I have never understood why so many people care about how much someone else makes. If they feel they are qualified for such a position so that they too can make that kind of money and have those same responsibilities there is nothing stopping them from applying.
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Companies Must Reveal CEOs Pay Compared To Workers
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
When a guy has 'the stuff' the emotion is called Greed, when someone else has 'the stuff' the emotion is called Envy. Neither are virtues. Although, people appeal to both in hopes of personally profiting from exploiting people affected by that emotion. Right now you hear the most from people trying to cultivate envy to their own ends.
Well I think it's less about caring what the other person makes so much as are you earning less BECAUSE of their increase.
next-Jin
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This who break up CEO pay and give employees the difference is confusing. The country literally runs of investment. The wealthy don't stay wealthy because of annual salaries or compensation packages they stay wealthly because they invest.
Basically stealing CEOs salaries to give to poor people (or their employees) just to have them spend it in the economy does nothing but praise the broken glass theory.
It won't solve the debt problems Americans have, it won't solve race inequality, and it won't solve the horrible education/planning system we have where poor people have zero idea on money management, life planning, or self sustainment.
If you are horribly poor there are countless options out there for college, there are countless different social safety nets, etc. Those have yet to solve anything and the problems have only gotten worse.
This does nothing but push an agenda that liberal democrats have about attacking the rich. Do I think CEOs deserve all that money? No. Do I think the Kardasians, Sports stars, or the anyone else for that matter deserve all that money? No. But I'm not about to punish them and force them to stop investing for future entrepreneurs and industry for the sake of giving millions of people money they are going to throw away on the economy.
Basically stealing CEOs salaries to give to poor people (or their employees) just to have them spend it in the economy does nothing but praise the broken glass theory.
It won't solve the debt problems Americans have, it won't solve race inequality, and it won't solve the horrible education/planning system we have where poor people have zero idea on money management, life planning, or self sustainment.
If you are horribly poor there are countless options out there for college, there are countless different social safety nets, etc. Those have yet to solve anything and the problems have only gotten worse.
This does nothing but push an agenda that liberal democrats have about attacking the rich. Do I think CEOs deserve all that money? No. Do I think the Kardasians, Sports stars, or the anyone else for that matter deserve all that money? No. But I'm not about to punish them and force them to stop investing for future entrepreneurs and industry for the sake of giving millions of people money they are going to throw away on the economy.
TwistedAegis
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Inequality also matters because it creates a ruling class. Look at Trump during the GOP debate - out and out admits paying to play with both sides of the house.
So now you have the richest skewing our democracy, day by day. Sure, numbers can outweigh dollars, but when you're chained to your desk because the middle class' wealth/income is the same as it was in 1985 (no growth in 30 years), finding the time to raise your kids, grind the 50 hours a week minimum that it seems to have become, then go out and be a political activist/grass-roots organizer? Yeah right. It's all connected.
There are several major trends I see as the issue. The first is globalization - if I can get the widget made in China for $0.25 instead of $1, I absolutely will.
The second is automation - the US actually manufactures more, in dollar value, than it ever has. The issue is that it requires orders of magnitude less workers than it used to.
The third is massive tax and legal incentives favoring capital vs labor. Actually work for a paycheck for a living and you get nailed with every tax out there. Be a hedge-fund manager and make a billion dollars a year? Your "dividends" are taxed at 15%.
The fourth is central banks, world wide, keeping rates extremely low. Low rates means "safe" investments don't pay, encourages speculative stock market gambling by financial institutions with nearly free money, rather than lend to businesses that actually contribute something to society, particularly capital intensive ones.
So now you have the richest skewing our democracy, day by day. Sure, numbers can outweigh dollars, but when you're chained to your desk because the middle class' wealth/income is the same as it was in 1985 (no growth in 30 years), finding the time to raise your kids, grind the 50 hours a week minimum that it seems to have become, then go out and be a political activist/grass-roots organizer? Yeah right. It's all connected.
There are several major trends I see as the issue. The first is globalization - if I can get the widget made in China for $0.25 instead of $1, I absolutely will.
