The specifics on how the math works

In a nutshell, this antidote to excessive self-compensation boils down to first deriving a composite of three different ways of looking at the individual’s pay and then calculating a select derivative of that composite to find what percentage of that top executive's income might, ideally, have gone to society in the form of income taxes and POPE membership surcharges combined. If the resulting amount is greater than the actual income tax paid to the IRS, the balance would constitute the surcharge due to maintain active membership in the POPE program. A duly authorized body, under the auspices of appropriate oversight, would be empowered to determine what the exact formula control values would be at any given time (in much the same way the Federal Reserve Board adjusts its interest rate to match what is happening in any given quarter).

Those three ways of looking at income are as follows:

1.) a theoretic measure of pay considered both normal and context-appropriate, relative to a worker's seniority and the number of employees in a company, using the lowest pay as the master reference;

(This computation allows for regular advancement potential, while still respecting the basic reality that general social liquidity is not unlimited, but, instead, the finite derivative of goods and services whose keystone components are derived out of a world of finite resources, extractable only insofar as is economically justifiable - resources that will have to be husbanded much better if future generations are to live as well as this one. Further, it respects the fact that this limited liquidity has to go around to meet the earning needs of all in the national workforce or social damage will ensue. When I think of normal pay, I think of pay that can be considered to be satisfactory to one's needs and worth going back to earn each day, over whatever part of a person's life it is healthy to devote to that form of work. Alternatively, normal pay does not appear to be cushy from the perspective of the majority of other people in other stations in the socio-economic complex or, for that matter, stingy, but rather, just normal, as the adjective implies. Key to this understanding is the importance of referencing lowest pay to derive what is “normal” for the ranks above. When bottom pay is higher, it will permit higher assessments for normal pay among ranks above.
In this first calculation of the Second Leg, we create an official benchmark for equitable pay. Beyond that, the pay given to a person of a particular rank, in a company of a given number of employees, would be considered by most to be excessive.

This assessment does not exist in some sort of sociological vacuum. Given the demonstrably growing interest in seeing the pie of the gross domestic product astutely and fairly sliced up among all, in the quest for universal providence, many people really do want to have some sort of way of knowing what is equitable in terms of pay for any given company role.
More and more, as things become tighter with respect to work that pays decently, the presumption is growing that the need for fairness now trumps winner-take-all ideologies and that this unspoken mandate from the collective renders obsolete pre-existing free-market dogma. Former relativisms over what kind of money should be paid for what kind of service - ratios that, for a variety of reasons, have swung wildly over the course of the nation's history - are not made of stone. If they need to be changed, we must change them. To do any less is to fail to adapt. Entities, however large or small, whether of the natural or economic world, that fail to adapt invite upon themselves a range of difficulties from discomfort to oblivion.)

2.) the ideal regularized pay - specifically, what the employee's pay would have been for that ranking if the same company payroll set-aside had been fitted under a straight-line graph from least paid to highest paid, using the lowest paid as the anchor point of the graph, the gross payroll as a given area and the top pay as an incidental derivative of the first two figures;

3.) what that employee was actually paid.

After the above amounts have been derived, they are used in the following way:

Taking the theoretical amounts established in steps 1.) and 2.), above, we blend them together using a control ratio (selected by the program's management) and compare the result with the actual pay received by the employee in question. If the blended amount turns out to be more than what the employee actually received, in light of all the factors taken into account under steps 1.) and 2.), we will have a fairly good measure of how much the employee's actual pay falls short of what society would consider equitable for that position. Similarly, if the blended amount is less than what the employee actually received, we will have a measure of how much the person was overpaid, relative to what might be considered normal pay.

This measure of deviation from the ideal is used in the next step. We use it to modify the base earnings of each executive (the top three) prior to calculating the appropriate amount that that person should be contributing to the commonwealth so that government can adequately meet its charter obligations. Charitable donations being open to self-serving purposes would not be included in meeting the demands of this figure. Elective reimbursements to the comopany cash account, however, would be eligible.

