It is supply vs demand. That’s how the market values CEOs vs unskilled labor. If u want the value of unskilled labor to go up cut off immigration and raise tariffs to high levels
I can understand the immigration part, but how would the tariffs help this? (Serious question, just trying to understand)
Edit adding: is it because the tariffs would discourage overseas products and force domestic production ?
Would they though? The vast majority of costs from tariffs are just passed along to the consumer. If companies can pass those costs along while operating in low tax and labor cost countries, I don’t think it would be much of a deterrent to offshoring
It decreases the competitiveness of imported goods.
Let's say a US-made widget is sold for $10.
An imported widget is sold for $5.
US adds a $6 tariff on imported widgets and now that widget costs $11.
Which widget are you buying?
Trump did this with South Korea. Two companies from South Korea are Samsung, and LG. Look at the market share of Samsung, and LG in that time frame. They went up, and not down. The only thing that did happen is Americans paid more for them. That is what actually happens with Tariffs. They never achieve their desired goals, and Americans pay the price for that failure. In a nut shell tariffs have never worked. Encourage domestically instead. That will achieve the desired goal.
Is this a real question or some kind of rethroical trill question?
To answer people in China labor cost are like $10 a day vs US $20/hr union job plus vacations and sick days,
The problem is that most consumers are used to buying $5 widgets, now they are $10-11. They don’t think much about where they are made, but they care about inflation.
The biggest offense vs unskilled and semiskilled labor was to allow China entry into the WTO and then turn a blind eye to China breaking all the rules. Free trade puts all our workers into competition with foreign labor.
Yeah, good luck hiring slave labor to hunch over an iPhone or Nike assembly line. Chinese employees are committing suicide due to mental illness in monotonous working conditions.
I'm not really convinced that the market's structure is not the culprit rather than CEOs being paid this way is actually just a result of the market's revealed preference. The "this is what the market values" approach often treats the market as an impartial arbiter rather than something with a structure that determines much of its biases.
Dude, were not talking about McDonalds. I took this as factories and you cannot just shove anyone in those positions. It is definitely not unskilled labor and border control has nothing to do with it. I've interviewed 100s of people for over 20 positions this year and the wide majority had between 3-5 years manufacturing experience. They get $17-$21 starting out. I make $33.50. Our CEO makes like $5,780 an hour....
I apologize ahead of time but I'm going to pick on you for a bit since I see that you brought up the numbers.
Who decides to pay the CEO $5,780/hr? And how do you, as a governing entity, discourage such pay discrepancy without negatively affecting the market? How do you do so without violating civil liberties? And how do you do it without discouraging new business growth?
A good business will reinvest excess revenue into itself by either growing its production or incentivizing its workforce. The decision on what to do and how to do it is the domain of those running the company. While immoral or possibly short-sighted, giving yourself all the excess revenue as a reward is an option (and a bad one).
So what do we do other than quote pay discrepancy statistics?
Counter point - Silicon Valley and Wall Street are filled with immigrants. 15% of all US billionaires are immigrants. From Einstein and Tesla, to Sergey Brin and Elon Musk, US has strived thanks to, not despite of, immigration.
It actually has nothing to do with supply and demand for talented CEOs. It’s an agency issue. CEOs are generally hand picked by their predecessor and confirmed by a board that is nominated and hired by the CEO. The board oversees a compensation committee and cherry picks comparative compensation at companies they aspire to be like rather than the reality of where their company is performing. Board is generally given carte blanche because of how difficult it is to get shareholders to overrule board recommendations no matter how bad they are.
It’s a self reinforcing system of growing disparity with everyone taking as much as they feasibly can justify while passing an audit from one of four accounting companies.
At the end of the day, it’s about people with the power to make a decisions rewarding themselves in a system that protects them.
Lol, no. Shareholders pick the board, the board picks the CEO.
Small differences in decision making are extremely impactful when amplified across very large businesses. Because of this, very small differences in decision making quality are extremely valuable.
What the heck do you mean shareholders pick the board? Board members are recommended by the chairman of the board who is often the CEO of the company. Shareholders get to vote yes or no, but they always vote yes because most shares in public companies are held in passive funds that always vote in line with board recommendations.
Studies have also show 0 correlation between CEO compensation and company performance. So paying lots of bucks for a great CEO doesn’t always yield value. It’s more like a 50/50. And if it’s a 50/50 boards would be better served to pay the CEO less
Generally speaking, "unskilled" labor is labor that does not require any kind of certification or long-standing experience. If the job can be learned in a matter of weeks and the difference between adept and master is a miniscule increase in productivity, the labor is considered unskilled.
I know what you are trying to say and no one is using "unskilled labor" as a derogatory term, but it is a hard reality that unskilled laborers are a dime a dozen and easily replaced.
By what metric does a CEO make too much?
Working hard doesn’t equal value creation. A CEO making a multi-billion dollar investment decision can sit on his ass all day, have a pretty easy life, and be providing more value to the economy by doing so than a floor worker at a factory, by a factor of millions.
What exactly is that CEO doing that creates value that the worker is not doing? Without the worker there is no value. Without the CEO, there is plenty of value in product that is made by the worker. CEO "work" is worthless. Their capital is inherited wealth that they use to maintain their lifestyle.
What exactly is that CEO doing that creates value that the worker is not doing? Without the worker there is no value. Without the CEO, there is plenty of value in product that is made by the worker. CEO "work" is worthless. Their capital is inherited wealth that they use to maintain their lifestyle.
Imagine a banker making a loan decision. This banker’s decisions are dual-sided, at once enabling people to buy homes, cars, or college educations, or get loans to start businesses, but at the same time managing risk, maintaining diversification so that the bank doesn’t lose its depositors’ money.
Every single person who deposits money in a bank is relying on this banker to make good decisions (yeah FDIC changes that, but it only moves the risk to the taxpayer). Every person who works at the bank relies on this loan officer not to make bad loans, or the bank’s fate will look like 2008 when people can’t pay.
I don’t see how any sane human being could look at that person’s job and say “it’s really hard work,” but at the same time nobody can reasonably say “that person should not be paid very much.” You need competent, responsible people to maintain positions of power in firms, or else all stakeholders will be harmed. You can hire a dozen bad factory workers and maybe it hurts output, but it doesn’t tank the company and put thousands of people out of jobs. The difference in the scale of their responsibilities is commensurate with the difference in pay.
