Big companies and interest groups that represent them are resisting a piece of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that is meant to help rein in executive compensation, even as pay for chief executives skyrockets and is increasingly untethered from company performance.

The rule, a draft of which is set to be issued at the end of the month, would force companies to disclose the gap between the pay of their CEOs and average employees. Over the last 30 years, CEO pay has grown 127 times faster than worker pay, and the average CEO at America’s largest companies now makes $14.5 million. CEO pay grew twice as fast as workers’ wages in 2011 alone.

Despite those alarming disparities, business groups and companies are lining up to oppose the rule, saying calculating such a disparity would be too hard and “would make them easy targets for CEO-pay critics,” the Wall Street Journal reports:

Companies say they have a rough sense of their internal pay ratios, but they argue that their global workforces and varied payroll systems make calculating the median cumbersome, if not virtually impossible. What’s more, they say, disclosing pay ratios would make them easy targets for CEO-pay critics.

“The ratio is not going to be a meaningful way to help investors but will be used as a political tool to attack companies,” says David Hirschmann, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Capital Markets, which opposes the measure.

But other companies that tie executive pay to the pay of average workers have pushed back on the criticism. Mark Ehrnstein, a vice president at Whole Foods, told the Wall Street Journal that tracking pay “takes a few days” and isn’t as cumbersome as business groups allege. Whole Foods tracks pay to ensure that no employee makes more than 19 times the median company salary. By comparison, the average American CEO now makes 380 times more than the average worker.

Today, Mitt Romney will bring his campaign to EIT, a circuit-board and electronics manufacturing company, in Sterling, Virginia. But while he is likely to highlight the success of the company, it represents a curious location choice for the Romney campaign.

A decade ago, the Northern Virginia suburb was home to a major circuit-board factory for the DDI Corp. DDI, based in Anaheim, CA, was a major Bain Capital investment during Romney’s tenure with the firm. Romney personally invested in the company and Romney’s name appeared on a 2001 SEC filing as a designated liaison from Bain’s management committee for the company.

While Romney and Bain made tens of millions on its investment in DDI, the company saw large layoffs in Sterling and ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2003. A 2003 Washington Business Journal report noted:

Circuit board maker Dynamic Details has laid off 167 people at its Sterling manufacturing plant since the beginning of July — and a total of 460 over the past two years — as it weathers the lingering effects of the tech and telecom industry implosion.

According to the same story, the Sterling plant employed 550 in 2001 and just about 130 in 2003. While the Romney campaign has repeated claims that Bain is responsible for creating thousands of jobs, hundreds lost theirs at DDI, at least in part thanks to Romney and Bain.

Additionally, today’s company — EIT — appears to contradict the Romney campaign’s gloomy assessment of the nation’s economy. Virginia state legislator Joe May (R), who owns the company, told the Washington Post that his private sector firm is indeed doing “just fine.”

The chief executive of a company that hosted a campaign event for Mitt Romney today in Virginia agrees with President Obama that tax revenues should be used to help pay for extensive infrastructure improvement projects. He said that increasing gas tax revenues is the smartest way to pay for an infrastructure package that would fix the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges while also putting Americans back to work.

James Parker, the CEO of Carter Machinery, told the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that he disagrees with Obama’s plan to pay for infrastructure spending by taxing the wealthy, but that he agrees new revenues are necessary to pay for a comprehensive transportation package:

“I believe that there’s got to be an economic plan to take care of our roads and our bridges,” Parker said. “Half a trillion over five years — over all of the United States.” Parker disagreed with Obama’s proposal to pay for his own infrastructure plan with a surtax on the wealthy, but he did say he favors a “gas tax” to pay for it.

“You have to have tax revenues to make it happen,” he said of his hope for a massive infrastructure plan.

