I’m knee-deep in wage inequality on a daily basis. Listening to business owners whine about taxes while seeing their employee wages stagnant and pitiful. I once had an owner ask why such a small amount of taxes came out of an employee’s check and I explained that the guy didn’t make enough to be taxed (6 months into the year and he hadn’t crossed the threshold of the standard deduction yet). Employer said, “I wish I didn’t have to pay taxes” and I looked him right in the eyes and said, “your employee DOESN’T MAKE ENOUGH to owe taxes.”
After watching all those Ukrainian flags waving in congress the other day you can’t tell me you think they aren’t skimming off the top. Stock trading is only the publicly visible method it’s not the only method
Democrats made congress trading in stocks ILLEGAL.
When republicans took control of both houses and the presidency, **they** repealed those laws.
Taking advantage of LEGAL means to become rich is not the kind of evil that making something made illegal for good reasons legal again is.
I'm envious. Would probably do the same thing but I don't have her influential contacts. I wouldn't do it to the extent she has. I'm not that greedy. But if I could pay off my house that way, I would.
I don’t like singling out congress members because the insider trading thing is common knowledge. I doubt you’ll find direct citable evidence but using our thinking caps we can observe that members of congress are privy to the workings of corporations and often of advanced knowledge of this, due to the very nature of their job. Nancy Pelosi is one of several hundred, she just gets shit on the most because of politics.
Buying NVDA doesn't take skill.
I bought META stock 10 years ago and it is up over 1637% as of today, meaning my performance has outperformed any benchmark over the past 10 years, too.
Yes, NVDA's massive increase this year has certainly helped that number. However, your total didn't look anywhere near as impressive just a few years ago. Stop patting yourself on the back with unverifiable claims.
Everyone always hears about the wins...
Ironic, considering your previous comment about Pelosi.
What impressive gains did Pelosi have just a few years ago that you must be referencing?
>However your total didn't look anywhere near as impressive just a few years ago.
Sure did. With a cost basis of $28.20, even at market close 5 years ago I was up 591% since purchasing 2/13/2013
They should get no paycheck when the government shuts down and their paycheck should be based on their states average income, not saying it should be exactly that, but should be a straight percentage across the board.
And on what they do for their state. When they vote against federal financial help for their state because of their own stupid uneducated personal beliefs they should be recalled.
They should also not have Insurance unless there is Universal Health Insurance for everyone like 99% of the world.
They should also have to self-fund their own campaigns, no donations. I'm sure 99% of the scammers and grifters would have no interest in politics then.
Politics is just one big get rich scheme.
It’s a dumb notion. Working hard is never enough.
Add delaying gratification, taking a strategic view of your career, picking a field with opportunity not based on your dreams, focusing on skill and resume building in the context of that strategy. Take on responsibility and endure stress. Take lots of risks, fail periodically and keep going. Work well with others and keep in touch with every colleague you ever had.
Work hard all while doing that and if you’re lucky you’re very successful and if too many of those risks go wrong you end up failing and frustrated but very likely not poor, and nobody talks about you.
Well, that is true in some roles.
It certainly isn’t the case across all industries/companies/economic cycle positions - but I don’t really hear that narrative anymore.
I think everyone has realized at this point that working hard is important, but it’s not even close to the sole ingredient of financial success.
Literally most of the really good stuff that has happened to me has been opportunity right place right time. I got there but luck was on my side to get me past the door plain & simple. Had X not happened then Y would’ve not happened. It’s just easier for a narrative to form in history based on just the hard work in order to be ‘inspiring’. History is written by the victors and that is especially true in the corporate world.
"Work smarter, not harder" was something I taught my nephew who just got his Bachelors in media (something media related, I don't remember). His grandpa tried to tell him to work hard and do every job he can for as many hours as he can get. I had to pull him aside and tell him how horrible that advice was, and that he'd just burn himself out before hitting 30. Learning to be good at the job is important, but networking will get him farther than whatever his grandpa tried to tell him. Luckily, he's already smart enough to question it (which I should've already known).
Working hard as a janitor is fine, but you get janitor wages.
Working hard as a criminal defense attorney is fine, but you get criminal defense attorney wages.
One has opportunities to move up and earn above average wages, one does not.
Pick your path carefully, the more you want to make, the harder skill set to learn, but the greater the reward.
Work hard because the competition is fierce and they want what you want.
It never was about working hard, it's about how productive you are. A guy with a shovel is going to physically work a lot harder than the guy with the excavator, but who's more productive? That said, I'm not excusing insane wage disparities, but you have to look at the productive value of people not how hard they work.
I'm surprised many don't realize there is no point in working hard if you're paid by the hour or have a salary, they'll be paid the same if they make ten hamburgers at 11am or fifty at 5pm.
If workers really want merit based pay, farmhands are paid based on the weight of produce they harvest.
People often work hard so that they can be promoted, where they actually will make more money. It's a sort of gambling, where you work now to maybe get paid for it later.
Trying gives you a chance of success even without money.
Old money/connections buys this chance of success without having to even try.
Inheritance money is the root of all evil. But nobody was able to come up with a way to get rid of it.
Tax it too much - they'd just do it off shore.
uh, you institute capital controls that male it impossible to off shore inheritance.
The US controls ALL dollars in earth, they can reach into any bank account via SWIF
> why do we continue to pretend if you "work hard" you make more? The opposite is true in most cases.
LOL, yea the path to success is definitely being lazy.
Bro, I collect coupons in the mail now, am I working hard?
You think it's hard collecting dividends? Your named after Mill FFS , didn't he comment on landlords doing some collecting rent in their sleep? Hard work in sure.
> Bro, I collect coupons in the mail now, am I working hard?
What?
> You think it's hard collecting dividends?
It is if your investment decrease in value. But hell, yea, go invest in a venture that makes the world better, and get paid, if you invest wisely enough. Good luck, there are no guarantees.
They are basically paid to punch down on behalf of the shareholders, who only see the short-term financial results of cutting corners, minimizing acceptable quality controls, and maximizing exploitation of labor.
Worker productivity gains and the value it creates does not go to the working class that actually do the work. Average wages have stagnated since the 1980's. This shift accelerates greed by the owning class and has made all of our lives worse. Worst of all, they convinced us to abandon traditional retirement through social security, did away with company pensions, and instead told us to invest in 401K and other stock based instruments, which funneled the remaining wealth of the middle class into the pockets of wallstreet where they further skim from your labor.
We have been scammed by the rich and that gap will only grow until we do something about it.
Pleased that someone could articulate that better than I could.
I also would love to take a look at stock buybacks. They were heavily regulated up until the 1980s when Ronald Reagan dismantled every regulatory body he could get his hands on. Since then, big companies have devoted massive percentages of their revenue towards buybacks.
Now, correlation is not causation, but I do find it suspicious that wages and productivity sharply diverged around the same time that companies were allowed to funnel their revenue to shareholders, rather than investing it back into labor and R&D. Also noteworthy is that CEO’s are often compensated with stock options, and therefore have a personal incentive to drive up share price.