The second is automation - the US actually manufactures more, in dollar value, than it ever has. The issue is that it requires orders of magnitude less workers than it used to.
The third is massive tax and legal incentives favoring capital vs labor. Actually work for a paycheck for a living and you get nailed with every tax out there. Be a hedge-fund manager and make a billion dollars a year? Your "dividends" are taxed at 15%.
The fourth is central banks, world wide, keeping rates extremely low. Low rates means "safe" investments don't pay, encourages speculative stock market gambling by financial institutions with nearly free money, rather than lend to businesses that actually contribute something to society, particularly capital intensive ones.
"Middle class wealth/income is the same as in 1985" - I take issue with that claim. Whatever the measure of inflation you use, people are far better off today than they were 30 years ago. My parents' first PC (with a Pentium 90) cost them $2000, without a monitor. My house is bigger than my parents', and we paid less for our house than they did for theirs, even ignoring inflation. Communications of all sorts are better, faster, and cheaper. Energy costs have gone down, once you account for inflation.
With regard to the central banks, it's worth pointing out that TANSTAAFL. You can only have low interest rates by pumping money into the system, and that causes inflation, which is essentially a stealth tax. Zimbabwe was the extreme version of this, but it applies at every level.
Legal incentives for capital vs labor--that's true to a point, but you must also bear in mind that those dividends have already been taxed at the corporate rate of 35%. If they *weren't* taxed at the corporate level, then I might agree that some adjustments would need to be made.
RE: automation and globalization--they're kinda two symptoms of the same issue--employing people to do a job in US is expensive. There are lots of reasons for that, but since we're looking at things from a public policy perspective, there are TONS of laws, regulations, and taxes that make it very expensive to hire someone in the US. You've got payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, health insurance, workers' compensation, etc. Those kinds of things can easily double the cost of hiring someone for a low-wage job, especially once you add in the compliance costs. Whether these things are net positives is not the issue--I'm just pointing out that our current public policy drives up the cost of domestic employees.
On the non-public-policy side, we have a very consumeristic culture that encourages spending every penny you've got on stuff, whether you need it or not. You don't see many TV commercials encouraging people to max out their 401k's and IRAs in order to prepare for retirement
TwistedAegis
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You're taking about creature comforts/or the value of them. I'm talking cold, hard cash and it isn't something you can disagree with - http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-Income-Distribution.php
There has only been a 0.43% real growth rate for the middle quintile since 1965. The peak year of income for the middle quintile was 2000, when it was $57,129...in 2013 is was still only $52,322 (chained 2013 dollars).
Economics is not a zero sum game, otherwise you could never have growth. I'm not a fan of low interest rates, but where is this Zimbabwean hyper-inflation everyone was worried about? If anything, the lack of inflation points to the level of inequality in the system; money is so few hands doesn't drive broad-based inflation.
Most hedge funds are LPs or LLCs, which means they are pass-through vehicles for taxes. That means there is no tax at the entity level, only at the individual level.
Don't necessarily disagree. It's just that, how much of a race to the bottom do we want? Do we want to encourage bringing maquiadores to the US? Near slave labor? I'm not sure what the answer is here; I do think there are still good options to have a strong middle class.
On the non-public-policy side, we have a very consumeristic culture that encourages spending every penny you've got on stuff, whether you need it or not. You don't see many TV commercials encouraging people to max out their 401k's and IRAs in order to prepare for retirement
Totally agree. I think the reason the recovery has been slow is that the middle class' income still has not grown, and they still need to pay down the debt overgrowth of the last 40 years, which is painful. Until we better balance debt vs savings financed growth, we're going to be slow; and it's only going to be slower with income inequality.
This is extremely anecdotal. There's a lot of evidence to support wages remaining essentially flat after adjusting for inflation since the 80s. But here's the kicker, costs of living have NOT remained flat, they've gone up. Even if the wages are similar you're getting less bang for the buck than you used to since so much money goes towards rent and basic expenses now.