Their difference on revenues aside, Parker’s support for infrastructure spending isn’t much different from Romney’s. Romney said “we’re going to have to make an investment” in infrastructure at a South Carolina campaign event in December. Parker’s plan to spend $100 billion a year over the next five years is roughly double the spending contained in the transportation bill in front of Congress now (Obama also supports higher levels than the Senate bill), but Romney has thus far not outlined a specific spending plan.

Romney also hasn’t offered a specific way to pay for such infrastructure improvements, saying only that paying for infrastructure would “require a new financing setting,” including “toll roads [and] public/private partnerships” in an interview with CNN last September. Given Romney’s support for the anti-tax pledge authored by activist Grover Norquist, however, it would appear that using new revenues, as Parker suggests, is an option that wouldn’t be on the table.

The Republican Party of Texas released its 2012 platform this month, outlining its policies on taxation, education, and a host of other issues related to the economy. Texas Republicans, according to the platform, support eliminating the minimum wage and the prevailing wage, doing away with the Department of Education and Department of Energy, and “reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education” — but those aren’t even the most damaging positions.

Here’s a look at the five most outrageous beliefs Texas Republicans hold:

1) The party opposes almost all forms of taxation: The Texas GOP supports “repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment,” which instituted a national income tax, and instead favors a wildly regressive national sales tax that would hit low- and middle-income Americans hardest. It also favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent and repealing the capital gains tax and the estate tax, the latter of which it claims is “immoral and should be abolished forever.” On the state level, it supports abolishing property and business taxes, and property taxes on inventory, and opposes efforts to institute a state income tax, an Internet sales tax, professional licensing fees, and taxes on real estate transactions. Instead, it supports “shifting the tax burden to a consumption-based tax.”

2) It supports returning to the gold standard: “We support the return to the time tested precious metal standard for the U.S. dollar,” the platform states, echoing Rep. Ron Paul (R), the state’s eccentric congressman and presidential candidate. While returning to “sound money,” as the platform calls it, is popular among far right-wing conservatives, it is “not feasible for practical and policy reasons,” according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Most economists agree that the gold standard never worked and that returning to it now would have disastrous consequences for the American economy.

3) It supports privatizing Social Security: Given that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” during his ill-fated presidential campaign, it may be no surprise that the Texas GOP opposes one of the nation’s most successful federal programs. “We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax,” the platform says, ignoring that had such a plan been enacted prior to the Great Recession, it would have cost an October 2008 retiree tens of thousands of dollars (and that was before the market bottomed out in 2009). Millions of Americans lost everything in private accounts during the recession, and Social Security was all they had left.

4) It opposes multicultural education and “critical thinking”: “We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive,” the platform says, adding that it supports teaching “common American identity and loyalty instead of political correctness that nurtures alienation among racial and ethnic groups.” In Arizona, where Republicans banned multicultural programs, students in those programs actually out-performed their peers. Texas Republicans also believe “controversial theories” such evolution and climate change — which aren’t controversial at all — “should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced.” There’s more: the GOP also opposes the teaching of “critical thinking skills” because they “focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

5) It supports corporal punishment in schools: “Corporal punishment is effective and legal in Texas,” the platform states, adding that teachers and school boards should be given “more authority to deal with disciplinary problems.” Actual research, however, shows that corporal punishment is bad for children and their education. Research shows that corporal punishment is “associated with an increase in delinquency, antisocial behavior, and aggression in children,” according to the American Psychoanalytic Association, which “strongly condemns” the use of such punishment. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents and schools use other forms of punishment because “corporal punishment is of limited effectiveness and has potentially deleterious side effects.”

(HT Jessica Luther)

Update

Texas Republicans also have radical policies on LGBT issues, voting rights, and health issues like sex education, and Jessica Luther has a run down of the entire platform’s extreme positions.

According to a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, states without an income tax received no discernible boost in growth over the last decade compared to states with relatively high income taxes. Lacking an income tax provided no boost to incomes or employment for the nine states that have chosen to abolish their levies, Bloomberg News reported:

The nine states with the highest personal income taxes on residents outperformed or kept pace on average with the nine that don’t tax their residents’ incomes, according to a study of economic output, unemployment and household income by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. [...]

