Yes, this is why you don't want to give them even more reason to do it.
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Bernie Sanders new 'Income Inequality Tax Plan'. New corporate tax tied to CEO-worker pay gap. Income gap of 50-500 times: 0.5-5% corporate tax
- Thread starter Tracygill
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Eh, I don't agree with this. I think where my problem comes is the subtle suggestion that every CEO is fuckin' Steve Jobs. No the fuck they aren't. Even the visionaries can sometimes be idiots (hi Elon!).
I automatically assume anyone arguing against Bernie's plans at this point doesn't want their cushy office job pay to go towards Bernie's taxes. That privilege.
That's why I'll never agree to what some on Era say about Bernie. I just refuse.
That's why I'll never agree to what some on Era say about Bernie. I just refuse.
Bernie's symbolism was badly needed, what it doesn't do is fix bigger issues with governance. It has limits, and it's those limits Im concerned about. All the symbolism in the world isn't going to change America when Bernie can't properly implement it. That's been his weakness as a politician while it's a strength for Warren.
That's ok.
This is myopic.
Focus on the facts and don't assume everyone who disagrees with you comes from a bad faith stance. There are more plausible political opinions in the world than what Bernie says.
This is politics, not a football match.
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That's not the issue I'm describing- it's outsourcing to other companies entirely.
And yet...per Wikipedia: In 2010, Nintendo revealed that Iwata earned a modest salary of ¥68 million (US$770,000), which increased to ¥187 million (US$2.11 million) with performance based bonuses. In comparison, Miyamoto earned a salary of ¥100 million (US$1.13 million).[103] Iwata voluntarily halved his salary in 2011 and 2014 as apologies for the poor sales while other members of the Nintendo board of directors had pay cuts of 20–30 percent.
Interesting that the people you use as your example visionaries make peanuts compared to the CEOs on the list in the OP. How many people on that list can you point to their accomplishments to justify what they're paid? Yeah, people like Steve Jobs have strong visions that generate tons of wealth...but most CEOs really don't. That should be obvious: Steve Jobs is a household name, how many of the CEOs on that list are as well known? The majority of them have no real vision other than pursuing short term gains for big investors and enriching themselves with no regard for workers.
There's a middle ground between "shop clerks and burger flippers are more valuable than inventors and executives to a company" and "CEOs should have ridiculous compensation packages", lol.
It would probably be easier just to raise capital gains taxes, so that the huge equity grants and options are taxed more when vested and/or sold.
It would probably be easier just to raise capital gains taxes, so that the huge equity grants and options are taxed more when vested and/or sold.
Moderates in here came out fully to bat for the rich and support for economic inequality, damn.
There's good reasons to resent the rich from an individual standpoint. Racism has no good reason. "Left wing Trump" Horseshoe theory is clown shoes.
You know which class of people generally sink capital to obfuscate by scapegoating poor minorities and immigrants? Also invest in political efforts to drag feet on policies that would disproportionately help the those people?
There's good reasons to resent the rich from an individual standpoint. Racism has no good reason. "Left wing Trump" Horseshoe theory is clown shoes.
Nobody is doing that, we want to put restraints on the rich, as well. It'd be naive to think Bernie becoming president will transform the entire political system over night wth a snap of his fingers. Obama couldn't do that in two terms. Not everyone who disagrees with Bernie is supporting inequality, were not Republicans.
The iPhones aren't assembled by Apple and generally speaking, yes, 200 workers are a giant workforce and Steve Jobs wasn't doing anything to justify salary ratios 200 to 1. Everything is produced, designed and planned by multiple workers, but for some weird reason people started the idolization of bosses and CEO's.
I don't really idolize him or give a crap, but I can see the value in him.
Apple stock was worth 100x the price it was from the moment he re-entered the company to the point of his passing.
Any business would love to have someone come on board and make it would 100x the value.
The game industry is rife with examples of good management decisions versus bad ones. The difference can be staggering.
That's why these companies are willing to pony up and pay for CEOs because they believe that person can be a large difference in the value of a company.
I'm not say it's good/bad/terrible whatever, but I do understand it.
If anyone on this board was running any kind of business, lets say a small mom n' pop restaurant and there was some chef you could hire to run the kitchen that would double/triple your business, would you say to them "no, get lost" if they wanted higher compensation knowing that they bring in more business for you?
It's just how the cookie crumbles. Good to great management is not just a regular cog in the machine, a lot of a company's fortunes rest of decisions the CEO and the higher ups make.
To this day for example Nintendo still has after effects from the decision to not use CDs dating back to 1993. That decision completely changed the entire game industry. It affects their third party relationships really to this day.
Sega is not in the business (not in the same way anyhow) period due to a string of bad decisions from their management from about 1993-1996.
