Just finished listening to the state of the union and the republican rebuttal....ACK! To me, neither party has a clue what the average american experience is... sad.... Time for a super long RANT....... I was interested in the the presidents argument for raising the minimum wage....I have been thinking about this issue for a while now and trying to figure out what can be done to raise wages for those who are struggling because inflation is quite higher in reality than the Govt say it is. The fact of the matter is... if the minimum wage is raised - jobs will be cut. I know what many out there will say.. Walmart is a big company and can afford to pay their employees more... etc ... etc. And if all the minimum wage jobs out there were being supplied by large and very profitable companies like Walmart ... I would probably agree right away with that thinking. But in reality, probably half the minimum wage jobs out there are for either smaller companies, or companies that are barely getting by right now. For these companies, that means they would necessarily have to let people go. At the same time I read that the top executive at your average fortune 500 company historically was paid and earned at a rate of about 25X what the lowest paid employee of the company made. In the last 10 years or so those CEOs are now making about 100X the lowest paid employee. Obviously something is wrong here. Morally and Ethically these guys should be ashamed of themselves..... But is it right for the Govt to step in and penalize them even if they are being jerks? Im not sure....??? At first blush increasing the middle wage would seem to help alleviate this situation (after all the CEO doest seem to be bothered by his out-sized salary like he should be). But doing that would cause many other struggling businesses to have to let people go or else collapse....It a dilemma for sure. I personally have always believed that some income inequality is necessary to help motivate people to work hard for what they get. (After all, some people in our society work a LOT harder than others and should benefit from that higher level of effort) But at some point over the last decade this inequality got way out of hand...In no way does a CEO of any company out produce any employee of that company by 100X. And any self respecting CEO would look to improve his employees situation before improving his own situation (which is almost surely much much better). Morally and ethically CEO should be asking himself if he deserves a raise doesnt the whole structure that made that raise even possible deserve one as well? Let me make a small distinction here between CEOs and Owners... a CEO is by definition an employee of the company they work for... An Owner actually created and owns the company... I still think they (owners) deserve any and all benefits they are due for taking the risk to create the company in the first place. But a CEO (when not the owner) should never be paid a kings ransom for running someone elses company. If it is his company then he should still not be paid exorbitantly as an employee of that company (he is getting plenty wealthy as an owner of a increasingly valuable company) and will benefit the most when the company is sold. After thinking about a solution to these two conflicting issues/situations... I have come to the opinion that since the corrupt CEOs out there wont do what they morally and ethically should do... which is step up and pay their employees better (obviously they have enough money to bloat their own salary and give themselves big bonuses)....maybe some kind of compromise Govt reform should be put in place. ( I have a hard time believing Im even saying this actually ) Imagine this instead of flat out raising minimum wage we do this... All employees have to be paid at least 1/25th of the salary of the company CEO ( or top paid employee ) not including dividends paid to actual owners - or minimum wage... which ever is bigger... This addresses both issues I think (since its doubtful a struggling business owner is paying himself more than 25X what hes paying his lowest paid employee....This way if a CEO has a banner year his whole staff benefits along with him....instead of him taking all of the benefit for himself. Of course, this breaks my long held belief that most ( if not all ) govt regulation is a bad idea... we unfortunately live in a world where men of power operate without consideration or basic humanity toward their fellow men. Who could conscience living in a Palace while their employees struggle to not become homeless...indeed the love of man has truly waxed cold.... But if the govt is going to regulate this anyways... maybe my idea would work better.....???
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 04:37:15 +0000
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