Google CEO Receives Stock Grant Worth $199M

Are the CEOs job's tough and are they worth a significant amount of money? Sure, but this ever growing gap is just not sustainable. Our economic system and our way of life is going to collapse on itself. "Trickle down" was supposed to prevent this, but trickle down is a BS phenomenon that was created to get your vote(for corporate funded politicians), it doesn't actually exist.

The rich will just keep getting richer(read: top 5% or so), everyone else keeps getting poorer. Without some sort of controls in place, eventually there's going to be a revolution against them or they will jet out of the country as we collapse. OMG Control = socialism you commie! GTFO of my country!

Ugh. I think human kind as a whole is currently proving out the Peter Principle.
 
Just to put things in perspective:

According to the Google search engine itself, Google currently has 60,000 employees. If the CEO had instead been given a $1,000,000 promotion bonus (a very nice chunk of change to anybody without the last name of Trump or Gates), the other $198,000,000 spread evenly between the other 60,000 employees would mean a $3,300 bonus for each person! To a middle class family, that amount of money would be a nice unexpected boon to their finances. And that's just from the money given to the CEO. If the rest of the executives were given realistic bonuses instead of these ridiculous, inflated amounts, every single employee at Google could receive a significant boost to their salary. I highly doubt that doing so would force Google executives to apply for food stamps.
 
Everyone really should read Capital by Thomas Piketty to get a really good understanding of economics over the last 300 years or so.
http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656

As it relates to the rich: Those who are able to invest more (into markets and other means) will make a higher return yearly. Where most of people (less than a million invested) can hope to make 3-5% gains (3 for those with smaller investments and closer to 5 the larger the investment). Those who are rich can be making 6-8%. Over a span of 5, 10, or even 20 years the difference in gained income from just 1-2% difference is huge.

Another sobering thought of what happens when the rich have everything and everyone else have little is revolutions. Think French Revolution (rise of Napoleon) and the Russian Revolution (overthrow of the Czar and establishment of Communism).

There's also the people who look back to the golden times of the United States, right after WW2 and through the 50's and 60's where most anyone who worked hard could succeed. In retrospect this was little more than an interesting time in which the playing field really was level and most everyone was starting from the same place financially speaking (unlike today). The cause of this was the great depression and the resulting inflation which caused the wealthy to lose their fortune and those who had no fortune to lose lost nothing. Starting around the 70's was when the rich began to emerge and the money slowly but surely began to flow to them more and more.

I'm oversimplifying many points here as I will not re-write Capital.


As for ways to deal with the problem, one interesting suggestion is to tax capital. ie Total Wealth. for those with a net wealth of less than a million do not pay anything; this is the majority of people, as most people have mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, etc (most have negative total wealth). Those who have more will be taxed at a 1-2% yearly rate. This would at least help start to balance the playing field in regards to the investment return inequality which is causing the income gap to grow.
 
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Holy crikey, who the hell let in the liberal, left wing, communist/socialist crowd today? The redistribution of wealth bs and it's not fair crowd must be on their day pass from the prison of stupidity. Instead of demeaning the guy because he made millions, why not strive to be like him? [H] capitalists come home, you're missed.
By the way, a couple of those posts are over the line, it's fine to debate but calling some one an ass kissing shithead doesn't really help your cause.
 
That is one strange perspective of seeing things. Strange to reality.

I don't advocate that everyone get the same pay for different jobs and occupations, but the value of wealth does not decrease simply because one has the same than the next guy.
Rather, and that is how the economy works, the more wealth you have, the more you you can spend. The more you can spend, the more you contribute to the economy.

That value you speak of has nothing to do the amount of one's personal wealth in relation to others. It has OTOH everything to do with inflation and strength of the currency.
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Bull. Even if everybody received the same amount of money, different people have different priorities and ideas about what to spend it on. Therefore products and services would still be priced based on supply and demand.

It's the rich who place zero value on money because they can buy anything they want at any time they to. The poor and middle class value money the most because a good portion of it is tied up in monthly living expenses. Luxury items and vacations must be saved up for months/years.