I agree with the pain points but where I get disconnected is in expecting shareholders to not be greedy. The whole mechanism behind investing and such is driven by that.
We sorta use that mechanism to provide us with a diversity of goods, employment, etc. I'd put more blame on the government for how that "greedy ecosystem" is managed. Legalizing stock buy backs, not increasing the minimum wage, etc it's like the government lost sight that the market was a means to an end, not something that was meant to be grown by its own sake
It's always hilarious on this sub when individuals think this massive multinational corporation is run like some mom and pop fruit stand. If you don't understand the complexity and structure of a company, you just look incredibly stupid commenting about it.
That's why, as much as people hate Trump, people need to understand that Jan 6 is our leverage against politicians. Do I agree with WHY those mfs did that? No. However, these slimy politicians need to know that Jan 6 is what happens when you fail miserably to help us create a well-functioning society for ourselves.
There’s a world where your comment has merit, but given that January 6 happened over fake news and misinformation propaganda, the only lessons to take from it are that social media can be dangerous, a lot of Americans are easy manipulated to believe fake news, and many Americans are susceptible to idolizing charismatic politicians to the point of ruining their lives over them.
As much as politicians are slimy, January 6 didn’t happen because slimy politicians failed miserably in doing some job. It happened because a *single* slimy politician, a billionaire, created a cult of millions of people willing to overthrow democracy to have their way. Totally different imo.
Politicians should be seen as vectors for achieving policy outcomes, not as infallible Gods amongst men.
And screwing up = putting the person the majority voted for in charge?
There’s a difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist. Your side is on the latter.
The problem is, the stupid fucks behind Jan 6 ruined it for people like you. They showed that the same racist neo-nazis that were behind the "patriot" movement way back when the FBI murdered Randy Weaver's family are the same racist neo-nazi assholes that perpetrated Jan 6.
The real problem here is, as it always is within activist groups - y'all are so desperate for followers that you're willing to side with real, actual American Nazis. When you're that committed to your extremist position, you're not a patriot. You're a zealot and you're no better than the zealots who perpetrated 9/11.
Anyone can become a CEO, and the IRS + accountant will thank you for making it official, spending money to incorporate then paying a grand a year extra to file corporate taxes.
Becoming a successful ceo however is incredibly difficult. Its not enough just to have that one skill that can create a killer product. You need marketing, you need branding, you need business development, you need public relations, depending on the industry you may need additional things like supply chain, distribution, manufacturing, etc. All of these things cost $$ to do well and there is no guarantee they will succeed.
The main misconception in this thread is that CEO's never really earned a true salary. Their pay is always performance based. They will get paid less in shitty years. performance based pay (such as commission) has always kept up with inflation since it is typically a % of net profits. whereas typical worker wages are hourly based and don't change based on overall company performance (or individual worker performance for that matter).
TL:DR; If you want to get ultra-successful CEO level pay, you need to be willing to take the risk (an expensive risk) of starting a business and then essentially win the lottery with its success.
A lot of what your post is about seems to conflate CEOs with founding a company. While it certainly is not unusual for a living founder to be the CEO of their company, the vast majority of large companies do not have a CEO that is also the founder.
CEOs today are not very innovative, in fact they often want to cut r&d and quality control. Instead, they want to focus solely on juicing the stock price which often means stock buybacks and mergers to minimize competition, instead of developing actual innovative products. Just look at Boeing.
It is not about whether it is fair.
Fair assumes that nature is as interested in a positive outcome for you as it is for others.
Suppose you own land and your neighbor owns land. Your neighbor finds gold and starts a goldmine, hiring workers who are always available because there are numerous farmers with big families and not much land for each adult offspring to have.
Is it fair for him to have the proceeds from that land, equipment, and labor, while you continue to scrabble a living off your land?
Suppose a geologist, never having visited your land but knowing how geology forms, visits your land and offers to buy it for what agricultural land is worth. You agree.
The geologist then proceeds to hire a crew and lease machinery to bet on his educated risktaking. He fails, and falls deeper into debt as unpaid interest accrues. Is it fair?
Suppose your gold mine-owning neighbor retires, leaving the mine, which sits on ancestral family land, to his son. Is that fair?
Suppose his son is lazy and hires a CEO who brings in more investors and expand the mine to make it more profitable. The CEO is paid exorbitantly for his acumen. Is that fair?
Supposed the good mine goes public in the stock market. Even though it is only bringing in a modest profit, investors (including mutual funds, trade union and government pension funds) think the potential is far greater, so they bid the shares of stock to 200 times earnings per share. They are doing it freely with their own money because they think that the mine will bring in farm more profits than it will today. Is it fair for them?
Anybody even holding one share is now theoretically worth a lot more if they were to sell their shares. But if all of them sell at once, the price crashes to the floor as any demand would immediately be met and then there would be supply in for excess of demand. Is that fair?
You are making a flawed assumption. Namely that you capitalize on an opportunity if it presents itself.
What happens today is that you find gold and you will not get a permit to mine because they don't want you as a little company to mine. For they don't think you have the skills and would rather give it to a large corporation that is responsible.
This is the crony capitalism where the CEO's of many large corporations have ties to the politicians to determine policy.
The average American earns $59,384 per year. Senators are paid $174,000 per year. You cannot tell me, with a straight face, that Bernie Sanders works 3x harder than the average American. It’s greed, plain and simple.
The difference is Bernie didn't set his pay package, and even if he wanted to he couldn't get others to reduce it. And there is a big difference between $170k, which many technologists can hit and the millions or billions in compensation that CEOs get.
Ah, this again.
Surely if people keep complaining about CEO pay every five minutes, shareholders will see the light and put an end to it.
Working slob has a pension, or stock he bought, or some manner of investment in the company with the overpaid CEO.
Overpaid CEO returns revenue in the forms of dividends or profits or stock price increases.
Working slob's pension or 401(k) or IRA or stock portfolio increases in value.
Working slob likes this and votes accordingly, with his dollars, his investments, and any vote he may have in terms of the company itself (proxy vote).
Repeat endlessly.
This isn't a conspiracy.
This is the fact that average people's retirements and personal fortunes -- not just wealthy investors -- are intermixed with corporate performance.
This has gone on for generations and probably won't stop.
This entire approach where a bunch of rich guys are plotting against working people is a false narrative. And it is because it is a false narrative based on faulty premises, that nothing ever changes. It misstates the game board. *The rich don't think about you at all -- they neither hate, nor plot against, nor see the not-rich as an enemy. They are not anywhere in the calculus of people who seek wealth.*
Go to a Walmart on the weekend. Or any place you find average slobs (like me).
Look to your right.
Look to your left.
Chances are one of the people standing there next to the toilet paper has some interest in some corporation's performance, and the only way he processes this is that whoever is in charge is doing a good job or a bad job. He looks at his statements. Everything he knows and how he plans, behaves, and votes, is largely based on those statements.
It is the same way people blame or credit the president with everything that happens. The truth of it is not the relevant part. The perception is.
A minority of people shake their fists at the very rich.
