Why do American CEOs get paid so much?

More chest puff? Both you and the other fellow have now demonstrated that your approach is based on pretending intellectual superiority. Does that work? Gottzilla starts with comment over the difference between economics and accountancy. He would be fine if he was restricted to a rather mundane comment over the difference in definition of costs. That would, mind you, yield some defence for right wing market-orientated justification CEO pay. However, he didn't do that. Instead, it was an effort to say- via a sales tax on bikes (why he chose this is still quite beyond me)- that the fellow who you say needs educating doesn't understand tax incidence. The problem remains: you can't educate by promoting an elasticity myth that isn't backed up by the empirical data.

 

Feel free to get off your smartphone and onto a computer so others here know to whom you are responding ...

 

I used the "quote" button. erp!

 

No, you do. Proof:

Just where do you incorrectly imagine your land titles all come from, hmmmmm? Who originally issued them and who still enforces them? Who creates their value by providing the desirable public services and infrastructure you are privileged to charge your tenants full market value for?

The unimproved rental value of land, at least, is money that the government indisputably does earn. You are merely accustomed to taking it from government (i.e., from everyone else) without earning it, so you have convinced yourself it is rightly yours. But being accustomed to taking bread from a bakery without paying for it does not make the bread rightly yours, nor that the baker would be "confiscating" your money if he required you to pay for what you take from him.

No it doesn't. To be clear, I don't advocate or defend taxes on the fruits of one's labor, like income tax and sales tax. But CA resorts to such unjust and harmful taxes on the fruits of people's labor BECAUSE Prop 13 prevents government from recovering the land value it creates to pay for the desirable public services and infrastructure that create it. Unimproved land value is nothing but the market's estimate of how much more money the landowner (that's you) will take from the community by owning the land than he will ever repay in taxes on it.

That is correct. The only difference between a land deed and a slave deed is that a slave deed legally entitles the owner to take everything from one person, while a land deed entitles the owner to take one thing from every person: their liberty right to use that land.

No, that claim is objectively false. Land value is indisputably NOT the fruit of the landowner's labor. It comes EXCLUSIVELY from the services and infrastructure government provides, the opportunities and amenities the community provides, and the physical qualities nature provides at that location. You might notice the absence from that list of anything the landowner provides.

That is also objectively false. In fact, I am quite certain that you cannot even accurately describe my position, and invite you to try.

Greed is excessive, rapacious desire for more than one needs or deserves. That describes the privileged, especially landowners. The greed of the welfare chiseler for unearned wealth is to the greed of the privileged as the brightness of the moon is to the brightness of the sun.

Poverty is caused by uncompensated abrogation of people's rights. In many poor countries that is mainly done illegally, by private criminals, because government does not bother to secure people's rights; in other poor countries it is done illegally but by corrupt government officials, because government is controlled by criminals; but in advanced capitalist countries it is done legally, via privilege -- again, especially landowner privilege -- because government violates people's rights without just compensation for the unearned profit of privileged private interests.

Yes, and CA's results since Prop 13 passed in 1978 certainly speak for themselves. The superior economies and quality of life in states with the highest property tax rates, like NJ, TX, VT, NH, CT, WI, etc., also speak for themselves.

<sigh> As I already explained to you, who pays a tax is not determined by whose hands the money might have passed through on its way to the public treasury, but by who is made worse off by it. As the rent a tenant pays for land is not affected by whether or not the owner pays a tax on the land, the tenant is not paying any of the land portion of the property tax. By your brain-dead "logic," it is not even the tenant who pays the property tax but his employer, because that is where the money came from before the tenant paid it to you in rent. But no, wait a minute, his employer got the money from its customers, so they must be the ones paying your property taxes!

See the kind of absurdities your "arguments" lead to when you don't know any economics, and refuse to learn any?

I ask you again: if you magically did not have to pay any property tax on your rental properties, would you reduce the rents you charge your tenants? And if so, why? If not, then you have admitted that your tenants are not paying the property tax. Think about it: if all your income is from rent, all your expenses are also paid with rent income. But that doesn't mean that whatever you decide to spend your income on is an additional expense for your tenants. Their rent is unaffected by whether you spend your money on food, women, booze, sports cars, horses, cocaine, or property taxes, or just put it in the bank. They are therefore paying for their spending choices, including their rent, but not yours. The fact that you consider the property tax a cost of having tenants is irrelevant: it is not a cost of having tenants, it is a cost of owning the property, and will be the same whether you have any tenants there or not. The fact that having tenants helps you pay the property tax does not mean they are the ones paying it. Clear?

The reason OTHER taxes can be passed on is that supply is affected: if there is a tax on people's wages, for example, some people will choose to work less rather than get the partial wage for the extra hours. Employers will then have to offer workers higher wages to get them to work the desired number of hours, in effect paying a portion of the wage tax because they are made worse off by it. By contrast, the supply of land cannot be altered by taxation, and neither can the demand for it (assuming the tax is not greater than the land's rental value), so the price is unaffected.

GET IT???

 

I get it. Your greed is superior to that of those who actually do the work. If you believe the government is the best place for your money, send them all you want. What is stopping you?

 

This, from you???

Because it was an honest attempt to clarify an issue, something as remote from your understanding as the Oort Cloud.

Which empirical data show a non-zero elasticity of supply for land?

 

The landowner qua landowner by definition never does any work. He just takes the land rent in return for nothing.

You are just sad, now.

 

You are the one resorting to cheap insults. The renter gets the use of the property without the risks ownership. Whats sad is supporting a big powerful government and providing them with money they didn't work for so they can buy bombs to drop on countries that never attacked us.