If you truly wanted money to have the greatest value to the greatest number of people, then there would have to be a much smaller wage gap between the CEO and janitor of any given company.
Click to expand...

Guys, just step back and think about WHY something has value. Today a $1 bill has little value. The reason for this, is because everyone has access to a $1. But 150 years ago $1, was worth a lot more, because much less people had access to $1.

100 years ago Ford Model T was just $400. That seems impossibly cheap to us now, but it was the same cost to those people, because back then $400 was hard to come by. Just like $20,000 is hard to come by today, but enough of us CAN afford it to make it work.

Think about this. If 100 people had $1000 and they had to barter with each other, do you think that $1000 would go very far? No, because people well I know you we all have $1000, and I want to be successful so give me $200 for this loaf of bread. That will separate me enough from the others to make me better. Everyone has $1000, but it's worth very little.

Now consider that 99 people have $1 and 1 person has $1000. The person with $1000 can now offer $4 to buy a loaf of bread and suddenly everyone is clamoring to get that 4 dollars. Why? Because now $4 will have the same effect that $200 had before. The money didn't change, the discrepancy between high and low changed and that's what increased moneys values.

Rich is a side effect of currency. You can never have more rich then poor. The reason America did so great in the 50's was because Europe was war torn and needed physical goods as well as financial goods. They got a lot of that from the USA, which in turn allowed us to live good. Our middle class was successful, because somewhere else people suffered. That's the way it has to be.

You cannot have a system where everyone is wealthy or successful, it just can't happen using currency. You have to use something else.

The idea that the "commoners" can even consider themselves successful is only a very recent idea in human history.
 
Jarod888 said:
Holy crikey, who the hell let in the liberal, left wing, communist/socialist crowd today? The redistribution of wealth bs and it's not fair crowd must be on their day pass from the prison of stupidity. Instead of demeaning the guy because he made millions, why not strive to be like him? [H] capitalists come home, you're missed.
By the way, a couple of those posts are over the line, it's fine to debate but calling some one an ass kissing shithead doesn't really help your cause.
Click to expand...

And identifying others as residents of "the prison of stupidity" does?
 
Jarod888 said:
Holy crikey, who the hell let in the liberal, left wing, communist/socialist crowd today? The redistribution of wealth bs and it's not fair crowd must be on their day pass from the prison of stupidity. Instead of demeaning the guy because he made millions, why not strive to be like him? [H] capitalists come home, you're missed.
By the way, a couple of those posts are over the line, it's fine to debate but calling some one an ass kissing shithead doesn't really help your cause.
Click to expand...

I think your points have been pretty well addressed elsewhere. No one is saying take all his money and redistribute it or that he and his grand kids shouldn't be significantly wealthy and set for life. But getting this crazy gap back to where it was 30-40 years ago will be nice(certainly don't want to eliminate it). I think people don't understand just how much money the elite have and how little almost everyone else does. This isn't 1950, because of the consolidation of wealth it's damn near possible to get to his level no matter how hard you work and that's only going to get worse without controls.

Controls don't mean communism. Yes I get a lot of you are all or nothing when it comes to government regulation and having this discussion is like arguing religion. But if the end result is a collapse of our system, which it 100% does, something needs to happen. Corporations certainly have no incentive to do it. The masses eventually will, it's called revolution, but it would be nice to curb things before it gets to that.
 
Sooooo these stock options are supposed to provide CEOs with an incentive, do their job well and their payday increases. However if they make a mess of things and the stock tanks say, 50%, they still have 100 million?!?
 
Even in failure they still have enough for their grand kids to retire on and likely a massive golden parachute on top of that. Most CEOs negotiate an exit strategy in their upfront contract in the event things go south. So yes, high stress job with a lot of responsibility, but they are smart people that negotiate plan b into their contracts in the event that happens.
 
wealth-distribution-2007.png
 
And let's remember, the distribution moves more towards the top every day and has been for almost a hundred years. This is not a static graph.
 
AMERICA FUCK YEAH!