Yes, you do have better communication and many cheaper goods, no argument there. But you also have less job security, less chance of retirement, worse healthcare coverage, less job benefits, MUCH more expensive education. These low costs come at a price from elsewhere.
Not in my thinking.
If I wanted to be a CEO and make that kind of money I would have made far different career choices over the years. If you are an adult making $8 an hour and you aren't happy about it, then you should have been making far better career choices as well.
Minimum wage jobs are not for grown men and women who hope to have a decent future. The opportunities are out there and all it requires is that people do what must be done to get them. It's choices, nothing more nothing less.
I'm sorry to be a realist, but spending all your time worrying about what the other guy makes isn't going to get you any closer to a better life, unless of course, you make those numbers your goal posts.
Don't take it personal, this is just what I get when I read your comment.
Don't take it personal, this is just what I get when I read your comment.
I'll vote for Trump for exactly this reason. He isn't one of them. My dividends are taxed no different. It's not unfair, I could have become a hedge-fund manager.
The problem I see is that the only way to "correct" the problems you see is to destroy the system we have that does offer us these opportunities and chances.
I agree with next-Jin. Until Americans learn to stop being stupid with their money, to stop looking to the Federal Government to fix their personal failures, to start accepting responsibility for their own life choices. Life is going to remain a little more "unfair".
Ur_Mom
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Not arguing with you there.
But, with a lot of manufacturing jobs going overseas or to Mexico/Canada, there are a lot more service jobs. Where I used to live, it used to be timber. City dwellers decided they knew better than we did and now it's all service oriented jobs. So, the majority of jobs are minimum wage or slightly higher unless you commute to the nearest city (45 minutes, not bad, I did it).
But, with the recent changes and proposed changes - minimum wage jobs will be only for adult men and women. No way would I pay a no skilled, no experience, no clue what they want for a career (are they here for 2 weeks or 2 years?) teenager. Entry level jobs won't be as big. I'd hire someone that knew what they were doing and I expected they would stay. Reliable, hard working, experienced.
Still, minimum wage jobs now and when I was growing up were for people like me. Teenagers wanting to work and get some money. I knew then (and I was dumb) that a minimum wage job was not a career, was not a way to sustain myself if I were to be responsible for myself, much less a family. So, I worked my ass off and got an education and skills to get into the IT industry. I've still worked shit minimum wage jobs here and there when I had to, but always knew that had no future and wouldn't cover all the bills and I never expected it to. Being paid $15 an hour for what I was doing would have been insane. I'd question the hiring manager's sanity. $15 an hour for extremely basic work? I wouldn't be complaining, I'd take the money. But, that's WAY too much for the work being done.
TwistedAegis
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"I could have been a hedge fund manager."
Sure you could have, and we could all be hedge fund managers if we all just worked hard, right? We wouldn't need janitors or bus drivers or cleaners or or or...in a magical land where everything is solely due to individual hard work.
It's this delusion holding us back as a society.I'll just throw this out there for you guys, only thing I want is if you make your millions say thank you. Buy me a new Charger for my wife.
Any of you guys who have kids know that when those kids are two to three years old they can handle going to the bathroom alone, they just can't reach the light switch.
I decided to try something and I took a length of coat-hanger wire, turned one end into a handle and the other a loop just big enough that they could use it to turn the light switch on and off.
Then I had an idea, those stamped plastic handles for fly-swatters could be modified without the swatter part, and with a rectangular hole in them for just this purpose. Cheap, easy, no fuss. Might could sell millions of them. And if the idea flopped, just spend a little more and attach the swatter heads and turn a big loss into a smaller profit.
Now go higher end for the discerning consumer. The clear plastic octagonal rods used to open venetian blinds with. Add a short piece of colored surgical tubing and just "roll" it onto the switch so it stays, or connect it with little gold colored rings of metal, whatever.
Make a box that replaces the switch cover and fix the rods on semi-permanently, too easy to install.
First one of you guys with a patent wins.
Go !
Any of you guys who have kids know that when those kids are two to three years old they can handle going to the bathroom alone, they just can't reach the light switch.
