Egregious executive compensation, especially for CEOs, really is a huge populist issue. I'm sure of that. People have been disgusted since before 2008, and since then, the bottom has fallen out of the opinion polls.

However, as David Cay Johnston recently points out, most corporate executive compensation is dropping currently.

On the other hand --

Many CEOs get paid far beyond what economic theory says is necessary to motivate them. Worse, a fair number enjoyed soaring pay while shareholders saw their wealth dwindle, as with John Snow when he ran the CSX Corp railroad company. When Snow left to become Treasury secretary his pay had grown 69 percent, while the price of CSX shares fell as much as 64 percent, just one of many disconnects between CEO pay and performance.

-- excerpted from Johnston's Reuters blog "Shrinking corporate officer pay"

This relates to remark by Robert Oak on the President's tax reform proposals contained in his deficit reduction plan --

"The plan caps federal contractor's executive compensation. Think about it. If a corporation wants to obtain federal contracts, they cannot pay their executives exorbitant fees." -- Robert Oak

I do think this is the first time I can remember him recommending policies which he knows the GOP will block at every turn. I cannot recall another event like this. Of course this doesn't negate the promotion of policies such as more H-1B workers, bad trade deals, bank bail outs and so on which are terrible for the U.S. middle class, but credit when it's due here I think.

I think my main point is trade is dynamic, dependent upon many elements and due to global supply chains, various elements via imports actually can help exports. There just isn't a "hatchet". Even the theory, if one digs into the mathematics, it's actually quite complex, multi-variate theory and Gomory utilized his integer mathematics in part for his analysis to come to equilibrium.

So, to scream "tariffs", which are just a tax and can be applied per item, even per point in time, just doesn't really address what's going on.

It's also a lightening rod. Alot of economists and esp. politicians don't take people too seriously who just shout "tariff" without details.

So, it's not a simple thing, except om currency manipulation that actually helps boil things down into a "simple thing" because it's just a gap, created across all of that nation's exports, who are manipulating their currencies.

For example, VATs are pretty common and China is notorious to literally change their VAT on a per time period and per item all of the time. That's all legal to do, according to the infamous WTO, i.e. change one's VAT in short time windows and per category or items.

"Putting an across the board tarrif on China ... would result in sharp increase in interest rates as the government deparately tries to find buyers for its debt. But rising rates would cause interest payments on the $14 trillon debt to skyrocket causing obsene deficits." -- Bill Sander

The premise here is that we will not see monetary and related reforms as advocated by the American Monetary Institute. So, of course, we can expect disaster in one form or another ... but we already knew that!

However, assuming necessary reforms will be implemented, then the main point is that since we will not need to continue to snowball our debt, the "skyrocketing interest rates" will be purely the result of the value of Treasuries falling, that is, people who buy them will pay less, which means they will earn more relative to the amount they have paid. The interest payments made by the USA on existing Treasuries will total exactly what they would have anyway. The solution to the problem is easy -- it's like cutting up all your run-up credit cards to begin paying yourself first. You just have to get over your idea that the economy requires a huge US. debt in order to function.

As China unloads its ownership of our national debt and exchange value of U.S. Treasuries fall, just buy in on the way back up and you'll have a nice guaranteed nest egg. The People's Bank of China loses. You win.

What's the problem?

We will see, how long it last, until the old system shuts down!

The Pirate Party is the only political answer which gains success for all people in the now system.
You will see:In the future system, there isn't any big private company!

So! Watch out and see, what you never have believed!

I see your fat boat swinging on the rough sea of the human future!

Have fun!

The first step to getting what you need is asking for it. If Democrats don't represent you, stop voting for them! Vote Green!

Take a look at Robert's article today on the Household Wealth decline in the Fed's quarterly economic data dump. Households - the consumer - the individual, however you want to define them, are bust. Their wealth is shrinking. Their earnings power we used to say in the 00s has plateaued; now we have to say it has collapsed altogether. There is no tax money to be squeezed from the consumer, however much The Washington Post, the Republican Party, and other mouthpieces and agents for the wealthy want to portray things. Just where did all the money go from the cut in the Social Security payroll tax this year? To food and energy and paying down debt. Nobody's buying flat screen TVs anymore. The only credit people can get is for buying cars using sub-prime loans, and we all know how that is going to play out eventually for the lenders.

If you want to squeeze more blood out of the consumer by increasing their taxes, you just hasten the day when the economy implodes altogether and federal tax revenues fall by 50% from already record-low levels.

But since the United States must, sooner or later, and in the face of strenuous objections from the Republicans, raise revenue by increasing taxes, there are only two places to go where there is any money to be found: the wealthy, and corporations.

We are wasting a lot of time pretending otherwise.

P.S. Don't get me started on that joke of an argument that we can't tax corporations because they create jobs. The argument actually is true. The part never discussed by the conservatives is the fact that almost all of these jobs are created in China.

Yes, I am not saying what Scott is saying. I just don't understand how I was misunderstood as trying to represent what I was saying as something that Scott has said or as something that is supported by Scott.

I thought that my point was clear, that it's good to see the term "tariff" and even "across-the-board tariff" in print and discussed. That point holds even though I have long since capitulated to the analysis, published here at EP, concerning energy.

Personally, I would install a dish just to be able to view a panel discussion of tariffs on some major network -- moderated by Robert Oak, with panelists Robert Scott, Craig Harrington, Ralph Nader and Peter DeFazio!

The terms "tariff" and even "across-the-board tariff" have popular appeal, like it or not. If that appeal is mainly to simplistic thinking, then there's all the more reason for discussing the idea in all its complexity, pro and con.

I remarked on Scott's use of a term, that's all. Doesn't mean that I am trying to make a citation, like, "blah-blah-blah (see, Scott, R., 2011)." Doesn't mean that I am representing that any of my ideas have been established by his use of the term!

I did not represent my analysis and conclusions as Scott's. I have no idea what Scott would say about my comments. He will probably never read them.

Am I posting fiction when I post historical/theoretical analysis of the free trade movement and related phenomena?

Nothing in my historical/theoretical analysis has been disputed. None of my conclusions have even been challenged. (Possibly, no one has read them!)

I am saying that the goals of free trade have not been and will not be, in the long run, served by systematic elimination (to zero) of tariffs in the short run. However, that doesn't mean that USA trade policy now should suddenly be limited to an across-the-board tariff -- that would indeed be simplistic. On the other hand, I would not recommend that USA trade negotiation should premise itself on any limitation, including a limitation as to an across-the-board tariff. (I presume that was Scott's point, that we should retain that 'nuclear option'.)

It's a non sequitur to suppose that my conclusion -- that across-the-board tariffs are the way forward for elimination of non-tariff barriers -- implies that I am arguing for an across-the-board tariff at this time (or ever). My conclusion is more of a conditional than a prescriptive statement: IF you want to reduce non-tariff barriers, THEN you need across-the-board tariffs. But we do not really want to reduce non-tariff barriers or tariffs either -- we want to improve the US economy. It's the free trade movement (WTO) that purports to want to systematically reduce non-tariff barriers by way of eliminating tariffs. IMO, that can't be done, and that's all I am saying.

IMO, the world will ultimately (maybe in 50 years) see modest across-the-board tariffs between major trading units globally, even as we may also see more transnational unions such as the EU.

he is saying an across the board tariff for only countries who significantly undervalue their currency for an unfair trade advantage. That's not a tariff in the traditional sense. It ends up being across all imports from one country, but only because trade exchange, price exchange's are in that country's currency.