Seriously, I'm all for an open and free market, but anyone who holds on that value so tightly that they refuse to see how this couldn't blow up in everyones face is a fool. I'm not, by any stretch, suggesting capping earning or redistribution...but eventually the fat cats will have to deal with a revolution. I'm not saying it'll happen today, tomorrow, or even in the next 25 years...but if you think that 50% of anything being held by such a small majority is "just how the perfect system we have works" I pity you.
 
infin@ said:
Sooooo these stock options are supposed to provide CEOs with an incentive, do their job well and their payday increases. However if they make a mess of things and the stock tanks say, 50%, they still have 100 million?!?
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Modern capitalism at work!
 
Taco said:
Are the CEOs job's tough and are they worth a significant amount of money? Sure
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Really? [No.] What's so hard about it? [Making choices without personal consequences.]
Do they get paid little or nothing if they do a bad job? [No.] Are they unable to find another job after doing a bad job? [No.]

Sounds pretty darn easy.

, but this ever growing gap is just not sustainable. Our economic system and our way of life is going to collapse on itself. "Trickle down" was supposed to prevent this, but trickle down is a BS phenomenon that was created to get your vote(for corporate funded politicians), it doesn't actually exist.
Click to expand...
Trickle-down would be funny if it weren't such an obviously flawed concept, that some powerful people have actually done their best to base our economy around.

Something only trickles down if the container it is theoretically trickling out of can overflow. I've never seen a bank account get too full and overflow into empty bank accounts. For trickle-down economics to really work, we would have to put a cap on an individual's or corporation's assets. Go propose a hard asset cap to the politicians pushing trickle-down economics, would be hilarious.
 
There are many reasons for high compensation some of them are good others not so much but its unlikely to change.

Most CEOs didn't come from nowhere they already are millionaires and or have worked very hard for much of their life and sacrificed a lot. The ones I know have often sacrificed their families in some form. So in order to motivate them to keep working for you, you have to make it worth their time. If you are just going to offer them more of the same then why don't they just retire right now and do whatever they want, fish all day or whatever? On top of that is a ton of responsibility and stress associated with the job. This is why compensation exponentially increases.

And for companies its worth it, because a good executive is worth its weight in gold, pun intended. They aren't competing with the common worker they are competing with other multibillion dollar corporations to retain talent. And now days that competition is even becoming international.

On top of that high compensation for the top dogs motivates the thousands of underlings to work harder and produce more for less, in hopes that one day, no matter how unlikely they might be there. Even a bad CEO can have a positive impact from this stance.

Also I would say that the increase in executive compensation as compared to worker wages has correlated with outsourcing. So while some people may blame it on CEOs it's more likely that foreign competition is what has put the downward pressure on wages.
 
rudy said:
There are many reasons for high compensation some of them are good others not so much but its unlikely to change.

Most CEOs didn't come from nowhere they already are millionaires and or have worked very hard for much of their life and sacrificed a lot. The ones I know have often sacrificed their families in some form. So in order to motivate them to keep working for you, you have to make it worth their time. If you are just going to offer them more of the same then why don't they just retire right now and do whatever they want, fish all day or whatever? On top of that is a ton of responsibility and stress associated with the job. This is why compensation exponentially increases.

And for companies its worth it, because a good executive is worth its weight in gold, pun intended. They aren't competing with the common worker they are competing with other multibillion dollar corporations to retain talent. And now days that competition is even becoming international.

On top of that high compensation for the top dogs motivates the thousands of underlings to work harder and produce more for less, in hopes that one day, no matter how unlikely they might be there. Even a bad CEO can have a positive impact from this stance.

Also I would say that the increase in executive compensation as compared to worker wages has correlated with outsourcing. So while some people may blame it on CEOs it's more likely that foreign competition is what has put the downward pressure on wages.
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This is just the dogma talking. It's only this way by inertia. Look at the Mondragon corporation, makes over 10 billion a year in revenue, employs over 70,000 workers. All employees get a vote on how the company run. This keeps salaries in check. The CEO only get paid 6x the amount of the lowest paid worker, it's part of their company policy, since most of the workers agreed that was fair. It's a very successful company in Europe, but it's so far out of the American way of doing business, it may as well be science fiction.
 