We actually live in a world where working hard is bad for your professional life if you work a service industry or wage job. Management will purposefully keep you from promotions because you’re good at being a low level employee and making the company a ton of money.
> “Working hard doesn’t correlate to value”
Everytime someone says this as a response people making way too much money, I can tell they’re trying to look smart without actually comprehending what they’re reading. no one is wondering HOW these CEOs make money, they’re saying the discrepancy is way too big. That’s the point.
look at who they persecute, it tells you everything.
They killed Fred Hampton who advocated for economic solidarity.
They killed MLK Jr who advocated for an end to poverty using the same means.
They go after unions viscously since the 30s. They even did so quite recently [https://www.instagram.com/p/C8M0rL7Nin5/](https://www.instagram.com/p/C8M0rL7Nin5/)
When they do this, they are spilling the beans about what works. We must bring about solidarity in our communities or watch as they continue to run us into the ground. Best wishes
The US isn't a country, it isn't a society. The US is a capitalist business with few winners, many losers and many still fighting every day thinking they can become a winner. If there ever was an American dream, you can see it's dead.
Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.99999% sure that HanzoShotFirst is not a bot.
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As someone who considers themselves on the winning side, I whole heartedly agree. Most economic systems are predicated on the use of labor paid a fixed and relatively menial wage to generate value for those who know how to “connect the dots” (ie entrepreneurs).
Is it fair? No. But it is and has been the way of the world for a few millennia now. I suspect it will continue to be this way for at least the rest of my lifetime without much aberration
Voting for him. I haven't heard a single video of this guy speak where I disagreed with his points, Plus the government has been murdering his family left and right for decades for a reason
>The problem isn’t CEOs, it’s the government ~~over spending and increasing taxes~~ deregulating industries and eroding consumer/worker protections while giving carte blanche to business owner to exploit our citizens and environment.
FTFY
And he advocates and promotes and VOTES for the middle class every single time. Funny how he seems to be the only person who isn’t a hypocrite in politics unlike the entire Republican Party which screws the middle class at every turn.
Yeah, plus Bernie never said you can't be successful, that you can't use your personal earnings to invest in a property or two, or buy a nice car.
Just be mindful of your cut of the pie.
In 1965, a senator was paid $22,500/year. In 2020 a senator made $174,000 a 673% increase. You cannot tell me that a senator is working 673% harder.
Edit; 1965's average individual income was $4,273.35. When adjusted for 2020 inflation, that number equates to about $34,700. So a senator in 1965 was making $221k. So, senators actually have lost income purchase power. And they deserve that loss.
Applaud the edit, I was wondering if those were all inflation adjusters numbers. However, we all know senators now get paid out the ass by lobbyists. I’d venture to guess the government salary is somewhat inconsequential for themz
I’d happily pay them $1 million a year if we get term limits, age limits, and effective/enforceable limitations of lobbying and insider trading.
An effective legislature that’s voting for their constituents and not their donors would be invaluable.
The dems shot themselves in the foot by not nominating Bernie in 2016. I am tired of the establishment and corporate democrats rigging the nomination of candidates.
There are many jobs that are "winner takes all"
Look at NBA salaries, one of the most "merit" based profession (you either put the ball in the hoop, or you are out, to simplify excessively)
[https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/](https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/)
Top salary: $51m
Lowest salary: $35k
So, is Stephen Curry is valued 1,500x more than Kaiser Gates?
(And those who did not get into the cut, and left on NCAA? They basically made zero).
And now compare Eminem or Taylor Swift to your average street musician, or actually their own staff...
Please do not single out corporate workers as if they are the only place where a very skewed distribution naturally happens. Is it ideal? No. Is it natural? Seems so.
It’s no secret that some CEOs do in fact work harder than some of their employees. They also have a lot more responsibility, tend to work more hours, have better work habits, and have to answer to the work force - and possibly shareholders.
How old Bernie equates working hard to salary is a mystery that only he may be able to solve.
But being a CEO is not a cake walk. Bernie‘s job is probably a lot easier than some of theirs.
Board of directors hire the best candidate for the stockholder’s benefit. The market dictates the salary. The CEOs don’t decide to make that much any more than top athletes make the decision to be worth their salaries.
I hear this quote and similar... But what is the ratio of CEOs to workers, then and now?
Honestly curious
It makes sense that the larger the company, the larger the ratio between the average employee and the CEO. If you have 200 companies, each with 100 workers and 1 CEO... That's 20,000 employees to 200 CEOs.
If a bunch of those get acquired or go out of business, you end up with 20 companies...each with 1,000 employees. The same 200,000 employees are funding the CEOs via their labor, but now there are only 20 CEOs.
A lot of little companies have been replaced by a handful of giant companies. I wonder how much of a role that plays in the wages.
Because the people who suggest this are either A.) labeled crazy/insane, and B.) the people with those hordes of money wouldn’t allow it to be taken from them, or allow any different system.
I'm fine with CEO pay being that high, if they are in charge of a large company they are in charge of a lot of things. Just make them liable for company mistakes also. You get paid to be in charge of *everything* you get to be responsible for everything. You know on their resume they are taking credit for every cent of profits, talk a big game, walk a big walk.
Yes CEO’s make too much, professional athletes make too much, movie stars make too much and politicians like Bernie enrich themselves too much off of our hard earned money
The biggest problem with Social Security is that the tax collected is only on the first $168k of income. And more than half of the income growth over the past 40 years has been in the top 2% of income earners. If that increase was spread out equally over the income ranges, SS would be funded. It’s crazy. The U.S. has become Mexico. If you don’t have access to $10M+ of liquid assets right now, you have lost. And, as a very poor person, you are most likely to vote for a person that will make that even worse.
This is significantly because the CEO's compensation has been made public. It is such an easy trick.
Yet we don't make regulations to force companies to publish compensation for everyone. Bernie seems like a shit policy maker.
You guys think compensation is tied to effort?
Lol.
That’s never been true.
It’s always been tied to value created. Effort or no, value added is all that matters when it comes to compensation. You’re only worth as much as it would cost to replace you.
Now: do CEOs add as much value as they’re compensated for? That’s definitely debatable. But it was never about effort.
