Get Things Realigned: Simplistic Suggestions

I know there isn't a chance of the proverbial ball of white fluffy stuff in the well-known hot spot, of these ideas being taken into consideration, but I'm tossing them out here just the same. Someone may actually read them and think about things in a different way.

Obama is making it known he is really taking those outrageous bonuses seriously. He has also signed into law the equal pay for equal work bill. I'm very proud of the man.

Now, for my first suggestion. Since there is going to be a lot of whinning about how this new bill is going cripple businesses why not just reduce the men's pay to what the women have been getting? If women can live on this and raise families then certainly men should be able to as well. Anyone want to bet that all of a sudden the idea of a pay raise for everyone wouldn't show up muy pronto if this was done?

Next, ban those bonuses for awhile; especially the ones for those sitting on boards etc. Instead, go back to giving fair pay raises. Didn't realize that the deal of bonuses was instigated to keep from having to give decent raises to the lower echelons did you? Well, it was. Back in the eighties pay raises began to be attached to the inflation index. Suddenly the accountants got the bright idea that if someone got a bonus rather than a raise then their base salary stayed lower. Lovely for the board etc. but a crappy deal for the lower level workers.

Besides banning bonuses, insist that basic annual raises be tied to the real inflation index and not the artificial one the numbers guys came up with.

Now for the biggie, hitch the hourly income of the lowest paid workers in the company to the highest paid executives. I'd say the top guys should get about forty to fifty times what the lowest paid people get. If the low wage person gets say ten dollars an hour then the top paid executive gets four or five hundred dollars an hour. Roughly a million dollars a year base income seems fair enough to me.

What about pensions and stock options? Well, have an investment program that everyone in the company can participate in rather than a special one for top executives. Bet they'd get real interested in doing what's best for the company as a whole then.

If those in the top hiearchy have their income firmly attached to the income of the lowest paid employees they are going to be a lot more interested in how the company and its people as a whole are doing.

I've nothing against making money. Having money is great. I certainly have nothing against those with special knowledge or who are taking extra risks earning more money for their efforts, but I don't think they should be allowed to run amuck as they have since 1980. We need to make some big changes and I think this would be a way to emphaize that we are all connected. That we need to think about the rest of the people as well as ourselves.