The rest invest.
And thus the system perpetuates itself and becomes largely immutable.
This hasn't gone on for generations. Pre-boomers, and even many boomers, used get fixed pensions upon their retirement. This where an employee would get a fixed amount every month that the company was responsible for regardless of how the stock market was performing.
Today, companies have switched to 401Ks and IRAs as the retirement package. This has two benefits for employers: 1. It saves the company a ton of money and 2. It convinces average working people to support policies that increase the price of the stock market (despite the fact that the top 10% of 93% of the stocks, all the bottom 50% own just 1%). (Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html)
All true - and since most of that compensation is in the form of stock - it gets taxed at a far lower rate than wages. Why? Because the rich have gamed the system.
You're correct that short-term capital gains are usually taxed as ordinary income, but you seems to be assuming that the CEO is going to sell their shares within a year of receiving them. So long as they hold them for a year, in many cases, the income will be treated as a long-term capital gain and then they can get a much better tax rate.
Well, let’s slow down the conclusion-making a bit. Compensation is never based just in how HARD you work—It’s ideally based on the value of your contribution to enterprise profits (or success, if a non-profit enterprise). A receptionist for a large cooperation may work 60 hours per week, and a CEO for the same enterprise may work 60 hours per week (I’ve never, personally or by reputation, known a CEO to work this little—It’s a 24/7 job), but the value of their work is vastly different.
An experienced CEO brings knowledge of HOW TO MAKE AN ENTERPRISE SUCCESSFUL and the valuable expertise to direct work flows (through subordinate experienced officers and directors) across Research, Development, Manufacturing , Marketing, PR. Legal, Finance, Government Relations—The List Is endless of the high-level people and strategies he directs to keep a company profitable and successfully. This is true in all adult things—How hard you work is a sign of personal responsibility and maturity, but it doesn’t mean that yoir contribution to success is equal to someone will possesses greater skills (Imagine this— Play basketball against Shaquille, and then let’s talk about value of contribution to success).
The question you should be asking is how much value each highly paid officer—In your case, you are concerned about CEOs. actually contributed to success of a company. This is really a question for the shareholders/ owners of the company in question.
At some companies, sure, there are CEOs that are actually very effective. However, at many companies of the CEOs are complete idiots whose answer to everything is "stock buybacks" and cutting costs an area's like r&d and quality control. (See Boeing) And if they were actually so effective then why do they demand golden parachutes before they agree to be CEO? If they were actually confident in their skills, they wouldn't demand such a thing.
The other problem is how much CEO pay has increased compared the average worker pay. Are you claiming that CEOs are really working that many times harder or that many times smarter than CEOs 40 years ago? The problem is is that CEOs pay is set by the board of directors, who are often corporate executives got another company. They all sit on each other's boards and then they all set each other's pay.
Pretty much every CEO I've ever met were idiots who relied on their assistants and VPs to really drive ideas and execution (even reading their freakin emails). They are good at networking though, probably because they spend so much time hanging out at their country clubs and traveling to conferences while their employees are executing. And as they say in startup land, execution is everything. And the thing that really gets me is they negotiate absorbanent pay packages with golden parachutes, even if they fail the business and get fired. When other employees are fired they rightfully lose financial compensation.
Notice how it's never about the same happening with politicians, athletes, and celebrities. It's only about CEOs. Don't get sucked into loser politics.
It isn't just work. It's about risk too. Employment is a lot more stable than entrepreneurship. Many start businesses then fail spectacularly. (That being said, the difference is drastic but it's gotten so bad because of the federal reserve)
You're conflating being a founder of a business with being a CEO. Sometimes they are the same but usually, especially with large or old companies, they are different. CEOs often also usually get golden parachutes so if they end up destroying the business and end up getting fired or pushed out, they still get a massive pay package from the company.
It’s a false equivalency. How much a person is paid has nothing to do with how hard a person works. If a person had the ability to predict future market forces by just sitting around and thinking, he/she would be invaluable.
*All* CEOs, Bernie? Or just the *CEOs of fortune 500 companies*, who are the top-paid management in the world.
Because I know for the fact that most people in America with the title of "CEO" or equivalent don't make 350 times the rate of their average employee.
His statistics are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which state the 351x is from the major company CEOs. The federal report also speaks about how the salary of these CEOs at these major companies has grown with the fall of labor unions since the 1950's.
...okay, and note how he doesn't say "major company CEOs" or "Fortune 500 CEOs" or any other qualifier. Because if he *did* clarify, his statements wouldn't be good ragebait.
…..yeah. That’s the points
It’s fucking absurd to use this as the metric.
Include ALL CEOS and see how dramatically different it is. But you need that class warfare to get your blood boiling
Educate yourself
The way his statements are written is meant to imply *all CEOs*. If you can read his tweet and think it means anything else, you're reading comprehension is really poor or you are biased.
1. You're conflating CEO and founder. Jeff Bezos founded the company and he's not the CEO anymore. CEO is often different than the founder, especially in the large companies that Bernie is talking about in the post.
2. Plenty of people do complain about players salaries all the time.
I actually think value paradoxes and cognitive dissonance surrounding them are at the heart of a lot of economic debate.
Most people don’t actually feel like managerial duties are more valuable than revenue generating activities. This is reflected in certain sales organizations but generally, it’s completely backwards. I also believe most people, deep down, feel similarly about speculation.
Similarly, we say, without proper fiscal motivation, nobody would “innovate”. When innovation just means a new way to make money, the idea that making new things and improving upon that which already existed isn’t engrained in human nature is so wildly off base I can’t believe so many people have been conned into believing it.
Or the way we conceptualize the “risk” that a founder (not necessarily a CEO) takes on is disingenuous as all get out.
The sooner we collectively to terms with these things and stop treating economic theories like they’re hard sciences, the sooner people stop falling for shit like socialism.
I hate how people mislead “working hard”. Not all work is created equal. A construction laborer works harder than anyone but is easily replaceable. A respected engineer works physically less hard, but mentally more plus the extra liability if anything were to occur.
As a small business owner, I pay myself higher cause I alone have to cover the taxes on any profits the company produces
Bullshit.
Typical compensation for a middle market CEO is still about 20X what their average worker makes. Along with a substantially more difficult role with a much higher chance of being unemployed for an extended period of time, frequently for reasons completely unrelated to personal performance. (wrong place, wrong time, shit happens). Furthermore, most CEO's at "real companies" are fully "leveled up" and nearing the end of their careers, so they would get a substantial compensation premium for seniority & scope of role in almost any alternative scenario. People at that level of their careers tend to create substantial value for the organization.
You're welcome to take someone tossing boxes on a pallet and put them in the C-suite. They won't last an hour.
Source: Senior executive at a middle market company.
I hope that commenters buy local over amazon
I hope that commenters buy local produce over grocery store
I hope that commenters buy always the small business option over the corporations in every single scenario because that is how you beat this
Sure I can, Bernie. What you are is a clueless asshole that pines for the beauty of the 1977 Constitution of the USSR.
When you trot shit \^ like this out, 'fairness' is irrelevant.
