the money doesn't buy as much because Prop 13 has made everything more expensive.

But a lot to do with the fact that what is spent has to go farther, because the subsidy to landowning makes everything more expensive. In TX, a public school teacher can buy a typical house for a little over $200K. In CA, purely because of Prop 13, it's nearly $600K. Do you understand that CA teachers therefore have to be paid a lot more for doing the exact same work as teachers in TX?

Because they don't have to satisfy the same mandates, like having to accept all students, no matter how ill-suited they are to being in school at all.

Because Prop 13 has made sure CA has to pay landowners five times as much for the land to build roads on.

Roads are in bad shape in many states. CA's roads have to handle a lot more traffic than the roads in most states, especially heavy trucks, which cause far more road wear.

No, I see the problem as the people who get the benefit of the desirable public services and infrastructure the cards are used to buy -- i.e., landowners -- not being the ones paying the costs.

<yawn> They certainly do: by virtually every measure, CA was a far better place to live in 1978, before Prop 13 passed. ALL of the problems the anti-Prop 13 campaign warned of in 1978 have come to pass, while NONE of the promised benefits have. Professional real estate lobbyist and liar Howard Jarvis, the public face of the pro-Prop 13 campaign, swore on a stack of Bibles that if CA tenants voted for Prop 13, their rents would go down. They believed him, passed Prop 13, and their rents increased even faster than before.

 

NEW SKILLS LEARNING FOR THE INFORMATION AGE

[QUOTE="Doofenshmirtz, post: 1071649532, member: 70377" Our low ranking schools has nothing to do with the spending per student. .[/QUOTE]

And Charter Schools are not the Magic Solution either. They are a solution that only a tiny majority of the American economy can afford.

The real solution is BIGGER in nature, and is found from the Atlantic here: America's Not-So-Broken Education System

Excerpt:

Read on if you want to know what is really wrong with Uncle Sam's National Education System. What is not mentioned, in the article, is (to my mind) the real reason we are not graduating from post-secondary education a sufficient number of students. (And by "sufficient" I mean expanding the Public Schooling priority to the post-secondary level.)

PS: From where comes the necessity of free post-secondary education? From an historic evolution of mankind - that is from the Agricultural Age (that ended in the second-half of the 19th century), to the Industrial Age (that ended in the second-half of the 20th century), and the present Information Age (the birth of which was anointed by the Internet).
PPS: Our work-force is not keeping up with the intellectual requirements of the Information Age. And that can only change with free, or nearly-free, Post-secondary Education funded by the US government and available to all at state post-secondary educational institutions of learning. (Learning what? Above all New Higher Level Skills necessitated by the Information Age affecting all work-professions!)

 

Surprise, surprise.

Ever look at the make-up of an American BoD? All top executives of other companies.

Make a law that stipulates that the Board must have at least two members elected from the Employee Base, and that might be a good start.

And if not, expect nothing to change: Income Inequality in the US - 2019

Note particularly in the above linked article the "10 Factors Impacting US Income Inequality".

 

CA brings in more tax money. Your argument that they take in less revenue is false. By the time I am done paying taxes, I am left with less than half of MY hard earned money. These same teachers are paying 10% sales tax, gas taxes, registration fees, etc. CA doesn't have a revenue problem.

 

Why do American CEOs get paid so much?
Because, "nothing exceeds like excess!"
Also, because of an extraordinary lack of common sense and humanity.

 

Not property tax money as a fraction of all revenue.

I made no such argument, as you know. Prop 13 only reduced PROPERTY taxes, which is why it has been so harmful. The worsening injustice caused by low property taxes has in turn caused social problems that demand more government spending, so all other taxes have to not only make up for the lack of property tax revenue, but raise even more to address the social problems -- poverty, crime, homelessness, etc. -- that low property taxes cause.

Which is exactly why land in CA is so astronomically valuable: your earnings are being taken from you in taxes and given to landowners in the form of desirable public services and infrastructure. Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading.

Right: it has a justice problem. Prop 13 forces it to give exorbitant, increasing, unsustainable, and UNJUST subsidies to landowners.

 

I get it. Prop 13 gets you emotional. Even with prop 13, CA is not even in the top 10 of low property taxes. We do rank number 1 in poverty. You simply can't make the case that CA politicians lack revenue. Most CA cities are on the brink of insolvency and that can only happen by irresponsible spending.

 

INCOMES ACCUMULATE INTO WEALTH AT THE TOP BECAUSE OF TAXATION

None of the above, really.

It is because America's dreadful upper-income taxation that has been systematically reduced ever since Ronald Raygun took office.

See here:


JFK was the first postwar PotUS to reduce upper income taxation. He wanted to do a favor for his father and the wealthy who funded his campaign; and then again in the early 1980s with Reagan.

Uncle Sam's upper-income taxation is ridiculously low so incomes accumulate at the top ...

