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CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

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Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#181

Post by Aunche »

slashdave wrote: post #78

Inequity is a real thing, but I am confused about why the CEO of a company that consists primarily of low wage earners deserves a lower compensation for that reason alone. If you follow this logic to extremes, the compensation of a CEO of a company of a dozen people earning 100,000 should be higher than one with with tens of thousands of employees earning 30,000. Not all businesses are the same.

> I am confused about why the CEO of a company that consists primarily of low wage earners deserves a lower compensation for that reason alone

If you're looking for an economic reason, there isn't any. Politics in the US has always been moralistic since the days of the Puritans, so people prefer moralistic "solutions".

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#182

Post by linotype »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #129
nitwit005 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no plan. CEO salaries have just crept up steadily. If anything, they're paying CEOs so much in some cases that the rational thing for the CEO to do is as little work as possible. Why work hard if you'll get enough to retire comfortably on regardless of your performance?

> Why work hard if you'll get enough to retire comfortably on regardless of your performance? ... Sundar Pichai, is that you?

After the Pixel announcement (Jimmy Fallon? Cringe) recently and the bafflingly bad fumble with LLMs, I’m surprised people think he works at all.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#183

Post by FridayoLeary »

simianwords wrote: post #112

I did an exercise here: the average CEO salary of S&P 500 is around $20M. That's around $10B totally. Assume there are three executives - so thats around $30B annually. Lets go much further, lets multiply this by 10 to account for top 5000 companies (in practice it would be more like top 20,000 because the lower companies have much lower CEO salaries). There are around 300 million people in USA. By redistributing the…

It's the unfairness which bothers people.

>Even if you give $500 to every citizen, that does not mean affordability will increase because inflation can increase proportionally. This is because even with increased money, each citizen is buying goods amongst the same quantity of goods as before.

I know. I thought those covid payments proved it. Everyone got a temporary financial boost, which was great, but they ended up paying for it threefold with rising inflation. As far as i can tell the only people that did really well from it were the banks. The whole policy was well intentioned and completely misguided.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#184

Post by papascrubs »

simianwords wrote: post #133
drunner wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As shown by the covid payments. $900 a year is a lot of money to a lot of folks. Heck annual social security average is 24k a year, so you are talking about nearly 4% more money for just those people alone.

Fair, lets then count income tax which makes it more like $500 assuming net taxes around 40%. I'm ignoring salary increase due to stock valuation going up because it complicates things and there is equal force from both sides of the argument. So you decide: 20,000 companies running with a CEO being paid like an average person. And every citizen gets $500 in their account per year. Edit: its not just a CEO but the C s…

Shouldn't it be distributed to just the employees of those companies? Why are we including every citizen. That seems to dilute that overall picture.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#185

Post by singleshot_ »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #140
NoahZuniga wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these issues are specific to CEO wages. This is essentially just a list of reasons why you don't like capitalism. ie if a CEO doesn't do these on their own accord, the shareholders might contact the CEO and tell them to take some of these measures. This mechanism isn't dependent on CEO pay, because the CEO is always beholden to the shareholders, and shareholders always want more money. The solution to this is…

> This mechanism isn't dependent on CEO pay, because the CEO is always beholden to the shareholders, and shareholders always want more money Legally the CEO has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders. In practice, can we honestly say that every CEO of a publicly traded corporation acted in the long term interests of EVERY shareholder and didn't just parasitically extract value from the company for themselves and a hand…

> Legally the CEO has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders

The CEO has two fiduciary duties:

1) To act with appropriate information; 2) To avoid usurping corporate opportunities

The duty to make money for the shareholders is distinctly not a thing.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#186

Post by paulryanrogers »

k_roy wrote: post #49
VirusNewbie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Seems like calling something low effort is even lower effort. But hey, let’s chat. Is this not the opposite of trickle down, with clearly the transfer of wealth upward?

I like the snowball metaphor. Those who start with more get more regardless of the weather. Meanwhile smaller snowballs melt away in bad (warm) times and can't grow nearly as fast even in good (cold) times.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#187

Post by Workaccount2 »

ravivooda wrote: post #122
simianwords wrote: post #112

I did an exercise here: the average CEO salary of S&P 500 is around $20M. That's around $10B totally. Assume there are three executives - so thats around $30B annually. Lets go much further, lets multiply this by 10 to account for top 5000 companies (in practice it would be more like top 20,000 because the lower companies have much lower CEO salaries). There are around 300 million people in USA. By redistributing the…

Beginning of game: CEO = 0$ value Employee = 0$ value --- Round 1 Year CEO = $20M Employee = $0.5M (generous) -- Round 5 Years CEO = $100M (if pay remained the same, and they did not create new companies, which I'm sure they will). Employee = $3M (let's give them promo) etc. Cost of living is increasing with employee's wage, nothing for a CEO. ---- Tell me who is more secure, who has the flexibility to take risks, an…

Do it again but factor in the 90% start-up failure rate.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#188

Post by thrance »

WalterBright wrote: post #170
thrance wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> no one cares about the long-term anymore. Every shareholder does, because you cannot make a quick buck off of a stock if the other shareholders are looking for the quick buck as well.

You just have to not be among the last suckers to be left to hold the ball.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#189

Post by timeattack »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #116
LordDragonfang wrote: post #46

So perhaps someone can explain something to me. One of the main problems I see with modern Corporatism is that "shareholders" have too much influence over companies, driving them to make choices that erode long-term customer trust and brand value in return for short-term gains. (This is rational from the investor POV, because they can sell their stake at any point and still have made a profit on the dead husk of a co…

Shareholders own the company. They are literally the owners of the company. Like anything you own. In the same way you own your house and pay a painter to paint it, the shareholders own the company and pay Nick to stamp boxes. I don't know of anyone who has had work done on their home, and then upon selling the home, went back to the painter and said "Here is your cut of the profit we made selling our house, thanks f…

Now, this painter works for your house exclusively every day 40 to 60 hours each week total, 2-5 years, and because of their work you sell house for 1,000x of the original price. You now go to live luxury life without need to ever work again, while painter continue their meager life painting another house 8 hours every day.

Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations

#190

Post by simianwords »

papascrubs wrote: post #184
simianwords wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, lets then count income tax which makes it more like $500 assuming net taxes around 40%. I'm ignoring salary increase due to stock valuation going up because it complicates things and there is equal force from both sides of the argument. So you decide: 20,000 companies running with a CEO being paid like an average person. And every citizen gets $500 in their account per year. Edit: its not just a CEO but the C s…

Shouldn't it be distributed to just the employees of those companies? Why are we including every citizen. That seems to dilute that overall picture.

Multiply it by 4 then. Around $2000 per worker.
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