Meet the CEO Who Cut Worker Pay in Half While Pulling in $21 Million Last Year

[haele]

82. Swing away - notice that though I tell you the percentage of taxes that come out of my paycheck -

I don't complain about them. And I certainly won't complain about the taxes my department head pays, or the VP of my company pays, or the CEO of my company pays. My taxes, and their taxes, and other people's taxes eventually come around to pay my salary, and if they don't, they pay for the services I use now, will use in the future, and have used in the past.
I'll pay them, and do so gladly, for the good they do as a common fund still outweighs the bad.

Though if Paul Ryan and the Randroids get their way, the taxes will end up going to the richy riches.

I'm also not saying "the 20% should pay less taxes" I have never said "the 20% should pay less taxes".
You keep missing with that, which is why I keep bringing the subject back to wages...

To put the tax-envy to rest - look, for the past three years, I pay on average an annual total of 40% between federal, state, and local income taxes and a good 7-8% of my income on sales taxes. For various reasons, primarily that not being a homeowner, unlike the majority of those in my tax bracket, I don't have the ability to itemize the deductions that might get me to the 9.29% "average" tax rate. I pay full rate to both state and federal - and BTW, taxes aren't an "addition" situation when it comes to what the total rate is, because what is counted as taxable and what isn't, and to what percentage something may be taxable is different between local, state and federal.
Now, we get $120 back every year from the state because we rent. So, I'm mistaken - I only pay around 38.7% of my gross income in taxes, and have to count that refund from last year on my federal taxes this year.
I don't cheat, I don't have "loopholes" and our family income is in the lower portion of a higher tax rate.
But according to some people, because I'm aware of how much I pay, why I pay it, and I don't live high on the hog, it must means I'm crying "Boo-hoo, poor me".
But what the hey, I'm just sharing my taxes because of my circumstances, and if they were higher, they'd be higher. Is that fair? Sure it is. I use a lot of infrastructure in my daily life.

If I get a raise and not much more in the way of deductions, I'd just have to cut out throwing some of my hard earned spending cash to the local food-truck owner. Of course, when I graduate, I'll be able to deduct my student loan payments, and then we'll see some deductions! I might even get close to 15% realized Federal tax rate!

As for "where I sit, asking for more than $19 an hour is greedy" - you don't know what someone is required to do - training, experience, testing - for that position and that wage. I'm sure someone will look up what is required to prove it is greedy, but my point still stands.

Sure, a 22 year old making $19 an hour could be partying all night with that - or that 22 year old could be paying off $40K or more in non-Stafford student loans, or the job that they are taking may required to continue expensive education to keep a certification that needs to be renewed every two or three years (medical certification, or IT - CSSIP Certification comes to mind), or they're not getting any benefits and have to fund their own medical and retirement through their job.

Is $19 an hour "greedy" if that is what is required for the person to live simply and pay off the debts required to get that job until they are no longer "entry level" and can start getting raises that will end up in a pay of six figures after ten/twelve years of hard work and promotions?
Or is it greedy because someone thinks they are making that $19 an hour just shuffling e-mails, answering calls and playing angry birds - and are spending the excess making it rain every Friday night with their buddies when they go out drinking?

No one can know how fair that income is unless they know where that job is (BTW, $19 an hour for a single parent gets you pretty much butkis in the 'hood in San Diego - too much for aid, not enough to pay rent - or mortgage - in a decent neighborhood and still pay for essentials), what that job does, and what value that job means to the business that hires a worker at that hour.
Just as people who bitch about those on disability have no idea what the disability is and how much that person is hurting. Or bitch about a single mother wanting to extend her welfare support because she's going to a university and has another year beyond what that support allows to get her degree.

An Auto Technician is probably coming to that job after having taken two to four years of training, for which they need to pay up to $40K of loans off depending on what they had to be certified on. And if they're installing/testing onboard computer systems or programming a robot for specialized operations, they may have to keep up on their training - and those courses aren't cheap.

As for the value of a wage to the business - that's usually pretty negligible to the business itself other than as a recruiting tool when it comes to hiring people with desired skills. What someone takes home is not really representative of what it costs the employer. I found in my surveys of small businesses that that hiring a better employee by offering 10% more than average, it has pretty much the same financial effect to that business as hiring a mediocre employee at 10% less than average.

Higher wages than the average may seem to come down to greed, but at the working levels, there is a lot of value that large businesses, especially corporations, are stealing from them. And subsequently stuffing that value into pockets of people with no more sense than an average floor manager at that business just because they know the right people or went to the right schools or know how to talk pretty enough to convince other people they're right.

So, off the tax issue altogether, since most workers have nothing to do with how their tax rate is set -

With today's cost of living, why shouldn't minimum wage be set at $19 an hour, pegged up only to the rate of the cost of living above the US mean? Keep the upper wages pretty much where they are - heck, I'll even forgo trying to get that merit promotion based off working for the degree "required" to make the job title I have now equivalent to the work I'm doing now- just peg up the lower 50%?
In most cases, that wouldn't affect the businesses very much at all - especially since most of them have already fixed the overhead issues that made the cost of the worker so high to them before the computer revolution.

Is that greedy, or would that help communities that are failing?

Haele