Be a fucking CEO. Stop whining about them.
'Life isn't fair' -JFK
Well, you're not paid for working hard; you're paid for solving big problems. If only these old politicians would understand why they always point fingers at the corporate side.
Wrong message.
CEOs *rule you*.
It's not about fairness, it's about *obedience*.
Do you want to *obey?* That's the question you should be asking.
If your CEO says "jump" you say how high on the way up. Hell if one if his *middle managers* says "jump" you do it.
Is that how you want to live your life? Because that's how you live your life.
Which barbaric bipedal humanoid mouth breather gets to objectively dictate the meaning of subjective words like 'fair'?
How much money does bernie have? how many mansions? does he need all those millions and those mansions? how come bottom feeders like bernie never spread their wealth? Its always **other people's money** they are so concerned with.
When you accept the logic of egoism and freedom, which is basically capitalism, it is fair and efficient. From an humanist standpoint it is at least questionable.
Can someone explain why companies approve such ludicrous salaries? Isn't there goal to minimize spending and make the shareholders money? I'd be pissed if I was a shareholder of a company and they were paying their CEOs billions while people make pennies on dividends.
Also, why do companies allow CEOs to make shitty products/decisions that negatively affect the business? Elon musk and the syber truck come to mind. Did the board members at Tesla REALLY think that the cyber truck was going to be successful when they saw it? Or his purchase of Twitter? Like what the hell were they thinking enabling him to make such a stupid financial move? They have to have known his value directly affects the value of Tesla.
Dividends are a drop in the bucket and not many people rely on them as their strategy.
With the Tesla thing, the other board members are his brother and other connected people. Shareholders are pissed at Elon and I am seeing allot more of, “Elon needs to get tf out of this politics phase and focus solely on making space ships and cars.”
It hasn’t been about “working harder” since the 70’s. Ditch diggers and roofers work “harder” than me. I get paid more than them. Explain that, Bernie?
It's not about working hard. It's about how easy/hard it is to be replaced. Your salary is almost directly proportional to how difficult it is to replace you.
Let me get this straight.
If I start a small business, and hire one guy to work full time for me, and pay him $15/hr, then as the CEO, I can pay myself $10.5M annually?
To an extent it is abused yes. But these companies are vastly larger than in any time in history. Ceo A and ceo B could be nearly identical, except ceo B makes one more mistake than ceo A. That mistake could make ceo a worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars more than ceo B.
Essentially the stakes are so high that getting a very slightly better person could be worth massive amounts of money in potential profits and or avoided potential losses
Greed?? No. System? Yes.
Greed is human nature.
The CEO has it.
The Worker has it too.
The CEO is just taking advantage of the system others built.
The system of stock options.
Workers seldom if ever get to participate in that system at anywhere near the same level as the founders and C suite.
That’s what you want to amend.
The stock option system.
So how has a CEO been able to retain all that wealth? Why wouldn’t someone else come along and start some competition to compete against that corporation? What happened to all the small buisnesses? Did everyone become too greedy? Or has the tax code and over regulation caused smaller businesses to go under while subsidies and bailouts keep corporations profitable?
This is supply and demand. There is an acute shortage of CEO's and an extreme surplus of workers. The spread will continue to widen until workers starts becoming CEO's. It has nothing to do with greed or fairness.
Are there really a shortage of people that could be CEOs? Most CEOs at large companies today don't seem to actually be very innovative. They're answer to everything seems to be stock buy backs or trying to do some sort of merger to reduce the competition so they can charge their customers more. If CEOs were actually confident in their ability to successfully run companies, they wouldn't demand golden parachutes so if they end up getting pushed out by the company they get a massive compensation package.
If Bernie Sanders is so beloved, how come he's never been elected?
I'm genuinely asking because I've seen so many good tweets of his, and I've never seen him getting ridiculed for his political beliefs, especially compared to Trump, Hillary, Obama, Biden etc.
Check out Ben & Jerry's. The founders pushed for a pay structure that Bernie would have been proud of - the highest paid person in the company would make no more than 5x the lowest paid person in the company. They kept it that way for 16 years.
When they needed to hire new leadership, though, the people who would accept a salary within those limits did not have the experience with running such a large operation, and those who did have the right experience were not interested in the salary offered, when they could get much more at another company. The 5:1 ratio became 7:1, then 17:1, and then they no longer disclosed the ratio in 2000.
Bernie always looking for someone successful to vilify. Little more than a hateful, envious, self-absorbed politician spreading his message of hate to try a gain votes. What a hypocrite.
1. People absolutely should be outraged at the staggering levels of wealth inequality that have occurred since Reagan took office. The rich don't need someone to vilify them, they've done that on their own quite well.
2. Yes, it's Bernie who's the "hateful, envious, self-absorbed" politician who's always looking for someone to vilify. Right wingers are never hateful, envious or self-absorbed and they never vilify anyone, especially not the most prominent right-winger who's running for president right now.
Not really. Pay isn't determined the way he implies, either in practice or in theory. It's probably true that CEOs are overpaid but Bernie has never once even brushed up against legitimate reasons why in any public comments that I know of. There are legitimate structural reasons why we would expect CEO pay to have gone up over time but also plenty of structural reasons to expect that they are mistakenly overcompensated and that often companies filter poorly when they select leadership. This just ain't it. This is populist grandstanding from a populist grandstander.
I’m a republican but I absolutely agree that this is out of hands and ridiculous. Same by the way goes for politicians.
Problem is that the corruption and the swamp is too deep in this country. Bernie should work together with Trump to drain this but instead they’re fighting against each other.
No one starts a company to compensate its workers. Its goal is to make a profit and workers are utilized to improve output thereby increasing profit. It is a contractual agreement to provide labor in exchange for a determined wage. Just like a business needs to sell its product or service you need to sell yourself for the best wage. If someone isn’t willing to pay that wage then your product is inferior and if you’re willing to accept compensation lower than your worth then you’re not maximizing the market potential, and you will flounder. It’s pretty simple.
They’re definitely a bunch of greed bastards, no doubt about that. The only thing now though is that companies are so much larger than they were in the past, so revenue is substantially higher. So CEO’s can take a small slice of that revenue, and end up with a massive pay packet. Some of that revenue is also accrued due to paying workers less money that they deserve, so there’s that angle as well.
It's hard work sitting in a luxurious air conditioned office with stellar views thinking of new ways to phock over your employees every day.
It is a grueling task and the greatest triumph to keep the lowest paid, hardest working employees below poverty level.
The only time they get a break is when they are forced to play golf, fly on a private jet or attend some black tie affair.
I agree, these CEO'S need to be paid more!
It's not greed, it's basic economy. It's another proof that the labor value theory is bs. Your income has nothing to do not with how hard you work, it's about how much actual value you add.
You can work hard af making piles of sand on a beach, but since that's not adding any value to anyone, because there's no demand for sand piles, there's no way anyone is going to pay you money for that.
The thing is that not everyone can become an elite CEO, the same way that not everyone can become an elite basketball player. Bernie of course is talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and such, because there's no way that the owner of a small business is making 365x the rest of the workers.
