Should there be a salary cap?

[MysticSang'ha]

I certainly don't lay claim to intellectual superiority, especially since I can't even correctly spell the branches of math
which I don't understand. Clearly, you must do what it takes to make dance more like turd herding (aka "drain cleaning"),
so that the practitioners will do it only for the money. This will make labor a scarcer commodity.

I think if dancers were given the idea of money being part of the equation, rather than a simple "labor of love", it would spark a change, but right now that's a pipe dream without any goals or plans or anything other than wishing it were different.

I'm toying with valuing the profession differently at the moment. Good thing is I'm not the only radical thinker in the industry. There's a few more around the country who are risking their hauty-tauty status and tired of the noble-starving-artist life, and we want to actually have health insurance and a retirement plan.

Nice limerick, btw.
To eschew rhyme & meter entirely, while telling a story with a punchy ending is elegant.
Your poem makes me think of haiku.

Thanks?

 

[Alceste]

I think if dancers were given the idea of money being part of the equation, rather than a simple "labor of love", it would spark a change, but right now that's a pipe dream without any goals or plans or anything other than wishing it were different.

I'm toying with valuing the profession differently at the moment. Good thing is I'm not the only radical thinker in the industry. There's a few more around the country who are risking their hauty-tauty status and tired of the noble-starving-artist life, and we want to actually have health insurance and a retirement plan.



Thanks?

You're on the right track, I'd say. One thing I learned is that there's fairly reliable regular money in teaching, which you already seem to have figured out, and you can also increase your teaching income substantially by offering group classes - again, you've got that going on.

Not only is teaching a good steady income, it also helps build an audience for your events and performances. For that part, I have also entered into an unholy alliance with various non-profit arts organizations filled with talented grant-writers. There's nothing like a bit of public money to get any esoteric arts event off the ground. Everything I put on, public money or not, seems to draw a crowd.

My last piece of advice is: whatever you're organizing, try to sell booze there.

 

[Revoltingest]

Thanks?

Don't unhappy-face me, toots!
I really like your limerick.
To toy with conventions can yield great results.

 

[MysticSang'ha]

You're on the right track, I'd say. One thing I learned is that there's fairly reliable regular money in teaching, which you already seem to have figured out, and you can also increase your teaching income substantially by offering group classes - again, you've got that going on.

Instruction is the one source of steady income for a performance artist. A friend of mine used to own a music store where she and her husband offered music lessons. They created a system where most of the lessons were absolute basics for the students, but those rare few that showed a commitment to practice above and beyond what lessons they were given, they gave extra attention to and charged more for the mentorship. The beginning lessons were advertised as super cheap, which drew a lot of people looking for recreational classes, and opened the door for them to find the budding artists for further development.

They made a killing. Multi-million dollar business in their town. Too bad the husband blew it all with his gambling addiction. But it was a model that worked, and she's given me a few pointers with how we've advertised our rec dance program level.

Not only is teaching a good steady income, it also helps build an audience for your events and performances. For that part, I have also entered into an unholy alliance with various non-profit arts organizations filled with talented grant-writers. There's nothing like a bit of public money to get any esoteric arts event off the ground. Everything I put on, public money or not, seems to draw a crowd.

We've begun applying for grants, and I've started applying for fellowships while the studio has been staging public performances. Between our first performance and our second, our audience ballooned, our ad sales went through the roof, and even though we rented out the best theatre in town to stage the performance, we turned a good profit from it that was re-invested back into the business.

They feed each other, actually. People come to see a stage performance and want to take lessons. People come to take lessons and want to see (or perform in) a production. And now we've begun to start accepting students into our third tier program that develops a student's knowledge of pedagogy, coaching, and compositional skills.....with the purpose of opening the right doors for them to stage their own production in a student showcase.

They should be ready to stage their own by December. With that program, they bring in more students, who want to be a part of our productions, who bring in audiences who want to take lessons. And that particular model projects that continuing to build if the cards are played right, we pay attention to the numbers and the customer feedback, and Lady Luck is on our side.

My last piece of advice is: whatever you're organizing, try to sell booze there.

LOL, I've toyed with the idea of organizing a rave, flash mobs in baseball stadiums or football stadiums, or midnight breakdance battles. If there are other suggestions for these promotional events where the venue can serve booze to the 21-and-over crowd, believe me, I'm up for it.

Don't unhappy-face me, toots!
I really like your limerick.
To toy with conventions can yield great results.

Ha haaa! Thanks bunches. :bounce

 

[dust1n]

Another great point. Maybe not so much a salary cap but a wage ratio that must be met.

Or, seeing that proponents of wealthy people perpetuate the claim that rich people need their money in order to create jobs and build the economy, then I assume they wouldn't have a problem with enforced and regulated investment and job creation for a percentage of all income/worth over a certain threshhold.

