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I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

theguardian.com

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Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#91

Post by 14 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #88
allworknoplay wrote: post #85

This is insane -- paying a $7.25/hr minimum wage to people you call "teammates" and expecting them to stick around is preposterous. In anything but a terrible economic downturn, minimum wage says to employees that you just want a body doing a job right at this moment, but aren't willing to invest any further in them. Why would anyone stick around, or care to do more than the most basic job requirements? These jobs ar…

I was watching a sitcom called Superstore a little while ago, features the employees in a Wal-Mart like store, and the protagonist got a promotion to the head of the store. There was a whole plot line about how her wage was now in the 6 figures, and I was incredulous until I did a bit of research - Wal-Mart store managers can absolutely make that much money while their employees live in poverty. How you could make th…

I am guessing they don’t expect loyalty but rather desperation and the need to pay bills. Use the person until they move on and get a new one. I make about 9$ an hour above minimum wage and I can not even fathom how a person on minimum wage survives.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#92

Post by _bxg1 »

locklock wrote: post #8
petercooper wrote: post #6

I was thinking the math didn't work out, but it does. If you ignore taxes and say a raise of +7.50 an hour for a working week comes to around $14500 extra a year, over 500 employees that's about $7.3m. If that were split into 20 executive bonuses, that'd be $365K each.

And if you're getting a $365k bonus you are likely already so rich that the money is only going for luxury things while for someone making $7.25 it's quite literally the difference between living in a car or not. I wonder if you could apply this to the rest of American society...

At that point people don't value money for what it can buy them, they value it for what it looks like in their accounts. That's the problem.

I'm not rich per se, but I make enough that I can give away 10% of my pre-tax income to nonprofits without it materially impacting my quality of life, so that's what I do. If my society won't distribute wealth in a sane way, then I'll do it for them. If anyone else has similar feelings, consider taking a percentage off the top of your own salary and allocating it to charities that will help the less fortunate.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#93

Post by thrav »

yboris wrote: post #89
vishnugupta wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are likely already so rich that the money is only going for luxury things while for someone making $7.25 it's quite literally the difference between living in a car or not This is a great insight which unfortunately doesn't get much attention in the inequality debate. I'm now rich enough to be in the top 0.5% of the world. The marginal utility/value of money is so low for me that I've begun valuing my time and…

Have you heard of Giving What We Can - an international community of people who pledged to give at least 10% of their income to charities they think are most effective at helping others? https://www.givingwhatwecan.org I really recommend focusing on cost-effectiveness when you give, however much or however little you give. See GiveWell for amazing research!

Ah yes, non-religious tithing.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#94

Post by Chris2048 »

mcv wrote: post #77
Chris2048 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe saving money is as important as "stimulating" the economy? Maybe the type of economy is important too, i.e. luxury items that push the envelope wrt novel manufacturing methods or R&D

Maybe, or maybe not. I think the first concern is that everybody should be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, and have the freedom to focus on other things. I think it's definitely healthy for a society if the poor are able to save some money so their life doesn't immediately collapse on a rainy day. Once that's sorted, I'm all for investigating all the maybes.

Depends. Maybe not all "poor" are the same. Some choose not to stay in school, what do you do then? Guarantee food and shelter anyway? Why work my way up through the humiliation of McJob when I can stay home and prove my worth in Xbox?

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#95

Post by Droobfest »

erfgh wrote: post #57
hedonic_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Give someone earning $7.50/hour more money and it gets spent and put back into the economy like you said. Give someone earning a base salary of say 500k more money and it gets put into a bank to earn them even more money, taking it out of the equation.

Nobody puts that money in a bank. They invest it in a mutual fund or similar, so it ends up funding businesses and their employees.

Investing in a mutual fund only directly funds other shareholders

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#96

Post by SkyBelow »

bitexploder wrote: post #43
bigred100 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah indeed. I wonder why more rich Americans don’t feel shame and embarrassment at such purchases.

There are studies that show being wealthy somehow decreases empathy.any people just stop noticing. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...

The studies do not show that.

>In order to figure out whether selfishness leads to wealth (rather than vice versa), Piff and his colleagues ran a study where they manipulated people’s class feelings. The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards, participants were shown a jar of candy and told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children.

Trying to take a single minor difference in behavior in a controlled setting and apply it to an entire demographic is bad psychology. Imagine someone doing this with a demographic distinction other than SES.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#97

Post by boomlinde »

vishnugupta wrote: post #44
locklock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you're getting a $365k bonus you are likely already so rich that the money is only going for luxury things while for someone making $7.25 it's quite literally the difference between living in a car or not. I wonder if you could apply this to the rest of American society...

> you are likely already so rich that the money is only going for luxury things while for someone making $7.25 it's quite literally the difference between living in a car or not This is a great insight which unfortunately doesn't get much attention in the inequality debate. I'm now rich enough to be in the top 0.5% of the world. The marginal utility/value of money is so low for me that I've begun valuing my time and…

> This is a great insight which unfortunately doesn't get much attention in the inequality debate.

Doesn't it? What else motivates things like progressive taxation?

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#98

Post by bluGill »

maxxxxx wrote: post #63
turk73 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite where you are wealth-wise but definitely I have had that moment several times recently where I am re-evaluating hiring out work I would have just done myself in the past. I didn't have some big windfall, but pretty much earned and saved my way to wealth. Now it is hard to not do things like fix my own cars as well as bring my own lunch. I do them out of habit now. That's the discipline. Anyways, you don…

“t makes no sense to me why the CEO and higher ups of the company I work at still work there. ” My theory is that they simply like their work and get satisfaction from it. They get paid a lot but they also work a lot and I can’t imagine anybody doing this to themselves if they didn’t genuinely like it.

We know the medically "sitting back, and enjoying your retirement" results in a quick death. Doctors now tell people entering retirement to "stay busy". It doesn't matter if you build birdhouses, play chess, or any of the other million things you can do, but don't sit back and relax.

I think most CEOs - used to working extra hours/hard have the least idea what they would do after they retire.

Re: I froze the salaries of my executive team to benefit other workers

#99

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

14 wrote: post #91
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching a sitcom called Superstore a little while ago, features the employees in a Wal-Mart like store, and the protagonist got a promotion to the head of the store. There was a whole plot line about how her wage was now in the 6 figures, and I was incredulous until I did a bit of research - Wal-Mart store managers can absolutely make that much money while their employees live in poverty. How you could make th…

I am guessing they don’t expect loyalty but rather desperation and the need to pay bills. Use the person until they move on and get a new one. I make about 9$ an hour above minimum wage and I can not even fathom how a person on minimum wage survives.

That may be the pragmatic assumption, but I've worked my fair share of low paying jobs, and there's a ton of talk of being part of the team.
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