Wealth inequality is real and I think it's good to have some sort of pushback on it, pay ratio caps or otherwise. At the same time California is so stupidly dysfunctional that I don't think they deserve any more tax revenue - San Francisco alone had a higher budget in 2019 ($12 billion) than 13 entire states, yet absolutely nothing gets done.
> San Francisco alone had a higher budget in 2019 ($12 billion) than 13 entire states
While I agree that I definitely wonder where a lot of the money in SF goes, this "bigger than 13 states" isn't a particularly impressive statistic IMO. First, SF has a bigger population than 5 of those states. In many states depending on how they split responsibilities, per-capita budgets can be significantly higher at the municipal level than the state. Finally, SF is obviously a very expensive city, so getting things done (hiring people, works projects, acquiring land, etc.) is much more expensive than most states.
Also, SF is both a city and a county; if you compare it to the sum of other cities' budgets plus their prorated share of the county budget, it's a lot more in line.
Still, SF does have to pay a lot more for workers these days thanks to its self-inflicted housing shortage.
Cities become expensive when people there spend a lot of money. Similar cities in different parts of the world have different prices for goods, services and rent. This is why Silicon Valley is so expensive, there are too much money there.
are we sure it won't? and whether the goal is to lift anyone from poverty (not sure that's a stated goal), perhaps it may force companies to look for other ways to spend their money. Perhaps more will find its way in to company/equipment reinvestment, more hiring, etc, or... uh-oh - might just end up getting taxed and make its way back to society via govt confiscation(!)
The biggest pay imbalance ratios in the US are in professional sports.
The top 30 NBA players are earning a combined $1 billion per year in salary.
122 players in Major League Baseball are presently earning $10 million per year or more.
The NBA + MLB + NFL is around $14 billion per year in salary for the top 2,000 active players. Probably $200 billion in salary over the next ten years.
It's more than what the top 2,000 executives are extracting from corporations in the US.
I can't wait to see what the Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Warriors, Rams, Chargers, 49ers, Dodgers, Giants, Athletics and Angels look like after California makes things right.
Lebron James should only be allowed to earn a maximum of ten times what a janitor in the stadium earns or a secretary in the front office, were California to be consistent.
Oh wait, they won't do anything about that extreme inequality because no professional athlete would want to play for a California team ever again?
I’m not sure how comparable a professional athlete is to a CEO.
CEOs exist to help a company sell more product, while in sports the athlete IS the product. In that respect they have more in common with movie stars than with CEOs.
Which I suppose just raises the question of the rule applying to movie studios—a similarly unlikely scenario—and how CA can defend the inconsistency. Is there a loophole for sports/film in that the famous people are contractors and not employees? I don’t know if that’s even the case, just ruminating.
> I’m not sure how comparable a professional athlete is to a CEO.
I agree that this is a difficult question. But why in the world is the government, with all it's perverse incentives, trying to figure this out? The shareholders, the people with a literal financial stake in the outcome, have spoken. Good CEOs are worth their weight in gold. Actually, gold isn't valuable enough. Steve Ballmer's resignation immediately added $20 billion to Microsoft's market cap. That's worth about 400,000 kilograms of gold.
> You want to limit professional athlete salaries?
Of course I never said that, you did.
I'm very clearly pointing out the hypocrisy of California and its regressive, anti-human policies in action.
If they weren't hypocrites, they'd similarly cap athlete salaries based on the lowest paid employees of the team the athlete plays for - given the extreme pay imbalances in question. I believe the state officials proposing this are cowards and going after easy populist targets, so they'll never dare to act consistently and target athlete pay for exactly the same reason as executive pay.
Citizens can hardly run away from California any faster. It's so bad they're set to begin losing congressional seats for the first time in their history.
> Citizens can hardly run away from California any faster. It's so bad they're set to begin losing congressional seats for the first time in their history.
Liberal California may be losing population to conservative states like Texas, but conservative states like Texas are becoming far more liberal.
> I believe the state officials proposing this are cowards and going after easy populist targets, so they'll never dare to act consistently and target athlete pay for exactly the same reason as executive pay.
The reason is that executives decide other employees pay; the rule doesn't cap highest-paid-employee pay but executive pay. Higher paid athletes don't set the salaries of lower paid athletes.
Is that why California’s population actually went up by 2 million ? The people leaving CA myth is more nuanced. There is domestic out migration of poorer and conservative population, which is replaced by higher income international migration. That story never seems to be told because it doesn’t jive with the narrative ?
> More people are leaving California than moving in, evidence of the toll the state’s housing crisis is taking as the world’s fifth largest economy inches toward 40 million people. [1]
The myth is that there is overall net out migration. But the reality is that California's population is actually growing and there is net migration into the state. There is net domestic migration out of the state, which is more than offset by positive international migration into the state.
Even within domestic migration - people leaving are poorer and people coming over are richer and wealthier.
The "exodus" stories are often peddled to tell a story on how productive people are leaving and there will be no tax revenues. But the opposite is actually true.
So, to summarize - 1) Net migration to CA is positive and 2) Net migration is actually bringing in more high income folks
That still happens. The top 5 players make $30m-$40m, but they’d probably make closer to $50m+ in an open market. After all, the best players still get multiple teams trying to get them on max contracts.
The current effect of the cap is mostly to redistribute some of that money to top 10-30 players who also get max contracts even as everyone knows they are not quite as good.
There are also competitiveness reasons to avoid true maxes like parity between the teams of relatively rich and poor/thrifty owners. But yeah the union does depress the salaries of the very best.
This is objectively false, of course. Governments do get things done all the time, even if policy changes you want are not happening. Even as hyperbole, your statement serves to fray the social fabric.
People seem to think that governments should be solving all the problems on their own. But a democracy is a government of the people. If people don’t participate beyond just voting, they deserve what they get.
I dunno. When my state ends up with more homelessness and sanitation problems and police ignore low-level crimes, I'm not inclined to give it more money.
When the government takes your money, they have the obligation to do everything they are supposed to do; if you don't do your part of the deal (paying taxes) you go to prison, if they don't do theirs, they should go to prison. Equal treatment, right?
When you pay your taxes there is no disclaimer: "people have to participate beyond just voting". Your taxes is your participation by the social contract, the government needs to either deliver or stop collecting taxes and everyone will have to get their services from private entities (of course this is not possible).
Paying taxes for a working government is simply not the social contract we made in the United States. You may be thinking of other forms of government. The US Constitution says that you, as one of the people, are the ultimate authority of the government. In a representative democracy, this means not only electing representatives but advising them and holding them to account. The transactional nature you are suggesting simply doesn’t exist. Good governance is not an entitlement program, it’s part of your duty as a citizen.
