Swiss propose to limit corp. executive pay to 12x their lowest-paid employees

[Ryantology]

"It's really just a thought process that says no-one should earn more in a month than the lowest-paid person in the same company does in a year," Roth says. "You shouldn't just say a maximum salary, because what we really want is a relationship between the lowest and the highest. There are others who say that people shouldn't earn over, say, a million, but in our opinion it is not really the number."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/switzerla...z2kYF2dO6D

Not a snowball's chance in Arizona of that happening here, because in America, we believe that "job creators" have the right to earn $60 million a year while paying their regular employees poverty wages because fuck the people who actually make business profitable.

[Captain Colostomy]

Striking it rich and making it big is the American dream, so as long as people are willing to swallow that bullshit, yup. The sad fact is there are minimum wage slaves who will rail against anyone 'tampering' with their snowball's chance in realizing it. That their company's CEO's are cutting hours in effort to pad his retirement at age 50 never factors. Why?

I applaud the Swiss proposal.

[kılıç_mehmet]

Regulation of greed. This is what a country needs.

[Anomalocaris]

How about Officers of any company that lay off workers is automatically disqualified from bonuses for that year?

How all officers of a company must forfeit their own pay for at least 3 consequetive months immediately prior to laying off any employees?

How about any officers of a company that laid off workers must give back 100% of any bonuses obtained while working for the company during the 3 prior years, even if they have left the company during these 3 years?

How about uniform severence packages for officers and employees?

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Regulation of greed. This is what a country needs.

One can't regulate greed, one could channel it to do the most good for the least harm.

[CapnAwesome]

I think some of this is well intentioned but ultimately stupid and doesn't deal with several realities. The most important being the brain drain. The truly quality qualified people will simply head companies out of countries that will pay them more. Another is that do you guys really think your average Swiss worker is suffering in poverty? This is the country with the highest standard of living in the world, but sometimes you guys act like all these pampered first world people are suffering. Get real. I'm pretty sure that Swiss workers (and indeed those in any first world country) are doing just fine. When people with flat screen T.Vs and video game systems and laptops are complaining about their poverty they just come off as whiney babies with imaginary first world problems.

[Tiberius]

I want to know how the '12' value was chosen. Is it just because it makes for a good political statement (12 months pay in 1 month, etc.) or has someone actually tried to make a cost analysis on an executive's role in the company?

My guess is the former. The lowest paid jobs should be those that require no skill, experience, training, or education. That is, after all, why they are low paid. The highest wages should be based on how much more of those factors the job requires, and then other sorts of things like company loyalty, role importance, etc.

I'm not saying execs should earn millions of times what the lowest paid earn, but I suspect the 12x number is more political than objective.

[Ryantology]

I think some of this is well intentioned but ultimately stupid and doesn't deal with several realities. The most important being the brain drain. The truly quality qualified people will simply head companies out of countries that will pay them more.

There is no cap on pay, here. CEOs can still have their ridiculous millions every year. They just have to pay their lowest-wage employees 1/12 of what they make.

Another is that do you guys really think your average Swiss worker is suffering in poverty? This is the country with the highest standard of living in the world, but sometimes you guys act like all these pampered first world people are suffering. Get real. I'm pretty sure that Swiss workers (and indeed those in any first world country) are doing just fine.

Poverty should never even enter the equation. Workers shouldn't have to be literally starving before something is done about income inequality. The people who actually make business profitable by doing all the dirty work get relatively nothing for it while people expending relatively no effort at the top deserve to get a thousand times (or more) in compensation. For some reason, we seem to have decided that this is okay.

When people with flat screen T.Vs and video game systems and laptops are complaining about their poverty they just come off as whiney babies with imaginary first world problems.

Peasants! You can afford LUXURY ITEMS that literally cost dozens of dollars! People in Africa starve every day!

[Anomalocaris]

It is more important for a law to be adjudicatable then for it to be objective by some people's standard.

[Minimalist]

One can't regulate greed, one could channel it to do the most good for the least harm.

One can tax the living fuck out of it, though!

[Anomalocaris]

One can't regulate greed, one could channel it to do the most good for the least harm.

One can tax the living fuck out of it, though!

Whether one should tax the fuck out of greed depends on what the greed is being used to do.

I am not going to tax it if it is being used to do what I want done.