I decided to try something and I took a length of coat-hanger wire, turned one end into a handle and the other a loop just big enough that they could use it to turn the light switch on and off.
Then I had an idea, those stamped plastic handles for fly-swatters could be modified without the swatter part, and with a rectangular hole in them for just this purpose. Cheap, easy, no fuss. Might could sell millions of them. And if the idea flopped, just spend a little more and attach the swatter heads and turn a big loss into a smaller profit.
Now go higher end for the discerning consumer. The clear plastic octagonal rods used to open venetian blinds with. Add a short piece of colored surgical tubing and just "roll" it onto the switch so it stays, or connect it with little gold colored rings of metal, whatever.
Make a box that replaces the switch cover and fix the rods on semi-permanently, too easy to install.
First one of you guys with a patent wins.
Go !
GearChoices
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I always vote third party or independent, but if I was forced to vote in the Republican primary, he would certainly get my vote. Not because I believe in anything he says (though I am with him on a single issue...against illegal immigration), but because he is annoying the hell out of everyone by constantly acting and speaking politically incorrect. Everyone has their carefully planned puppet roles and routines and he's grabbing random strings and pulling/throwing them everywhere.
next-Jin
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"I could have been a hedge fund manager."
Sure you could have, and we could all be hedge fund managers if we all just worked hard, right? We wouldn't need janitors or bus drivers or cleaners or or or...in a magical land where everything is solely due to individual hard work.
Again, if they choose that life and stay in that life assuming they invest and manage money properly they would move up. The problem is people are just ignorant on money in general.
Yes I realize healthcare costs bankrupts the most people but that is an absolute fraction of the base that we are talking about. White on black crime is also an absolute fraction (including all black deaths in every war this nation has been in if you blame government for blacks dying in a white mans war) if we want to bring up racial inequality and lying blame.
All I am saying is that in order to change anything a small minority had to have a plan of action, clear ideas and a large enough voice.
None of these issues can be solved by throwing more money at the problems. A real initiative needs to be made on STEM and Finance from grades 3-12 for starters.
sliverjazz
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On the heels of the 15 min wage executives acknowledged that costs are increasing and Wendys is going to switch to a self ordering and automation kiosk.
Government caps on Corporate CEO salary and bonuses.
No CEO is worth the amount they receive. Although, the Cotsco CEO salary is quite fair the last I checked.
MOST CEO's salaries, also Corporation profits, do not go back into the communities infrastructure, or support for maintenance of state and federal roadways.
Corporations ought to be paying a premium for usage of roadways, since they're the main reason roads go bad due to high traffic and heavy loads. Also Corporations having to pay a premium for road maintenance wouldn't allow them to increase the prices on commodities and goods.
No CEO is worth the amount they receive. Although, the Cotsco CEO salary is quite fair the last I checked.
MOST CEO's salaries, also Corporation profits, do not go back into the communities infrastructure, or support for maintenance of state and federal roadways.
Corporations ought to be paying a premium for usage of roadways, since they're the main reason roads go bad due to high traffic and heavy loads. Also Corporations having to pay a premium for road maintenance wouldn't allow them to increase the prices on commodities and goods.
"I could have been a hedge fund manager."
Sure you could have, and we could all be hedge fund managers if we all just worked hard, right? We wouldn't need janitors or bus drivers or cleaners or or or...in a magical land where everything is solely due to individual hard work.
Well, that is... uh was, the american dream. You could be what you want to be, given that you give enough effort into it and have/develop ability.
But of course, you also need luck. I mean, you need others for various things and you could have the worst luck in the world and every time you try, they all caught the flu and wasn't where they were going to go.
TwistedAegis
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I totally agree, we need to concentrate on improving schooling at all early levels, preschool through 12, to give ALL kids regardless of where they start a fair chance. Rural and inner city schools are atrocious. And the party looking to gut science and replace it with 10,000 year earth and America does no wrong pablum is the Republican party at this time.