 

Yes, because it's evil. Maybe you don't care because you feel like evil isn't such a bad thing, that it's nothing to get upset about. I beg to differ.

But the effects are worse because it is so unequal. Prop 13 reduces the effective rate by limiting increases as long as the owner holds the title. So owners who have held the title since Prop 13 passed in 1978 -- almost all of which are corporations -- are paying almost no property taxes, while people who have bought their homes recently are paying far more instead. Corporations are also able to avoid CA property taxes by transferring titles through shell companies so that the nominal owner stays the same.

Because of Prop 13, which forces everyone to subsidize landowners, especially corporate ones.

Increased revenue can't solve a problem -- an unjust tax system -- that increased revenue inherently aggravates.

Wrong again. They are insolvent because Prop 13 forbids them to recover the land value their spending on desirable public services and infrastructure creates.

 

So we have moved from:

"calm and thoughtful identification of facts"

To:

"because it's evil"

Nowhere in your emotional rant do you hold elected officials accountable for mismanagement. Not forcefully confiscating money from land owners is not the same as subsidizing them. There are states with lower property taxes than CA and much better roads and schools.

Im not sure why I having a conversation with someone who thinks that not forcefully confiscating money from tax payers is evil. Taxes are the reason companies left CA.

 

You really do need a history lesson.

Federal Income Taxation was passed by Congress in 1913. It's been around for more than a century and it is NOT being confiscated except in your mind.

What it is also is far too low for upper-incomes, and thus unfair in scope ... !

 

So please share your vast knowledge of history and tell us what happens to my home, business, bank account, retirement, and other assets if I don't pay my taxes? I can't wait.

 

No we haven't. I am still calmly and thoughtfully identifying facts. They are merely facts that you have decided not to know, because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

Right. That is a calm and thoughtful identification of a fact. Evil is deliberate abrogation of others' rights with intent to inflict injustice. That is what Prop 13 does, as I have demonstrated.

Calling facts emotional rants does not alter them, sorry.

Because I am not the voters. It is their job to hold their officials accountable, not mine. My job is to identify the indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications. That is what I have done, and that is why you are dodging, twisting and evading.

Ahem. It is the landowners who are forcefully confiscating the land from all who would otherwise be at liberty to use it, and I will thank you to remember it. It is the landowner who, qua landowner, is always a pure parasite, a pure thief. Requiring people to pay the market value for what they are taking from others is not "confiscating." Clear? Do you think if a baker asks you to pay for a loaf of bread you take from his bakery, he is "confiscating" your money?? What nonsense. You are merely used to taking the bread without paying, so now when I suggest you should rightly pay for it, you accuse me of advocating "forceful confiscation" of your money.

Yes, actually, it is, because landowners are privileged to pocket the entire value of all public spending on desirable services and infrastructure. I told you before to Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading. You obviously didn't, or you would know better than to make such foolish and disingenuous claims. Land value is NOTHING BUT the market's estimate of the net future after-tax subsidy to the landowner. That is why housing is least affordable in low-property-tax states like HI, DC and CA.

Name one.

Whereas I know very well why I am having a conversation with someone who refuses to know the fact that land value is nothing but the measure of the expected net future subsidy to the landowner: he is ignorant of that fact.

Not property taxes. Why do you always try to change the subject? Property tax rates are very high in TX, and companies are flocking there. According to your beliefs, that is impossible. According to mine, it is expected. My beliefs therefore accord with the facts, yours are refuted by the facts. Can you find a willingness to learn from the fact that objective, empirical facts prove your beliefs are false?[/quote]

 

That's called "life". Get it?

There is no guaranty of ANYTHING in "life", unless you have insurance. And, in the case of a National Economic Breakdown, nobody had foreseen how a tiny-bug could do what it did to the Great Uncle Sam! Whereas Europe, which has a National Healthcare System, had foreseen calamities - just not THAT GREAT as Covid-19. We humans are not all that prescient - too often we must learn the hard way.

Surprise, surprise! What an astonishing lesson this one has been ...

 

Well, you'll have to wait. This present economic crisis is not going away tomorrow.

You hunker down and do as best as you can given the circumstances. Any economy is "national in nature" and that means for Demand to rebuild Consumers must consume. That will restart (hopefully at the end of summer) when everybody more or less gets back to work.

Because what ordinary consumers SEEM NOT TO UNDERSTAND is that we are the economic bosses! We determine the limits of Demand, in both good and bad ways. Meaning both economic expansion and contraction ...

 

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION MUST BE OFFERED FREELY BY EACH STATE

And, above all (having reread this post) that must happen at the state postsecondary schooling level. That's where far too many of the poorer kids are being refused entry not because they aren't smart enough, but because their parents cannot afford the average $14K a year tuition fee (plus the extras).

Lest we forget: The Poverty Threshold wage is $25K a year for a family of four. There is no way any family at that level can afford $14K a year to send their kids to state postsecondary schooling!

