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The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

seths.blog

11–20 of 245 posts

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#11

> After a million dollars or so in salary, the absolute amount that a person is paid has no real impact on their life. They can't eat more meals in a day or wear more shoes There is more to life than food and shoes? This is one of the dumbest things I’ve read.

The point still stands. Beyond some amount the absolute amount of money really stops to matter

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#12
post #7

Bigger salaries attracts more people, so you can have your pick of your favorite candidate. A bad scenario is the public school teacher path: they need better marketing and should be paid on par with the congressman, senators, and other highly paid politicians in government.

Would you end up with money seekers like failed politicians?

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#14
post #11

> After a million dollars or so in salary, the absolute amount that a person is paid has no real impact on their life. They can't eat more meals in a day or wear more shoes There is more to life than food and shoes? This is one of the dumbest things I’ve read.

The point still stands. Beyond some amount the absolute amount of money really stops to matter

Not in the minds of the people competing for the job. They can get a bigger house with more money.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#15
After aging I'm starting to have new views on large salaries:

1. The money is just going to be saved. Net gain to the person is they're probably going to live for the rest of their life off dividends. Net gain to society, is any money taken out of circulation fights inflation.

2. If you pay someone a lot of money they will, essentially, spend it on other people. Either through salary or just buying shit. The richest people will make other people wealthy, and those people will make other people money too. Net again sounds like it's a benefit to not just the original person.

3. I've had lots of people say it's not a zero sum game. This is turning out to be true. Someone having success inventing and selling a new ketchup dispensing lid (and making billions) does not prevent someone from starting a successful company that makes Gyroscope toys that stands on its corner that can hold a tomato.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#16
post #12
post #7

Bigger salaries attracts more people, so you can have your pick of your favorite candidate. A bad scenario is the public school teacher path: they need better marketing and should be paid on par with the congressman, senators, and other highly paid politicians in government.

Would you end up with money seekers like failed politicians?

We need normal schools that teach teachers like we used to. There are teachers who know less math than students and speak less than perfect English.

If you’re a teacher you should have some basic competency thresholds.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#18
> After a million dollars or so in salary, the absolute amount that a person is paid has no real impact on their life. They can't eat more meals in a day or wear more shoes. What matters to the manager is the relative amount.

Sure, nobody needs more than a million dollars in annual compensation (in 2024 dollars), but relative amount gets you to your never need to work again number faster or slower. You might still work after you don't need to, but it's nice to not need to. And of course, there's economic milestones to be had like flying first class, flying charted, leasing a jet, owning a jet. Those certainly have an impact on your life, depending on how much you travel; and you might travel more if you didn't have to wait at the airport for a flight.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#19
I guess I'm not sure that there's a practical difference between "It's marketing" and "This is what the market rate is for a CEO." In other words, firms need to pay this much because that's what other firms are paying (at least.) That's not marketing - that's just the unfettered market at work. Which is why it needs to be fettered. I agree with the salary cap idea, because the market will naturally keep raising the price without bound unless there's something to counteract that, and it is terrible for the labor market as a whole (and even the company as a whole) to be paying so much for a CEO when the same amount could buy dozens or even hundreds of workers.

Re: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

#20

Name the other axes, Seth. What are they? What else is there but money? With sufficient money you can fill your positions instantly with top talent. Anyone pretending there are other answers is probably guilty of lowballing, wanting to lowball or the English translation of my name: a grape fox.

It's really not beyond a certain level. Maybe it mostly is for entry-level but tons of people don't exclusively focus on highest comp.
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