 

There was no honesty in you pretending that he wasn't referring to a sales tax. There was no honesty in you pretending that he didn't provide tax burden myth. Now I don't want to discuss your Georgist garbage on this thread. It isn't relevant after all. I'm more interested in how you think gottzilla can use his elasticity analysis to defend or critique CEO pay? Good luck.

 

He only used a sales tax as an example of a tax with non-zero price elasticity to show the difference from zero elasticity.

It's not a myth any more than Newtonian mechanics is a myth. It just isn't the whole story, which is obviously too complex for people like Doofenshmirtz who are completely unacquainted with the basics.

You are the very last person who can criticize the relevance of others' contributions.

IIRC, the thread got to that point because D wasn't clear on the fact that reward is not strictly commensurate with contribution, and g was trying to show him why his ideas about tax incidence were erroneous.

 

That you regard the facts as insulting indicates that you know your position is indefensible, and embarrassingly so.

There is no risk in owning land, and merely assuming a risk does not earn any return: criminals routinely assume a lot of risk.

You could actually make a legitimate criticism of property taxes at this point: they fall on improvement value as well as land value. But that would mean admitting that the portion on land value is not susceptible to such criticism.

As land rent is created by provision of desirable public services (very much including secure, exclusive tenure) and infrastructure, they DID work for THAT money.

If you had been paying attention, you would know I have consistently talked about government providing the desirable public services and infrastructure that create land value, and how such spending should most justly and efficiently be financed, not defending government spending per se. Governments -- and especially the US federal government -- certainly do a lot of things I would rather they not do, especially engage in military aggression. CA, for example, spends billions to keep a lot of innocent people locked in cages.

 

He pretended that he knew more about a sales tax, but actually demonstrated a knowledge deficiency (based on the notion that perfect demand inelasticity is required for consumers to pay the full cost of the tax). You've been told this countless times now.

 

"Meeza hatesa gubmint!"

I don't have to defend my position as results speak for themselves. When you give the gov more money, they just find more ways to spend it. Prisons are a good example.

Your statement (In bold) is false. If you can't google the well known risks that come with land ownership, don't bother replying.

 

More accurately, you can't defend your position as results speak for themselves.

"Meeza hatesa gubmint!"

No it isn't. There are risks in buying land, in using land, in improving land, but none in just owning it.

BWAHAHAHHAAAA!! Thanks for confirming there are no such risks.

 

Sorry to ruin your emotional outburst, but if someone is injured on your unimproved land, who do they sue?

 

No one. You can't sue people just because they own land you somehow got yourself hurt on. If a kid climbs a tree on someone else's land, falls out of it and breaks his leg, he can't just sue the owner of the land the tree is on. Don't be ridiculous.

 

I wish you were correct, but when a tort attorney gets involved, your tree is now an attractive nuisance and you are negligent. Most defendants settle as the expense of going to trial is often more than the property is worth. Owning land is far from no risk. Im surprised you didn't know that.

 

Nope. Calling a sheep's tail a leg does not give a sheep five legs. There are trillions of trees in the world, and calling them all "attractive nuisances" is just self-evidently absurd.

The fact that US tort law is massively dysfunctional and absurd is not related to landowning, because it applies to almost everything one does in the USA:

https://9gag.com/gag/ayngjoW/the-most-ridiculous-lawsuits-that-have-been-won-all-in-the-us-of-course

The basic problem is that effectively criminal penalties can be imposed by juries in civil cases without satisfying the burden of proof necessary in criminal prosecutions. But other advanced, democratic countries aren't that stupid.

There is no risk in owning land, any more than there is a risk in owning the leaves of a common weed. There may be some risk in living under evil laws that say owning the leaves of a common weed can get you locked in a cage for years by evil swine with guns, just as there may be some risk in living in an absurdly litigious society where the courts can just arbitrarily take your money from you for no reason. But that is a risk of living under absurd laws, not of owning land, as the same risk is incurred by many otherwise safe actions in that society, but not to owning land in other societies. Clear?

 

I wish you were correct, but you are far from it. You can google tort law for owners of vacant land if you are ever interested in being informed. From being required to clear brush to paying property taxes on land that is not generating income, there are many risks.

A friend of mine bought vacant land so he could have a private campsite for his family. One time, someone dumped tires, used oil, and radiator coolant. He reported it and they red tagged the lot. They gave him a deadline to clean it up to avoid fines. After paying to remove the waste and top soil, it ended up costing more than the land was worth.

Owning land comes with risk.

Wise men argue opinion. Only fools argue fact.

 

Absurd lawsuits are a risk of being in the USA, as I already showed you, not of owning land.

Brush clearing and property taxes are predictable costs, not risks.

Again, that is a risk of living in a jurisdiction that victimizes the victims of crimes. If he simply returned the title to the local authorities, he would not be out anything but the cost of the land. But that was a risk of buying the land, not of owning it.

Buying land comes with risk. Using land, improving land, they come with risk. Not just owning it.

How true.

 

Still incorrect as I have shown. That may explain why CEOs are paid well. They know what risks are. Ignoring risks do not make them go away. Putting you on ignore will make you go away. Bye.

 

False.

<yawn> It doesn't explain why American ones are paid an order of magnitude more than CEOs of comparable firms in other countries.

Yeah, that must explain why big American firms with highly overpaid CEOs never go broke or get bailed out by the government.

Oh, no, wait a minute, that's right: they do. A lot.

Misattributing them does not make them something they are not.

 

Not quite true. Incumbent firms tend to be less innovative than new entries. CEOs, if anything, are guilty of not taking enough risks. That only changes with mergers. We are in the territory of managerial theories of the firm then, when decision making becomes even more impaired.

 

Do you own a business?

 

Yep. Small and agile mind you.