Public schools create value for all Americans, regardless of if you live in that area or even if you don't have kids (I do not). Almost need something like the MLB profit sharing, I'm not sure the solution.
There are CEOs that are worth what they are paid, the problem is most really are NOT that good and how the fuck boards fork over all that money i will never understand.
But you can't cap SHIT on what a company does, and if you try to tax it, the tax code is so fucking complex they will find a way around it. Oh look i transferred them 300 million dollars in shares that vest at a rate under the max amount where a 100% tax kicks in every year for the next 700 years, which they can then take loans out against it.
As far as trucks, how exactly are you going to do that? there is this thing called nafta, i move my truck company to mexico or canada and then i dont have to pay that tax and my truck can still run in the US, then you could in theory use a toll road to tax. But if you do that then i can have all my money go to my mexico corporation and then literally use that tax to show a loss on the US entity
GearChoices
Gawd
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None of these issues can be solved by simply throwing money at them, absolutely true. But resources (which is what money ultimately represents) one way or another is part of the solution, though resources alone will do no good at all and will simply be a waste.
But you must have not recently looked at the average compensation of those workers and the average cost of living for a neighborhood where there is a) educational opportunity, b) career opportunity, and c) safety/health. If you had, you would know that it is completely ridiculous to say that they can save any money at all, especially without government assistance.
And although one day in the past it was possible to "start in the mail room and work your way up," those days are long gone. You can be the best mail room worker in the world, but the company will never give you an opportunity to move up out of the mail room, at least not in the real world.
Also, start paying attention to other sources of news besides the mainstream corporate propaganda. Although the educational system is a complete mess from top to bottom, including college, it is not a mess due to lack of high school and college graduates in STEM fields. There is an excess of STEM graduates and experienced workers across the board, in every field.
The only reason they keep saying otherwise is to get the sheep on-board to support more "free trade" (where we ship jobs overseas to places that pay little and have no safety/health/ethical/labor regulations for anything) agreements and increases in H1-B visas for less qualified, cheaper workers enslaved in an employer sponsorship agreement.
More STEM and Finance education is not going to help anyone.
Republican party is obviously worse, but Democrats control many big cities/states and do things barely any better. The education system is a disaster in its current state and private schools don't help, but there are simply not enough living-wage jobs for everyone, no matter how much education people get. That's why jobs that do not even require a high school degree level of education to perform excellently still require a college degree.
It's a structural problem in our entire society. There should be a focus on producing jobs that create more jobs, but instead our society focuses ONLY on producing jobs that ultimately cut other jobs, while transferring the wealth from the remaining ones upwards to the top. And everything left is increasingly off-shored, given to illegal immigrants for a non-living wage, or given to less qualified, cheaper H1-Bs.
"I could have been a hedge fund manager."
Sure you could have, and we could all be hedge fund managers if we all just worked hard, right? We wouldn't need janitors or bus drivers or cleaners or or or...in a magical land where everything is solely due to individual hard work.
Sure, why couldn't he or you be a hedge manager or whatever you want? It is this delusion that you can't be whatever you want with hard work and fortitude that is holding us back as a society.
Thomas Jefferson once said he is a firm believer in luck. In that the harder he worked the more luck he had. I still find that to be true today.
To whomever said you can't work your way up from the mail room in today's society is full of it. I started at the bottom at my last company and within a year was promoted to upper management a deal was managing my former boss. I've seen similar experiences in both the private and government sectors. A former employer within 3 years of employment moved up from an entry level position and is now the division head of one of the largest counties benefits program in the state of Colorado. Oh yea, he is a minority who busted his ass every chance he got.
I hate this mythos that only the rich and privilege can succeed. It is one of the biggest hindrances which keep people from trying.
GearChoices
Gawd
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Janitors and hamburger flippers are now "entry level?"
Even if it was possible for them to work their way up (which it is not at-large, since they are not entry-level) and they do not, they don't deserve a living wage for cleaning and/or flipping those burgers as best they can?
And how many guys have you seen that worked their way up without schmoozing, lying, backstabbing, and taking other ethical "shortcuts?" If it's the majority you have seen, then you live in some place special.