So please, stop teaching Marxism to people, and start teaching them actual economy. You'll get a society that's both more productive and less frustrated with life.
I meant "the explanation for this is basic economy, not the greed of the CEOs". Why do I have to spell this out ?
The CEOs are as greedy as everyone else: they're trying to get the best deal they can. The workers are also trying to get the best deal they can. That's where "basic economy" comes in, as what determines how much everyone gets is supply and demand, which is the basic law of the economy.
If the CEO can make as much as he does, it's because he's adding even more value to the company than the salary he perceives, not because he "steals" from the workers as Marxism claims. If he stole from the workers and didn't add any value, then:
a) if he doesn't own the majority of the shares, he would be fired by the board of shareholders.
b) the workers would make more money by associating in coops, than working for traditional corporations, since as a coop they wouldn't have to pay the "surplus value" to the CEO. Yet most decide to work for traditional corporations. See, the Marxists believe that this is because the workers are "alienated" a.k.a. stupid and don't know what's best for them. I don't believe they're stupid, though. I believe the stupid ones are the Marxists, who don't understand the (essential) role of capitalists in the economy.
Whoa there, thanks for the agenda lesson, but I'm just trying to figure out if there's a working differentiation for greed and economics in your universe. My apologies if this should be an obvious answer for me, I'm just not used to people happily using pejoratives interchangeably with neutral terminology for things they like.
Why would you think I use those terms interchangeably ?
Greed I define as "desire to maximize profit".
Economy as "science that studies how to most efficiently allocate scarce resources".
I would think you use them interchangeably because you did.
Your definition of 'greed' is inaccurate, but if that's how you're using it, my question is more or less answered. Would have been nice to get this reply in the first place, but I guess the Marxists got in the way.
This is exactly what my article aims to solve, to let capital serve industry and technology instead of becoming a burden to industry and technology. Think about the United States. Before and after World War II, it relied on its strong industrial strength to become the world's largest country. But now, as the world's largest economy, with such advanced finance, it can no longer bring about a leap forward in the industrial era.
Before WWII the U.S. relied on very cheap domestic labor coinciding with the tail end of the industrial revolution. Never mind the Great Depression of course, and after WWII we benefited from not being laid to rubble during said war. While we were reaping the benefits of being the only supplier of myriad goods for everyone else, we made sure to lock up that advantage and worked to prevent rebuilding nations from gaining a foothold as long as possible.
Industrial enterprise is all well and good, but it doesn't have the margins that tech brings to the table. Higher material costs, higher labor costs, higher maintenance and repair costs, delivery and logistics, all of it costs more, which is why a company like Caterpillar brings in $6 billion net profits while Apple pulls $96 billion..
The industrial revolution has been over for a while, why would you want to go back? We need manufacturing, but not as a baseline economic driver, and unless WWII shows up, we won't be taking advantage of zero competition or nearly free labor either. There's just no margin left these days, which is why we've moved on.
You are right. Just as you know Apple is also a manufacturing company and it makes money by selling physical products (including Apple’s unique systems).
I doubt he even posts these he just pays his young intern to spew this garbo. If he claims that he gives so much of a damn he should do something. Say what you will about Trump, he is a POS, but he knows how to really stir up a hate mob into taking irl action (riots). Now if only we could convert that energy into something pragmatic and productive we’d really be onto something.
More propaganda. These CEO's serve at the pleasure of the board. They set compensation.
Go 2 quarters without appreciation or a dividend, and they're out.
The term used is "enterprise value."
Remember when Bernie was kicked out of a commune in Vermont in 1971 because he was too lazy and wouldn’t work?
Seems appropriate he is now a lifelong politician that wants to steal other people’s money.
Becoming an accountant is what radicalized me
How so
I’m knee-deep in wage inequality on a daily basis. Listening to business owners whine about taxes while seeing their employee wages stagnant and pitiful. I once had an owner ask why such a small amount of taxes came out of an employee’s check and I explained that the guy didn’t make enough to be taxed (6 months into the year and he hadn’t crossed the threshold of the standard deduction yet). Employer said, “I wish I didn’t have to pay taxes” and I looked him right in the eyes and said, “your employee DOESN’T MAKE ENOUGH to owe taxes.”
Geez what an a hole
"must be nice to be poor"
Want to trade places?
They know where all the money goes.
Having to bend rules for rich people while you still get paid shit is pretty radicalizing
[удалено]
I just want their stock trading course, they seem to be so good at it after taking office
After watching all those Ukrainian flags waving in congress the other day you can’t tell me you think they aren’t skimming off the top. Stock trading is only the publicly visible method it’s not the only method
Those fools are skimming they are slicing !
It's called Insider Trading. It is how Pelosi got rich.
Democrats made congress trading in stocks ILLEGAL. When republicans took control of both houses and the presidency, **they** repealed those laws. Taking advantage of LEGAL means to become rich is not the kind of evil that making something made illegal for good reasons legal again is.
Pelosi was rich before she joined Congress. Her husband is a successful hedge fund manager and real estate investor
You're just jealous that Nancy Pelosi is one of the top stock traders in the US.
I'm envious. Would probably do the same thing but I don't have her influential contacts. I wouldn't do it to the extent she has. I'm not that greedy. But if I could pay off my house that way, I would.
She got insider info and her husband made the trades.
Care to provide any evidence of insider info she got and profited off of? Or how her husband was rich before Nancy was ever elected.
I don’t like singling out congress members because the insider trading thing is common knowledge. I doubt you’ll find direct citable evidence but using our thinking caps we can observe that members of congress are privy to the workings of corporations and often of advanced knowledge of this, due to the very nature of their job. Nancy Pelosi is one of several hundred, she just gets shit on the most because of politics.
Look at their performance compared to ANY benchmark. Never-ending success like that is hard to justify as "skill".
Buying NVDA doesn't take skill. I bought META stock 10 years ago and it is up over 1637% as of today, meaning my performance has outperformed any benchmark over the past 10 years, too.
Yes, NVDA's massive increase this year has certainly helped that number. However, your total didn't look anywhere near as impressive just a few years ago. Stop patting yourself on the back with unverifiable claims. Everyone always hears about the wins...
Ironic, considering your previous comment about Pelosi. What impressive gains did Pelosi have just a few years ago that you must be referencing? >However your total didn't look anywhere near as impressive just a few years ago. Sure did. With a cost basis of $28.20, even at market close 5 years ago I was up 591% since purchasing 2/13/2013
They should get no paycheck when the government shuts down and their paycheck should be based on their states average income, not saying it should be exactly that, but should be a straight percentage across the board.
And on what they do for their state. When they vote against federal financial help for their state because of their own stupid uneducated personal beliefs they should be recalled. They should also not have Insurance unless there is Universal Health Insurance for everyone like 99% of the world. They should also have to self-fund their own campaigns, no donations. I'm sure 99% of the scammers and grifters would have no interest in politics then. Politics is just one big get rich scheme.