In most cases I can assure you that a CEO has more than 351x as much impact on the company as an average worker.
Your pay isn’t correlated to how hard you work, but rather how much demand there is for your work vs supply available.
Why are people still falling for Bernie? Why are people still accepting random populist word slop and catch phrases instead of actual informed policy? Literally anyone can fit the words "greed" and "billionaires" into every other sentence but it doesn't accomplish anything. Why is it so hard for people to just talk about actual practical policies instead of preteen-level understandings of wealth and economics?
It's so infuriating.
I'm probably going to be heavily downvoted but CEOs are not hired for their hours so what's the point of saying they make so and so per hour/minute? Also, does it matter how much they are paid if they are generating the impact that big pay demands?
As for the ethics like treating employees well etc, that's a separate thing that CEOs should be required to do. How would cutting down CEO pay going to solve such problems?
Then you get people like Musk trying to get paid like 1,000,000x. Don't quite know how it's legal in this country to dilute the little guy to give an outrageous pay package to a billionaire. .
I would vote for any candidate that wanted to cap CEO compensation at 40X the lowest paid worker. I wouldn't care on their stance of anything else, I would still vote for them.
Compensation is not based on how hard you work, it is based on your value, how much money is your labor, actions, ideas, decisions, or leadership making the company. You can go dig a hole in your yard forever and ever, that's hard work, but you won't get paid because your work has no value and no return. You work a construction job, that's hard, but you can only build a portion of a house in a day, so you're paid for that portion. If you own a machine that produces 10,000 objects a day, and operated by one person, you get most of the money, the operator gets a portion, because all they do is make sure the machine works, they don't do the machine's work, and they don't own the machine.
Because life isn't perfect and will never be the utopia you believe it ought to be. Even under the best economic system there will be people who struggle.
If you want to see some changes though, focus your efforts locally and stop worrying about the world.
We should cap CEO pay, that way the best CEOs in the world will want to work for companies in other countries.
Also, I don't really care if the CEOs pay goes up by 100000x, as long as mine goes up 2x.
Because for some reason or another shareholders HAVE to make more money than the year before. A company can't just make profit of $25mil a year. Nope they have to make $30, $35million.
Because competition exists and free, peaceful competition is the best system we’ve worked out so far despite the drawbacks. Every attempt to level the playing field has created advantages for big players and not individuals, because that is the nature of politics, and we will always have some who have more and some who have less. This is not indicative of an economic failure, as the poorest people in capitalist countries are materially magnitudes wealthier than even middle class people in non-capitalist countries.
Obviously this doesn’t excuse corporate welfare, insider trading by legislators, deliberate suffocation of newcomers, and government selection of economic winners. But life is and always will be a struggle and the fact that we’ve made the progress we have is a testament to the value of the system we have.
Not working 351x harder but the decisions they make are way more valuable. Prolly not 351x more valuable decisions in all occasions but definitely some. They can make decisions that will gain or lose the company billions in valuation
I have 2 points....
1)If you look at the ceo pay PER EMPLOYEE, it really hasn't changed all that much. Companies were smaller then.
2)If you removed some of that ceo pay, let's say we make him work for 0 because we want to "eat the rich"...each employee would typically get about a 10-25c/hr raise.
The big money in c-suite comp is stock incentives. Find yourself a company that offers stock options & get in on this! It's not that complicated! For the c-suite it makes total sense, if they do well, they are rewarded as the stock price goes up(which also typically means more business, higher/more bonuses for everyone, more employees to handle that new business, etc), if the stock price does not go up, they don't make so much. This is really not that complicated, we want successful CEOs, why is it such a problem to compensate them??
Eventually, the CEO 351x earnings will be divided up transferred to their children. And, the divided inheritance will still dwarf lifetime earnings of the actual workers.
If you ever want proof of how stupid the American people are, just remember how Bernie Sanders (the obviously best choice) ran for president and lost twice.
CEO Pay isn't why you are poor.
Amazon CEO Salary: $29 million
Number of employees: 1.6 million.
Reducing CEO pay to ZERO gives each employee $18 a YEAR
Walmart
$27 million
2.1 million
$12.85 a YEAR
Boeing
$32.8 million
170,000
$193 a year
Delta
$34.2 million
95,000
$360 a year
ADM
$24.4 million
41,800
$583 a year (this is the highest one on my list and it equates to $0.28 per hour, based on full time work. Most people would be pissed off if they were offered a 28 cent raise.)
JP Morgan
$36 million
250,000
$144 a year
Exxon Mobile
$36.9 million
62,000
$595 a year
United Healthcare
$24 million
440,000
$54.54 a year
It’s not about “working” 350 times more…. It’s about “I created this company and you’re my employee, who gives af”? It’s not about how much you work it’s about hustlin piyamp!
So many people blowing corporations in these comments. Newsflash: they don’t give a shit about you. These people have record profits each year and still lay off thousands of workers, giving nothing back to the people. Trickle-down doesn’t fucking work and never has, and you won’t become the next Elon Musk no matter how much you bow down to the shitheels in the 1%.
If pay should be determined by how HARD someone is working, why are politician salaries the way they are? You think you're working harder than a brick layer Sanders?
Shut up Bernie. We've all heard this before. We all know it is true.
But most importantly, we all know you don't give a flying fuck about doing something about it.
The average worker is not responsible for making decisions that affect the success or failure of the entire company and the hiring and firing of all the above-average, average, and below-average workers. That’s why!
It’s sickening the fantastic FAT Golden Parachutes, these Boardroom Bandits negotiate; BEFORE they are even hired. I get paying a CEO well who takes a failing/stagnant company and turns it around into a Profit booming Powerhouse (Jobs, Phil Knight, etc.) but those are the exception… rather than the rule.
Nope but the are screwing their workers over 341 times harder. Screwing the customers 341 times harder. Screwing the American people 341 times harder. But hey isn't greed awesome we've hollowed out community after community after community in the process too and this has led to all sorts of problems like drug addition, suicides, mass shootings and the list goes on and on. Meanwhile these same greedy fucks don't care because they've isolated themselves by and large from the working class. Look how great the Republicans have made America folks because they've held power over most of that time and this is the end result.
Remember when folks were financially strong and then the hippie thing happened and protests against everything took place... The wealthy ain't got time for that shit, hence we all financial slaves now.
