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San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

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Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#51

Post by quickthrower2 »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #11
wrren wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's an expression of a corrupt system where CEO pay is public, and thus it's easy for candidates to negotiate, but employees are strongly discouraged from sharing their own pay data or are prevented from seeing the company's own pay bands. Where swathes of employees are let go when a company underperforms, but no-one is held accountable for making the strategic blunders that got them there. Where employees w…

> Where swathes of employees are let go when a company underperforms, but no-one is held accountable for making the strategic blunders that got them there. Execs should have more Skin in the Game. But it is also a fact that the higher you go in the hierarchy, the riskier your job gets. You get fired easier, in shorter amounts of time and sometimes just for backstabbing/political reasons. The average tenure of execs h…

I’d love to see the gardens of these poor CEOs give the generous gardening leave arrangements being paid out when they are fired.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#52

Post by pravus »

tluyben2 wrote: post #23
pmlnr wrote: post #3

The fact that there are ceos who get paid 200x more, than an employee, is already outrageous.

Well some CEO's maybe should; I don't know how it is to run companies with 50000+ employees; as a long term CTO myself, I look to work with CEO's who are not greedy and spread the wealth with the employees and who are not just out there to buy jets and ferrari's. (Actually, I have a natural aversion to people who buy sportscars with their wealth as I find it rancid and decadent in this day-and-age, but that's another…

You work 8 hours a day for your survival. They work 8 hours a day for their survival. Somehow we justify giving them 200 times the share of the output regardless of individual effort because they had some good ideas.

I'm not saying these ideas aren't worth anything. Are these ideas really worth a continual system where someone else is always getting 200 times the extracted benefit than you?

The problem is that at that rate of pay they can rapidly accumulate a financial engine that moves that multiplier externally from say 200-1000 while you can only move your multiplier from 1 to maybe 1.1. How often do you get a 10% raise and how much utility did Bezos get out of his recent billions stock windfall?

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#53

Post by pmoriarty »

tluyben2 wrote: post #23
pmlnr wrote: post #3

The fact that there are ceos who get paid 200x more, than an employee, is already outrageous.

Well some CEO's maybe should; I don't know how it is to run companies with 50000+ employees; as a long term CTO myself, I look to work with CEO's who are not greedy and spread the wealth with the employees and who are not just out there to buy jets and ferrari's. (Actually, I have a natural aversion to people who buy sportscars with their wealth as I find it rancid and decadent in this day-and-age, but that's another…

"I do see why CEO's (and all c-level if they are founders, have board seats, are early investors, have a high amount of %) should be compensated well over employees; they take the risks. Or rather; they should take the risks"

What risks do they or should they take to deserve higher salaries?

These people typically have golden parachutes from which they'll make out rather well if the company does poorly, and they typically have no problem finding other jobs should they get fired.

That's not the case for low-level employees, for whom losing a job can be absolutely catastrophic. Low-level employees are the ones who typically live paycheck to paycheck and risk everything every day they go to work, for should they fail to perform they and their families may go hungry, and may struggle for a long time to find another job, especially in this economy.

On the other hand, many CEOs don't need to work another day in their life, so getting fired from their job would actually have absolutely no impact on them whatsoever.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#54

Post by tchaffee »

asiachick wrote: post #24
pmlnr wrote: post #3

The fact that there are ceos who get paid 200x more, than an employee, is already outrageous.

Why? In Japan my CEO gets paid $1 million year and I make $50k a year. (20x) In the USA my CEO gets paid $60 million and I get paid $300k a year (200x) I'd much rather have the CEO getting paid 200x

You would make more in Denmark than in the US, and your CEO would make far less. Your one data point fails pretty quickly.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#55

Post by RivieraKid »

gambiting wrote: post #43
RivieraKid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the number of CEO positions much lower than the number of people.

What do you mean? Everyone can start their own company and become a CEO overnight. The answer isn't what you said it is.