I can get behind that. If you're going to insist on everybody calling you a "job creator" instead of a "greedy *******" you will surely have no problem with regulation that ensures your wealth is actually creating jobs.

dusty, would love to hear your war stories.

I think that is one of the issues with a salary cap, however, making $3 million still has to be a whole lot more of an incentive than making $30,000.

But right now I'm really liking the "proportionate distribution" concept, where there is no wage cap per se, but the highest paid cannot be paid more than X times the amount of the lowest paid worker, or something of that sort.

Guys, I know, my idea was great.

Why? because things would be more fair?

Who told you life would be fair?

Money is not distributed, there is nothing fair that has anything to do with this.

Employee's are nothing different than a nut or a bolt or a screw with the exception you have to keep them safe when they work.

Workers are nothing more than a commodity that should be paid market price for their services.

The resources a company has or it's revenues or for that matter what anyone else in the company makes is really none of your business.

When you get hired, you make your deal so live with it or negotiate a better deal if you can.

Sorry, Rick, but the law is totally against you. In case you haven't noticed, public corporations' resources and revenues are PUBLIC information required by law to be transparent, and available for audit, etc. A company is required to make reasonable accommodations for a disable applicant. A company is required to build other certain building codes.

"Disadvantages

Privately held companies have several advantages over publicly traded companies. A privately held company has no requirement to publicly disclose much, if any, financial information; such information could be useful to competitors. For example, publicly traded companies in the United States are required by the SEC to submit an annual Form 10-K containing a comprehensive detail of a company's performance. Privately held companies do not file Forms 10-K; they leak less information to competitors, and they tend to be under less pressure to meet quarterly projections for sales and profits.


Publicly traded companies are also required to spend more for certified public accountants and other bureaucratic paperwork required of all publicly traded companies under government regulations. For example, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States does not apply to privately held companies. The money and income of the owners remains relatively unknown by the public.
Stockholders

In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission requires that firms whose stock is traded publicly report their major stockholders each year.[1] The reports identify all institutional shareholders (primarily, firms owning stock in other companies), all company officials who own shares in their firm, and any individual or institution owning more than 5% of the firm’s stock.[1]"

Public company - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



I suppose if it was none of my business (or any other random American's business) to know various aspects about huge institutions that have huge effects on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, it wouldn't be legally required to report all of it publicly, now would it?



So, do you have an actual argument against a lowest wage/highest salary ratio cap?

 

[outis]

zing!

So, do you have an actual argument against a lowest wage/highest salary ratio cap?

A right-wing argument would be most interesting (meaning funny). Unfortunately, right-wingers tend to be no-shows.
If you're willing to consider left-wing arguments (boring, I know), I might be able to help. If you're willing to entertain the notion of someone you call "insane" that is. Or you could simply refer to the first page.

Here's hoping a right-winger will show up.
Yes, do tell why it's OK if your "job creators" spend their lump-of-money on ridiculous remunerations while millions are unemployed.

 

[Reverend Rick]

zing!

A right-wing argument would be most interesting (meaning funny). Unfortunately, right-wingers tend to be no-shows.
If you're willing to consider left-wing arguments (boring, I know), I might be able to help. If you're willing to entertain the notion of someone you call "insane" that is. Or you could simply refer to the first page.

Here's hoping a right-winger will show up.
Yes, do tell why it's OK if your "job creators" spend their lump-of-money on ridiculous remunerations while millions are unemployed.

It is not the reason nor function of a corporation to create jobs. Jobs are a byproduct of a corporation. There are many factories run primarily with robots.

The main function of a corporation is to create profit for their shareholders.

People think shareholders are primarily "rich folks" but more times than not, the lion's portion of shareholders are pension plans and 401K's

 

[outis]

It is not the reason nor function of a corporation to create jobs. Jobs are a byproduct of a corporation. There are many factories run primarily with robots.

The main function of a corporation is to create profit for their shareholders.

I agree, though the propaganda aimed at the masses does not.
But tell me... why should the citizens of a free country grant limited liability (among other priviledges) to the owners of these corporations then?

People think shareholders are primarily "rich folks" but more times than not, the lion's portion of shareholders are pension plans and 401K's

Back to the propaganda, are we?
"People" would be right and you would be a dissembler or a dupe.
Anyone can look up the numbers.

 

[Sunstone]

The main function of a corporation is to create profit for their shareholders.

The main function of a corporation is whatever society says it is. It has no "main function" apart from the value judgement of society. Currently, the main function is to create profit for shareholders. But that wasn't the case fifty years ago, and it might not be the case in another ten or twenty years, either.

