This is missing a lot of history. There was a lot of Anarchist violence in the 30s that led to things like the Inheritance Tax, now repealed. Up until Reagan it was possible to live reasonably well and even raise a family on a minimum wage. Now even middle class people can barely make it and are vulnerable to large medical bills. The past was not impossible. It actually happened. And we should be able to use that experience to craft something better if we really care to. Getting distracted with "Not within this system" talk is useless. The system can be changed and honed so let's do that.
Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
81–90 of 153 posts
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
People always bitch about CEOs. Do the math. Intel employs 120k people. The CEO makes $10M per year. Distribute his salary evenly to everyone at the company, it's not even a 0.2% increase to the average person's pay. Let's say there's 10 execs like this. Still not even 2% (and there aren't 10 execs like that). Most of the megacaps look the same. The salaries are massive. But they employ a LOT of people, and the avera…
> Do the math. A counterpoint with 5 minutes of searching: from [1], Peter Kern (3rd highest paid CEO) got $296M in 2022 overseeing ~15k employees (from [2]). Distribute that salary evenly and everyone gets a ~19k boost which, on an average base of $108k (from [3]), is about +17%, if I'm not mistaken. If you want an even more ludicrous example, David Baszucki (Roblox, 7th highest, also [1]) got $232M in 2022 overseei…
I said you will find outliers.
Congratulations. You found one extreme case, and included links to some others.
There are many.
There are also 5000+ large companies in the US that employ tens of thousands of people. 20,000+ companies globally.
This isn't the average. Use a normal distribution, and you'd expect 20+ companies with 3 sigma (where CEO pay would increase pay by 6%+). Corporate profits definitely don't have a normal distribution, neither does CEO pay. This isn't surprising to me.
Elon Musk has $200B. He's an edge case of an edge case. Should we pretend all billionaires are like him, too? The average Billionaire has almost 50x less money. The average CEO makes much less than 50x the links you cited.
The average CEO for the top 350 companies made $24M in 2020 (a good year). The average CEO for all companies over the last decade makes less than $1M - according to BLS it's $190k: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/top-executives.htm#:~:tex.... And that's the average not the median - so people like the links you provided are skewing that higher than the median...
> In summary, you can pick and choose examples to make either point.
This is called cherry picking. You can always find what you're looking for if you're willing to cherry pick hard enough on a large dataset.
Your starting hypothesis is that CEO pay is ridiculous - and you're finding examples to confirm that - rather than looking at averages to easily disprove the idea that the examples you cited are the exception not the norm.
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#83> Only a radical change in how work is done and who controls this can make labor once again an integral part of life, one through which we can fully develop our capacities as thinking, acting human beings. uhh. The article appears to suggest that we change who controls our labor... #1 - we do, we can quit anytime we want and find another place to work for. #2 - I assume they are railing against private individuals an…
Why do you assume the only options are being controlled by a different self-serving employer, or having the government regulate everything? After all, shouldn't those who actually form the workforce of a company and shape the products and services it offers be in control? Why not have those who actually do the work collectively control the fate of the company, instead of having to hand over that power to someone else…
> After all, shouldn't those who actually form the workforce of a company and shape the products and services it offers be in control? Why not have those who actually do the work collectively control the fate of the company, instead of having to hand over that power to someone else?
That is viable in some cases.
The underlying issue is that distribution of corporate growth is relegated to a small percentage of all organizations out there. To put it simply, a small percentage of companies above a certain size grow quickly while the rest are slowly dying. As a result, not only are the distribution of outsized monetary rewards highly biased in favor of a small percentage of companies, but the fight to maintain position once that period of growth is over is intense. Modern companies growth fast, survive for a time, and then go away.
This leads to an unfortunate dynamic where any competitive advantage that leads to either growth or survival matters. If a top-down managerial structure where rewards inside of the company are distributed to a small layer of top level managers and owners provides even a slight economic advantage over an employee-owned structure, the former is going to win out.
This may sound unfair, and it likely is, but the question becomes: if I am a worker at 'traditional corp.' with a 100K salary and a funded 401K, will I do better than if I was a worker at 'employee-owned corp.' with the same salary but an ownership share? The deciding point being that traditional corp. has a 20% chance of going away over the next ten years while employee-owned corp. has a 20%+ chance of going away over the same period of time.
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great question! Maybe they are, maybe they're not, and you're right that this should influence how the company is structured. But our current system goes quite a bit past simply "solving" this problem with investor shareholders, because that sole shareholder is entitled to any future profits the company makes, regardless of whether it makes a completely different game, and regardless of the massive contributions futu…
It's the same argument if someone should take options in lieu of salary in a startup, and the answer is almost always no. Options tend to end up worthless as most startups fail. IMO, a better question is to ask what allowed the single investor to become an investor to begin with. The nature of investing means the investor must be able to also lose all their capital. What can we do as a society to make easier for the…
Yes, I fully agree with your conclusion! I think changes in the structure of work have to be accompanied by things like UBI to fully work.
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe that the point of life is to become more than we are. My friend - grow to where you can. I wish you the best.
Your wishes are worth zero. - Would you be willing to oppose corporations controlling the government with bribes/campaign contributions? - Support a judicial system where poorer people can access justice? - Tell your representatives that wage theft should be punished as seriously as theft and fraud?
