If we took the rationale for the tax cut seriously, corporations should be investing the money, not increasing share buybacks or dividend payouts, the latter of which were inexplicably not mentioned in the Sanders-Khanna bill. And, if they don't have good investment options, then they should share some of their tax cut directly with workers.
The $15-an-hour wage is certainly affordable for large profitable companies like Walmart. If the minimum had kept pace with inflation from the late 1960s it would be close to $12.50 an hour by now. If it had kept pace with productivity growth, which it had in the three decades from 1937 to 1968, it would be over $20 an hour.
Five days a year of paid leave is pretty minimal. In Western Europe, workers are guaranteed at least 20 days and in several countries they can count on 30 days.
The limit on CEO pay is actually doing shareholders a favor. Due to our broken corporate governance structure even incompetent CEOs can walk away with tens of millions of dollars.
This is one reason that returns to shareholders have been so poor in the last two decades, less than 4.7 percent annually compared to 8.2 percent in the Golden Age from 1947 to 1973.
In short, the Sanders-Khanna bill raises important issues. Hopefully it will put pressure on large employers to share some of their tax cut bounty with ordinary workers. And, perhaps it will be a step in the process of bringing CEO pay back down to earth.
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