To produce the desired effect over the course of the longterm, the applicable portion of income used to calculate what percentage the individual would need to return to society would first need to be converted into real dollars to provide a consistent numeric base for the formula to work on, otherwise incomes pegged to overall inflation would be subject to higher levels of appropriate contribution to the national treasury as the years rolled by - a rise that could well not be justified.
For that reason, I have included a constant in the math that would be updated at regular intervals to correct for how much the currency's real purchasing power had changed since the previous listing. In most years, owing to inflation, this would result in the numeric value of the leviable amount being reduced slightly. This would keep the social contribution rates levied on executives in a steady relationship with the context factors used in these formulas.

For any given amount of pay received, those whom the formulas identified as having had a bigger impact on their company payrolls than was warranted (relative to the lowest pay and the number of employees under their purview), would be required to make a larger overall return to society - income taxes and supplemental POPE fees included - to satisfy the top-end earner requirements of the POPE system. This is not just to discourage disproportionate top-end extractions from corporations but, also, to reconcile any perceived strains on social equity with a process that is mathematically rigorous.

In establishing what amount of a paycheck to put under scrutiny, the computerized calculating program would deduct an appropriate standard living exemption, for basic subsistence costs, and a 1% alternative minimum income deduction (to prevent total forfeiture of income for those earning 100 million in adjusted dollars per annum or more). What remained of the person's gross income after these deductions, would provide the initial numeric base for the POPE Second Leg calculation. That base would then be either boosted or reduced by whatever equity deviation corrector the process rendered. The corrected base, in turn, would then be used to calculate the actual minimum contribution rate for that individual.

With all the figures described taken into account, we have the major inputs needed to calculate what could be considered a fair percentage contribution out of compensation to reconcile that individual's income-related debt to society, given the combination of responsibilities carried at that point in the pay spectrum in a company with that number of employees.
As I mentioned, the actual contribution rate would depend on what root of the leviable amount the program's managers were using in the formula under the Second Leg (I like the 4th root but, ultimately, the precise root would be the province of POPE system managers to tweak, according to the needs of the time).
In the final step of the process, the corrected leviable amount would be multiplied by the percentage derived from applying the Second Leg formulas, as described above. This would give what the POPE system deemed appropriate for that individual to return to society in the form of federal income taxes. In the event the individual had returned less than that to society in total income tax contributions, he/she would have to pay the balance to the POPE account for the company to be eligible for the benefits available under the First Leg. On the other side of that coin, if the individual had paid MORE than the POPE formulas deemed warranted, a rebate could be in order.

Why do we need such a reconciliation? Because society has no choice but to deal with the consequences of entrenched inequity in order to sustain its civic condition. Having to do so is very expensive and those who have benefitted disproportionately from the good condition of society should pay disproportionately into the social kitty to help sustain that good condition.
Quite a few people seem to have difficulty with this concept. A simpler analogy, using an eveyday event, might help. Consider you're getting together with family at a local restaurant. At the end of a nice time, who pays? Well, if your family is an upstanding lot, it will be those with natural seniority and superior means who work that out between themselves. If it doesn't happen that way, you can bet your bottom dollar, people will turn it into a story to be recalled time and again with contempt, perhaps for years later. That's no stretch: it happens every day. Even children of the tenderest age understand this timeless principle. The principle only becomes difficult when children grow up being taught that society is not family, that it is out to get their last lousy dime out of them and that they should be afraid of giving up anything they've contrived to acquire. This acculturation toward having a basically suspicious and negative attitude toward the commonwealth is especially prevalent in countries that are either disfunctional or failed states.

For the POPE system to be a genuine protector of the personal ability to survive, Congress would have to give each earner a realistic cost-of-living exemption (around 30% of the state median income for a single person, and something sensibly proportional to that for incomes supporting family units). With that basic protection in place and augmented by the additional 1% of earnings also off limits, the kind of personalized social contribution program I've described would bring into play a very useful, equity-promoting, tax-referencing instrument with which to forestall the worst expressions of inequity before they are even contemplated, regardless of the size or profitablility of any participating corporation. Trying to use prose to explain how these formulas work isn't easy. I admit to a lot of repetition in trying to obviate possible misapprehensions by the reader. In actual life, all these calculations would occur in the same instant at the push of a button on a computer.