The Continuing Failure Of Conservative Economic Policies

Not. 1981 interview in The Atlantic:

LINK to full text

Any other myths you'd like me to dispel for you?

 

That's not an interview. That is a biography. Also, that is exactly the hearsay I was referring to. The author is quoting David Stockman, but not referencing where the quotes are from or referencing where the information he gathered originated. The author's words are hearsay.

You really need to learn the difference between primary and secondary sources.

 

Interview, in a magazine, with permission from Mr Stockman. Primary source.

He also is quoted as saying "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers."

 

Ummm...not making your bonus is not a pay cut.

 

How can you say that without knowing any facts? Here in Kansas you can live quite well on $14-15 an hour.

 

I don't pay my employees (remember, I own a company too) based on company performance. I pay them based on the wages we agreed to when they were hired and then compensate them on their individual performance. Meaning, if they increase the profitability of a project through efficiency and hard work, they will realize a computed bonus.

How the company overall performs, has no bearing, whatsoever on that employees compensation.

Don't go moving the goal posts. I was using the figures provided in your article from a left leaning economy rag.

Lets talk reality here rwild.

The left like you like to use very rare instances and anomalies in pushing your agenda. Its always using the worst of the worst to push for change on everybody.

Small businesses overwhelming outnumber large businesses where these situations that you describe are prevalent. The liberal economy rag you cited only pays attention to the top few companies, because their income gap is the largest, and then they proclaim that this is a problem down throughout all of our society and trickle down is failed. You buy into it hook line and sinker.

The truth is, the majority of companies in this country have minimal income gaps between management and employees. And trickle down theories WORK every single day for hundreds of thousands of businesses.

Its typical in the class war fare tactics of the left though to pay attention to a few bad apples to proclaim that the entire orchard is rotten.

Its so ugly and untruthful.

 

You can twist around all you want, just because he regretted saying it doesn't mean he didn't.

Part of the original agreement? Not a pay cut.

 

If the company is doing well, and he is doing well would you be inclined to offer him a raise?
If the company is doing poorly but he's doing a stellar job will you still pay him a bonus?

We're not talking about small businesses who by and large don't benefit from the huge incentives and tax breaks given to the biggest companies. I agree with you, most small companies are well run with minimal wage gaps.

 

We're not in court kiddo, arguing semantics doesn't change anything.

It's very simple.
The CEO was to receive a predetermined amount of compensation if he accomplished this goal, and a different predetermined amount if he did not.

If it is a part of the original agreement, and he doesn't reach the specified goal for the higher amount it isn't a pay cut, it's part of the original agreement in which it was accepted that this might happen.

 

It's not semantics, but a matter of simple logic. Facts need to be supported with evidence. Hearsay isn't evidence.

It only sounds simple because I have already decided that I'm not going to waste time explaining how CEO compensation works to you. And I've already explained that executive compensation is a mixture of performance based compensation with fixed salary. One form of compensation is often determined how large or small other forms of compensation will be. Again, it is really not worth diving into details because I don't think you'll be able to understand.

 

Using the federal minimum, when multiple states have a higher wage. So yeah, that figure of 7.25 work for places like MS, where the cost of loviing is so much less that someone earning 15k/yr their has spending power of more than 15k. And that's starting, not actual. Average Wal Mart associate pay is around 12 or 13/hr. Do you think the CEO of Wal Mart makes tens of millions out the gate with no experience? Of course not. So if you want to make an honest comparison, use average associate wage. With that it's around $27k.

Using a full-time work week doesn't make sense when looking at salary workers who work almost double full time (sometimes more).

And it's not 35 million. That's an old figure. It's actually 25.6m, including stocks and such. And the average associate pay goes into that 948 times. And since the CEO works far more than 40 hours, let's just cut that in half and say that his hourly wage is about 475 times that of a regular associate (not including the overtime differential). Because it is disingenuous to look at an 80hr/wk worker and say that his hourly wage is his weekly pay divided by 40.

It's still a lot more, but you missed the point. Is the work of the head of a 100+ billion dollar company worth as much as a greeter? 100x? It's easily worth 100x more. How would you say that it is not? That's what I want to know.

 

100 times? sure.
200 times? quite probably
Nearly 500 times? debatable
Nearly 1000 times? I doubt it.

And even with your numbers it's over $6000 an hr.

 

As I already said, we're not in court. Whether what he said could be used as evidence or not he said it and hasn't denied it AFAIK.