Jarod888 said:
Holy crikey, who the hell let in the liberal, left wing, communist/socialist crowd today? The redistribution of wealth bs and it's not fair crowd must be on their day pass from the prison of stupidity. Instead of demeaning the guy because he made millions, why not strive to be like him? [H] capitalists come home, you're missed.
By the way, a couple of those posts are over the line, it's fine to debate but calling some one an ass kissing shithead doesn't really help your cause.
Click to expand...

He passively-aggressively called me a Communist and told me I should leave the country, while praising his "job creating" overlords and their over-inflated salary. That is, by my definition, an ass-kissing shithead. Just like you, I call them like I see them.
 
I think if mondragons business model was so good it would be adopted by a lot more companies and employees would be just jumping at the chance to join such companies. But chances are that they are leaving some of the interested parties out in the cold and that is costing the company in some ways that are inhibiting growth.

It seems lots of the most successful companies in the world are very much hated and that seems to be common. And most of them, are top down organizations. Many from corrupt places. Maybe if you just look at that you start to realize their must be some pretty serious advantage to such a structure.
 
Its gonna be a fun time when this all goes bust! Seriously, we've probably got about another 20 years tops before we face a widespread Eco disaster. I say that, because our ECOnomy functions exactly like a living eco system in the wild. The people who coined the phrase understood it functioned as such.

What happens when the whales eat all the plankton in the sea? (hypothetically speaking) What happens to the life in the ocean? What happens to the whales?

The problem humanity faces, is not that we can't figure out solutions to our problems, its that through our own selfish desires, we create problems which otherwise would not exist if we weren't being completely self-serving.

Whales can only eat so much before they are satiated. Whales eventually die, and their bodies decompose and become food for the plankton. Corporations do not know how to be satiated. When a Corporation dies, its assets are divided amongst other corporate institutions, and any shortfalls are pushed onto taxpayers. Corporations are run by humans, who use it to shield and perform their own self serving needs, and because of this corporations themselves become self serving entities which operate at the cost of others.

If people really wanted a bigger slice of pie, then they would work with everyone to make the pie bigger. They don't, they want something to hold over someone else head. They require something that they can be measured by. They have penis envy, so they make it up by having big bank accounts.

Money itself has ZERO value. Its merely a placeholder for hard work, time, and effort. Before money, people would trade favors and items. The banksters don't want you to know this, otherwise their game of de-valuing your hard work to increase their own profits will fail.

At the end of the day, someone, somewhere is going to get the shit end of the stick. At the same time, someone is going to get all the luck, and live large. That is life. Its up to the lucky person to make the stick not so shitty. If they don't, well before to long the people with shitty sticks are just gonna beat the lucky person with them. Why? Well look at it this way... poor people have very very very limited options for things to enjoy. So the things that are enjoyable, tend to be overdone by the poor. Sex is enjoyable. It costs no initial money. Guess which income group has the highest birthrates? Poor people have children which inherit the poorness of their parents unless there is intervention. The poor and meek will inherit the earth.
 
Gweenz said:
The problem with that attitude is, think of the total amount of money in the economy as a big pie. If someone takes a bigger slice, there is less left for everyone else.
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So get off your butt and work your way up to getting a bigger slice.....

Usually those complaining are the ones with less than those getting the money.
 
You are missing the point, like most of the willfully ignorant spouting that "werk for it" idiocy(been explained ad nauseum in this thread, not going to continue it).

And while I'm certainly no 10 percenter, my pocket would be hit and not padded as an effect of what I'm advocating for.
 
Creig said:
Bull. Even if everybody received the same amount of money, different people have different priorities and ideas about what to spend it on. Therefore products and services would still be priced based on supply and demand.

It's the rich who place zero value on money because they can buy anything they want at any time they to. The poor and middle class value money the most because a good portion of it is tied up in monthly living expenses. Luxury items and vacations must be saved up for months/years.

If you truly wanted money to have the greatest value to the greatest number of people, then there would have to be a much smaller wage gap between the CEO and janitor of any given company.
Click to expand...

Because a janitor is as valuable as the CEO? Give me a freaking break. Cleaning the shitter isnt nearly as important as vision, direction, etc.
Seriously, move the hell out of America. We don't need or want your redistribution of wealth or socialism.
 
