Wealth Distribution in the USA

It seems to me when it comes to jobs in the United States, there are several factors to consider1) What responsibility does the employer legally have
2) What responsibility does the employer have to their shareholders (i.e. the bottom line and the all mighty buck
3) What responsibility does the employer have to their employees
4) What responsibility does the employer have to society as a whole.It seems to me, right now, in the U.S... the major corporations to all intents and purposes ONLY think of 'the bottom line'.. and only go beyond that when there are legalities involved. Those legalities are little things like 'quality control' and 'environmental issues' and 'don't poison the customer'. It seems the fiscal conservatives want to get rid of those controls to increase the bottom line.Some of that 'going for the bottom line' include some things that are not for good for their employees, and not good for society as a whole. It seems that the people with the money have convince the government to mainly be consern with the bottom line, and for the monetary well being of the corporations and the shareholders, and not to concern themselves with the employees. They are the ones with the money and he who has the gold makes the rules.That is the situation as Percy describes. But.. is that the right thing to do In my opinion.. no, it is not.What ever happened to 'an honest days wage for an honest days work'?? It's gone. Many of the people who work hard live at a subsistance wage, while the CEO's of those corporations earn multiple millions.80% of the people who work at walmart qualify for food stamps... which means the tax payer to subsidizing walmart for their salaries.. and the CEO made 35 MILLION a year. Let's compare that with Cosco, where the owner/ceo made 500K, and the average worker made $16 to 18 dollars , and 85% had health care.Now, what Walmart did was legal. But , in my opinion it is unethical. The modern wealthy are supremely interested in just getting wealthier... at the expense of exploiting the poor.It seems that greed rules the day, and Laissez faire economics does not allow for a healthy distribution of wealth. I think the government SHOULD get involved, and put the kind of proper regulation into place to insure that people do get a proper wage for honest work.There is what is currently legal, and then there is was is ethically and morally correct.Edited by ramoss, : No reason given.

Except that they don't even have to do that. The CEO can tank the company, even deliberately, and still walk away with millions, and there's no form of legal redress that says that since he should have benefited the shareholders he should give some of it back.

Just to be sure people understand, I've only been describing the way things are, not the way they should be. Some people have expressed a great deal of wishful thinking about the way they think things really are, and that's all I've been objecting to. My main points have been that wages are primarily set by market forces, that shareholders own companies (including the profits *and* the losses), and that employment conveys none of the rights of ownership. I was with you right up until the very, very last part. I'd rather see governments implement fair taxation so that the rich pay their fair share, and then make sure that everyone has adequate housing, food and healthcare, independent of their wages.--Percy

That is one approach. I can agree with that to some degree, but I think there should be incentives to companies to , well, pay reasonable wages.. .. The idea of 'adequate food/healthcare/housing' can be so flexible, and I want people to have incentives to work. I realize not every one can, but I know some people in the system that need it for healthcare.... they can't earn more than a certain amount or lose the healthcare they need that allows for them to work.And I know some others that take advantage of the system to be bums.

What you are describing is capitalism. A company's first duty is to its shareholders and always has been. There's no point accusing companies of only thinking about the bottom line because that's their job - that's exactly what they're supposed to do and it's what has made the USA a successful country.What you need to be complaining about is your various governments not setting the correct regulations and taxation policies to rein in the worst excesses of capitalism and civilize it for the benefit of society as a whole.There's no point blaming the fox for not being a vegetarian - you need to protect the chickens better.

The problem is that the fox's wealth gives him influence over henhouse security.

Which reminds me of this:
I think too far off-topic for discussion - but fun and almost relevant to this thread.Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

And also that a lot of chickens think they're foxes - or think that they will be one day.

No, there isn't any point in blaming wild animals for their behavior. But it does not follow that we can ignore reality by failing to note that the decisions of corporations are made by people and not by animals or forces of nature.Perhaps ultimately we should require the government to curb antisocial behavior of corporations. But that does not mean that we cannot assign any bad karma for paying less than a living wage for a full days work to the people who actually have control over those wages.And those posters who seem to be talking about fiduciary duty as an absolute requirement to be greedy (this would not include Tangle) really ought to look into what that duty legally requires. I think the defenses that executives have against charges that they have breached their fiduciary responsibilities are very telling.In particular, defenses based on the business judgement rule are extremely difficult to overcome when the money involved is not going into the executive pockets. It would be an easy case to make that the publicity for paying sweatshop wages is not in the company's best interest. Yes, the stockholders may disagree, but their recourse is to replace the executive rather that to sue him/her.Do you think you could make the case that investment firms breach a duty when they divest themselves of profitable holdings in the gun industry for moral reasons or when they refused to deal with South Africa under apartheid? I think the answer is clearly no.

A couple of things could happen - the government could require companies to pay a minimum wage that is a living wage and the people could stop buying from the companies that exploit others.Consumer movements against companies who exhibit exploitative behaviour have been quite successful in some areas, I don't know how Walmart gets away with it so easily.