Per-capita economic output increased an average 10.1 percent in the nine “high-rate” states, led by Oregon, which grew 26 percent from 2001 to 2010. New York, Maryland, Vermont, Hawaii and California also grew faster than the 8.1 percent average for the 50 states.

Among states with no income tax, New Hampshire, Washington, Texas, Florida, Tennessee and Nevada had growth rates below the 50-state average, with Nevada’s economy shrinking 2.7 percent during the period. The average growth rate for the nine no-tax states was 8.7 percent. Three no-tax states grew faster than the national average, led by South Dakota and Wyoming at 22 percent.

Median household income declined an average 0.7 percent among the nine “high-rate” states, compared with a 3.5 percent drop in the nine states without such a levy. The study found no difference in the average unemployment rate between the two groups of states.

“Those who don’t believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny anymore, and actually look at facts and data, recognize that since supply-side economics has been implemented in America, the complete opposite of what supply siders had promised has occurred,” said Ralph Martire, executive director at the nonpartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. But that hasn’t stopped several states from attempting to implement supply-side tax cuts as a solution to their economic woes.

Women are a growing part of the American workforce. In the last 25 years, the number of working women has grown by 44.2 percent, while 59.4 percent of working-age women are currently in the labor force. Sixty percent of women are the primary or co-bread winner for their household.

But despite those historic numbers, most women are still left doing the majority of the house work.

A new report out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics details how both men and women spend their days, and it comes as no surprise that women do a larger portion of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other chores:

On an average day, 83 percent of women and 65 percent of men spent some time doing household activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management.

On the days that they did household activities, women spent an average of 2.6 hours on such activities, while men spent 2.1 hours.

On an average day, 19 percent of men did housework–such as cleaning or doing laundry–compared with 48 percent of women. Forty percent of men did food preparation or cleanup, compared with 66 percent of women.

The numbers can be in part explained by the women who don’t work or who have part-time jobs. But the disproportionate burden of housework on women shows that a “second shift” still exists for those who work. While women have earned more rights in the office place (though they still aren’t fairly paid for their work), there is still the burden for them to be the primary housekeepers and caretakers.

When an aspiring rocket scientist abandons ship to join a hedge fund, how much does it actually cost society?

In its annual report, the Bank of International Settlements points to a recent study that attempts to measure the societal cost of a growing financial sector. The study found that the financial industry — which continues to lure top college graduates — hampers productivity and growth in manufacturing sectors that are R&D-intensive, especially when finance booms.

The conventional wisdom is that a robust financial system fueled by young geniuses distributes capital and improves overall economic growth, but according to the study:

The financial industry competes for resources with the rest of the economy. It requires not only physical capital, in the form of buildings, computers and the like, but highly skilled workers as well. Finance literally bids rocket scientists away from the satellite industry. The result is that erstwhile scientists, people who in another age dreamt of curing cancer or flying to Mars, today dream of becoming hedge fund managers. [...]

While they are booming, these industries draw in resources at a phenomenal rate. It is only when they crash, after the bust, that we realize the extent of the over-investment that occurred. Too many companies were formed, with too much capital invested and too many people employed. Importantly, after the fact, we can see that many of these resources should have gone elsewhere.

That many top grads from elite universities eschew science and engineering for Wall Street is well known. Even after the crisis, finance remained the most popular career path for 2011 Harvard graduates. And at Princeton, an astonishing 35.9 percent of 2011′s class were coaxed by the large salaries that finance offers.

But when the financial sector grows, essential industries that are also skilled-labor-intensive — computing, aircraft, engineering, and the like — are disproportionately harmed by the Wall Street brain drain and the competition for financial resources.