Finally, how many have you seen that did not have to mentally, emotionally, and/or physically destroy themselves working slavish hours in order to reach a living wage and/or keep it? Working hard should not equal giving up your life outside work, at least if we still believe there is any value in human life outside the accumulating stuff from birth until death.
I am too.
Well, unless you decide to throw your hat in the ring. In that case I'd vote for you cheeky
I am.
Close all public schools.
Pay for your kids to go to school or school them yourself.
Make everything a parent needs available online for home-schoolers.
Take the budget for the department of education and subsidize homer-schooling parents.
In other words, drop in mom's and dad's lap and let them deal with it themselves. Little Johny and Baby Sue will have to depend on their own parents to provide.
Coops formed from home-schooling parents can grow and receive some help to get started as well. That way Mom's and Dad's don't have to be great at everything, they just need to be decent at teaching something.
The government never created schools to begin with. Schools were first born from the needs of communities. We should put that back into practice.
TwistedAegis
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Right, because as we've learned in our country's history, more educated citizens is a bad thing for us. Let's just throw it all away and have random parents teach their kids all the way through high school!
Seriously, I get that some people just don't want to be a part of society, but it's helpful to try not to drag us all down with you.
Seriously, I get that some people just don't want to be a part of society, but it's helpful to try not to drag us all down with you.
lol, no.
anything that looks like a school today was created and mandated by government.
before that communities may have "educated" their kids but the population was largely illiterate and math came in the form of bartering a pig for a dozen fish. so no thanks to going back to that.
TwistedAegis
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Look at Charlemange...tried to get us out of the dark ages with, government created schools.
Wow, I'm curious how you would address these scenarios:
-What if the parents are too poor to pay for private schooling and both working full time to have enough time to provide home schooling and a coop hasn't formed near them? The hell with them?
-What if everyone in a semi-isolated community believes dinosaur fossils were lies planted by Satan to test our faith, doesn't understand what the scientific method, and doesn't know any math past basic algebra? That cool too?
-Seeing as how we already HAVE home school and private schools, what exactly is the advantage of gutting the meager system we do have for everyone else who depends on it?
TwistedAegis
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Not to mention, forget women's lib, because the man ain't gonna stay home and home school those little bastards, amirite?
Do you have children?
If you do, have you actually spoken with their teachers?
I have and I was not impressed. At a Parent Teacher conference one of our daughter's teacher actually told us that she didn't know why we had requested to speak with her as our daughter never caused problems or got into any trouble. This teacher isn't teaching anything, all she is doing is handing out assignments and dealing with problem kids and the parents of problem kids. I could buy the same book, which has chapters and assignments at the end of those chapters. I can check her assignments just like a teacher can and you know what? Those assignments could all be available online along with tools that track her progress and recommend reinforcement based on her performance.
And like I said, even if I am not the kind of parent to be teaching my kid, the subsidized funding can still be there to pay someone else to do it. And then there is still the coop concept which is already a reality where home-schooling parents are banding together, pooling their resources, teaching their kids the way they think is best as a community.
It's not withdrawing from society, it's recognizing and abandoning a failed model and engaging with society again instead of relying on a failed institution.
Your wrong, unless you only listen to the government's version of the history of education in America.
http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/blog/how-private-schools-evolved-in-the-united-states
http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=ce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States
What you are going to find is that the Churches had just a big a hand in schooling as did the government and those church schools have been around every bit as long as the public ones.
And Charlemange came and was dust long before Europe began settling the Americas so what's your point besides pointless drama?
You do know that most of the earliest teachers in America were men right?
It's amazing actually how the same people who completely distrust our government and yet insist that only the government could possible teach our kids what they need to know, and all while looking to the internet as a resource of information and self education knowing full well that today professionals of every level continue their professional development and maintain the currency of their knowledge via mostly privately funded training and schools.
I know the government didn't help me get any of my IT certs. Every one has come out of my own pocket.
I know the government didn't help me get any of my IT certs. Every one has come out of my own pocket.