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

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

#231

Post by danbruc »

jedberg wrote: post #220
danbruc wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What then is a more fair outcome in your original scenario where producing widgets was the only activity? If you keep working, making other inventions, that is a completely different scenario. That you should do your share of crank turning only applies to the scenario where turning the crank is the only work that needs to be done.

Clearly crank turning isn't the only job, since machine inventing must exist as another possible job. But even if the machine is the only invention that will ever be made, it's still not fair that we each crank the handle the same amount of time, because I invented the machine. I built the machine and presumably spent my widget money on making the machine. My contribution was amassing the capital and resources to mak…

I already wrote that you can have some additional widgets for inventing and building the machine. Even if I had not mentioned it, that would be a reasonable thing to do, if I insist on splitting the crank turning work, you can pretty safely assume that I am also willing to split the inventing and building work in one way or another.

But even if you would not get anything for inventing the machine, it would not really matter significantly. As you both keep turning the crank, the relative amount of work you both did would approach one half and both of you would have half of all the widgets. Compare that to the other scenario where the guy does all the crank turning, there the relative amount of work you did approaches zero as the guy keeps turning the crank making his relative amount of work approach one.

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

#232

Post by tim333 »

> claiming that they need to pay CEOs $50,000,000 salaries in order to recruit the very best ...

>After a million dollars or so in salary, the absolute amount that a person is paid has no real impact on their life...

At the high end it isn't really about employee lifestyle, it's about the value the person can bring to the business. If one CEO will take a $100k salary and keep the business about the same and the other wants $50m but will add £1bn in value to the business then the latter is a better deal for the owners.

And the person wanting the $50m may not be greedy but just being offered similar elsewhere because they are good. Of course in real life people often get the high salaries without actually being that good which is a less fair deal.

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

lex-lightning wrote: post #203
latexr wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t weird at all. A residential home is also more likely to be robbed than Fort Knox. It goes back to the required preparedness of the robbers. Either way, I wasn’t the one who picked the example. Seth didn’t ask “should a liquor store employee be payed more than a bank teller”. Which wouldn’t be a good example either, as we’d be comparing too many different axis.

Devil’s advocate: they’re both clerks and the liquor store is more dangerous, so yes they should be paid more

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by manuelabeledo »

wonderwonder wrote: post #208
bobsomers wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same people that minimize what people like Musk have accomplished. Oof, I agree in general with what you're saying but Musk is a bad example. His companies have been successful in spite of him, rather than because of him.

come on friend. I can understand someone getting lucky, happening to hire the exact right person and the company succeeding due to the hard work of someone else. Once. But this guy is so lucky that he managed to do it in: SpaceX, Paypal, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. Even if Neuralink and Boring company are not profitable, the sheer scale and potential of the ideas are incredible. I understand why people…

> But this guy is so lucky that he managed to do it in: SpaceX, Paypal, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.

Not so great examples.

The Boring Company only real customer is the city of Las Vegas. Nothing much to show apart from that.

Neuralink is barely a R&D project, and still not making any money.

PayPal wasn't a Musk's venture, x.com was. x.com lasted for a couple years. Musk was the CEO for maybe a year. Essentially, he cashed out on the success of Thiel as CEO after PayPal went public and was sold to eBay.

SpaceX is very much still losing money.

> I understand why people don't like Musks opinion on many things but to infer that he has somehow become the richest man in the world by accident is disingenuous.

Not by accident, and richest only on paper.

But he was indeed incredibly fortunate and somewhat lucky. The fact that he is successful doesn't change that.

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

#235

Post by danbruc »

thwarted wrote: post #226
danbruc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are reasons for differing salaries and they have important functions. But at some point those justifications stop to make sense and it is really just about exploiting your position to grab as much as you can for yourself.

Has there ever been a union that pushed for lower compensation for it's members? A union advocating/negotiating for as much as it can for its members is exploiting its position in the same way.

No, trying to get a better compensation is not per se the issue. In a hypothetical company where the management takes home all the profits and the workers make minimum wage, moving to a more fair distribution of the profits involves less money for the management and more money for the workers.

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

#236

Post by red-iron-pine »

shermantanktop wrote: post #97
lukas099 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number of millions matters when donating to your favorite charity or political lobby, too.

I'm sure that's important to some people, but I'd be very surprised if that's why most millionaires are still going to work every day.

dunno. after you get enough to meet all needs forever, the question then becomes "what can I build?" and how to steer civilization into something you want -- dictate the shape of things to come.

way more motivating than trying to squeeze out an extra 30k per annum to get a slightly nicer condo

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

#237

Post by ghaff »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #228
lex-lightning wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal pet peeve is how every retirement calculator bakes in an assumption like “you’ll NEED 75% of your current income as living expenses when you retire.” Like your salary won’t change over your career. Like you’re just an impulse buyer. Like there’s anything but a distant correlation between these numbers. I think there’s a conspiracy or a (USA) cultural aversion to not working.

Sadly I can see a lot of workers never truly getting pay raises as they go around jobs, not careers. The progression feels obvious if you have something highly technical, but many don't get to that point. >I think there’s a conspiracy or a (USA) cultural aversion to not working. maybe. "American Dream" hasn't died in many's minds.

>(USA) cultural aversion to not working

It's generally good for people to have activities. That said, if money were totally off the table, I'd probably have retired at least somewhat earlier.

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

#238

Post by ghaff »

lazide wrote: post #192
inejge wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flying first class, flying charted, leasing a jet, owning a jet Perhaps counterintuitively, going from first class to charter/leased flights is a safety downgrade. Search for accident statistics on the NTSB site and you'll see that Part 135 flights (smaller aircraft, including business jets) have 3-4x the accident rates compared to Part 121 (large air carriers), arguably because Part 121 regulations are much more str…

You pay for flexibility in multiple ways. Private helicopters are only slightly safer than solo parachute jumps.

It's really about flexibility. First class + airport lounges is pretty comfortable. But you're still on someone else's schedule.

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

#239

Post by mcguire »

asadotzler wrote: post #167
mcguire wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The neat part about it is that if my friend's buddy, Bubba (Yeah. He's an electrician.) goes to see a congressman, governor, or the president and says he wants something done, he'll get a big shit-eating grin and a "Sure, buddy, we'll work on that!" with a hearty handshake. If I go to them, I'll get offered a cup of coffee and possibly a few minutes to make my case. If the guy making $50,000,000 per year does it, the…

So we should mint a few more billionaires to improve our democracy? That cannot be what you're saying, right?

If the result is a small number of trillionaires, it probably won't help.

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

#240

Post by unbalancedevh »

throwaway240412 wrote: post #86

> 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. Take the now-defunct "American dream" of a single-income family with 3 kids living in a house with a backyard, say, in Silicon Valley and other places that have mobs paying more than $1 million…

> that's down to $85k in savings if you live frugally

Saving $85k per year, which is way more than the median income in the US, is fantastic for a family of 5, while simultaneously building equity in one of the most expensive markets.

And $5k in personal expenses per person per month is hardly living frugally, especially for a 1-income household where presumably child care (and pre-school) isn't necessary. I don't live in an HCOL area, but non-discretionary expenses for just me, besides rent/mortgage, are about $1200/month. Food and clothing aren't 4x as expensive in SV are they?

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