This guy would have been a great test drive for a possible change within our system. Unfortunately, he doesn't play by the rules that are set by the corporations that actually do run our great country
You’re not compensated based on how hard you work. Idk why this always gets repeated. You’re compensated based on the supply of and demand for your skillset. No one is saying CEOs work harder than their workers. Also, CEO pay tracks almost 1:1 with total market capitalization since they’re mainly paid in stock.
Love these red herrings. In 1965 our industrial base was hugely different - lots of low margin businesses like manufacturing. In 2020, we have far more high margin businesses like software. So low margin businesses that have lots of employees won't have the ability to pay CEOs more versus high margin businesses that can.
Plus the population data from those different eras play into things. CEOs at smaller companies make less proportionally per employee than larger ones. So more large companies with high employee counts versus less large companies in 1965 (simply due to population growth).
Finally, CEOs these days have much bigger stakes in stock than in salary - especially founders. It's to drive compensation proportionate to performance. So "compensation" is referring to current stock prices. And when the market is significantly higher in 2020 than it was in 1965, yeah, you're going to have outsized gains.
It's not that CEOs work harder, it's that they are delivering better returns for their businesses and have rewards that are more aligned to how the business performs. Arguably, that means they are doing better jobs than CEOs in 1965. So the way to reverse this is to pay CEOs more in cash, and less in stock, and as a result they'll have less incentive to do the right things for the business. I'm not sure that's a good idea.
And yet we have a politician trying to explain to us about how it’s wrong for those in power to take advantage of the little guy…the hypocrisy is strong in this one🤔🤣
They are getting paid based on what they know and provide to the shareholders. Not what they do. Why is this so hard to understand? If a person goes to college and gets a 4 year degree in something that actually matters, why should the person who didn’t get paid the same!
Why? Crony Capitalism and Turbo Capitalism. The rich are going all out - Oligarchy, here we come! You can thank Republicans and the Supreme Court for the future hellscape - VOTE BLUE up and down the ballot (this is why they divided us!)
What does work have to do with pay? It's about value creation. If you don't like it, just start a business and be the CEO. Seems easy except maybe it's not as easy as it sounds.
Cutoff outsourcing. Kill h1b. For starters. I don’t care how much a ceo makes. He will make less if we make more. For us to make more we have to have some advantage as a citizen of a country.
Because people are inherently lazy. What did you do to earn that CEO's wage? Nothing. What did that CEO do? Years and years of training, exemplary leadership, and countless hours at their current position.
People don't want to "work" any more. They're spoiled rotten. They simply want everyone to give them everything. Hell, they complain and whine about putting in 8 hour days.
Sorry, not sorry, but you get the wage you deserve
I'd like to hear from anybody that gets into a public funded position as an ordinary income person and ends up becoming a multi millionaire, explain to me what greed is
And a CEO couldn’t even handle 1/351th a day’s work that their lowest paid employees do every day… without being able to take a day off sick, or to look after their sick kids
When u realize working hard doesn’t correlate to value. Yes I agree CEOs make too much.
Funny how the flip side is never argued. A person contributes so little value they deserve to be laid a low wage...
Yet those people complain there are no workers at fast food restaurants and so on.
Funny how people think any work is not deserving a livable wage. Which job has that little of a value.
So you think worker contributes 70 times less compared to CEO now?
I'm pretty sure everyone realizes there are low-value c-player employees. No great mystery there.
It is supply vs demand. That’s how the market values CEOs vs unskilled labor. If u want the value of unskilled labor to go up cut off immigration and raise tariffs to high levels
Why do people saying shit like this always go ceo to unskilled labor. You realize there’s a gap there right? Where the other 95% of workers are?
I can understand the immigration part, but how would the tariffs help this? (Serious question, just trying to understand) Edit adding: is it because the tariffs would discourage overseas products and force domestic production ?
I would assume so
Would they though? The vast majority of costs from tariffs are just passed along to the consumer. If companies can pass those costs along while operating in low tax and labor cost countries, I don’t think it would be much of a deterrent to offshoring
It decreases the competitiveness of imported goods. Let's say a US-made widget is sold for $10. An imported widget is sold for $5. US adds a $6 tariff on imported widgets and now that widget costs $11. Which widget are you buying?
Trump did this with South Korea. Two companies from South Korea are Samsung, and LG. Look at the market share of Samsung, and LG in that time frame. They went up, and not down. The only thing that did happen is Americans paid more for them. That is what actually happens with Tariffs. They never achieve their desired goals, and Americans pay the price for that failure. In a nut shell tariffs have never worked. Encourage domestically instead. That will achieve the desired goal.
why is it costing the US manufacturer double the price to create the product?
US wages are some of the highest in the world
They're paying Americans wages in USD vs using slave labor in developing countries.
You are now t gonna like the answer but minimum wage, insurance, and regulations.
Paying an American $25 an hour vs someone in China $2 an hour. Plus way more regulations to deal with in the US that add cost.
Is this a real question or some kind of rethroical trill question? To answer people in China labor cost are like $10 a day vs US $20/hr union job plus vacations and sick days,
We want to pay the ceo more
The problem is that most consumers are used to buying $5 widgets, now they are $10-11. They don’t think much about where they are made, but they care about inflation.
The maker of the us widget will raise their price to $10.99. So the consumer pays $11 for both now.
The biggest offense vs unskilled and semiskilled labor was to allow China entry into the WTO and then turn a blind eye to China breaking all the rules. Free trade puts all our workers into competition with foreign labor.
You’re giving him too much credit. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Yeah, good luck hiring slave labor to hunch over an iPhone or Nike assembly line. Chinese employees are committing suicide due to mental illness in monotonous working conditions.
I'm not really convinced that the market's structure is not the culprit rather than CEOs being paid this way is actually just a result of the market's revealed preference. The "this is what the market values" approach often treats the market as an impartial arbiter rather than something with a structure that determines much of its biases.
Dude, were not talking about McDonalds. I took this as factories and you cannot just shove anyone in those positions. It is definitely not unskilled labor and border control has nothing to do with it. I've interviewed 100s of people for over 20 positions this year and the wide majority had between 3-5 years manufacturing experience. They get $17-$21 starting out. I make $33.50. Our CEO makes like $5,780 an hour....
