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Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

arstechnica.com

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Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#51

Post by benjaminwootton »

mrguyorama wrote: post #48
benjaminwootton wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Moderna was real science, real innovation, and mostly huge globs of real private capital at risk. And though I'm skeptical on almost anything "Covid", most people think he saved the world with this vaccine technology which has big potential in future. This is capitalism 101, and the spoils need to go to the victor for it to work. Any government funding does muddy the waters slightly, but anything they did con…

>mostly real private capital at risk It absolutely was not! It was billions of public funding for a public health emergency.

As described in peer comments, mRNA was a platform developed in the decade prior with over $3 billion of private risk capital. The government came in to help them get the Covid vaccine to market using that existing platform.

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#52

Post by devinl »

throwoutway wrote: post #45
jncfhnb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling shares to raise money to donate to charity feels highly likely to net negative social good regardless of how the funds are spent. You could simply retain ownership of an important biomedical company or you could share it with employees. Selling shares for money that you then give away is dumb.

Selling shares for money to donate to charity is actually a tax mistake. I've done it and regret it. Just donate the shares to the charity and let them cash it out. Surely the CEO has a tax advisor to advise... so this leads me to believe that very little of it will "go to the charities"

It wouldn't always be a mistake. Moderna stock is significantly lower than it was in 2021 so the CEO could be harvesting losses.

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#53

Post by forinti »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #28
exogeny wrote: post #13

People want it both ways. They want private business to use the free market to develop more efficient and better solutions than a socialized system, but also a limit to just how much that free market should compensate them. Either you're a capitalist or you're not. If the company in question was Disney or Apple, this wouldn't be appearing on HN in any capacity.

Have Disney or Apple received billions from taxpayers?

In a way, they have, especially Disney, through IP laws. They have been granted protections which are not really fostering innovation and have just turned into rent seeking.

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#54

Post by VoodooJuJu »

endisneigh wrote: post #37

I’m curious to hear why it matters how much anyone makes. If the concern is that they’ll buy too much critical stuff, why not just limit that? If the concern is outsized political influence, why not stop that? Etc. I will say it’s strange the government doesn’t have substantial stake in this company given the subsidies. Same with Tesla and many others too.

The concern here is that the profits were made possible by significant contributions from taxpayers [1] [2]. Privatized gains, socialized losses.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/covid-19-...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9975718/

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#56

Post by happytoexplain »

exogeny wrote: post #13

People want it both ways. They want private business to use the free market to develop more efficient and better solutions than a socialized system, but also a limit to just how much that free market should compensate them. Either you're a capitalist or you're not. If the company in question was Disney or Apple, this wouldn't be appearing on HN in any capacity.

This is obviously a false binary. There is a complex multi-variable gradient between the two extremes. People don't want it both ways - they want it somewhere in the middle, and they reasonably disagree about where.

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#57

Post by the_only_law »

alex_lav wrote: post #55

It's funny how COVID and vaccines instantly turn any conversation (even here) into kind of...mindless bias flailing? Many of these comments are A.) Antivaxx propaganda, B.) Whining about cancel culture.

The “guidelines” of this site went out the window a long time ago. Moderation occasionally comes by and clears out the worst flame bait, spam, and blatant off topic nonsense, but there’s just too much of it.

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#58

Post by talldatethrow »

postpawl wrote: post #35
talldatethrow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up the rates of heart damage. A Swiss study saw upwards of 1 in 35 showing heart damage.

Look up the rates of heart damage from actually getting Covid without being vaccinated?

Less than 1 in 1000 I believe?

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#59

Post by infamouscow »

postpawl wrote: post #35
talldatethrow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up the rates of heart damage. A Swiss study saw upwards of 1 in 35 showing heart damage.

Look up the rates of heart damage from actually getting Covid without being vaccinated?

Remember, it took a year for the vaccines to be available. In the meantime everyone was contracting the virus and virtually everyone recovered.

So if these vaccines magically reversed heart damage caused from contracting the virus, it's news to me and you should be able to cite a peer reviewed study not funded by the manufacturers or their investors.

Re: Moderna CEO made $400M last year–2,435x the median salary of employees

#60

Post by JimtheCoder »

aeyes wrote: post #50
JimtheCoder wrote: post #5

In general, I wouldn't have a problem with this. It was a preplanned stock sale, and the value of Moderna skyrocketed, predictably. But, this... "In a congressional hearing in March, Sanders highlighted that Moderna created its vaccine in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and received $1.7 billion in federal grant money for clinical development." sort of changes things. The solution? I am not sure.

There are many possible solutions. The first would be for the government to behave like a normal investor: Give money for stock or give a loan instead of writing blank cheques. The blank cheque at least could have disallowed any sort of patents. This is quite ridiculous: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/science/moderna-covid-vac...

"Give money for stock"

Wouldn't that distort the competitive landscape for the other participants, though?

If I were running a business where one of the main customers was the government, shouldn't I be lobbying for the government to take a stake in me, and me only?

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