Portlandia Levies a Tax on Pay Inequality – IOTW Report

Portlandia Levies a Tax on Pay Inequality

Portland is investigating company CEOs and their salaries. They’ve put together a mathematic formula that will trigger a surcharge in business taxes if the CEO makes too much in comparison to the mean salary of the rest of the workers.

It’s a socialism tax.

NY Times-

“When I first read about the idea of applying a higher tax rate to companies with extreme ratios of C.E.O. pay to typical worker pay, I thought it was a fascinating idea,” Mr. Novick, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview. “It was the closest thing I’d seen to a tax on inequality itself.”

Another supporter of the tax is Charlie Hales, the mayor of Portland.

“Income inequality is real, it is a national problem and the federal government isn’t doing anything about it,” Mr. Hales, a Democrat, said in a telephone interview. “We have a habit of trying things in Portland; maybe they’re not perfect at the first iteration. But local action replicated around the country can start to make a difference.”

Mr. Hales, who did not seek re-election, will leave office at the end of the month.

“We see it as an empty gesture,” said Sandra McDonough, the alliance’s president and chief executive, in a telephone interview. “We think they’d be far better off trying to work with business leaders to create more jobs that will lift people up and improve incomes.” Publicly traded companies, she added, are “an easy group to pick on.”

Mr. Hales conceded that the pay ratio is “an imperfect instrument” with which to solve the problems of income inequality. “But it is a start.”

ht/ Wisco Dave

22 Comments on Portlandia Levies a Tax on Pay Inequality

  1. If Progressives are so sensitive to Inequality and seek to expose and correct it wherever they find it, let’s hold them to fighting Inequality in the Tax Code; If everyone should be paid the same wage-rate as Progressives demand, then certainly Progressives should support everyone paying the same tax-rate, right? This is fair and equal for all. Whether rich or poor, everyone pays the same RATE. I suggest 10% with a Government that lives within its means as everyone else must.

  2. How about assessing such a tax on all government jobs starting with all positions at public universities funded with tax dollars. What liberals don’t understand is it is none of their business what a private company does with the money they earn. However, we could make a case that jobs funded by taxpayers do deserve such scrutiny. And it is absurd that professors earn hundreds of thousands of dollars and have tenure (they can’t be fired for even egregious acts without a fight) while those seeking college educations have to go into 5 to 6 figure debt to pay for them.

  3. Portland’s wealthiest tend to fund these socialist ass holes. Socialist ass holes are going to wonder why Portland’s wealthy elite and all their jobs are relocating to less expensive cities. The number of homeless bums, drug addicts, and alcoholics flooding in will keep the population the same.

  4. No, for their stupidity this should go through and we can sit back and watch Maggie Thatcher’s observation about running out of other peoples’ money and socialism be proven correct.

  5. Good.
    Any business in Portlandia, or even elsewhere in Oregano, should be penalized.

    “The last capitalist will sell us the rope with which we will hang him.”

    Financing stupidity is stupid.
    Financing your own demise is … what? … beyond fukkin stupid …

    izlamo delenda est …

  6. “Yes, we really do not want productive people and companies within our city limits. We feel there is a shortage of economic activity in Texas and we want to make sure that more companies go down there and prop up their economy.”

  7. I believe there should be less of a gap between workers and management but it should be because it’s the right thing to do NOT because it’s mandated. This is a cultural as much as a financial issue. We are raising selfish children who believe it’s all about them 24/7. Can you say suckerberg?
    Look at all the super rich ceo’s buying our gov’t because they can. And what do they want? CHEAP labor so THEY can get richer and buy more gov’t.
    Google, facebook and apple in the whitehouse is just wrong. To say this is nobody’s business is just sticking your head in the sand.
    By the way in the fifties it was the top 5%. Now it’s the top 1%.
    The answer is to bring back charitable Christian values and enough with the me, me me, selfie crowd.
    OH YES! And Term Limits!

  8. Ha! Maybe I should move my business to Portland and lobby for a reverse ruling. I have not taken a salary from my small business in over 2 years so I wouldn’t have to lay off or reduce the pay of my employees. Went through some tough times and things like our group healthcare premium and workman’s comp increases certainly did not help. I’m lucky to have a supportive husband. Maybe there are very large businesses with outsized CEO salaries, but that is certainly not the case with small businesses, which are the heart and soul our economy. If we want to look at salary gaps, maybe we should start with the gap between the crybaby athletes and the guy who mows the lawns for them — or the hypocritical “socialist” leaning entertainers (actors and musicians) and the kid who changes the lightbulbs or schleps the equipment on the sets/stages. They can go first.

  9. If the gov’t wasn’t for sale, the rich couldn’t buy it.

    We might want to start electing honest, and honorable, men and women to office, and not a bunch of “free-shit” advocates.

    izlamo delenda est …

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