– Steven Perlberg

(HT: FT Alphaville)

As ThinkProgress has noted, the city of Glendale, Arizona, has laid of public sector workers and cut social services in order to hand millions of dollars to the Phoenix Coyotes, its National Hockey League franchise. The Coyotes are currently owned by the league itself, after the team declared bankruptcy, and the city had pledged $15 million per year over 20 years to any future owner.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the Arizona Republic reported that the city considered offering both its city hall and its police station as collateral for a loan in order to cover payments to the NHL (and payments related to a baseball spring training stadium in the city):

Glendale officials this week considered offering up City Hall and the main police station as collateral to obtain a $41 million loan to cover sports-related debts.

The city would use the money to cover payments to the National Hockey League and potentially to make payments on Camelback Ranch stadium, the city’s spring-training ballpark.

Glendale officials acknowledged the proposal wouldn’t bring the city any savings. [...]

The City Council on Tuesday decided there were too many unknowns for staffers to proceed with the plan now.

A referendum that would cut the support the city has pledged to the Coyotes could appear on the ballot in November, so the city shelved its plan to offer the buildings as collateral. Meanwhile, Glendale is far from the only city facing a professional sports related budget boondoggle: in five others, teams want taxpayer money to publicly finance stadiums, even though such structures rarely deliver on their economic promise.

Ten current and former employees of the United States Postal Service (USPS) today launched a multi-day hunger strike to protest branch closures and layoffs that are supposedly meant to address the service’s shortfalls. At the center of the protest is a law passed by Congress that is responsible for the Postal Service’s ongoing budget problems.

The USPS will start closing 48 mail processing plants in July, and by the time current plans are completed in 2014, it will have closed or consolidated 229 plants, eliminating 28,00 jobs in the process. Those cuts likely wouldn’t have to take place, however, if Congress reversed a law it passed in 2006 mandating that the USPS prefund its pension benefits for 75 years, costing the postal service billions of dollars a year, as CNN Money notes:

They also want Congress to eliminate a mandate that has been a major financial drag on the service — annual $5.5 billion payments to prefund health care benefits for future retirees. The strikers say say eliminating the mandate would solve the Postal Service’s financial problems.

“That payment is causing great hardship to the Postal Service,” said Nannette Corley, a Maryland mail clerk for the past 19 years who is taking unpaid leave to join the hunger strike. “We are the people. What is it that Congress wants us to do? Starve and make everybody homeless?”

Under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), which was passed by a Republican-led Congress in 2006, the Postal Service is forced to prefund its retiree pension and health programs for the next 75 years in just a 10-year window. That’s a requirement that doesn’t exist for any other government agency or private corporation, and without it, USPS would actually face a $1.5 billion surplus instead of a $20 billion shortfall.

Massachusetts Rep. Steven Lynch (D) introduced bipartisan legislation in April 2011 that would allow USPS to pay down its debts instead of prefunding the pension plan, but it never even saw a vote in committee.

According to an analysis by the pay research group Equilar, compensation for top bank CEOs grew by nearly 12 percent last year. The Financial Times noted that these increases occurred “despite widespread falls in profits and share prices“:

Top US and European bankers, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, have enjoyed double-digit annual pay rises averaging almost 12 per cent, despite widespread falls in profits and share prices, Financial Times research shows. [...]

The analysis of total pay awarded to 15 bank chiefs by Equilar, a US pay research group, shows they received an average 11.9 per cent pay rise last year to $12.8m, the second increase in a row. However, the pace of growth has slowed.

Bankers such as Brian Moynihan at Bank of America, Citigroup’s Mr Pandit and JPMorgan’s Mr Dimon enjoyed the largest gains.

According to a different estimate by Bloomberg News, Wall Street CEO pay grew by 20 percent last year. At the same time, worker wages grew by only 2.1 percent. And inflation adjusted wages actually declined by 0.6 percent between March 2011 and March 2012.

At the moment, in fact, wages as a percentage of the economy are near all-time lows:

Over the last 30 years, CEO pay has increased 127 times faster than worker pay.