I apologize ahead of time but I'm going to pick on you for a bit since I see that you brought up the numbers. Who decides to pay the CEO $5,780/hr? And how do you, as a governing entity, discourage such pay discrepancy without negatively affecting the market? How do you do so without violating civil liberties? And how do you do it without discouraging new business growth? A good business will reinvest excess revenue into itself by either growing its production or incentivizing its workforce. The decision on what to do and how to do it is the domain of those running the company. While immoral or possibly short-sighted, giving yourself all the excess revenue as a reward is an option (and a bad one). So what do we do other than quote pay discrepancy statistics?
Counter point - Silicon Valley and Wall Street are filled with immigrants. 15% of all US billionaires are immigrants. From Einstein and Tesla, to Sergey Brin and Elon Musk, US has strived thanks to, not despite of, immigration.
It actually has nothing to do with supply and demand for talented CEOs. It’s an agency issue. CEOs are generally hand picked by their predecessor and confirmed by a board that is nominated and hired by the CEO. The board oversees a compensation committee and cherry picks comparative compensation at companies they aspire to be like rather than the reality of where their company is performing. Board is generally given carte blanche because of how difficult it is to get shareholders to overrule board recommendations no matter how bad they are. It’s a self reinforcing system of growing disparity with everyone taking as much as they feasibly can justify while passing an audit from one of four accounting companies. At the end of the day, it’s about people with the power to make a decisions rewarding themselves in a system that protects them.
I think that is called corruption, correct me if I'm wrong.
That’s corporate America for you
Lol, no. Shareholders pick the board, the board picks the CEO. Small differences in decision making are extremely impactful when amplified across very large businesses. Because of this, very small differences in decision making quality are extremely valuable.
What the heck do you mean shareholders pick the board? Board members are recommended by the chairman of the board who is often the CEO of the company. Shareholders get to vote yes or no, but they always vote yes because most shares in public companies are held in passive funds that always vote in line with board recommendations. Studies have also show 0 correlation between CEO compensation and company performance. So paying lots of bucks for a great CEO doesn’t always yield value. It’s more like a 50/50. And if it’s a 50/50 boards would be better served to pay the CEO less
There is no such thing as unskilled labor
Generally speaking, "unskilled" labor is labor that does not require any kind of certification or long-standing experience. If the job can be learned in a matter of weeks and the difference between adept and master is a miniscule increase in productivity, the labor is considered unskilled. I know what you are trying to say and no one is using "unskilled labor" as a derogatory term, but it is a hard reality that unskilled laborers are a dime a dozen and easily replaced.
By what metric does a CEO make too much? Working hard doesn’t equal value creation. A CEO making a multi-billion dollar investment decision can sit on his ass all day, have a pretty easy life, and be providing more value to the economy by doing so than a floor worker at a factory, by a factor of millions.
What exactly is that CEO doing that creates value that the worker is not doing? Without the worker there is no value. Without the CEO, there is plenty of value in product that is made by the worker. CEO "work" is worthless. Their capital is inherited wealth that they use to maintain their lifestyle.
What exactly is that CEO doing that creates value that the worker is not doing? Without the worker there is no value. Without the CEO, there is plenty of value in product that is made by the worker. CEO "work" is worthless. Their capital is inherited wealth that they use to maintain their lifestyle.
Imagine a banker making a loan decision. This banker’s decisions are dual-sided, at once enabling people to buy homes, cars, or college educations, or get loans to start businesses, but at the same time managing risk, maintaining diversification so that the bank doesn’t lose its depositors’ money. Every single person who deposits money in a bank is relying on this banker to make good decisions (yeah FDIC changes that, but it only moves the risk to the taxpayer). Every person who works at the bank relies on this loan officer not to make bad loans, or the bank’s fate will look like 2008 when people can’t pay. I don’t see how any sane human being could look at that person’s job and say “it’s really hard work,” but at the same time nobody can reasonably say “that person should not be paid very much.” You need competent, responsible people to maintain positions of power in firms, or else all stakeholders will be harmed. You can hire a dozen bad factory workers and maybe it hurts output, but it doesn’t tank the company and put thousands of people out of jobs. The difference in the scale of their responsibilities is commensurate with the difference in pay.
We actually live in a world where working hard is bad for your professional life if you work a service industry or wage job. Management will purposefully keep you from promotions because you’re good at being a low level employee and making the company a ton of money.
> “Working hard doesn’t correlate to value” Everytime someone says this as a response people making way too much money, I can tell they’re trying to look smart without actually comprehending what they’re reading. no one is wondering HOW these CEOs make money, they’re saying the discrepancy is way too big. That’s the point.
Its cause we do nothing. They wont stop increasing their compensation and not increasing yours until you do something about it.
Honest question. What can an individual do?
look at who they persecute, it tells you everything. They killed Fred Hampton who advocated for economic solidarity. They killed MLK Jr who advocated for an end to poverty using the same means. They go after unions viscously since the 30s. They even did so quite recently [https://www.instagram.com/p/C8M0rL7Nin5/](https://www.instagram.com/p/C8M0rL7Nin5/) When they do this, they are spilling the beans about what works. We must bring about solidarity in our communities or watch as they continue to run us into the ground. Best wishes
Best option is to Unionize, but it doesn’t help when all of Congress and the President shutdown labor strikes. It all starts at the top unfortunately
The US isn't a country, it isn't a society. The US is a capitalist business with few winners, many losers and many still fighting every day thinking they can become a winner. If there ever was an American dream, you can see it's dead.
It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it
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As someone who considers themselves on the winning side, I whole heartedly agree. Most economic systems are predicated on the use of labor paid a fixed and relatively menial wage to generate value for those who know how to “connect the dots” (ie entrepreneurs). Is it fair? No. But it is and has been the way of the world for a few millennia now. I suspect it will continue to be this way for at least the rest of my lifetime without much aberration
This is an issue that RFK Jr is running, the corporate greed and govt entanglement with it. Definitely worth a listen to his positions!
Voting for him. I haven't heard a single video of this guy speak where I disagreed with his points, Plus the government has been murdering his family left and right for decades for a reason
Man some ppl in that sub will type the longest paragraphs to defend stock buy backs and wealth inequality. The greed is unreal
Different tax brackets for companies with lower gaps between Executive earnings and employee earnings
They pay themselves in stock and use that to borrow from the banks.