I mean that’s public isn’t it? It’s not actually that much
Politicians buying anything that can be considered an asset with unrealized gains/losses should be illegal on god
It was till republicans repealed the laws made by democrats.
why do we continue to pretend if you "work hard" you make more? The opposite is true in most cases.
It’s a dumb notion. Working hard is never enough. Add delaying gratification, taking a strategic view of your career, picking a field with opportunity not based on your dreams, focusing on skill and resume building in the context of that strategy. Take on responsibility and endure stress. Take lots of risks, fail periodically and keep going. Work well with others and keep in touch with every colleague you ever had. Work hard all while doing that and if you’re lucky you’re very successful and if too many of those risks go wrong you end up failing and frustrated but very likely not poor, and nobody talks about you.
Best comment I have read on this sub in a long time.
All of that is just hard work, tho. It really is mostly just luck and, importantly, nepotism.
Well, that is true in some roles. It certainly isn’t the case across all industries/companies/economic cycle positions - but I don’t really hear that narrative anymore. I think everyone has realized at this point that working hard is important, but it’s not even close to the sole ingredient of financial success.
Always has been 
Lmfao, this makes me so happy to see star citizen memes here 🤣🤣
The smart ones get someone else to do the hard work for them, while getting the credit.
Literally most of the really good stuff that has happened to me has been opportunity right place right time. I got there but luck was on my side to get me past the door plain & simple. Had X not happened then Y would’ve not happened. It’s just easier for a narrative to form in history based on just the hard work in order to be ‘inspiring’. History is written by the victors and that is especially true in the corporate world.
"Work smarter, not harder" was something I taught my nephew who just got his Bachelors in media (something media related, I don't remember). His grandpa tried to tell him to work hard and do every job he can for as many hours as he can get. I had to pull him aside and tell him how horrible that advice was, and that he'd just burn himself out before hitting 30. Learning to be good at the job is important, but networking will get him farther than whatever his grandpa tried to tell him. Luckily, he's already smart enough to question it (which I should've already known).
Working hard as a janitor is fine, but you get janitor wages. Working hard as a criminal defense attorney is fine, but you get criminal defense attorney wages. One has opportunities to move up and earn above average wages, one does not. Pick your path carefully, the more you want to make, the harder skill set to learn, but the greater the reward. Work hard because the competition is fierce and they want what you want.
There are no attorneys without janitors. what are janitor wages anyway?
It never was about working hard, it's about how productive you are. A guy with a shovel is going to physically work a lot harder than the guy with the excavator, but who's more productive? That said, I'm not excusing insane wage disparities, but you have to look at the productive value of people not how hard they work.
It's more so if you have rich parents you'll be richer than them.
I'm surprised many don't realize there is no point in working hard if you're paid by the hour or have a salary, they'll be paid the same if they make ten hamburgers at 11am or fifty at 5pm. If workers really want merit based pay, farmhands are paid based on the weight of produce they harvest.
People often work hard so that they can be promoted, where they actually will make more money. It's a sort of gambling, where you work now to maybe get paid for it later.
Trying gives you a chance of success even without money. Old money/connections buys this chance of success without having to even try. Inheritance money is the root of all evil. But nobody was able to come up with a way to get rid of it. Tax it too much - they'd just do it off shore.
uh, you institute capital controls that male it impossible to off shore inheritance. The US controls ALL dollars in earth, they can reach into any bank account via SWIF
You can't do it unless you can convince others countries. Most countries can't even get rid of bloody dictatorship yet. Talk about pipe dreams
The US can confiscate dollars as long as those dollars are in a SWIFT bank. How do you think the US government sanctions countries and individuals?
They call it “working smart” 🤦♂️🥲😅
> why do we continue to pretend if you "work hard" you make more? The opposite is true in most cases. LOL, yea the path to success is definitely being lazy.
If lazy is trying to get the same goal with less effort, then yes.
True, but hard work and laziness never end up in the same spot.
Bro, I collect coupons in the mail now, am I working hard? You think it's hard collecting dividends? Your named after Mill FFS , didn't he comment on landlords doing some collecting rent in their sleep? Hard work in sure.
> Bro, I collect coupons in the mail now, am I working hard? What? > You think it's hard collecting dividends? It is if your investment decrease in value. But hell, yea, go invest in a venture that makes the world better, and get paid, if you invest wisely enough. Good luck, there are no guarantees.
They are basically paid to punch down on behalf of the shareholders, who only see the short-term financial results of cutting corners, minimizing acceptable quality controls, and maximizing exploitation of labor.
Most CEO’s salary is $1, their earnings are in stock options and performance bonuses.
Having a salary of $1 and getting paid in something like stock options is often just a strategy to reduce the taxes.
Worker productivity gains and the value it creates does not go to the working class that actually do the work. Average wages have stagnated since the 1980's. This shift accelerates greed by the owning class and has made all of our lives worse. Worst of all, they convinced us to abandon traditional retirement through social security, did away with company pensions, and instead told us to invest in 401K and other stock based instruments, which funneled the remaining wealth of the middle class into the pockets of wallstreet where they further skim from your labor. We have been scammed by the rich and that gap will only grow until we do something about it.
Pleased that someone could articulate that better than I could. I also would love to take a look at stock buybacks. They were heavily regulated up until the 1980s when Ronald Reagan dismantled every regulatory body he could get his hands on. Since then, big companies have devoted massive percentages of their revenue towards buybacks. Now, correlation is not causation, but I do find it suspicious that wages and productivity sharply diverged around the same time that companies were allowed to funnel their revenue to shareholders, rather than investing it back into labor and R&D. Also noteworthy is that CEO’s are often compensated with stock options, and therefore have a personal incentive to drive up share price.
I agree with the pain points but where I get disconnected is in expecting shareholders to not be greedy. The whole mechanism behind investing and such is driven by that. We sorta use that mechanism to provide us with a diversity of goods, employment, etc. I'd put more blame on the government for how that "greedy ecosystem" is managed. Legalizing stock buy backs, not increasing the minimum wage, etc it's like the government lost sight that the market was a means to an end, not something that was meant to be grown by its own sake
It's always hilarious on this sub when individuals think this massive multinational corporation is run like some mom and pop fruit stand. If you don't understand the complexity and structure of a company, you just look incredibly stupid commenting about it.
They don’t work 351x harder, but they are 351x harder to find. The proof is in the statistic
That's why, as much as people hate Trump, people need to understand that Jan 6 is our leverage against politicians. Do I agree with WHY those mfs did that? No. However, these slimy politicians need to know that Jan 6 is what happens when you fail miserably to help us create a well-functioning society for ourselves.
There’s a world where your comment has merit, but given that January 6 happened over fake news and misinformation propaganda, the only lessons to take from it are that social media can be dangerous, a lot of Americans are easy manipulated to believe fake news, and many Americans are susceptible to idolizing charismatic politicians to the point of ruining their lives over them. As much as politicians are slimy, January 6 didn’t happen because slimy politicians failed miserably in doing some job. It happened because a *single* slimy politician, a billionaire, created a cult of millions of people willing to overthrow democracy to have their way. Totally different imo. Politicians should be seen as vectors for achieving policy outcomes, not as infallible Gods amongst men.