I've never been a multi-millionaire CEO (have you?)so I don't know first hand but I understand contracts just fine thank you and if it is part of the original contract that he will only be paid X amount of dollars if he doesn't meet certain goals then it isn't a pay cut no matter how you pars it.

 

Yeah, about that. I'd say it's fine for a CEO to make 1000+ times what an associate does per hour, but that's because that's what the company is willing to pay them. Just like I have no issue with Wal Mart cashiers starting at around $15/hr in the Dakotas, because that's what the company is willing to pay. It's the market determinant, where both have agreed to the set price.

So you agree that with my figures, comparing the CEO to average associate pay is debatably fair? Because it's less than 500x. Even less if you account for the overtime differential, which puts the Wal Mart CEO's actual hourly pay at 4900/hr. Which, divided by the average Wal Mart associate salary ($12.57), is 392. So he's really only making 392x what the average Wal Mart associate does per hour. So you'd say that's between quite probably and debatably fair, right?

(sidenote - the article I reference here does make one annoying error. There is no such thing as "W-1 enlisted personnel". W-1 is an officer, and W-1 is pretty much non-existent. The Navy doesn't have a W-1.)

 

The last two years that Clinton was President the US had a budget surplus that allowed us to pay down some of the debt. When Bush was president taxes, especially to the richest of us, were cut to where the US no longer had a budget surplus but a budget deficit. The easy solution is to restore the tax rates to where they were under Clinton. The problem is that the Republicans who control the house refuse to raise any taxes, preferring government programs, especially those programs that help anyone, especially the underprivileged, be cut. That Obama prefers, the good the government can do, to endure the deficit rather than throw the county into a tea party/libertarian/conservative morass, shows Obama’s moral superiority over his Republican detractors.

I guess that is why the net effect of the GOP forced government shutdown was the acceptance of Clinton’s policies that eventually led to a budget surplus. I know Republicans like to think they won the battle but the final result was pretty much what Clinton proposed, not the other way around

Who are you calling a moron? After all it is a conservative revisionist line that you are repeating.

 

Why do you think giving the government more money produces wealth and prosperity? It doesn't and, in fact, it can't. The problem now isn't the tax code. It's a regulatory regime that has tripled in content range and scope since Reagan. It's government that produces, at the federal level, little more than red tape, but wants to consume everything. The problem with high taxes is that it serves in the main to concentrate wealth, while simultaneously slowing, if not preventing the formation of more wealth. By the way there is no such thing as trickle down economics. That's misnomer sold by leftist political pundits to the credulous to get them to work against their own best interests.

 

The mean GDP growth for 5 years of Obama and the Democrats is less than 2%, not much there to write home to Mother about.



The five years from 1981 to 1986 the mean growth rate was almost 4%. One is a recovery, the other is not.

 

When did I say that giving money to the government produces wealth and prosperity? I didn't.

Someone else already built the "there's no such thing as trickle down" semantic strawman.

We deregulated in the 70's and 80's, and that's also when real wages and productivity became disconnected. Productivity kept going up while real hourly wages have stagnated since the mid 70's. Why do expect a strategy that failed the majority of the population previously to suddenly turn out differently?

 

Because the republican talking heads say so of course! Geeze.

 

We didn't deregulate crap in the seventies and eighties. Our Democratic congress wouldn't permit it. In fact we added four to five federal agencies that didn't previously exist. We lowered rates but added complication to the tax code and removed several exemptions The term trickle down is a straw man. The proper term is the Laffer curve which is a mathematical model that shows where optimum amount of revenue occurs along a line of increasing tax rates. Above that point revenue declines as economic activity and wealth formation slows, producing a smaller pie and consequently less tax revenue. Below that point and the impact on economic growth caused by tax decreases can't grow the economy fast enough to make up for the lost revenue. Where that point is is currently under debate.

And who the hell do you think gets the money if you raise taxes, Santa Clause?

 

I'm sorry, but if you are going to deny the deregulation of the 70's and 80's ever occurred , you are simply not operating in the world of reality. Good luck with that.

 

Please tell me what was deregulated in the seventies and eighties? Please tell me how you deregulate anything while adding four to five new regulatory bodies. We sort of deregulated sir travel in the early 80's with the immediate result that fairs decreased as competition increased and air travel safety remained as good as ever.

 

It got you your small chain of retail stores with a go of $750K ,didn't it .

 

I agree with this forbes article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/07/16/what-went-wrong-in-kansas-maybe-nothing/

Sumed up: Too early to tell.