I don’t think this vitriol is warranted or reasonable.
* I would support completely disbanding corporations who bribe officials, and jailing its officers
* I think the biggest problem with our judicial system is the prevalence of plea deals leading to a lifetime of regret for those who ignorantly take them. Fix it.
* I believe wage theft is theft and would like to see jail time for those involved.
I imagine I’ve a harsher view than you on these elements. But, more to the point, even if I wasn’t this opinionated I dont think this hate is warranted.
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
>#1 - we do, we can quit anytime we want and find another place to work for. Sometimes this is not straight forward for example when you have some responsibilities in your life, or when your career is too specialized with little to no transferable skill (like when you´re proficient at an internal process of a company). Unless we could quit and be self sustainable without a job, then yes, at that point you could say o…
I think my point is being misunderstood just slightly. Its not that 'finding a job is easy' its that we are not slaves and while we can not necessarily choose who we labor for, we can choose who we do not labor for.
I would argue that as long as our health insurance is tied to our current job we are basically slaves of that job. I can't choose to quit if I need insurance to cover chronic problems, or to cover kids, etc. Not to mention all the aspects of not everyone can afford to take the time off to search for other employers, or move to wherever a new employer might be even if they wanted to. Quitting is only for the privileged.
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We, as humans, are only entitled to what we can ourselves provide. So then why do we have inherited wealth, why not ban that. Make things equitable, born with nothing but you can scavenge yourself. > To believe otherwise may be to hoist the black flag to take from others that which they did not earn. You mean like "private property"? Your logic only makes sense in an equitable world, where everyone is born equal, b…
This is diving into a conversation that may be best not had on HNN. @Dang - delete this if you like man, no offense taken. I don't think the goal is equity but equality. At least, that is my goal. I want the lowliest shoeshine boy to have the opportunity to do amazing things. I make no apologies for the country I was born or the circumstances. I grew up on a poor farm in a broken trailer surrounded by my backwoods re…
You are equating work with the production of value (in some way shape or form). However, machines can till the earth.
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you assume the only options are being controlled by a different self-serving employer, or having the government regulate everything? After all, shouldn't those who actually form the workforce of a company and shape the products and services it offers be in control? Why not have those who actually do the work collectively control the fate of the company, instead of having to hand over that power to someone else…
> After all, shouldn't those who actually form the workforce of a company and shape the products and services it offers be in control? Why not have those who actually do the work collectively control the fate of the company, instead of having to hand over that power to someone else? That is viable in some cases. The underlying issue is that distribution of corporate growth is relegated to a small percentage of all or…
That reasoning makes sense to me. Do you think there actually _is_ some material disadvantage to co-operatives that leads them to be less economically successful than companies where shareholders have all the power and ownership? If so, do you think there is something that can correct this imbalance such that companies structured in more equitable ways can work just as well as the current inequality-laden corporations?
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
So stop giving the Trillionaires your money. They have that trillion because we buy things from them... from Amazon, from Tesla, etc. You don't like those things exist? Stop exchanging your money for their goods/services.
That is a problem when Amazon buys up everything that moves and integrates it into their product line. At some point it becomes impossible to avoid. Most of the snack and soft drink industry is owned by like what, 3 megacorps? You don't like existing? Just die. Nobody's stopping you.
You really picked up the worst possible examples.
Solution #1 - don't buy properly crap food that is literally slowly killing you and making/keeping you addicted, while you pay the money to said corporations. A generally smart move. Yes they also own normal food(TM) brands, but here in Europe there are tons of alternatives on shelves, ie 1 cocoa powder from nestle, other 5 from small often fair trade producers.
Maybe in US Amazon owns everything, although I doubt it. But US is what, 5% of the world? In most of the world, Amazon is OK but nothing big. In Switzerland for example, there is no Amazon and its non-trivial to order anything from other countries, many sellers simply do not ship here. Stuff comes via Swiss post/small companies, from local eshops. So yeah not giving much to Bezos even if I wanted to.
Now what did I solve though? Nothing apart from good feeling (and paying more for postal serviecs and eating more healthily)
Re: Work, Work, Work – So a Few Can Be Rich
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, if I wanted to work on, say, World of Warcraft, I could hardly show up and demand Blizzard be turned into a co-operative. You can always start a co-op which makes a WoW clone. Nothing stops people from that. The fact that it's practically never done says a lot about real-life applicability of co-ops.
Do you think that just because something is not regularly done, that automatically means it is bad or not feasible? Relatedly, do you think the fact that our culture has somewhat of a focus on individual economic success and the accumulation of power might have something to do with the fact that co-operatives are not at the forefront of our radar?
> Do you think that just because something is not regularly done, that automatically means it is bad or not feasible?
I think it proves that co-ops are just worse at complex tasks. A company requires just one dedicated and driven individual (the founder), and the rest of people can be hired and just do tasks assigned to them. Whereas, in a coop, the decision-making process is much harder, and just doesn't work as well for complex organizations. And, game devving (like many other complex tasks) is so hard and fraught with perils, that you don't want to throw in additional complications if you don't have to.