Can anyone here share their thoughts on Bill Gross and the “credit supernova?” He seems to have a poor history of prediction. Any reason to pay attention to him now?
Joe Scarborough is a lousy economist, but an excellent obfuscator. That was evident during the Charlie Rose show this past evening during the discussions between Scarborough and Paul Krugman. Rose did little to address the issue of Joe’s lack of credibility on the economic front and was mildly antagonistic as Krugman tried heroically to address Scarborough’s misapplication of facts. Fortunately there is a succinct article on the Politico site which was written by Alan Blinder and addresses the same issue in relationship to Scarborough’s interview with Krugman weeks ago on his Morning Joe program. Read Blinder on Joe’s misinterpretation of Blinder. I like his title, “Morning Joe’s accuracy deficit.” \http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/morning-joes-accuracy-deficit-88376.html
Of course the entire episode underscores the woefully pathetic level of reportage from the media, especially from people like Charlie Rose who seems to be respected as an impartial arbiter of ideological differences. Not so based on last evening’s performance.
Talk of the minimum wage, and news of a Swiss effort to address excesses at the other end of the spectrum, raises a question for me. Other than political reasons, why should multimillion dollar compensation packages for executive employees pass the “reasonableness” test for IRS business tax deductions? (Congress, of course, could set a limit on what’s deductible regardless of other, generous IRS test criteria.)
Maybe a “reasonable” way of addressing overpay of CEOs — and ballplayers an TV anchors — would be a (not too) temporary 92% marginal tax rate like we had up until the 1960s — lasting long enough for my obsession, legally mandated sector-wide labor contracts to at alst level the playing field in the lop sided American labor market.
92% was justified back then by the need to win the big war — and did not need to go on forever (but did not seem to do any harm either). 92% can be justified today to squeeze down the labor price demands of the extreme top while we are resetting labor’s price below. Just getting the minimum, median and higher wages back up to normal may not automatically extract the ballooning (dirigibling!) pay from the top back to everyone else — though it seems to work pretty automatically in reverse, in the wrong direction.
ddrew I agree a high top tax bracket would discourage extremely high salaries, but my conservative buddies would call it a “confiscatory rate” no matter what. On the other hand, removing the tax deduction (above some level) on total compensation seems like a better way, at least to me on the surface. The total marginal tax on excessive pay would not be obvious but, in fact, would equal the sum of two lower rates: the top individual income tax bracket rate paid by the employee, plus the corporate rate paid by the business. That said, there’s got to be downside, somewhere, because I haven’t seen talk of this notion.
PJR, You must remember that in my imaginary world unions rule with equal financing to ownership’s and almost all the votes — under legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements, of course — no need to seem too accommodating. 🙂
Come to think of it — with a serious need not to muscle business out of business — unions can do that too.
Can anyone here share their thoughts on Bill Gross and the “credit supernova?” He seems to have a poor history of prediction. Any reason to pay attention to him now?
Joe Scarborough is a lousy economist, but an excellent obfuscator. That was evident during the Charlie Rose show this past evening during the discussions between Scarborough and Paul Krugman. Rose did little to address the issue of Joe’s lack of credibility on the economic front and was mildly antagonistic as Krugman tried heroically to address Scarborough’s misapplication of facts. Fortunately there is a succinct article on the Politico site which was written by Alan Blinder and addresses the same issue in relationship to Scarborough’s interview with Krugman weeks ago on his Morning Joe program. Read Blinder on Joe’s misinterpretation of Blinder. I like his title, “Morning Joe’s accuracy
deficit.” \http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/morning-joes-accuracy-deficit-88376.html
Of course the entire episode underscores the woefully pathetic level of reportage from the media, especially from people like Charlie Rose who seems to be respected as an impartial arbiter of ideological differences. Not so based on last evening’s performance.
a video: Grillo: our money is a joke
we need him over here…
Talk of the minimum wage, and news of a Swiss effort to address excesses at the other end of the spectrum, raises a question for me. Other than political reasons, why should multimillion dollar compensation packages for executive employees pass the “reasonableness” test for IRS business tax deductions? (Congress, of course, could set a limit on what’s deductible regardless of other, generous IRS test criteria.)
Maybe a “reasonable” way of addressing overpay of CEOs — and ballplayers an TV anchors — would be a (not too) temporary 92% marginal tax rate like we had up until the 1960s — lasting long enough for my obsession, legally mandated sector-wide labor contracts to at alst level the playing field in the lop sided American labor market.
92% was justified back then by the need to win the big war — and did not need to go on forever (but did not seem to do any harm either). 92% can be justified today to squeeze down the labor price demands of the extreme top while we are resetting labor’s price below. Just getting the minimum, median and higher wages back up to normal may not automatically extract the ballooning (dirigibling!) pay from the top back to everyone else — though it seems to work pretty automatically in reverse, in the wrong direction.
About Scarborough Twain had a line:
“The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one.”
The Fox News/Goebbels paradigm for “air and balanced”.
ddrew I agree a high top tax bracket would discourage extremely high salaries, but my conservative buddies would call it a “confiscatory rate” no matter what. On the other hand, removing the tax deduction (above some level) on total compensation seems like a better way, at least to me on the surface. The total marginal tax on excessive pay would not be obvious but, in fact, would equal the sum of two lower rates: the top individual income tax bracket rate paid by the employee, plus the corporate rate paid by the business. That said, there’s got to be downside, somewhere, because I haven’t seen talk of this notion.
PJR
“That said, there’s got to be downside, somewhere, because I haven’t seen talk of this notion.”
on the contrary. the fact that it’s a sensible idea is why you haven’t seen anyone talk about it.
PJR,
You must remember that in my imaginary world unions rule with equal financing to ownership’s and almost all the votes — under legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements, of course — no need to seem too accommodating. 🙂
Come to think of it — with a serious need not to muscle business out of business — unions can do that too.