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“Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

arstechnica.com

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#22

Idiocy. If they want to tax high-income people, set an income tax. Why does an arbitrary subset of other people's income matter? This pairs hilariously with Prop 22 making all Uber's low wage employees non-employees.

There may be a reasonable argument to be made concerning the difference between the two approaches, but you've portrayed yourself as unreceptive from word one.

It reads totally differently if the first word is simply removed. It's remarkable how influential first impressions are.

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#23

Idiocy. If they want to tax high-income people, set an income tax. Why does an arbitrary subset of other people's income matter? This pairs hilariously with Prop 22 making all Uber's low wage employees non-employees.

They would then have to redefine income. many of these ceos are not paid salaries, they use more creative vehicles.

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#25
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong. But neither of those examples justify less than 3% compared to the lowest workers (assuming lowest = $30,000, and highest = $1,000,000). In reality the highest paid executives earn waay more then 1 million. This isn't okay.

> This isn't okay. If he produces more than 100x the value that others produce, it's perfectly ok. Nadella and Steve Jobs are obvious examples of the tremendous value a CEO can bring.

And Elon.

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#26

Company A and Company B pay their CEOs the same thing. Company A has 1000 employees and pays an average salary of $50k/yr. Company B has 500 employees and pays an average salary of $100k/yr. Company A is taxed, but Company B is not. Is that fair?

It's definitely not fair to the employees of company B (assuming the jobs are equivalent).

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#27
It's a little unclear to me exactly who this will be enforced on (Does a drugstore count? McDonalds restaurant?), but it seems like it will likely lead to a lot of companies divesting themselves of anything that could put them at risk now or in the future. And it doesn't seem like a great time for SF to be pushing companies away.

It's downright impressive to me that one of (if not the most) educated cities in the nation is ignorant of the fact this will likely do much more harm than good in the long run.

> San Francisco is one of the most desirable cities in the United States for companies to be located.

You're only the prettiest girl at the party until you're not anymore.

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#28
This is one of those things thats seems right as a principle, but really questionable as legislation.

On on hand, using median salary rather than an absolute amount seems fair, but in practice, this will most likely result in firms creating subsidiaries to employ their lowest-paid employees rather than raising their pay.

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#29
“businesses in San Francisco when their highest-paid managerial employee earns more than 100 times the median compensation paid to their employees in San Francisco.“

I'm slightly concerned that you are going to see them just shift jobs out of SF... isn't that logical? May be harder for some businesses, but they will all do a cost-benefit analysis of raising median wages in SF, paying the tax or moving the SF jobs somewhere else?

I think you can't pay the executive less... the executives that land in this level of pay are paid based on what they could get at another company (that is not based in SF... there are not really cost-of-living adjustments at this level...), speaking generally and in broad strokes. So you shouldn't see any changes to the top end of the equation (which isn't want they are going for... they are going for raising the less paid workers' wages, so they did that right.)

Re: “Overpaid Executive Tax” in SF hits firms that pay CEOs 100X more than workers

#30

Company A and Company B pay their CEOs the same thing. Company A has 1000 employees and pays an average salary of $50k/yr. Company B has 500 employees and pays an average salary of $100k/yr. Company A is taxed, but Company B is not. Is that fair?

>extra tax on any big company that pays its highest-paid employee over 100 times more than its median worker

Small nit, but the law evokes measuring against the median wage not the average.

Besides that, from the wording of the article it seems like they have a different goal than your argument. Your post reads as if they should be optimizing for the number of employees rather than more pay equity.

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