You know, I really think the 'work hard and make the same amount of money!" logic breaks down when 1) there's literally no fucking way that's possible for 99.995% of the country and 2) this kind of money quite literally guarantees your entire family and all their offspring will be rich until the end of time (barring some catastrophic event) simply based on the fact that you can make more off interest in a decade than most people make in a lifetime.

I appreciate hard work and being rewarded for it. God knows I think I deserve more money than everyone else. But sometimes you need to stop and think "does a handful of people having this much power do good things for our economy?" Furthermore, the amount of power they have is increasing substantially over time. It's not like it's slowing down. It's getting worse. I don't get how people don't acknowledge that that could eventually be a really big problem even if they don't think it is now.
 
Jarod888 said:
Because a janitor is as valuable as the CEO? Give me a freaking break. Cleaning the shitter isnt nearly as important as vision, direction, etc.
Seriously, move the hell out of America. We don't need or want your redistribution of wealth or socialism.
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Tell me that after a year or two of no one cleaning the crapper. Bet they'll be wishing for someone with the vision to pay the janitor better. Stock holders won't care though...Just another unnecessary salary off the books!
 
Kueller said:
Tell me that after a year or two of no one cleaning the crapper. Bet they'll be wishing for someone with the vision to pay the janitor better. Stock holders won't care though...Just another unnecessary salary off the books!
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You speak in an absolute as if the crappers must only be cleaned by janitors. I've cleaned a toilet here and there at work out of my own free will. I'm no janitor. And I certainly didn't go around proclaiming it like I'm entitled to something extra for doing so. I know I'm not the only person that would clean a crapper as a samaritan action. What now?
 
Jarod888 said:
Because a janitor is as valuable as the CEO? Give me a freaking break. Cleaning the shitter isnt nearly as important as vision, direction, etc.
Seriously, move the hell out of America. We don't need or want your redistribution of wealth or socialism.
Click to expand...

Reading comprehension FTW. :rolleyes:

Creig said:
If you truly wanted money to have the greatest value to the greatest number of people, then there would have to be a much smaller wage gap between the CEO and janitor of any given company.
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Nowhere did I say the janitor should be paid the same as a CEO. Only that there should not be such a huge gap between the highest paying job in the company and the lowest/median paying job. NOBODY is worth a $199,000,000 bonus.

I can't wait until 2017 when businesses will be forced to disclose their CEO:average employee pay ratio. That should throw some gas on this fire:

SEC Adopts Rule for Pay Ratio Disclosure

http://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-160.html

Highlights of the New Rule

Pay Ratio Disclosure Requirement

As required by the Dodd-Frank Act, the rule would amend existing executive compensation disclosure rules to require companies to disclose:

  • The median of the annual total compensation of all its employees, except the CEO;
  • The annual total compensation of its CEO; and
  • The ratio of those two amounts.
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Hopefully we can get a president in office that will gimp the Dodd-Frank act. There is simply no reason to disclose that information. It really isn't anyone's business what anyone else at a company makes.

Also, I never said you said that a Janitor should be paid the same as the CEO. I said that they were no where near as valuable, because they lack vision and direction. Janitors have value as employees of the company, they just dont have as much value as the CEO, therefore they deserve significantly less pay. It makes absolutely no sense to artificially reduce the wage gap between the Janitor and the CEO. If the CEO makes 1000 times the total compensation of the Janitor, then he deserves it.
 
Don't like it?
Short Google stock.

Oh, that's right. You'd need actual capital to do that.
Carry on with the crying, then.
 
^ Larry David and Sergey Brin decide capital allocation and the shareholders know this.
 
