Trying to have your cake and eat it too. I thought that Republicans believe that efficiency comes from paying the top people multiples of what the bottom people make. How can the government be efficient if you won't let it have a class system?
The guys at the top of corporations make .05% of the company's revenues. It's generally been that way for big companies for decades. The rest of the workers get 50% of the revenues, typically. The president of the USA makes what Bill Gates made for most of his career at Microsoft. It's $400K/year more than Steve Jobs made. Granted, the president makes a fraction of what Saddam made. I don't see why you'd argue for a system like they had. Government should be the employer of last resort, not competing with the private sector for people looking to make a buck.
Not per capita, taking inflation into account. The Roman Empire or any king's reign in England were even more predatory in their taxation, and provided almost no services at all to the masses.
It's entirely true. I'll use Disney as an example, since their CEO makes an obscene $150M a year. Their revenue is $38B. $150M / $38B = .0039 (.4%).
Ok, so according to your numbers, the president should be paid around $10 billion per year. Maybe less, though, since the president has more limits on his power than a CEO does. How are those examples relevant? You surely know that they owned stock. You could just as easily make the case that Saddam had a 'S' in his name, so we shouldn't have presidents who have 'S' in their name. Why? Why would you want a huge enterprise run by anything less than the best people? The only logical reason to do that is if you want it to fail. And I suppose you probably do. barfo
So, paying someone a fair wage turns them into royalty? And this is a big danger in 2011? We should have a shittier government than necessary because we might start calling Nancy Pelosi "Princess" if we paid her more money? If that's really 'the whole point' of paying crappy wages to government employees, I'd say it's pointless. barfo
I don't want government run by people who are in it for the money. I want government that is run by rather ordinary people who've succeeded in the private sectors, who serve for just a few years, and then they go home to do whatever it was they did before serving. How many $100K a year private sector workers do you have to tax to pay King Obama $10B?
And will they have tea parties with the fairies and unicorns that live on the capital lawn? And, oh, let's make the white house really really tall, so that you can touch the moon from the window. barfo
I doubt you have any source, because no reputable one would mash together all types of industries into one stat. For example, the service industries pay a high percentage of revenue out as payroll. Manufacturing sectors pay a low percentage. In between is retail. What determines the percentage is the complexity of inventories. In declining order of types of inventories, the industries are manufacturing, retail, and with no inventories to speak of, service. To be more accurate, you'd have to classify industries more finely than just the three broad categories I used. Anyway, it's interesting that you want government employees to be socialist altruists after giving up their high pay in private management. And you want private headhunters to ignore talent developed in government and not hire them away. That's the only way to keep top government employees low-paid. I'd like to see both sides, top people in private and government, paid less. The economy is dying because consumers overspend on both sides, giving away trillions on rich people's tax cuts.
I've seen the financial statements of hundreds of companies. Unless it's a very small company with absurdly high revenues (like a small investment firm), the employee salaries and benefits are the biggest expense by far. And those dwarf the executives' compensation. Note that COGS are not expenses. And I do not want socialist anything from government or its employees.
COGS are cost, not expenses, but either way they don't affect the constant percentage of revenues that you say payroll has across many industries. The aspirations you want to motivate government employees are socialist and altruist. If you think people could successfully be motivated by charitable impulses to work efficiently in government, why not try using the same money-saving motives in private jobs?
You up for 1 share = 1 vote in government? The rich would own a lot of shares, since they would be buying them with their taxes. Think really hard about what you're proposing.
I don't see the connection between your post and his. Doesn't seem like he proposed anything remotely like that. barfo
Maximizing profit for the shareholders are the money saving motives in the private sector. I do think the govt. should be run like a non-profit business. It shouldn't maximize profit, but it should break even and spend no more than it takes in. It should pay for its ordinary expenses via taxes, and it should buy capital investments (like roads, bridges, etc.) from an entirely separate capital budget.
