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

seths.blog

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

#101

Post by sudhirj »

n2d4 wrote: post #80
srackey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A salary cap doesn’t change the market rate! It just obfuscates it. Salaries for public companies locked at 10M/yr? Ok, now firms have to compete on amenities. (Your current firm gives you a free car? Ours gives a jet, a personal Michelin star cook, and complimentary beverages)

Company benefits are also a form of salary. If your company gifts you a free car, they have to tax it as such.

It isn't usually classified as a gift, it's company property that you use exclusively. So on the books it's a depreciating asset for the company.

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

#102

Post by shermantanktop »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #6

> 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.

It does apply to many things. You can only wear so many pairs of shoes, and only one pair at a time. You can't eat more food than will fit in your stomach. You can have X houses, but you can only live in one at a time.

If money isn't the bottleneck anymore, something else becomes the bottleneck - time, space, energy, interest/passion, etc.

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

#103

Post by captainbland »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #10
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #3

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.

Work-life balance. Job perks. Working on projects that you consider valuable. Non-profits are particularly good at that last point.

> Working on projects that you consider valuable.

Sometimes I imagine all the very wealthy people thinking about where to allocate their capital like "hm, hiring more people to do computational cancer research? nah. Let's try and invalidate people's insurance claims through their ad clicks instead."

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

#104

Post by cscurmudgeon »

danbruc wrote: post #77
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here is that they did the work up front and then saved to accumulate wealth which they could spend later. Is that immoral to you?

Yes. If you work for 10 years and then just consume stuff for the rest of your life without lifting a finger, stuff for which other people work all day long to produce it while at the same time probably not enjoying a quality of life anywhere near yours, that is deeply unjust and I consider it immoral to desire such a life.

Let me guess your take on folks who never work, are able bodied/minded but live off the state.

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

#105

Post by ifyoubuildit »

danbruc wrote: post #77
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here is that they did the work up front and then saved to accumulate wealth which they could spend later. Is that immoral to you?

Yes. If you work for 10 years and then just consume stuff for the rest of your life without lifting a finger, stuff for which other people work all day long to produce it while at the same time probably not enjoying a quality of life anywhere near yours, that is deeply unjust and I consider it immoral to desire such a life.

Ok, so capitalism isn't your thing. Fair enough.

I wonder where the limits are though. What if I save up and take a month off? Is that immoral? What about 6 months? A year? Or do I have to have some justification for it that you find acceptable (like having kids or mental health, etc?)

Or is it just immoral to not be constantly working while other people are working?

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

#107

Post by danbruc »

everfree wrote: post #81
danbruc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consuming without working for it is immoral, flying privat jets and traveling more is bad for the environment. Those are not reasons in favor of higher salaries.

By that logic, do you consider it immoral to spend lottery winnings?

Good question, but I would ad hoc say no. In the case of a lottery people willingly gamble with some money they earned. In case of management salaries they just take a share of the money for which all the thousands of workers on the factory floor worked.

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

#108

Post by pants2 »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #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…

I mostly agree with point 1 in the sense that the rich and powerful's money doesn't directly contribute to inflation of basic goods, i.e. Bill Gates can only eat so much rice personally so he's probably not affecting global rice prices.

However, per point 2, the issue is paying people to do useless things. If Bill Gates buys a superyacht staffed by 30 people just paid to operate the yacht, well that's a whole lot of man-hours and natural resources (fuel, raw material) being pumped into a useless object that could otherwise be spent improving the world. And yes, downstream from that (people paid to grow the food that feeds the yacht workers) are now doing mostly useless work.

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

#109

Post by sequoia »

It's pretty absurd of him to talk about how it's ridiculous that people are paid $50mil (I agree) then pivot and say that $120,000 per annum for a new grad is another example of "ridiculous comp." These things are not in the same ballpark, they are qualitatively different.

I don't know the author but this is so bizarre it makes me question their analysis overall.

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

#110

Post by ezrast »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #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…

I think it makes more sense to look at it through the lens of labor distribution. Money is abstract and cyclical and can be inflated and deflated by policy, which makes it complicated to draw conclusions about. But money is ultimately used to influence the distribution of labor, which we as a species have a finite capacity for, and which has concrete impacts.

As a person becomes wealthier, each marginal dollar is less likely to be used to support critical infrastructure like food distribution and more likely to support the construction of mega-yachts. And because the labor pool is finite and subject to competition, increasing the leverage of the mega-yacht industry can have a negative effect on other sectors' abilities to meet people's basic needs. This is why I hold income inequality to _generally_ be a negative thing under capitalism: not because of any moral judgment on rich people, but because a certain level of competitiveness among individuals in the labor market is a requirement for survival.

edit: whoops, everyone else already made this point while I was typing. Sorry for the pile-on.

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