{"id":8145,"date":"2011-10-04T08:56:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T13:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=8145"},"modified":"2011-10-04T12:15:30","modified_gmt":"2011-10-04T17:15:30","slug":"real-world-mia-in-elections-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/10\/04\/real-world-mia-in-elections-rhetoric\/","title":{"rendered":"Real World MIA in Elections Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The video below comes from the article <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/therealnews.com\/t2\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;task=view&#038;id=31&#038;Itemid=74&#038;jumival=7359\" title=\"The Real News story\" target=\"_blank\">Real World MIA in Elections Rhetoric<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2U8R4svmKCc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<pre>\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>This interview is a follow on to the interview in the previous post <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/10\/01\/the-trouble-with-billionaires\/\" title=\"Previous post\" target=\"_blank\">The Trouble with Billionaires<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>One example Linda McQuaig uses to demonstrate the shift in wealth to the wealthy was not just a natural occurrence but came from deliberate policy changes is the change in regulations governing Stock options.  I wish she had been more specific about exactly what that change was.<\/p>\n<p>I did find the paper <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hks.harvard.edu\/jeffreyliebman\/hallliebmantpae.pdf\" title=\"PDF version of paper\"><strong>The Taxation of Executive Compensation<\/strong><\/a> by Brian J. Hall, Jeffrey B. Liebman.  The paper is 44 pages long and so far I have only skimmed it.  In the summary, I found:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nFirst, there is little evidence that tax [rate] changes have played a major role in the dramatic explosion in executive stock option pay since 1980.<\/p>\n<p>Second, we find evidence that the million dollar rule (which limited the corporate deductibility of non-performance-related executive compensation to $1 million) led firms to adjust the composition of their pay away from salary and toward &#8220;performance related pay,&#8221; although our estimates suggest that substitution was minor.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I added the clarification that the tax rate changes are what the authors mean.<\/p>\n<p>Later, in the body of the paper, I found<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nUnlike cash compensation, which is expensed against earnings, there is generally no expense recognition (at grant, exercise, or sale) for options, whether they be NQSOs or ISOs. As a result, compensation consultants often point out that stock options are the only form of compensation that are free in an accounting sense, but still deductible for tax purposes.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You or I will have to read the paper more carefully to see if this is the missing explanation for the large increase of the use of stock options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The video below comes from the article Real World MIA in Elections Rhetoric. This interview is a follow on to the interview in the previous post The Trouble with Billionaires. One example Linda McQuaig uses to demonstrate the shift in wealth to the wealthy was not just a natural occurrence but came from deliberate policy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8145"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8164,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8145\/revisions\/8164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}