Thursday, February 26, 2009

Raise Income Tax on the Rich

Obama said that he will limit CEO salaries. It's going to be hard to do. They get money so many different ways -- straight salary, stock options, bonuses, retirement largess, golden parachutes, etc. It's not only the bank CEOs that we are worried about anyway. It's all those obscenely compensated CEOs.

Plus, America has not in the past liked hereditary, moneyed royalty like the Rockefellers, Kennedys, Hiltons, etc. So, tax them when they make obscene amounts of money. A year ago some hedge fund guy named Paulson (not the Treasury Secretary) made over a billion dollars. Nobody needs to make more than say $50 million per year. After $50 million, increase the tax rate to 75% or more. From $10 million annual income the tax rate could be 50%, which is still less than it would have been 50 years ago. If most of the income goes to Uncle Sam, maybe CEO's won't work quite as hard to soak their shareholders, customers and employees. Another test would be the difference between CEO salaries and employee salaries. If a CEO makes more than 100 times what an average worker in his company makes, tax the overage at 100%.

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