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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (17152)	4/26/2006 3:11:20 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 543059

Tim, you are over simplifying things in your interest to force everything into a market based model. I said supply and demand is the prime factor, I didn't say it was the only factor. I don't consider that to be an over simplification. The incentive structures for pay for higher level corporate executives are structured by a variety of factors, of which your single variable model covers only one. Top executives may effectively set their own compensation within certain boundaries. Those boundaries have some connection to supply and demand but if they are to a large extent setting their own compensation it really isn't a market operation. In that sense it is a special case. Other people don't get to set their own compensation that way. Which is not to say that the process is a pure unfettered open market process. Minimum wages laws, political pressure, union activity, all distort the labor market, but not enough in most cases to keep the wage from being primarily determined by the market. Market forces, are not a "single variable model". The supply and demand at different prices/wages are effected by numerous variables. The operation of the market is the mechanism that is effect by these variables, it isn't a single variable. In most cases government action is not a major variable in determining wages and salaries. The article in "The Nation" that eleutheria quoted suggested that government action was the prime factor which is not a reasonable assertion either for wages and salaries in general, or for the compensation of top level executives at large corporations. Government doesn't set wages and salaries for most jobs and if it attempted to do so the result would likely be disastrous. No doubt the same could be said for the process by which wealth is accumulated in the US. I'm not sure what you mean by that.