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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to see just how many people are willing to argue against a business paying their employees more, when those commentators have no involvement in the issue at all.

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I don't think people argue against a business paying their employees more. It's up to the owner of that business to decide.

What people argue against is legal requirements for other, or all, companies to do the same.

A lot of the heated responses I've seen seem to respond to the assumption that a successful business experiment is obviously being showcased to model a mandate around it. Can't get some people off their scripts to save them, I tell ya.

Well, "under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect" sounds a little bit like someone wants to mandate this kind of a practice. (I'm not in the US so such a law does not impact me directly, at least not at the moment, but as experienced with the totally nuts application of SOX laws, such things passed by US Congress may mean WTF moments to people at the other side of the world).

[edit: typo]

There's a broader political context, of course, which naturally attracts interest from outsiders. It's apparent from the article that this decision is motivated, at least in part, by progressive ideology. This might sound good, especially to those who believe in "progress", but progressivism at its worst is terrifying (see, e.g., "Comrade Stalin—Leader of Progressive Mankind" [1]). As a result, a move like this, whose potential for capture and enforcement by the state is apparent, understandably gives some people pause.

[1]: https://www.marxists.org/archive/malenkov/1949/12/21.htm

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