It’s interesting to me this doesn’t self correct. I’d love to know if someone can explain why. E.g. presumably companies can pay people more if they capture less value themselves. Why can’t a company do that and just hire the best talent?
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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
#22Stock buybacks used to be illegal. It's a loophole way of paying employees at a lower tax rate than salary. HBR discusses some downsides of buybacks: https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous-for...
Stock buybacks were never illegal. Stock buybacks were how Buffett took control of a small textile mill called Berkshire Hathaway in the 1960s. What was not allowed was at-the-market buybacks in the open market. Corporations had to do tender offers at a fixed price, usually well above market price, in order to attract sellers to mail in their certificates. I'm not sure why that is necessarily better or helps anyone, so I think allowing ATM buybacks is a net good.
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#23This in particular seems silly to post to the hackernews crowd, as this seems to imply the majority of stock goes to senior execs, when large tech companies are literally paying out tens of billions of dollars to the average tech worker.
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#24Measuring median wage of Starbucks employees against the one time multi-year strictly performance based stock-option plan given to the new CEO is so blatantly dishonest I can barely read the rest of the article. Especially when Starbucks awards stock and healthcare plans to even part time baristas. Probably one of the better major employers of low skill labor in the world.
Is part of the performance keeping worker wages as low as possible?
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#25I'm not sure how to phrase this, so please be patient and try to understand what I intend to say.
CEO pay relative to median employee pay has soared since the 1970s. That is, a CEO may be paid $10,000,000 vs the median employee at $70,000 (arbitrary numbers), where before 1970 the numbers may have been $150,000 and $20,000
Using only one set of numbers can be deceiving though. For instance, through mergers and acquisitions, there may be One CEO where there were previously 10. So you might be able to see this by comparing Total Executive Pay - ie the whole C-suite to Total Non-Executive Pay.
Also, many companies have become more efficient as measured in revenue per employee over time, so another good set of numbers might be Total Executive Pay vs Gross Revenue.
How does Executive Pay look in these contexts?
I'm sure someone has done the work, but I have not had luck googling it, and I definitely don't trust a LLM to get this one right.
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#26Stock buybacks used to be illegal. It's a loophole way of paying employees at a lower tax rate than salary. HBR discusses some downsides of buybacks: https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous-for...
That's specifically focusing on debt-driven buybacks and leverage, which is come down significantly since the dates in the article: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/April-2025-finan...
Metrics like debt service costs to cashflow are also relatively healthy.
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#27This from an advocacy group with a clear agenda. But if they wanted to raise wages they could just advocate for less immigration and robust enforcement. Restrict supply, wages will rise. But they don't.
Key Points - While some policymakers have blamed immigration for slowing U.S. wage growth since the 1970s, most academic research finds little long run effect on Americans’ wages. - The available evidence suggests that immigration leads to more innovation, a better educated workforce, greater occupational specialization, better matching of skills with jobs, and higher overall economic productivity. - Immigration also…
This account seems to be bot-posting.
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#28This from an advocacy group with a clear agenda. But if they wanted to raise wages they could just advocate for less immigration and robust enforcement. Restrict supply, wages will rise. But they don't.
This is not true. Restrict supply too much and you can't build anything. Could you have built Nvidia by restricting supply? Probably not - so there seems to be a middle ground.
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#29It’s interesting to me this doesn’t self correct. I’d love to know if someone can explain why. E.g. presumably companies can pay people more if they capture less value themselves. Why can’t a company do that and just hire the best talent?
Because the "talent" in this case is a commodity. Most of the low-wage corporation's employees tend to be front-of-house customer facing staff or brown-collar labor, which in most cases does not require any special skill set, nor rewards exceptional talent in most companies. Jobs that are easily replaceable and does not require a degree holder.
Ironically, one of the few places I've seen that actually rewards employees for going above and beyond regularly is Walmart. Entry-level staff who can rise through the ranks with exceptional work can turn from low-wage line workers to store managers who are often paid close to $250k.
Re: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the largest low-wage corporations
#30This from an advocacy group with a clear agenda. But if they wanted to raise wages they could just advocate for less immigration and robust enforcement. Restrict supply, wages will rise. But they don't.
Immigration is an economic net positive on the country, you're just pushing your agenda. Don't pretend otherwise.
Pushing the agenda of supply and demand?
Generally any gain in income is NOT going towards the lowest rung American worker who are specifically being talked about here.
This is why you always told by open border advocates if you restrict/enforce immigration the price if produce will rise. Why would that be..