There's a Freud quote that goes something like "I didn't read Nietzsche because I was afraid he already wrote everything I was thinking." But good point.
I dunno what you mean by specific areas? Like continental, analytic, etc?
My point is that those authors (who tend to be the most revered by the academy) haven't really innovated anything in the way that someone like Kant or Nietzsche or Hegel innovated.
But I agree that there are strong overlaps between science and philosophy and that they will grow more and more interconnected with time.
Well, I'm only a slightly-more-than-casual reader on philosophy, but it seems to me that Heidigger/Nietzche/Kant all were talking about the "nature of man" as it were, and established a moral framework of sorts. Would you agree/disagree?
By specific areas, I meant things like the philosophy of mind (for instance, whether man is all spirit, all physical, or some mix), or questions about the fundamental nature of existence and how much can be determined.
If you're well-versed in philosophy, feel free to school me; I'm always up for learning something new.
It's been such a long time, I dunno how correct I am and I never really read much Kant, but ...
I don't think you could say that the 'Digger thought up a moral framework. He was a phenomenologist and was more concerned with the question of being/Being. In fact, philosophers like Levinas criticized his work as lacking any ethical or moral dimension. So while the whole "question of being" schtick might be what you mean by the nature of man, I don't really think there's a moral aspect to the 'Digger.
Nietzsche, I guess, had a set of morals, but I'd hate to use that word. I take his philosophy to be more of a question of how we concoct morals in the first place (the whole truth is a matter of perspective bit). And while there is a certain ethical or moral dimension to his work, I don't really think he set forth a normative moral framework.
Good point about the separation of morals vs being/existence/nature of man. I conflated the two incorrectly.
As I said upthread, I'm not familiar with any modern-day philosophers that go into either a justification of morality or a discussing of human nature. I tend to read up more on specific areas of philosophy that interest me.
I think some of the philosophical questions that are being asked today couldn't be conceived of 100 years ago due to lack of knowledge, and I think some will become more interesting as previously unthought of techs come about. (For instance, the "Ship of Theseus" question aimed towards a theoretical "cyborg" future.)
Yeah, he said something about living in Dallas. Clearly a $30k millionaire.
Ya know, Vy's seeming cognizance of various philosophers begs the question: which moral system does he adhere to?
From my limited knowledge, I would consider myself an existentialist first and foremost. (I don't know if there's a certain moral framework I would place myself in, but I doubt it would be utilitarianism. Maybe something by Rawls? *shrug*)
I find it surprising that he knows about these different philosophers, but chose rather weak arguments to debate in this thread.
Like a tuna can: wide but shallow.
Last edited by Winehole23; 02-17-2011 at 08:23 PM.
Hurts going in, does not satisfy.
The amoral postmodern relativism he affects to despise, probably.
Well, apart from insisting that progressive taxation isn't "fair", wha other argument did you present?
Why didn't you acknowledge that it would be considered more than fair in some moral frameworks? For instance, is the work a CEO puts in 1000x of times more important than that of a fireman/policeman/etc?
If, as you said, the millionaire has little direct involvement with the creation of his own fortune, what moral justification does he have to claim ownership of it?
(note: not saying I adhere to these frameworks, but for you to not even ackowledge them is a little fishy)
You tended to handwave away even logistical arguments, like the outcome of increasing concentration of wealth leading to diminished power for the majority of citizens. Or that said higher taxation is usually benefitting the very people who work for the boss (course that's less so nowadays with outsourcing). Or that a flat tax is regressive and affects the poor moreso than the wealthy when it comes to usefulness/necessity of money due to diminishing returns.
Manchester United/Manchester City Game On Saturday Will Feature The Most Expensive Teams In Sports History
Well, apart from insisting that progressive taxation isn't "fair", wha other argument did you present?
Why didn't you acknowledge that it would be considered more than fair in some moral frameworks? For instance, is the work a CEO puts in 1000x of times more important than that of a fireman/policeman/etc?
If, as you said, the millionaire has little direct involvement with the creation of his own fortune, what moral justification does he have to claim ownership of it?
(note: not saying I adhere to these frameworks, but for you to not even ackowledge them is a little fishy)
You tended to handwave away even logistical arguments, like the outcome of increasing concentration of wealth leading to diminished power for the majority of citizens. Or that said higher taxation is usually benefitting the very people who work for the boss (course that's less so nowadays with outsourcing). Or that a flat tax is regressive and affects the poor moreso than the wealthy when it comes to usefulness/necessity of money due to diminishing returns.