Decisions that CEOs/presidents/top board members make can have repercussions for decades. It's not even the salary these people get, companies offer them stock options because the basic tenant is this: you steer the company well and your stock options will be worth more, so they get paid more if the company does well on back of their decision making.
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For developers and others in that field, yes.
They don't really hire other kind of staff directly (staffing agencies), so that ratio looks good.
So some idolized dude made decisions against the odds despite his consultants and workers were speaking against it.
You describe all the reasons why no CEO should have the discrepancy in salaries.
I mean I understand people not liking the optics of it, but I understand it too. CEO is not a nothing position, every company has 500 ideas, ultimately the CEO is most responsible for making the key decisions most of the time or having the most influence on those decisions along with a few other higher ups.
Also if their stock options is really what most of their salary is, and the stock options are worth a lot of money, odds are it's at least in part because the company is getting decent leadership from the top.
Any rudimentary study of the video game industry for example can show you the consequences of good management (Sony) versus poor management (Sega). Even if Sega had to pay their CEO 10x what he was making, if they had made better decisions, it ultimately would've been worth far more than that salary.
The reason company's pay a premium for this position is because they view it as central to the success of the company. Competitive markets are no picnic, having a good CEO who can guide a company well is extremely valuable and can be worth billions to a company.
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The management is still no one-man job for big corporations and especially not for conglomerates. It's the reason why you use the word management and not ceo or boss.
People just undervalue workers way too heavily.
I mean if there's a worker at Apple on the assembly line that's so good that he/she makes iPhones so well that its recognized and valued by consumers to the point where Apple is selling tons more phones because of their contribution, more power to that person. They should ask for a large pay raise and/or stock options to account for their contribution. Because in all likelihood they could get a job within 20 seconds at Samsung or somewhere else if that was the case.
But if it's a job that 5000 other people can do just as well and really has no bearing on whether someone is going to buy the product or not or how well the company is going to do or not, well I think that's the difference there.
A CEO/higher up just by the nature of their job have to make decisions that can dramatically alter company performance. Person on an assembly line doesn't impact whether or not the consumer wants the product or not.
I'm sure plenty of company's would love to pay their CEO and upper end staff $20,000 a year if they could. You're not getting anyone competent or good to work for you in those positions at that salary. I guess the question is how much is good management worth versus bad management. Because bad management can sink a company entirely. Whereas good upper management can make a company billions of dollars. A bad worker at a factory (versus a good one) really doesn't make that much of a difference.
iPhones aren't assembled by Apple. Despite that fact, factory workers are still the reason why you get the product. So their contribution is still huge even if more responsible jobs exist or jobs where a higher education is needed.
However, you shifted your tone from one single CEO to "the management".
The higher the CEO/Worker ratio, the more corporate tax the company has to pay. This is actually a very interesting idea. Because the corporation can invest the corporate tax they would pay in the wages of the workers to decrease the CEO/Worker pay ratio. Rather than paying the money in tax, you invest the money in the workforce. Good idea I think.
Musk has funded the start of the company, and he also got some crazy performance-linked salary. He has to deliver big time to get paid.
Consumers don't choose the iPhone based on who the factory workers are though. They chose it based on the design of the phone, which factory workers have nothing to do with really, they just assemble it.
If there was value from the consumer on the way the phone was assembled, then it'd be a different story, but if that's the same job 20,000 other people can do just as well after a few hours of training, it's not exactly a job position where you can leverage yourself to a high salary.
A Tim Cook though? Samsung would probably gladly pay him 25% more than Apple is now if he was interested in going elsewhere. Because they'd be getting a lot of insight and a philosophy on how to run things that could ultimately yield them products that sell better or at the very least weaken a competitor so that they gain more marketshare.
Value isn't some arbitrary thing some exclusive club chooses on a whim. Your value in anything is based on largely how rare and valuable your position is. A heart surgeon is going to be paid more than a janitor. I can play basketball, it doesn't mean I should be paid $20 million a year because LeBron James gets paid that or LeBron James shouldn't be able to make $20 million a year from basketball because the pay gap between him and me is too large.
I don't generate hundreds of millions of dollars in TV viewership, ticket sales, merchandise sales, etc. when I play basketball, no one would pay money to watch me play.
Running a multi-billion dollar company is not something anyone can do successfully with a couple hours of training. It's not to deify them or whatever, but it's just the reality. Being able to do things like play basketball like LeBron James or direct movie like Steven Spielberg or run a multi-billion dollar corporation that maintains billion dollar profits every year like a Tim Cook is not something anyone can do or can be taught to do easily.