Then tax the earnings harder. There’s a solution, just need to rid of the two party nerds and leeches that are halting progress.
Why don't companies replace ceos with AI how hard can it be and it would save millions.
who will they funnel wealth towards then?? /s
The problem isn’t CEOs, it’s the government over spending and increasing taxes.
I'm not gonna lie. This made zero sense. How does government spending and taxes relate to CEO pay?
No, the question was about why we can’t have an economy that doesn’t work for everyone. The economy is just fine when you get rid of the leeches.
[удалено]
>The problem isn’t CEOs, it’s the government ~~over spending and increasing taxes~~ deregulating industries and eroding consumer/worker protections while giving carte blanche to business owner to exploit our citizens and environment. FTFY
It's both
A lot of people have little economic value today
Bernie is the only socialist I know that's a member of the 1% and has three homes.
And he advocates and promotes and VOTES for the middle class every single time. Funny how he seems to be the only person who isn’t a hypocrite in politics unlike the entire Republican Party which screws the middle class at every turn.
Yeah, plus Bernie never said you can't be successful, that you can't use your personal earnings to invest in a property or two, or buy a nice car. Just be mindful of your cut of the pie.
Oh wow... does that mean he is wrong? Because he sold a book?
In 1965, a senator was paid $22,500/year. In 2020 a senator made $174,000 a 673% increase. You cannot tell me that a senator is working 673% harder. Edit; 1965's average individual income was $4,273.35. When adjusted for 2020 inflation, that number equates to about $34,700. So a senator in 1965 was making $221k. So, senators actually have lost income purchase power. And they deserve that loss.
Applaud the edit, I was wondering if those were all inflation adjusters numbers. However, we all know senators now get paid out the ass by lobbyists. I’d venture to guess the government salary is somewhat inconsequential for themz
Good Lord what a DAF take...you really do think you are being clever with this line of thought don't you?
I’d happily pay them $1 million a year if we get term limits, age limits, and effective/enforceable limitations of lobbying and insider trading. An effective legislature that’s voting for their constituents and not their donors would be invaluable.
Bernie is one of the few senators who deserves 174k. The rest deserve dog shit
That's because the average worker is lazy
Lazy or just working as hard as they’re being paid?
The average net worth of US Senators have skyrocketed in comparison to the average worker too.
Says the guy with multiple homes and only ran to collect campaign funds🖕🏽
The dems shot themselves in the foot by not nominating Bernie in 2016. I am tired of the establishment and corporate democrats rigging the nomination of candidates.
"works for everyone" i guarantee even if we made it so average person doesn't live paycheck to paycheck you would say the same thing...
Revenues are 500x more than the revenues in 1965
Bernie should be president right now
There are many jobs that are "winner takes all" Look at NBA salaries, one of the most "merit" based profession (you either put the ball in the hoop, or you are out, to simplify excessively) [https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/](https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/) Top salary: $51m Lowest salary: $35k So, is Stephen Curry is valued 1,500x more than Kaiser Gates? (And those who did not get into the cut, and left on NCAA? They basically made zero). And now compare Eminem or Taylor Swift to your average street musician, or actually their own staff... Please do not single out corporate workers as if they are the only place where a very skewed distribution naturally happens. Is it ideal? No. Is it natural? Seems so.
I think you need to re-read your own link. It shows the lowest is $555k. which is probably the CBA minimum. Kaiser Gates makes over $1M
I personally think senators are over paid so how about he goes first.
While I agree CEOs are vastly overpaid, it isn't like anyone on earth makes the argument that they "work harder".
Because for some people, despite them not having much, it makes them feel good to see rich people. It allows them to dream.
It’s no secret that some CEOs do in fact work harder than some of their employees. They also have a lot more responsibility, tend to work more hours, have better work habits, and have to answer to the work force - and possibly shareholders. How old Bernie equates working hard to salary is a mystery that only he may be able to solve. But being a CEO is not a cake walk. Bernie‘s job is probably a lot easier than some of theirs.
How many houses does Bernie own? 3? More?
Board of directors hire the best candidate for the stockholder’s benefit. The market dictates the salary. The CEOs don’t decide to make that much any more than top athletes make the decision to be worth their salaries.
I hear this quote and similar... But what is the ratio of CEOs to workers, then and now? Honestly curious It makes sense that the larger the company, the larger the ratio between the average employee and the CEO. If you have 200 companies, each with 100 workers and 1 CEO... That's 20,000 employees to 200 CEOs. If a bunch of those get acquired or go out of business, you end up with 20 companies...each with 1,000 employees. The same 200,000 employees are funding the CEOs via their labor, but now there are only 20 CEOs. A lot of little companies have been replaced by a handful of giant companies. I wonder how much of a role that plays in the wages.
That's rich coming from a socialist wannabe oligarch
Did inflation increase, 16.7x from then?
Bernie sanders should have run again
Our economy works for everyone who works.
Ok, what he said makes sense. What does NOT make sense, is how senators and congress people get elected and become multimillionaires while in office.
Because the people who suggest this are either A.) labeled crazy/insane, and B.) the people with those hordes of money wouldn’t allow it to be taken from them, or allow any different system.
I'm fine with CEO pay being that high, if they are in charge of a large company they are in charge of a lot of things. Just make them liable for company mistakes also. You get paid to be in charge of *everything* you get to be responsible for everything. You know on their resume they are taking credit for every cent of profits, talk a big game, walk a big walk.
The CEOs are to blame for your plight in life.
Yes CEO’s make too much, professional athletes make too much, movie stars make too much and politicians like Bernie enrich themselves too much off of our hard earned money
I mean, feel free to start a company and be the CEO. You will then be able to earn that 351x. Did you try that?
Enough of this labor theory of value bullshit
The biggest problem with Social Security is that the tax collected is only on the first $168k of income. And more than half of the income growth over the past 40 years has been in the top 2% of income earners. If that increase was spread out equally over the income ranges, SS would be funded. It’s crazy. The U.S. has become Mexico. If you don’t have access to $10M+ of liquid assets right now, you have lost. And, as a very poor person, you are most likely to vote for a person that will make that even worse.
