“Today I cut my pay to $0. I'm committed to laying off 0 of our employees.” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Today I cut my pay to $0. I'm committed to laying off 0 of our employees.”

#191

Post by rsync » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #90

rsync wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware of this, of course, and always find it interesting ... According to my own understanding of US tax code(s), one must not reduce their w-2 income to zero - or even relatively small numbers that do not befit their position or responsibilities. The issue here is that a funding for welfare programs, such as social security, are taken from wage earnings. It is, in fact, preferable for me, as a business owner, t…

The $1 earners put a lot more than $1 on their W2s. Zuckerberg for example has $1 salary, $0 stock, and $22 million "other compensation" including security and jet costs.

That's not how a W2 works. All of those other forms of compensation are, of course, in their 1040 but are probably on a K1 or other amendment.

Social security contributions (to pick the most important one) can only come from wage income so the question remains: how are they paying into social security and, if they are not, why is that allowed when it is generally assumed that it isn't ?

Re: “Today I cut my pay to $0. I'm committed to laying off 0 of our employees.”

#192

Post by mistermann » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

ttul wrote: post #179

mistermann wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can assign whatever label you want to it, but it's odd how difficult to agree on what is happening here, or if anything of significance is even happening at all . Is there a flow of funds from government to one or more corporations involved in the scenario being discussed? YES/NO? Is there a risk that the government may not get all of this money back? YES/NO? Have we seen a scenario resembling this before? YES/NO…

Okay, you sound like a southern preacher. You want to save the economy? It’s going to take some broken eggs. Not all pennies will be accountably allocated. Some bad companies will survive. Some people will make money when they shouldn’t have. But broadly speaking, if governments don’t move fast, there won’t be an economy in six months’ time.

> Okay, you sound like a southern preacher.

That's fine, I hold no strong prejudices towards religious people or their leaders. I'm well aware most people do, but then I don't have terribly strong concerns about what people who think in that manner, think about me. For example, if a racist disapproves of me because I'm not "defending my people" or some such nonsense, I mostly see it as an excellent opportunity to "have a bit of a laugh" as the British say.

I'm mostly concerned about objective correctness than appearances.

> You want to save the economy? It’s going to take some broken eggs. Not all pennies will be accountably allocated. Some bad companies will survive. Some people will make money when they shouldn’t have.

Seems reasonable.

> But broadly speaking, if governments don’t move fast, there won’t be an economy in six months’ time.

I suspect this is largely speculative. Not that I'm saying you're incorrect of course, of all the thousands of possibilities that lie in our future, that seems like it could be a perfectly valid outcome.

But I don't feel like we've advanced the ball here much on achieving some sort of a shared understanding/agreement on what actions are optimal under these conditions.

Re: “Today I cut my pay to $0. I'm committed to laying off 0 of our employees.”

#193

Post by ViViDboarder » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

kitotik wrote: post #80

ViViDboarder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some may do that, but if we don’t offer loans or bailouts to many companies (as well as bolster unemployment for the individuals) companies will surely lay even more people off, no?

The U.S. could give each household ~$15k instead of trying the trickle-down experiment again. This is not a bailout, it’s another transfer of wealth using the same model that was prototyped during the last financial crisis.

Ok, so then more people are without jobs but they have $15k. What’s next?