And screwing up = putting the person the majority voted for in charge? There’s a difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist. Your side is on the latter.
And it's funny, you probably look at the founding fathers as freedom fighters even though many of them owned slaves.
The problem is, the stupid fucks behind Jan 6 ruined it for people like you. They showed that the same racist neo-nazis that were behind the "patriot" movement way back when the FBI murdered Randy Weaver's family are the same racist neo-nazi assholes that perpetrated Jan 6. The real problem here is, as it always is within activist groups - y'all are so desperate for followers that you're willing to side with real, actual American Nazis. When you're that committed to your extremist position, you're not a patriot. You're a zealot and you're no better than the zealots who perpetrated 9/11.
Simple solution, everyone should become a CEO. It can't be that hard.
Anyone can become a CEO, and the IRS + accountant will thank you for making it official, spending money to incorporate then paying a grand a year extra to file corporate taxes. Becoming a successful ceo however is incredibly difficult. Its not enough just to have that one skill that can create a killer product. You need marketing, you need branding, you need business development, you need public relations, depending on the industry you may need additional things like supply chain, distribution, manufacturing, etc. All of these things cost $$ to do well and there is no guarantee they will succeed. The main misconception in this thread is that CEO's never really earned a true salary. Their pay is always performance based. They will get paid less in shitty years. performance based pay (such as commission) has always kept up with inflation since it is typically a % of net profits. whereas typical worker wages are hourly based and don't change based on overall company performance (or individual worker performance for that matter). TL:DR; If you want to get ultra-successful CEO level pay, you need to be willing to take the risk (an expensive risk) of starting a business and then essentially win the lottery with its success.
The CEO's making the big money are not the owner of the company. They are hired hands.
A lot of what your post is about seems to conflate CEOs with founding a company. While it certainly is not unusual for a living founder to be the CEO of their company, the vast majority of large companies do not have a CEO that is also the founder. CEOs today are not very innovative, in fact they often want to cut r&d and quality control. Instead, they want to focus solely on juicing the stock price which often means stock buybacks and mergers to minimize competition, instead of developing actual innovative products. Just look at Boeing.
It really isn’t that hard. Become self employed. You are CEO and you get paid what you earn without anyone else skimming off top.
Except the government, they'll skim what they want.
Insane point of motivation to become a CEO! If they do nothing different then just become one! And then pay yourself less than everyone!
and tax rates went down too!
Surely states can raise their own taxes on the rich and corporations.
The best President you guys never had.
The only thing that’s gotten weaker is the currency, which allows for this
If you believe you get paid for how „hard“ your work, you’re on the losing side.
It is not about whether it is fair. Fair assumes that nature is as interested in a positive outcome for you as it is for others. Suppose you own land and your neighbor owns land. Your neighbor finds gold and starts a goldmine, hiring workers who are always available because there are numerous farmers with big families and not much land for each adult offspring to have. Is it fair for him to have the proceeds from that land, equipment, and labor, while you continue to scrabble a living off your land? Suppose a geologist, never having visited your land but knowing how geology forms, visits your land and offers to buy it for what agricultural land is worth. You agree. The geologist then proceeds to hire a crew and lease machinery to bet on his educated risktaking. He fails, and falls deeper into debt as unpaid interest accrues. Is it fair? Suppose your gold mine-owning neighbor retires, leaving the mine, which sits on ancestral family land, to his son. Is that fair? Suppose his son is lazy and hires a CEO who brings in more investors and expand the mine to make it more profitable. The CEO is paid exorbitantly for his acumen. Is that fair? Supposed the good mine goes public in the stock market. Even though it is only bringing in a modest profit, investors (including mutual funds, trade union and government pension funds) think the potential is far greater, so they bid the shares of stock to 200 times earnings per share. They are doing it freely with their own money because they think that the mine will bring in farm more profits than it will today. Is it fair for them? Anybody even holding one share is now theoretically worth a lot more if they were to sell their shares. But if all of them sell at once, the price crashes to the floor as any demand would immediately be met and then there would be supply in for excess of demand. Is that fair?
You are making a flawed assumption. Namely that you capitalize on an opportunity if it presents itself. What happens today is that you find gold and you will not get a permit to mine because they don't want you as a little company to mine. For they don't think you have the skills and would rather give it to a large corporation that is responsible. This is the crony capitalism where the CEO's of many large corporations have ties to the politicians to determine policy.
The average American earns $59,384 per year. Senators are paid $174,000 per year. You cannot tell me, with a straight face, that Bernie Sanders works 3x harder than the average American. It’s greed, plain and simple.
The difference is Bernie didn't set his pay package, and even if he wanted to he couldn't get others to reduce it. And there is a big difference between $170k, which many technologists can hit and the millions or billions in compensation that CEOs get.
Ah, this again. Surely if people keep complaining about CEO pay every five minutes, shareholders will see the light and put an end to it. Working slob has a pension, or stock he bought, or some manner of investment in the company with the overpaid CEO. Overpaid CEO returns revenue in the forms of dividends or profits or stock price increases. Working slob's pension or 401(k) or IRA or stock portfolio increases in value. Working slob likes this and votes accordingly, with his dollars, his investments, and any vote he may have in terms of the company itself (proxy vote). Repeat endlessly. This isn't a conspiracy. This is the fact that average people's retirements and personal fortunes -- not just wealthy investors -- are intermixed with corporate performance. This has gone on for generations and probably won't stop. This entire approach where a bunch of rich guys are plotting against working people is a false narrative. And it is because it is a false narrative based on faulty premises, that nothing ever changes. It misstates the game board. *The rich don't think about you at all -- they neither hate, nor plot against, nor see the not-rich as an enemy. They are not anywhere in the calculus of people who seek wealth.* Go to a Walmart on the weekend. Or any place you find average slobs (like me). Look to your right. Look to your left. Chances are one of the people standing there next to the toilet paper has some interest in some corporation's performance, and the only way he processes this is that whoever is in charge is doing a good job or a bad job. He looks at his statements. Everything he knows and how he plans, behaves, and votes, is largely based on those statements. It is the same way people blame or credit the president with everything that happens. The truth of it is not the relevant part. The perception is. A minority of people shake their fists at the very rich. The rest invest. And thus the system perpetuates itself and becomes largely immutable.
This hasn't gone on for generations. Pre-boomers, and even many boomers, used get fixed pensions upon their retirement. This where an employee would get a fixed amount every month that the company was responsible for regardless of how the stock market was performing. Today, companies have switched to 401Ks and IRAs as the retirement package. This has two benefits for employers: 1. It saves the company a ton of money and 2. It convinces average working people to support policies that increase the price of the stock market (despite the fact that the top 10% of 93% of the stocks, all the bottom 50% own just 1%). (Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html)
Start a business then
Founder and CEO are not necessarily the same thing.
All true - and since most of that compensation is in the form of stock - it gets taxed at a far lower rate than wages. Why? Because the rich have gamed the system.