I don't understand the redistributors' mindset. They are different creatures with different wiring than I. I have never wasted the mental and emotional energy stressing over and envying the wealthy, and I was born and raised in the THE poorest rural region of the nation, the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky. I've never felt entitled to even the smallest part of their riches. I honestly think, "Good for them!" Maybe that can be me one day if I bust my ass, but if not, that's fine.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
I've never felt entitled to even the smallest part of their riches. I honestly think, "Good for them!" Maybe that can be me one day if I bust my ass, but if not, that's fine.
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There's the problem: you can't. No matter how smart and hard working you are it's impossible for you to achieve parity with somebody who already has billions of dollars through hard work and investing alone. Luck is literally a requirement, either being born into wealth or getting lucky with your investments/businesses. Unless you happen to strike it rich on an investment you're going to be limited by your available capital and the average rate at which your investments grow. You'll never be able to catch up with larger investors.

Wealth provides economic and political power, and if that power is increasingly tied to luck rather than merit it's going to have harmful effects on society as a whole.
 
Jarod888 said:
Hopefully we can get a president in office that will gimp the Dodd-Frank act. There is simply no reason to disclose that information. It really isn't anyone's business what anyone else at a company makes.
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Not anyone's business that the CEO is milking the company out of a fortune? You don't think the shareholders might want to know where their investment money is going? You don't think the average worker who might not even get a cost of living increase shouldn't know that the reason they didn't get it is because their company's CEO just received a multi-million dollar bonus?

It's just that kind of thinking that allowed this runaway CEO/executive pay scale to happen in the first place. Without some kind of transparency, there will be no way to reign in this practice because we won't know how bad it is.

Jarod888 said:
Also, I never said you said that a Janitor should be paid the same as the CEO. I said that they were no where near as valuable, because they lack vision and direction. Janitors have value as employees of the company, they just dont have as much value as the CEO, therefore they deserve significantly less pay. It makes absolutely no sense to artificially reduce the wage gap between the Janitor and the CEO. If the CEO makes 1000 times the total compensation of the Janitor, then he deserves it.
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Says who? Just because the board of directors approves CEO pay at 1000 times the total compensation of the janitor doesn't mean he deserves it. Oftentimes, members of the board of directors are chosen by the CEO. So they feel beholden to the CEO for their cushy $300,000-$400,000 stipends for attending a few board meetings a year at a luxury resort somewhere exotic. And it's undoubtedly easier to just approve the CEOs pay and get on with the vacation than it is to actually sit at their meeting and argue about whether or not the CEO actually deserves his outlandish salary.

As I stated earlier, NOBODY is worth a $199,000,000 bonus. Yet it still happened. CEO and executive pay has so outstripped their average worker's pay that it reached the point of ridiculousness years ago.

The CEO and other executives aren't the sole reason a company succeeds. They need to stop being paid as if they are.
 
Apparently because you can, you should and have the right to

I don't want to Godwin this or anything, but show some independent thought guys.
 
Anyone who blindly follows one ideal no matter what is the reason this country will collapse.

If you have such a huge boner for capitalism that you're too stupid to see that wealth gaps like this will lead to a collapse, you're part of the problem.

If you adamantly believe that redistribution or capping someones pay is the way out of this mess we're in, you're part of the problem.

IT IS OKAY to be generally for capitalism, but realize that something needs to be done to correct the ship before we fuck ourselves.

I'd like to see what the right-wing circle jerkers have to say about what I just said.
 
tetris42 said:
No, but in the case of CEOs, their wages really ARE coming at the expense of the workers:

2012-05-02-ProdWages.arrow.jpg
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So happy to see this chart making the rounds with other people.

Jarod888 said:
Hopefully we can get a president in office that will gimp the Dodd-Frank act. There is simply no reason to disclose that information. It really isn't anyone's business what anyone else at a company makes.
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Dodd Frank doesn't mandate that. Further, it's a publicly traded company, why on earth would you feel that a $200M expense should not be disclosed to shareholders? And finally, do you understand how executive compensation is set? Everyone on the Boards of Directors are other C-level execs or closely tied to other C-level execs; they approve the pay of the CEO that then is used to determine their own pay back at their company. It has nothing to do with deserving it, it's a circular reasoning circle jerk that just enriches this elite circle.

OEM said:
IT IS OKAY to be generally for capitalism, but realize that something needs to be done to correct the ship before we fuck ourselves.
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Good article by a billionaire on why wealth inequality is going to fuck us all, and the plutocrats need to get on board:


http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...forks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014?o=3
 
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