POST-SECONDARY SCHOOLING MUST BE FREE, GRATIS & FOR NOTHING! Like primary and secondary schooling, we-the-sheeple should make all-level education available at no real cost*. (Vocational, Associates, Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate.)

But that's at the mid-level of our population. The real problem is much lower. It is the know-nothings we are graduating (or not graduating) from high-school. They are amongst the nation's poorest families and they need Special Attention at the state-level. Meaning they need to be closely watched at both the primary and secondary-school level where their ability to learn becomes amply vivid (to the teacher's eyes).

They need attention. They deserve attention. And if given that attention at the earliest age then one day you might be grateful that they DID NOT BREAK INTO YOUR HOUSE and abscond with something they think is "theirs" to take ...

*Where does Uncle Sam get the money? From two places: First, we lower the total expenditure on the DoD, which is way beyond any decent proportion (to our needs). And, secondly, enhanced taxation of the rich and super-rich and most all upper-incomes.
**And why will the above "work". Because we are changing from the Industrial to the Information Age. The enhanced skills we give our kids will boost their incomes by far better paying jobs!

 

[/QUOTE]

Great. Now all you have to do is show how our government lost revenue due to prop 13. Every person and business pays property tax. The money I have left over to support my family is the result of my labor, not a subsidy.


ALL CAPS shows emotion. HAHAHAAA for example. I am not just accusing you of advocating forceful confiscation of my money, you are admitting to it. Still no mention of irresponsible spending or the fact that CA cities were already on the brink of insolvency before Covid19. If you feel that government should reward themselves for their careless policies, you can still give them more of your money!

 

Thats your history lesson? Good day sir.

 

What I am admitting is that you are "bitching in a blog" because there's no where else you can do it!

This DEBATE Site has become a large exchange of misery in the present context. And of course, all the finger-pointing is in the direction of LaLaLand on the Potomac.

Well, that's just tough. In life, shat-happens!

Uncle Sam's government has become is one of the worst of any developed countries on earth when it comes to Government Expenditure and foresight of any large calamity as has occurred. The first reaction from Donald Dork when he saw what Covid-19 was doing to his hotel-business was to deny it existed. (That's JERKO for you!)

Political Facts:
-The country has been hit by a major epidemic and everybody is finger-pointing one-another! Typical of a presidential election year.
-The country was TOTALLY UNPREPARED for a calamity like Covid-19 and now it is facing momentous death-counts as a consequence!
-It does not have the means to fight this viscous killer and wont have them for quite some time due to its complexity.

My Point? Wakey, wakey!

Something is VERY WRONG with the way the country is being run unpreparedly. And to my mind, the Replicants are to blame. Not just for today, but the past seven years. When they are not in power, they stymie the party that is - which is how they broadsided Obama.

Why? Because the Replicant's want control of the spending-purse. And whatever it controls, it is to protect the gains of the upper-income people who garner the most-money from the country's economy due too very lax upper-income taxation. Which means, ipso-facto, one of the most Unfair Economic Systems on this planet when it comes to Income Disparity

Tell me how I've got all wrong, all wrong but PROVE IT by means of the factual evidence ...

 

If discussing my opposition to irresponsible money management by elected officials is "bitching", what does that make your posts? Are you blind to the things citizens can do other than discussing it on a forum?

California is an example of your misguided beliefs that Republicans are to blame. Dems enjoy a super majority and CA is the poverty capitol of the US. Both parties spend like thieves with stolen credit cards.

 

No I don't. It lost property tax revenue because that was Prop 13's sole intent.

False.

False. To the extent that your money consists of land rent it is a subsidy, because it comes from the community and you could have collected it equally well while comatose.

< Y A W N >

No, that is just another bald falsehood on your part. Requiring people to pay for what they take is not forceful confiscation. Land value is simply the measure of how much wealth the landowner can expect to take from the community but not pay for.

OK, here's a mention of it: when governments get their revenue from land rent, their own financial incentive is to use the money responsibly, for the public benefit, as that will increase their future revenues. By contrast, when they use revenue from taxes on economic activity, as Prop 13 forces them to do, their incentives are perverse, encouraging them to spend the revenue irresponsibly, as there is little connection between their spending and their future revenue.

They weren't before Prop 13. HELLO??

The worst policy is Prop 13, and the government can't do anything about it.

 

It's just another American-English word for "complaining".

Down boy!

You've not been on this forum long enough. My beliefs are not misguided. (They are indeed mine and mine alone.) And always based upon practical evidence for what I argue and well aimed!.

Stick around. It gets easier with usage ...

 

Republicans are definitely to blame for Prop 13, the worst public policy blunder committed by any US state since the Civil War. CA committed suicide when it passed Prop 13, as the state's downward trajectory since 1978 on virtually every measure proves.

The Dems are powerless against Prop 13, which has made CA the poverty capital of the US.

Prop 13 creates the social problems that government spending futilely tries to remedy. No matter how much they spend, nothing can work while Prop 13 remains in place.