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CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

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Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#101

Post by shmageggy »

jandrese wrote: post #71
loandbehold wrote: post #49

Maybe Karl Marx had a point? Sure, communist revolutions of the 20th century produced suboptimal results, but only because violent psychopaths were in power. We need democratic socialism. Maybe Bernie Sanders has right ideas.

Ultimately the more centralized the power the less efficient the system is. Markets are great because they push decision making down to the fringes, closer to where the ground truth is. With highly centralized systems there is a bottleneck both in getting information to the decision makers, but also in overwhelming those decision makers with too much detail and losing fidelity. The flipside is that markets are only e…

> Consumer goods are absolutely best handled by markets.

But what about the previous paragraph where you said

> markets are... mostly blind to externalities (pollution!)

What about the externalities from consumer goods? (And everything else we value via markets, which is nearly everything else)

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#102

Post by christophilus »

arcturus17 wrote: post #66

Like most people I think that this is ludicrous, but could someone give a shot at playing devil's advocate and justifying this? Are competent CEOs so much harder to get, do they really produce a 1,460% more value compared to '78, etc.?

I’m not playing devil’s advocate, as I think the pay is indefensible. But I think the reason for the gap is that C-level executive salaries are public info. So, C-level employees have a lot of negotiating leverage. In addition to this, they generally have the ability to give themselves a raise (given that most boards are just yes-men).

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#103

Post by mkoubaa »

loandbehold wrote: post #49

Maybe Karl Marx had a point? Sure, communist revolutions of the 20th century produced suboptimal results, but only because violent psychopaths were in power. We need democratic socialism. Maybe Bernie Sanders has right ideas.

Reading Karl Marx made me realize how much of an arrogant idiot he was, and now I think differently about people who take him seriously

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#104

Post by soperj »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #96
5544ffee wrote: post #75

Because CEOs are 399x smarter and work 399x harder! Plus they take all the risk! /s

I feel it's not a stretch to say your average ceo has more than 399x impact however. A 'simple decision' such as do I approve this product or not can make or break a company. The iPhone is a great example, it was far from considered a slam dunk money printer at the time. You can still find old articles from people wondering why you would want to browse the web on a phone.

that impact can be very negative.

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#105

Post by shmageggy »

holbrad wrote: post #51
fistfucker3000 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't give a single fuck about the salary of the 0.0001% of the population that is billionaire CEO, that's not the problem. The problem is that basic necessities have been turned into a profit-printing machine and you pay 2K a month for a 500 square feet apartment in London. Interesting that you don’t see those things as part of the same problem but rather two separate unrelated issues.

How are they directly related? Is Bezos, Gates or Musk at fault for high UK house prices ? No, it's a failing of government policy. Straggling house building for decades, leads directly towards rampant land speculation. (70+% of a houses value is the land...)

> No, it's a failing of government policy.

And who (or perhaps what socio-economic class) might be responsible for our inability to change these perpetually bad government policies that always seem to preserve this state of rampant inequality?

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#106

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

I'd be interested in how this compares to, say, sports stars or celebrity actors.

That is, the growth of markets in the past 35 years means that people at the top in "winner take all" markets are able to take a lot more from the bigger pie they command.

I'm not saying this is fair or good for society, but I think comparing to things like sports stars would shine a better light on the dynamics that allow all of those at the top to rake in disproportionately more money.

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#107

Post by soperj »

jandrese wrote: post #71
loandbehold wrote: post #49

Maybe Karl Marx had a point? Sure, communist revolutions of the 20th century produced suboptimal results, but only because violent psychopaths were in power. We need democratic socialism. Maybe Bernie Sanders has right ideas.

Ultimately the more centralized the power the less efficient the system is. Markets are great because they push decision making down to the fringes, closer to where the ground truth is. With highly centralized systems there is a bottleneck both in getting information to the decision makers, but also in overwhelming those decision makers with too much detail and losing fidelity. The flipside is that markets are only e…

> Ultimately the more centralized the power the less efficient the system is. Markets are great because they push decision making down to the fringes, closer to where the ground truth is. With highly centralized systems there is a bottleneck both in getting information to the decision makers, but also in overwhelming those decision makers with too much detail and losing fidelity.

Wouldn't this point to CEOs not being super effective?

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#108

Post by georgn »

jandrese wrote: post #71
loandbehold wrote: post #49

Maybe Karl Marx had a point? Sure, communist revolutions of the 20th century produced suboptimal results, but only because violent psychopaths were in power. We need democratic socialism. Maybe Bernie Sanders has right ideas.

Ultimately the more centralized the power the less efficient the system is. Markets are great because they push decision making down to the fringes, closer to where the ground truth is. With highly centralized systems there is a bottleneck both in getting information to the decision makers, but also in overwhelming those decision makers with too much detail and losing fidelity. The flipside is that markets are only e…

No disagreement with your post in particular.

Just pointing out that the C-suite is also a kind of centralized power.

Unsure why these kinds of stories always devolve into some kind of ism-vs-ism in the comment section because it almost always missed the point.

CEO pay is held up as a symptom of something. My interpretation of that symptom is that it represents a shift in capital over a period of decades. The interesting discussions are around what changed? how did that happen? is it ok? if not, what should be done?

Me? I happen to think it's not ok but like most, don't have a coherent set of suggestions about a path forward.

[edited for grammar]

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#109

Post by suzzer99 »

arcturus17 wrote: post #66

Like most people I think that this is ludicrous, but could someone give a shot at playing devil's advocate and justifying this? Are competent CEOs so much harder to get, do they really produce a 1,460% more value compared to '78, etc.?

I imagine connections are pretty important.

Re: CEO pay skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs paid 399 times as much vs. worker

#110

Post by germinalphrase »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #92
germinalphrase wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree somewhat. A great of MAGA rhetoric was/is about elites abusing their positions at the expense of regular folk. Trump was viewed as an insider telling people the truth about how the sausage gets made.

yeah, but MAGA is even more diffuse and ineffective as a movement than Occupy was Occupy was seriously thinking about killing the rich, but MAGA just has some nebulous ideas that there are pedophile cannibals sneaking around and that social media and the news are heavily biased Plus there's the fact that Occupy Wall Street was popular among pretty much everyone below a certain wealth level, but now everyone from that…

Can anyone recommend any solid writing about this?
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