 

[MysticSang'ha]

It is not the reason nor function of a corporation to create jobs. Jobs are a byproduct of a corporation. There are many factories run primarily with robots.

The main function of a corporation is to create profit for their shareholders.

People think shareholders are primarily "rich folks" but more times than not, the lion's portion of shareholders are pension plans and 401K's

Depending on the corporation, this is true.

I understand corporations to be a personal liability shield for owners and investors so if any wrongdoing were done by the company, the owners and investors would be protected from the courts. It's also an organization that is set up to outlive the founder indefinitely and doesn't require next of kin bloodlines to decide who takes the helm.

Overall, IMO, though jobs may be a by-product while profit may be the primary motive for some particular corporations, I expand the definition to include that corporations simply exist to create wealth, however the owners, shareholders, and patrons define "wealth". What exactly does that ROI entail? Is it discretionary time? Working capital for new or expanding businesses? Real estate? Political lobbying? Franchising in multiple countries?

I don't think you meant it, but I submit that corporations don't necessarily limit their financial and executive structure on Gordon Gekko's vision and ethics. "Greed is good" isn't simply the means to provide cash stores being moved around so that investors are simply content to watch their portfolios value go up. The investors many times, as you said, are everyday people too, and they come to shareholders meetings with more ideas and value to offer to the corporation and to find a return on their investments than money alone.

Corporations can mean many things to many different organizational structures. But, ya know, I'm still a newbie CEO myself.

 

[Mathematician]

I think if dancers were given the idea of money being part of the equation, rather than a simple "labor of love", it would spark a change, but right now that's a pipe dream without any goals or plans or anything other than wishing it were different.

Almost every non-technical profession builds up this expectation that if you complain about your financial status or the status of your co-workers that you are not truly in love with your chosen career. It's excruciatingly annoying and oftentimes makes me consider being an engineer so I can moan with no recourse.

 

[LuisDantas]

Personally, I can't even begin to figure a truly stable and healthy society in the next 100 or 200 years without voluntary caps both on income and on birth rates.

 

[Revoltingest]

Personally, I can't even begin to figure a truly stable and healthy society in the next 100 or 200 years without voluntary caps both on income and on birth rates.

Tell you what.....you can voluntarily cap your income, & I'll voluntarily cap my birth rate.

 

[Revoltingest]

Almost every non-technical profession builds up this expectation that if you complain about your financial status or the status of your co-workers that you are not truly in love with your chosen career. It's excruciatingly annoying and oftentimes makes me consider being an engineer so I can moan with no recourse.

I can't figure out what you're saying here.
Engineers moan about pay? There's no recourse for us?

 

[Brickjectivity]

Salary caps are not implementable. Its been tried multiple times in socialist states, and so far the only way to regulate money really well is through price. When there is no possibility of accumulating hoards of cash, the economy goes underground. That is because you cannot cap human nature.

In addition, any kind of regulation is eventually surmounted and is gone around or kills business. For example when the govt. raised the smallest federal bond price to 10,000$ what did people do? They established mutual funds, so they could buy them anyway. When the US government decided to tax boat construction, what happened? People stopped buying boats, so the government lost its boat tax base and nearly killed off the boat-building industry. If the government caps salaries, the salaries will simply disappear from the books one way or another. Instead of Income Tax it will get No Tax.

 

[Falvlun]

I can't figure out what you're saying here.
Engineers moan about pay? There's no recourse for us?

I think he was saying that in artistic sort of occupations, if you complain about the lack of money you are making, you are seen as someone who is not very dedicated to your art. But if you are an engineer or in some more traditional profession, you are allowed to ***** as much as you want and no one will attack your commitment or passion.

 

[LuisDantas]

Tell you what.....you can voluntarily cap your income, & I'll voluntarily cap my birth rate.

Eh. Like that meant any effort or sacrifice from my part. You might as well ask me to cap my number of fingers below thirty.

 

[dust1n]

So still no arguments as to why there shouldn't be a pay ratio inside public corporations?

 

[Panda]

So still no arguments as to why there shouldn't be a pay ratio inside public corporations?

How exactly would that work with massive corporations that do almost everything?

They may be involved in a section with relatively low average wages and a completely unrelated part of the business might do something where wages are substantially higher. If they were competing with a companies that only operated in one of these two areas they would be at a huge disadvantage as they would either have to pay the staff well above the average wage for that type of job, which would likely make them noncompetitive, or they would have to substantially reduce the wages in the other section which would mean they wouldn't be able to attract people with the skills they need.

Edit: What sort of pay ratio are you talking about here?

 

[Revoltingest]

Eh. Like that meant any effort or sacrifice from my part. You might as well ask me to cap my number of fingers below thirty.

So you only want others to cap their salaries?