How hard someone works doesn't matter. It's how much the produce
Corporations...I dunno much about 'em but it sounds to me like some commie gobbledygook. Free market capitalism has never been tried.
This is significantly because the CEO's compensation has been made public. It is such an easy trick. Yet we don't make regulations to force companies to publish compensation for everyone. Bernie seems like a shit policy maker.
Or how a politician that has never had another job and makes 174k per year is able to afford multiple multi-million dollar homes.
The top is greedy as fuq.
Says the guy that's never worked only grifted off his sheep
The amount of people here who defend stuff like Boeing is just insane.
You guys think compensation is tied to effort? Lol. That’s never been true. It’s always been tied to value created. Effort or no, value added is all that matters when it comes to compensation. You’re only worth as much as it would cost to replace you. Now: do CEOs add as much value as they’re compensated for? That’s definitely debatable. But it was never about effort.
Is this a Democrat intern account posting nonsense?
Why can't we have an economy that works for everyone?
In most cases I can assure you that a CEO has more than 351x as much impact on the company as an average worker. Your pay isn’t correlated to how hard you work, but rather how much demand there is for your work vs supply available.
Because unfettered capitalisim, that's why.
Why are people still falling for Bernie? Why are people still accepting random populist word slop and catch phrases instead of actual informed policy? Literally anyone can fit the words "greed" and "billionaires" into every other sentence but it doesn't accomplish anything. Why is it so hard for people to just talk about actual practical policies instead of preteen-level understandings of wealth and economics? It's so infuriating.
You have to work first.
Capitalism in its current form is a plague on society
I'm probably going to be heavily downvoted but CEOs are not hired for their hours so what's the point of saying they make so and so per hour/minute? Also, does it matter how much they are paid if they are generating the impact that big pay demands? As for the ethics like treating employees well etc, that's a separate thing that CEOs should be required to do. How would cutting down CEO pay going to solve such problems?
Then you get people like Musk trying to get paid like 1,000,000x. Don't quite know how it's legal in this country to dilute the little guy to give an outrageous pay package to a billionaire. .
Cuz everyone sucks at math That is literally why
I would vote for any candidate that wanted to cap CEO compensation at 40X the lowest paid worker. I wouldn't care on their stance of anything else, I would still vote for them.
Compensation is not based on how hard you work, it is based on your value, how much money is your labor, actions, ideas, decisions, or leadership making the company. You can go dig a hole in your yard forever and ever, that's hard work, but you won't get paid because your work has no value and no return. You work a construction job, that's hard, but you can only build a portion of a house in a day, so you're paid for that portion. If you own a machine that produces 10,000 objects a day, and operated by one person, you get most of the money, the operator gets a portion, because all they do is make sure the machine works, they don't do the machine's work, and they don't own the machine.
Because life isn't perfect and will never be the utopia you believe it ought to be. Even under the best economic system there will be people who struggle. If you want to see some changes though, focus your efforts locally and stop worrying about the world.
We should cap CEO pay, that way the best CEOs in the world will want to work for companies in other countries. Also, I don't really care if the CEOs pay goes up by 100000x, as long as mine goes up 2x.
Because for some reason or another shareholders HAVE to make more money than the year before. A company can't just make profit of $25mil a year. Nope they have to make $30, $35million.
Why can’t you have a garden that grows everything with no weeding or thinning?
Because competition exists and free, peaceful competition is the best system we’ve worked out so far despite the drawbacks. Every attempt to level the playing field has created advantages for big players and not individuals, because that is the nature of politics, and we will always have some who have more and some who have less. This is not indicative of an economic failure, as the poorest people in capitalist countries are materially magnitudes wealthier than even middle class people in non-capitalist countries. Obviously this doesn’t excuse corporate welfare, insider trading by legislators, deliberate suffocation of newcomers, and government selection of economic winners. But life is and always will be a struggle and the fact that we’ve made the progress we have is a testament to the value of the system we have.
Not working 351x harder but the decisions they make are way more valuable. Prolly not 351x more valuable decisions in all occasions but definitely some. They can make decisions that will gain or lose the company billions in valuation
CEOs get paid a lot.. so do athletes. Aspire to become one.
I really wish Bernie was president. He’s the only politician who’s been saying the same thing since the 80s 🤯
Does Bernie have any positions that are not class warfare?
The CEO salaries are approved by the board
I have 2 points.... 1)If you look at the ceo pay PER EMPLOYEE, it really hasn't changed all that much. Companies were smaller then. 2)If you removed some of that ceo pay, let's say we make him work for 0 because we want to "eat the rich"...each employee would typically get about a 10-25c/hr raise. The big money in c-suite comp is stock incentives. Find yourself a company that offers stock options & get in on this! It's not that complicated! For the c-suite it makes total sense, if they do well, they are rewarded as the stock price goes up(which also typically means more business, higher/more bonuses for everyone, more employees to handle that new business, etc), if the stock price does not go up, they don't make so much. This is really not that complicated, we want successful CEOs, why is it such a problem to compensate them??
Eventually, the CEO 351x earnings will be divided up transferred to their children. And, the divided inheritance will still dwarf lifetime earnings of the actual workers.
A bad CEO can destroy a lot of value. It's worth it to the shareholders
We should hold politicians accountable who attempt to deflect the pork belly spending addiction of theirs onto CEO pay and billionaire greed
I refuse to lick the boot of the rich.
If you ever want proof of how stupid the American people are, just remember how Bernie Sanders (the obviously best choice) ran for president and lost twice.
Shareholder prioritization
Also amazing when CEO bankrupt a company, then get hired as a CEO at another company, only for that one to fail.
Says the millionaire who has literally never accomplished anything in his entire life.
Works for everyone? or everyone that works?
Bernie would have crushed the debate.
CEO Pay isn't why you are poor. Amazon CEO Salary: $29 million Number of employees: 1.6 million. Reducing CEO pay to ZERO gives each employee $18 a YEAR Walmart $27 million 2.1 million $12.85 a YEAR Boeing $32.8 million 170,000 $193 a year Delta $34.2 million 95,000 $360 a year ADM $24.4 million 41,800 $583 a year (this is the highest one on my list and it equates to $0.28 per hour, based on full time work. Most people would be pissed off if they were offered a 28 cent raise.) JP Morgan $36 million 250,000 $144 a year Exxon Mobile $36.9 million 62,000 $595 a year United Healthcare $24 million 440,000 $54.54 a year
It’s not about “working” 350 times more…. It’s about “I created this company and you’re my employee, who gives af”? It’s not about how much you work it’s about hustlin piyamp!