It's not to say those people are "better" than anyone else as human beings, just in a free market if you have a skill/ability to do something that is rare, valuable, and cannot be easily taught to just anyone ... you have tremendous leverage to get a high salary.
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Fuck, man. You're too hung up on Apple. I feel like most CEO's aren't like, doing most of the design work for their products. Companies hire people for that, then the CEO can walk in and say "That's what I'm talking about, but you gotta add more EDGE to it" and then the designers and engineers just pretend to know what that means and show them the same thing the next day until they can release it. Though that's an overly cynical view of what they do, when you see things like the CEO of Toys R' Us getting millions in bonuses after the company was run into the ground you start to not really care what they think. For the working class, screwing up bad likely means you lose your job. It does not mean you get enough money to live a comfortable middle class life for 3 generations of family. Shit's obscene.
But even Toys R' Us, they weren't paying that guy big money to rub it in your face and "be obscene". Companies pay a lot to CEOs because good management is incredibly valuable to any company.
Lets say you came up with some idea somehow that generated $15 million/year, but you need a CEO to run the actual company because that part of the business was beyond you. Would you rather pay a "good manager" who has experience and proven track record $250k a year in stock options or hire a shitty one with no experience that increases your chances of the company probably folding at some point (no guarantee to either scenario though, even the "good guy" can screw up) for only $60k?
You do save $210k a year by hiring the crappier option, but is that savings really worth it put against the value of the company?
I bet when reflecting on it, you'd probably choose the 250k CEO. That's a lot of money to pay one employee, but ultimately it's probably worth the piece of mind knowing that you have someone qualified, experienced. It's no guarantee your business can't ever fail, because that's impossible to get, but at least you can probably sleep a little easier at night.
That's really the POV businesses have when making these decisions, they're not doing it "cuz lulz we want this guy to buy a yacht!". They're running a business that generates hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars, you want to have a person you feel is valuable/competent in the CEO position, not just "Average CEO", and those people aren't stupid, they know many companies want them, so to get them you have to pay up.
I'd personally argue there is no amount of business acumen that could justify a salary of 10's of millions. Doubly so once the company tanks under them and they leave with a bonus equivalent to winning the local lottery. I'm also not entirely interested in how the free market values things anyway because if it were totally up to that most workers wouldn't get paid more than a bowl of soup a day. And even then there would still be those arguing that some people are simply worth more than a million times the hypothetical soup serfs because of some nebulous amount of business experience. But I'm one of those pro-max income kind of people so you gotta take this all with a tablespoon of salt.
I mean Apple was trading at 50 pennies a share when Steve Jobs arrived, when he passed it was 100x that.
He brought way more than $10 million/year in value to that company ... we're talking billions more.
A CEO's decisions and ability to execute can be worth billions in many cases, we see all the time on this board. How much better has Microsoft done under Nadella? How much better has Sony done once Kaz Hirai was appointed the top guy over Stringer?
$10 million is actually pretty paltry when comparing how much those company's made from a better CEO.
Also I mean a lot these people are paid in stock options not salary, if a company is doing poorly under their watch it means their "salary" is going to shrink, if the stock of the company keeps going up, odds are the CEO is doing at least some things right.
People say the same stuff about athletes ... "why the fuck does LeBron James get paid $20 million/year, all he does is dribble a basketball" ... he gets paid that because he earns the NBA/Lakers 10x that.
Pretty much this. I think it's totally valid to the shareholders of a publicly traded company for a CEO to be paid a lot. In fact in some cases, it might even be the case that CEOs should earn more given the returns their leadership can bring to a company and its shareholders. Of course, I do think they should be paying equal taxes and their employees more as well, some kind of profit sharing, but yeah.
I actually think it's reasonable that most of their higher part of their "pay" should be stock options. If they're crap at their job, those stock options aren't likely to be worth a ton, if they're good at their job their stock options should rise, which I do think is fair. If a CEO is doing a good job running a company and the company is making a lot of money, then I think the company offering that person stock options is fair.
You can't really blame Kaz Hirai for example for running Sony so well that his lets say $5 million in stock options is worth double that in 5 years because he did a good job. He's not "stealing" that money from someone else. The company as a whole is getting proportional benefit too with the same stock rise.
Software engineers get paid well, especially at big companies like FB. Plus, they probably only hire the best and it's really challenging to get in. I mean, I've tried twice and failed both. First time went ok, second time was awful so I guess there's also a random element to it
Sure, CEOs are often special people that do exclusive tasks or bring something only them can do. They can win more than regular employees. 49 times actually.
They are still human beings that shit and eat and breath and have the same basic needs that every human. They happen to have better education or whatever you want to call their "it" factor. How many brilliant people didn't had the chance to bring out their true potential are going around there earning misery. Pay them more and CEO will still be able to live the way they do.