Well *obviously *had Paris Hilton be taxed 2% more, she would have figured it all really wasn’t worth the effort. Sucking a few cocks and uttering vapid nonsense on camera is fine for 30 million dollars, but 29.5 ? Pfft. Might as well not get out of bed.
Film crews and concession workers?
I have 62 employees and I’m still considered a small business owner. Right now, I’m not creating jobs, but I am really busting ass to not cut them.
That’s stretching it. The Yankees will sell tickets no matter who plays third base, they may sell a few hundred more per game if A-Rod plays. So he may put a few fannies in the seats, which could result in a few more hot dog vendors, but none of this would be diminished if he paid more taxes nor would lowering A-Rod’s taxes result in more vendors being hired.
Sure, the actors’ work employ large numbers of people, but do you honestly think that raising Jennifer Aniston’s taxes is going to make her appear in fewer movies or result in her producers hiring smaller crews?
Most of whom work for the studio or production company, not for the stars personally.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/08/bofa-pay-137-million-settle-claims-defrauded-schools-hospitals/
This is the kind of citizen Bank of America is. "Fraud and theft are us’, should be their new name.
Even if she did, the fact remains that there is a long list of wannabe starlets ready to replace her. And even if they remain worse in ability than her is the difference in ability really worth the 10million (PIDOOMA) out of her and a no-name second stringer?
You may argue that she is worth that much because people are more than willing to pay the difference between what a movie would attract with and without her and she’d just pick some other job that offered that salary. But if all acting roles offered her a reduced salary (because of internal practices or post-tax amounts or whatever) and she decided to just retire, do you think that no one else would rise up to take the spot? And even if the person is a second-stringer, is the difference in beauty/acting ability between her and Ms. Aniston enough to impact the overall profits after people get used to all of their big-name stars walking out?
So again, that question must also be applied to the mega-rich. I do expect that a lot of high-earners would resign if taxes went up to 1950-70’s levels. But the question is: how much worse would their lower-paid replacements would be? Considering that COs and above in the US Military get paid a lot less for a more difficult job and there’s still considerable competition for these spots I’d say that there would be little overall impact.
You know who the real job creators are? The children. Think of the children! They grow up to be adults, who create jobs.
I’m Drewtwo99, and I support tax breaks for children.
You apparently have me confused with someone who has a dog in this fight over taxes on the rich.
I don’t, I merely noted that Bob was mistaken when he argued that Alex Rodriguez and to an even greater extent, Paris Hilton don’t create jobs.
In fact, celebrity actors and athletes create lots of jobs.
According to some rumors the star of White Collar, Matthew Bommer, is gay. When asked, he supposedly refused to answer saying, “I’m headlining a show and a lot of people depend on me for their jobs.”
Bob’s mistake has nothing to do with the question of how much in taxes such people should pay.
Paris Hilton and A-Rod don’t create jobs. In the case of A-Rod, it’s the people who watch her shows and buy the magazines with her picture that create a demand for those products. In fact you could say that the women who buy People magazine and watch Hollywood Access are the ones who create a job for Paris Hilton.
Same goes for A-Rod. He’s not spending his own money to give people work to do. The people who buy tickets to the game and hotdogs and watch the YES Network and buy the A-Rod jersey are creating jobs, most notably A-Rod’s.
I guess the real question would then be to ask: if Paris Hilton got replaced by Kimkay or some other aspiring starlet how many jobs would be lost by her refusing to take the job?
Even if all of the actors making over $200,000 a year walked out/died of simultaneous heart attacks that doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie industry will just tank. It’s more likely that they’ll just promote a bunch of people waiting in the wings to headliners. So then you must ask:
A) What’s the lowest that Hollywood can pay these second-stringers before they don’t get enough people pretty/talented enough for acting?
B) How much worse off will these second-stringers perform than the celebrities in terms of profitability?
I don’t think it’s worth it in their cases to pull this stunt because people have a hard time visualizing a project without a handful of familiar faces to it (which is why the most famous historical figures and scientific thoughts can be boiled down to a face and a one-liner even though most work is done in teams) and because people will see the profits going to producers and shareholders rather than the staff–which strikes people as unfair and the Man trying to keep you down and will boycott such a move.
If people stop watching the show, the jobs will end whether Matthew Bommer is on it or not. The viewers provide him and all the other people on the show jobs, not Bommer. Now he might have the power to cause them all to lose their jobs (by wrecking the show somehow so people won’t watch), but that’s not the same thing as creating them.
This. Supply-side economics is so ridiculously backwards, it’s not even funny.
To be absolutely fair the process is reciprocal. It’s very hard to deny that Will Smith’s presence in a movie doesn’t create more profitability for the movie. Which in turn helps sell more People magazines, more toys, more whatever-the-fuck. Then when these people cash their paychecks they buy tickets to Will Smith movies and some of his merchandise. And so on until it reaches a profitability equilibrium. And while you could probably find someone of equal acting ability and beauty to Will Smith it’s doubtful that this person will (at least at first) draw in the same amount of cash to the project because part of his salary comes from his image–a large part of which isn’t exactly impacted by his ability.