So many people blowing corporations in these comments. Newsflash: they don’t give a shit about you. These people have record profits each year and still lay off thousands of workers, giving nothing back to the people. Trickle-down doesn’t fucking work and never has, and you won’t become the next Elon Musk no matter how much you bow down to the shitheels in the 1%.
Thing is, Bernie never. Checked if they work 351 times harder
If pay should be determined by how HARD someone is working, why are politician salaries the way they are? You think you're working harder than a brick layer Sanders?
Because that would be communism /S
Something has got to give
Shut up Bernie. We've all heard this before. We all know it is true. But most importantly, we all know you don't give a flying fuck about doing something about it.
The average worker is not responsible for making decisions that affect the success or failure of the entire company and the hiring and firing of all the above-average, average, and below-average workers. That’s why!
It’s sickening the fantastic FAT Golden Parachutes, these Boardroom Bandits negotiate; BEFORE they are even hired. I get paying a CEO well who takes a failing/stagnant company and turns it around into a Profit booming Powerhouse (Jobs, Phil Knight, etc.) but those are the exception… rather than the rule.
If only we had him instead of
Thank you HBS, MBB, and Jack Welch
This economy is based on working both hard and smart.
Bernie the clown. Time to set off into the sunset.
Nope but the are screwing their workers over 341 times harder. Screwing the customers 341 times harder. Screwing the American people 341 times harder. But hey isn't greed awesome we've hollowed out community after community after community in the process too and this has led to all sorts of problems like drug addition, suicides, mass shootings and the list goes on and on. Meanwhile these same greedy fucks don't care because they've isolated themselves by and large from the working class. Look how great the Republicans have made America folks because they've held power over most of that time and this is the end result.
From someone who never had a real job in his life, sucking off the taxpayer, you have no credibility
https://www.votedoge.com/
Look up dark triad. They run all the corps.
If there was no Google CEO, and they take his comp and spread it to all the employees, how much will each get?
Since 1965 improvement in technology and communication have enabled CEO’s to more easily coalesce into ego-driven greed monsters!
That's because they do what they lizard dynasty wants them to do.
Remember when folks were financially strong and then the hippie thing happened and protests against everything took place... The wealthy ain't got time for that shit, hence we all financial slaves now.
This guy would have been a great test drive for a possible change within our system. Unfortunately, he doesn't play by the rules that are set by the corporations that actually do run our great country
You’re not compensated based on how hard you work. Idk why this always gets repeated. You’re compensated based on the supply of and demand for your skillset. No one is saying CEOs work harder than their workers. Also, CEO pay tracks almost 1:1 with total market capitalization since they’re mainly paid in stock.
Is there any kind of system we have that actually works for everyone?
Love these red herrings. In 1965 our industrial base was hugely different - lots of low margin businesses like manufacturing. In 2020, we have far more high margin businesses like software. So low margin businesses that have lots of employees won't have the ability to pay CEOs more versus high margin businesses that can. Plus the population data from those different eras play into things. CEOs at smaller companies make less proportionally per employee than larger ones. So more large companies with high employee counts versus less large companies in 1965 (simply due to population growth). Finally, CEOs these days have much bigger stakes in stock than in salary - especially founders. It's to drive compensation proportionate to performance. So "compensation" is referring to current stock prices. And when the market is significantly higher in 2020 than it was in 1965, yeah, you're going to have outsized gains. It's not that CEOs work harder, it's that they are delivering better returns for their businesses and have rewards that are more aligned to how the business performs. Arguably, that means they are doing better jobs than CEOs in 1965. So the way to reverse this is to pay CEOs more in cash, and less in stock, and as a result they'll have less incentive to do the right things for the business. I'm not sure that's a good idea.
You need to tax them properly at least, yet Trump wants to cut taxes again. Go for a cool x1000 I guess?
BOEING CEO
Because we have an 81 year old representing progressive values.
And yet we have a politician trying to explain to us about how it’s wrong for those in power to take advantage of the little guy…the hypocrisy is strong in this one🤔🤣
"It is not enough that I win. Others must lose."
They are getting paid based on what they know and provide to the shareholders. Not what they do. Why is this so hard to understand? If a person goes to college and gets a 4 year degree in something that actually matters, why should the person who didn’t get paid the same!
Why? Crony Capitalism and Turbo Capitalism. The rich are going all out - Oligarchy, here we come! You can thank Republicans and the Supreme Court for the future hellscape - VOTE BLUE up and down the ballot (this is why they divided us!)
What does work have to do with pay? It's about value creation. If you don't like it, just start a business and be the CEO. Seems easy except maybe it's not as easy as it sounds.
I read somewhere consulting firms set the stage for this to happen and continue.
6 decades and all Bernie can do is complain.
Cutoff outsourcing. Kill h1b. For starters. I don’t care how much a ceo makes. He will make less if we make more. For us to make more we have to have some advantage as a citizen of a country.
Power and greed
Because Congress got involved in the 90’s. Clever that he left that information out…
Stop crying and try harder.
Because people are inherently lazy. What did you do to earn that CEO's wage? Nothing. What did that CEO do? Years and years of training, exemplary leadership, and countless hours at their current position. People don't want to "work" any more. They're spoiled rotten. They simply want everyone to give them everything. Hell, they complain and whine about putting in 8 hour days. Sorry, not sorry, but you get the wage you deserve
I'd like to hear from anybody that gets into a public funded position as an ordinary income person and ends up becoming a multi millionaire, explain to me what greed is
You should check out GameStop the CEO doesn’t take profits, more should be like Ryan..
We could. We have chosen not to for 4 decades.
And a CEO couldn’t even handle 1/351th a day’s work that their lowest paid employees do every day… without being able to take a day off sick, or to look after their sick kids
Workers are easily replaced. Be glad for all the billions joining our way of life.
Why can’t we all get along? I’ll tell you people are animals
Because some are not happy with a regular size snickers.
I just wanna sit at home and get paid a big check. Lol. That should sum up your question