The soccer players on that team have an income roughly on par with the annual nominal GDP of Liberia.The combined rosters of Manchester United and Manchester City cost their teams around $850 million in transfer fees and salaries, making Saturday's game the most expensive in sports history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_GDP_(nominal)
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesam...er/wealth.htmlAlthough some of the information I've relied upon to create this section on executives' vs. workers' pay is a few years old now, the AFL/CIO provides up-to-date information on CEO salaries at their Web site. There, you can learn that the median compensation for CEO's in all industries as of early 2010 is $3.9 million; it's $10.6 million for the companies listed in Standard and Poor's 500, and $19.8 million for the companies listed in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. Since the median worker's pay is about $36,000, then you can quickly calculate that CEOs in general make 100 times as much as the workers, that CEO's of S&P 500 firms make almost 300 times as much, and that CEOs at the Dow-Jones companies make 550 times as much.
If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select -- and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit -- gives them the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called "compensation consultants," who give the process a thin veneer of economic respectability.
The process has been explained in detail by a retired CEO of DuPont, Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., who is now chair of the New York Stock Exchange's executive compensation committee. His experience suggests that he knows whereof he speaks, and he speaks because he's concerned that corporate leaders are losing respect in the public mind. He says that the business page chatter about CEO salaries being set by the compe ion for their services in the executive labor market is "bull." As to the claim that CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they "create wealth," he describes that rationale as a "joke," says the New York Times (Morgenson, 2005, Section 3, p. 1).
Here's how it works, according to Woolard:
The compensation committee [of the board of directors] talks to an outside consultant who has surveys you could drive a truck through and pay anything you want to pay, to be perfectly honest. The outside consultant talks to the human resources vice president, who talks to the CEO. The CEO says what he'd like to receive. It gets to the human resources person who tells the outside consultant. And it pretty well works out that the CEO gets what he's implied he thinks he deserves, so he will be respected by his peers. (Morgenson, 2005.)
The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the outside consultant is an "expert" on such matters. Furthermore, handing out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator.
As for why the consultants go along with this scam, they know which side their bread is buttered on. They realize the CEO has a big say-so on whether or not they are hired again. So they suggest a package of salaries, stock options and other goodies that they think will please the CEO, and they, too, get rich in the process. And certainly the top executives just below the CEO don't mind hearing about the boss's raise. They know it will mean pay increases for them, too. (For an excellent detailed article on the main consulting firm that helps CEOs and other corporate executives raise their pay, check out the New York Times article en led "America's Corporate Pay Pal", which supports everything Woolard of DuPont claims and adds new information.)
There's a much deeper power story that underlies the self-dealing and mutual back-scratching by CEOs now carried out through interlocking directorates and seemingly independent outside consultants. It probably involves several factors. At the least, on the workers' side, it reflects their loss of power following the all-out attack on unions in the 1960s and 1970s, which is explained in detail in an excellent book by James Gross (1995), a labor and industrial relations professor at Cornell. That decline in union power made possible and was increased by both outsourcing at home and the movement of production to developing countries, which were facilitated by the break-up of the New Deal coalition and the rise of the New Right (Domhoff, 1990, Chapter 10). It signals the shift of the United States from a high-wage to a low-wage economy, with professionals protected by the fact that foreign-trained doctors and lawyers aren't allowed to compete with their American counterparts in the direct way that low-wage foreign-born workers are.
(You also can read a quick version of my explanation for the "right turn" that led to changes in the wealth and income distributions in an article on this site, where it is presented in the context of criticizing the explanations put forward by other theorists.)
On the other side of the class divide, the rise in CEO pay may reflect the increasing power of chief executives as compared to major owners and stockholders in general, not just their increasing power over workers. CEOs may now be the center of gravity in the corporate community and the power elite, displacing the leaders in wealthy owning families (e.g., the second and third generations of the Walton family, the owners of Wal-Mart). True enough, the CEOs are sometimes ousted by their generally go-along boards of directors, but they are able to make hay and throw their weight around during the time they are king of the mountain.
The claims made in the previous paragraph need much further investigation. But they demonstrate the ideas and research directions that are suggested by looking at the wealth and income distributions as indicators of power.
Again, I have few qualms about taxing these higher-earners at steeper rates.
If you think that CEO and executive compensation is determined by actual supply/demand, you are kidding yourself.
What about a dr. who makes 160k? Should they lose 25-30% of thier salary in fed. taxes?
Oh and lol CEOs selecting BOD members.
This is an example of a poor argument.
Why not discuss the underlying issues rather than using one-offs?
Or perhaps you could answer your own question? Why shouldn't a doctor pay 25-30% of his salary in federal taxes?
I'd also like to know what the 2011 updates were to that article? I've seen a lot of literature that says that, post-recession, shareholders are holding corporate board's feet to the fire re: executive compensation.
Also, if that article's characterization of BOD-compensation committee-CEO relations is correct, nearly any shareholder could and probably would sue - and probably would be successful.
No, what's poor is choosing the extreme example of a CEO who makes close to 20 mil. You don't think the 160k salary is a much closer case? If so, why not?
I just raised a question - why not answer it instead of calling it ty?
Ok, I'll answer the question. Yes, I think it's fair.
Your move.
I don't think its fair.
Do you think it's fair to tax a CEO making 20mil at a 25-30% rate?
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