I mean the number of CEO positions at companies that make a lot of money. In order to start such a company you need many things which most people don't have, including luck, timing and access to capital.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#56

Post by tluyben2 »

RivieraKid wrote: post #48
tluyben2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well some CEO's maybe should; I don't know how it is to run companies with 50000+ employees; as a long term CTO myself, I look to work with CEO's who are not greedy and spread the wealth with the employees and who are not just out there to buy jets and ferrari's. (Actually, I have a natural aversion to people who buy sportscars with their wealth as I find it rancid and decadent in this day-and-age, but that's another…

What risks are they taking? If your general argument is that the job has downsides, it's bullshit. Even if CEOs had the same salary as fast food workers, people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs because of social status, meaning, power to improve and change things, freedom and perhaps most importantly, you don't have to actually physically work, you basically just talk to people, think and make decisions.

> people would overwhelmingly prefer to be CEOs

Really? How many people with a steady job you know who want to be CEO? Of a company with more than 10 people that is and that's even a bit pretentious to call that a CEO, but let's say; 10+ company. How many people do you personally know that would say; 'hell yeah, that sounds great'. I know 0 who are not CEO's already; the rest do not want the responsibility, the insecurity, the vagueness, the long hours, the decision making. They like to make 100k/year following whatever their manager says 9-5.

Maybe you move in different circles, but I find that very unlikely. Most people definitely do not want to lead.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#57

Post by robertlagrant »

pravus wrote: post #52
tluyben2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well some CEO's maybe should; I don't know how it is to run companies with 50000+ employees; as a long term CTO myself, I look to work with CEO's who are not greedy and spread the wealth with the employees and who are not just out there to buy jets and ferrari's. (Actually, I have a natural aversion to people who buy sportscars with their wealth as I find it rancid and decadent in this day-and-age, but that's another…

You work 8 hours a day for your survival. They work 8 hours a day for their survival. Somehow we justify giving them 200 times the share of the output regardless of individual effort because they had some good ideas. I'm not saying these ideas aren't worth anything. Are these ideas really worth a continual system where someone else is always getting 200 times the extracted benefit than you? The problem is that at tha…

It's weird that you know more about what a CEO is worth to a business than the business' owners do.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#58

Post by Funes- »

pmlnr wrote: post #3

The fact that there are ceos who get paid 200x more, than an employee, is already outrageous.

I think making companies forcibly reinvest a generous fraction of net benefits--into increasing minimum salaries, as well as research and development, sustainability, etcetera--would be a good approach to solve that problem. Establishing a limit on net benefits past a given amount or percentage over expenses, and forcibly allocating that portion to improving every employee's conditions, every product or service's quality, would only do good, in my opinion.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#59

Post by fastball »

tchaffee wrote: post #42
WalterBright wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 200x is over the top I guess; I cannot see how you bring that much more value than your employees. Steve Jobs took over Apple when it was 90 days from bankruptcy and turned it into the most valuable company in the world. Apple had a series of CEOs before Jobs that didn't. Essentially, the CEO decides which hill to climb. The right hill, the company makes $$$. The wrong hill, the company languishes. That's worth a h…

Many CEOs who aren't famous because they failed still got paid at that 200x rate.

Yes, but the solution is not "nobody should get paid at that rate", it's "pay people in accordance with their actual performance".

If you are the CEO and your company does terribly, you should probably get paid 0 that year.

Re: San Francisco will put ‘CEO tax’ on the ballot this November

#60

Post by [deleted] »

gorgoiler wrote: post #31
WalterBright wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 200x is over the top I guess; I cannot see how you bring that much more value than your employees. Steve Jobs took over Apple when it was 90 days from bankruptcy and turned it into the most valuable company in the world. Apple had a series of CEOs before Jobs that didn't. Essentially, the CEO decides which hill to climb. The right hill, the company makes $$$. The wrong hill, the company languishes. That's worth a h…

Is it the team captain which wins the football match?

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