You may notice that the quote you provided bears no mention of me ever saying that salaries should be calculated as a function of economic benefit. You may notice that the the quote you provided does nothing but suggest that those who provide labour from which business derive economic benefit should be paid a living wage they can live on without govermnet subsidy for doing so.You may now apologise for the relentless straw man that you have been persistently pursuing. If you want to roughly estimate what economic benefit your box stackers bring then I suggest you estimate the cost to the business of your box stackers successfully going on strike. I.e. an absence of box stackers. If you estimate that your business is better financially off having not paid the wages of box stackers then one would have to question why you are employing them in the first place. If you estimate that the costs incurred from not having your box stackers do their thing is greater than the saving in unpaid wages then - Hey presto - We have the sort of argument for economic benefit Vs costs that you keep telling me is completely impossible. What about executives paid in the millions?

You have been the main contributor to a thread of over 350 posts so far and practically every single one of your posts has involved you completely ignoring what the numerous people opposing you are actually saying and instead relentlessly railing against some straw man notion of calculating salaries. So it's a bit rich for you to start telling me that I'm misrepresenting you..... That others have adopted the same straw man as you is testament to your persistence with it rather than anything else. Do you now understand that the 'link' being talked about has nothing to do with calculating salaries on the basis of some idiotic formula and that this is entirely a straw man construction created by you? And so do I. As Tangle put it market forces are "a crude indicator of the economic benefit an individual brings to a company". What I am highlighting is the increasingly common situations at the top and bottom where market forces completely and utterly fail to be even so much as a "crude indicator". Do you agree that if someone is receiving a salary in the millions it is absolutely reasonable and appropriate to question whether the economic benefit that person provides to the business justifies that level of reward? Do you agree that if shareholders are not asking such questions of such people they darn well should be?Do you agree that if the lowest paid workers are being paid so little that it is impossible for them to feed, clothe and house themselves, and thus continue in employment without welfare assistance, then it is absolutely reasonable and appropriate for society to ask whether those employees are providing the businesses that employ them with economic benefit that far outstrips the cost of the measly wages they pay? Do you agree that if government and societies are not asking why they should subsidise the employment costs of huge corporations they bloody well should be? I think once you start telling shareholders and governments that they cannnot ask questions like the ones above that you hit very dangerous terriotory. But is this always inevitably true?Let's say, merely for the sake of argument and to keep things simple, that each employee hired at $10/hour generates $100/hour in profit for the business in question. The company in question would be desperately stupid to start laying off workers merely because it had to pay them $15/hour instead wouldn't it?

Those are good options. Another could be an 'exploitation tax'.. where upper management is taxed at a higher rate if they make more than a certain times more than the hourly wages of the average employee. like an extra 2% if you make more than 10 times the wage of the average employee, and as that 'times' value goes up, so does the amount you get taxed .. (including, of course, stock options). That basically either causes the company to either pay their upper echelon less, or pay the average employee more.

Pay at the bottom is just as much a result of lobbying by those with wealth and power as is pay at the top. Who do you think relentlessly lobbies for a "flexible labour market"? Who opposes unionisation and collective bargaining? Who lobbies to stop minimum wage legislation being introduced? Who lobbies to ensure that where there is already a minimum wage that it will simply rot into irrelevance by virtue of never being increased with inflation?Let's not pretend that the same interests being served by proclaiming that market forces justify salaries at the top aren't also responsible for the fact that society has to subsidise the employment costs of corporations paying low wages at the bottom. Supply and demand is too blunt an instrument in situations where low paid workers provide enormous economic benefit. Let's say, merely for the sake of argument and to keep things simple, that each employee hired at $10/hour generates $100/hour in profit for the business in question. The company in question would be desperately stupid to start laying off workers merely because it had to pay them $15/hour instead wouldn't it?Let's take a more realsitic example - McDonalds (for example) is deriving enormous economic benefit from a low paid workforce. If all the low paid workers employed by McDonalds successfully went on strike we'd get some idea of just how much economic benefit McDonalds derives from such workers as compared to the wages it pays them. My estimate would be that the cost of such a strike would be considerably more than the cost associated with the salaries paid to those workers.Now let's say we raise the wages of those workers by 20%. Just for the sake of argument. What would happen? Would McDonalds sack lots of workers? Well if it did it would presumably have to close some of it's outlets or sell less burgers. Unless that 20% wage increase actually makes selling burgers unprofitable why would McDonalds do that rather than continue to make profit selling burgers albeit less profit than it was prior to the wage increase? Would it? If McDonalds could charge 20% more for Big Macs why isn't it doing so already? Where is your law of supply and demand when it comes to burger munching......?An increase in pay for those at the bottom could be absorbed by less profits for shareholders or less pay elsewhere (e.g. at the very top) - Tell me why you didn't deem these options as even worthy of mention? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I don't disagree and never have. You're first problem is that it's impossible to show this.
The second problem is that there is no reason for them to pay $15 instead of $10. But if they had to pay $15 because of a minimum wage imposition they would simply put up their prices to return to their earlier profit levels. This isn't necessarily a problem for them because their competitors would be subject to the same cost increases. But because a price increase will reduce demand, it's probable that fewer jobs will result. That's not realistic at all. McD employees a huge number of students and casual workers on a very flexible basis. They are generally glad of the work, happy with the pay and are not unionised (afaik).If they were unionised, it's likely that their pay would be higher, but that ain't the way of it. As above, they'd raise prices and sell a few less burgers which would lead to lower employment. It really is that simple - McD would be irrational to choose lower profit margins over more jobs just because we'd both prefer it.