It's finally official, SAG-AFTRA is now on strike. This will be the first time in 60 years that both the WGA and SAG are striking at the same time. The last time it happened, it rocked the industry and resulted in massive changes. Here's hoping that this time it does the same.
We've already seen plenty of feedback from studio execs who are paying themselves millions of dollars per year who are acting like somehow the writers and actors are at fault for not having money, rather than taking a good look at their own level of corporate greed. They are out of touch with reality of people working from paycheck to paycheck.
We need an end CEO bonuses. Companies need to pay their employees what they're worth!
Once again, a reminder that these big companies are highly profitable, but in order to cut down on their tax burden to the govt, they must be able to report "expenses" that bring them down to an acceptable level of profit. This tax expense deduction was - in theory - supposed to cause companies to invest back into their business, pay higher wages, better benefit and keep the company growing.
However, in function, they realized that "employee pay/benefits" meant any employee and they made the decision to pay THEMSELVES hundreds of millions of dollars more and writing that down as an expense.
Worst of all, by doing so in the manner they currently do, they manage to circumvent paying high tax rates.
The tax rate on the ultra wealthy used to be 70% back prior to Reagan. So when older people talk about the days when you could pay off a house with one salary, they're referring to the days when businesses had to invest money in their employees because otherwise they would have to pay it out in taxes. Now that they can pay THEMSELVES and write it off as an expense, they've gone mad with greed and decided to pay themselves ALL the money and starve their employees.
Under Ronald Reagan, they reduced the tax from 70% to 50% for the ultra-rich. The current tax rate on the ultra rich is now 37%.
When I say ultra-rich, I mean they own hundreds of millions or more in money, or even more. This is the kind of wealth you cannot earn by working. There is simply no way to actually make that much money doing a job.
Instead, they make their money using stocks, most especially a type of stock where you buy (or in the case of most executives, get it as part of a bonus package). This kind of stock doesn't just sit there in the stock market getting more or less valuable. Instead, this type of stock pays you money (at least annually, but often monthly). Just owning it gives you the equivalent of a monthly salary... for doing no work at all. This is called a dividend.
In 2021 David Zaslav's 243 million dollar income from Warner was only 3 million in "salary" and the rest in stocks and other options. 12 million of it was in stocks that pay out this kind of dividend. So not only did he give himself 12 million in work-free salary that year, but also every year following that, because dividends don't just go away, they stack. Every year that Zaslav gives himself millions of dollars in dividends, he's just adding that onto the Work Free money he already has coming in.
The worst part of all is that this is how the rich get around paying even that measly 37% tax rate. And for clarification, the next bracket under the super ultra rich, we're talking like making a few million a year as opposed to 100+ million or more in a year, pays at a tax rate of 35%. The ultra rich have hundreds of times the money but pay only 2% more in taxes. But they're not even willing to pay THAT MUCH.
No. Instead by getting their money through no-work dividends and stocks - and I emphasize, they are not making money with work, they are making money by giving themselves more money for doing nothing - they are able to take advantage of another handy (for them) tax loophole. Not only can they pay themselves oodles of money and write it off as "employee wages and benefits", but the fact is that they are also using it to avoid paying taxes on their income.
See, special types of stocks, like dividends, are not treated as normal income. 90 days after to get them, they turn into something called "Capital Gains". What does this mean? Well, leaving aside the complex details, it basically means it falls into a different tax bracket than income tax. Income tax is 37% on the ultra rich, but the amount of taxation on capital gains ranges from a high of 15% to a low of... nothing. No taxes.
So when David Zaslav gave himself that 12 million dollars in work-free money in 2021, the money that his dividends pay him on a monthly basis - He gave himself a million dollars a month for free! - he also definitely went to his accountants and told them that he wanted to pay as little taxes on that work-free cash as possible. He's definitely paying no more than 15% of taxes on it, but he could - and likely IS - paying far less. And there is a good probability that he's paying no taxes on it at all.
THIS is the exploitation that CEOs and Execs of big companies are using. They use their underpaid workers to generate a ton of profit for the business and then turn around and tell the government "oh, but really we made nothing, so we don't have to pay too much in taxes. We spent all the money on these Employee Wages", where the employees were themselves and the "wages" were 240 million dollar executive bonuses.
There is no way to EARN a billion dollars of personal wealth. The only way to get it is through exploitation. This is why the system is so broken.
Getting back to SAG-AFTRA going on strike. One reason I bring up the way that CEOs get their money is because I already see people talking about how actors make millions and should STFU and get back to work. Often people will cite "oh but X job makes so much less" as though that's s point in their favor, but all I'm seeing is that this kind of corporate greed exists in multiple industries. Actors shouldn't be earning less, other jobs should be getting MORE.
And I am personally a lot less concerned by actors salaries than I am by David Zaslov's tax free 240mil bonuses. At least the actors EARNED their money. You can see it in the movies and shows they're in. What does Zaslov do to earn the money?
He buys a bunch of things, axes them and then wipes them from the internet to avoid paying residuals.
So let's not hear any defense on the behalf of CEOs. They don't need defense. They are leeches, feeding on the hard-work of people below them and draining them dry.
The WGA strike is about far more than paying writers, it's about demanding a stop to the kind of corporate greed that forces these kinds of strikes to happen. They could easily end the strike now and pay the writers what they want and they would be making about 0.01 percent less per year. Think of it that way, for the equivalent of a PENNY a year to the big studios, this strike could have ended months ago. Instead they're blithely posting about how they're going to starve people until go back to work because they lose their houses.
The CEOs of these big studios have basically devolved into straight up 80s cartoon villains twirling their mustaches and talking about how they're going to force writers to LOSE THEIR HOMES and STARVE because they won't accept scraps while the CEOs are feasting on the profits of their work.