However, even if this is the case, people can still ask the question about how little they can offer Will Smith in $$$ before he takes his service elsewhere. If it’s just one industry or production they’ll be out the cash and he’ll just make someone else profitable. If every industry does this then there’s a chance that he (and a bunch of other mega-celebrities) will just flat-out retire. And then the movie industry either folds or finds new actors. And the movie industry making less money (may, let’s just assume that it does) mean fewer/lower quality movies being made which means fewer jobs. And when the screenwriters/technical staff/caterers get laid off they inject less money into the economy.
Indeed, if you ask me about a bunch of the mega-celebrities, if we’re talking about fairness, are probably actually underpaid when you evaluate the overall effect on the economy. I wouldn’t be surprised that if you count the increased sales of magazines, toys, etc… just from putting Will Smith’s face on the product he’d bring an extra 500 million. And in a fair world he deserves a large cut of that.
All that said, even if Will Smith deserves much more of the multimillion-dollar pie than he’s getting (and I suspect that he does) the question still remains: what is the most profitable for the industry? Even if he turned down his current ‘paltry’ salary they could replace him with another actor. And even if said actor does not make as much money for the industry once the dust settles, if the difference between what the actor and Will Smith asked for is less than the difference in what the movie franchise ended up making with the actor switch then the industry should’ve gone with the no-name.
Asking what’s ‘fair’ is thus an almost useless question when we’re talking about wealth redistribution because in a capitalist society no one is intentionally making more than what they’re worth. What should be asked is what’s most profitable (or what generates the most revenue). So, going back to the people in the top X% of the various categories: is the difference in what they’re currently making for whatever endeavor they’re choosing to do worth the difference in the profitability of a replacement if they decide to take a hike because of the new taxes?
Based on historical rates, I’m inclined to say ‘no’ but I’m willing to listen to a counter-argument.
Isn’t there (or isn’t there supposed to be) a disconnect between a millionaire CEO’s personal wealth and the wealth of the company?
Sure, I know the CEOs personal wealth is dependant upon the health of the company, but how is the company’s health dependant upon the personal wealth of a CEO?
Or are we supposed to “not tax” the personal wealth of these millionaires just because it may put them in a bad mood and they will retaliate by not hiring?
Is that the message the GOP is trying to get across? “By God, don’t touch their piles of money. They might get angry. And if they’re angry their going to be in no mood to hire.”
They really want us to believe Fortune 500 companies base their hiring decisions on how much the VPs personal salaries are taxed? The mind boggles.
I think argument, such as it is, related to small businesses. Their businesses are taxed at the individual rate. You don’t hear the Pubbies talking about the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and the necessity of not taxing their salaries at a higher rate. Or at least they don’t talk about that very often.
I don’t know, but that sounds a little like class warfare to me.
In the strictest sense, yes. If you tax anyone enough then you’re not going to get someone to take hold of the position or any position for that matter. And of course you’ll reach the point where you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel long before you get to that point.
Obviously the next question is how much money they can stand to lose before they actually bail out and whether their replacements will perform any better or worse. But that’s another story.
The argument goes that the highest salaries attract the most talented people to that position. Which is true as far as that goes; if you’re a hot-shit guy who is unquestionably the best CEO/Actor/Athlete/Doctor/whatever, would you rather make five million or one million buckaroos if that’s what two companies were offering? And if it could be demonstratively proved that you increased the profitability of whatever projected you helmed by that amount, don’t you think that Company A would drool at the chance to put you in the position? Furthermore, if a company was stated to underpay what the industry overall was paying for the position, wouldn’t you suspect that the people who actually took the position wouldn’t actually be the ‘top’?
The only way you as said hot-shit CEO are not going to get the salary increase you want is if every business is in collusion not to pay you that kind of money. Of course there’s a very strong chance that one of them will defect and everyone else will be out a hundred million dollars.
Of course human beings are risk adverse and no one is ever going to be able to calculate how much money Donald Trump or Will Smith personally brings to the table. But on the other hand, people are willing to pay extra for marginal utility. Paying an extra 500,000 dollars for a car that’s only 5% better in performance than one that costs only 100,000 dollars seems foolhardy, but if this car is going to compete in NASCAR’s biggest race, there’s no car on the market that’s better, and the guy you’re giving it to is in the top five of drivers then it’s actually quite a steal. That’s why CEO salaries are so high and I’ll go as far as to say that a lot of them deserve it.
Because once we released all the pent-up potential that we wasted in the 90s with high taxes, and lowered them on the top earners, we unleashed a massive wave of CEO talent in the 2000s, the likes of which has never been seen before. Right?
I think the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina put it best:
The economy exists to serve the American people if it’s not doing that it’s time for something else, almost makes me want to join the party.