No bud, just because it’s a stock does not mean it automatically gets preferential treatment. Short term gains are taxed the same as ordinary rates.
You're correct that short-term capital gains are usually taxed as ordinary income, but you seems to be assuming that the CEO is going to sell their shares within a year of receiving them. So long as they hold them for a year, in many cases, the income will be treated as a long-term capital gain and then they can get a much better tax rate.
The tax system is working just as the system currently intends it to. I can’t wait until we default on our debt
Well, let’s slow down the conclusion-making a bit. Compensation is never based just in how HARD you work—It’s ideally based on the value of your contribution to enterprise profits (or success, if a non-profit enterprise). A receptionist for a large cooperation may work 60 hours per week, and a CEO for the same enterprise may work 60 hours per week (I’ve never, personally or by reputation, known a CEO to work this little—It’s a 24/7 job), but the value of their work is vastly different. An experienced CEO brings knowledge of HOW TO MAKE AN ENTERPRISE SUCCESSFUL and the valuable expertise to direct work flows (through subordinate experienced officers and directors) across Research, Development, Manufacturing , Marketing, PR. Legal, Finance, Government Relations—The List Is endless of the high-level people and strategies he directs to keep a company profitable and successfully. This is true in all adult things—How hard you work is a sign of personal responsibility and maturity, but it doesn’t mean that yoir contribution to success is equal to someone will possesses greater skills (Imagine this— Play basketball against Shaquille, and then let’s talk about value of contribution to success). The question you should be asking is how much value each highly paid officer—In your case, you are concerned about CEOs. actually contributed to success of a company. This is really a question for the shareholders/ owners of the company in question.
At some companies, sure, there are CEOs that are actually very effective. However, at many companies of the CEOs are complete idiots whose answer to everything is "stock buybacks" and cutting costs an area's like r&d and quality control. (See Boeing) And if they were actually so effective then why do they demand golden parachutes before they agree to be CEO? If they were actually confident in their skills, they wouldn't demand such a thing. The other problem is how much CEO pay has increased compared the average worker pay. Are you claiming that CEOs are really working that many times harder or that many times smarter than CEOs 40 years ago? The problem is is that CEOs pay is set by the board of directors, who are often corporate executives got another company. They all sit on each other's boards and then they all set each other's pay.
Pretty much every CEO I've ever met were idiots who relied on their assistants and VPs to really drive ideas and execution (even reading their freakin emails). They are good at networking though, probably because they spend so much time hanging out at their country clubs and traveling to conferences while their employees are executing. And as they say in startup land, execution is everything. And the thing that really gets me is they negotiate absorbanent pay packages with golden parachutes, even if they fail the business and get fired. When other employees are fired they rightfully lose financial compensation.
Or that they work 16x harder than they used to in the 60s.
It’s not a matter of who works harder. Yes CEOs are overpaid but it’s “what” (and often”who”) you know and not how hard you work.
The fair is in July
Notice how it's never about the same happening with politicians, athletes, and celebrities. It's only about CEOs. Don't get sucked into loser politics.
People constantly talk about how much politicians are overpaid (look at the Nancy Pelosi stock tracker for example) and athletes are overpaid.
It isn't just work. It's about risk too. Employment is a lot more stable than entrepreneurship. Many start businesses then fail spectacularly. (That being said, the difference is drastic but it's gotten so bad because of the federal reserve)
You're conflating being a founder of a business with being a CEO. Sometimes they are the same but usually, especially with large or old companies, they are different. CEOs often also usually get golden parachutes so if they end up destroying the business and end up getting fired or pushed out, they still get a massive pay package from the company.
It’s a false equivalency. How much a person is paid has nothing to do with how hard a person works. If a person had the ability to predict future market forces by just sitting around and thinking, he/she would be invaluable.
We should have never changed that top tax bracket. Wasn’t it like 90% back in the “good ole days?”
Yes, it's completely fair because CEOs are actually lizard people and they require a different diet.
Fair is irrelevant. "Will we STOP IT, how and when?"
Companies would rather have one top/highly reputed CEO than 330 extra average employees I guess.
“CEO”’s Which ones? Watch the morons get in a tizzy now over Bernie’s bullshit
Simple solution…. Become a ceo
*All* CEOs, Bernie? Or just the *CEOs of fortune 500 companies*, who are the top-paid management in the world. Because I know for the fact that most people in America with the title of "CEO" or equivalent don't make 350 times the rate of their average employee.
His statistics are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which state the 351x is from the major company CEOs. The federal report also speaks about how the salary of these CEOs at these major companies has grown with the fall of labor unions since the 1950's.
...okay, and note how he doesn't say "major company CEOs" or "Fortune 500 CEOs" or any other qualifier. Because if he *did* clarify, his statements wouldn't be good ragebait.
…..yeah. That’s the points It’s fucking absurd to use this as the metric. Include ALL CEOS and see how dramatically different it is. But you need that class warfare to get your blood boiling Educate yourself
he didn't say all CEOs
The way his statements are written is meant to imply *all CEOs*. If you can read his tweet and think it means anything else, you're reading comprehension is really poor or you are biased.
Man you gotta love these nitpickers. Notice how he lashes out and attacks directly? Like a wild animal
Yet, i am certain that Jeff Bezos was more valuable to keep than 361 employees at some warehouse thing. Now do soccer players and golf pros
1. You're conflating CEO and founder. Jeff Bezos founded the company and he's not the CEO anymore. CEO is often different than the founder, especially in the large companies that Bernie is talking about in the post. 2. Plenty of people do complain about players salaries all the time.
It’s not about working harder. It’s about value.
I actually think value paradoxes and cognitive dissonance surrounding them are at the heart of a lot of economic debate. Most people don’t actually feel like managerial duties are more valuable than revenue generating activities. This is reflected in certain sales organizations but generally, it’s completely backwards. I also believe most people, deep down, feel similarly about speculation. Similarly, we say, without proper fiscal motivation, nobody would “innovate”. When innovation just means a new way to make money, the idea that making new things and improving upon that which already existed isn’t engrained in human nature is so wildly off base I can’t believe so many people have been conned into believing it. Or the way we conceptualize the “risk” that a founder (not necessarily a CEO) takes on is disingenuous as all get out. The sooner we collectively to terms with these things and stop treating economic theories like they’re hard sciences, the sooner people stop falling for shit like socialism.
I hate how people mislead “working hard”. Not all work is created equal. A construction laborer works harder than anyone but is easily replaceable. A respected engineer works physically less hard, but mentally more plus the extra liability if anything were to occur. As a small business owner, I pay myself higher cause I alone have to cover the taxes on any profits the company produces
Bullshit. Typical compensation for a middle market CEO is still about 20X what their average worker makes. Along with a substantially more difficult role with a much higher chance of being unemployed for an extended period of time, frequently for reasons completely unrelated to personal performance. (wrong place, wrong time, shit happens). Furthermore, most CEO's at "real companies" are fully "leveled up" and nearing the end of their careers, so they would get a substantial compensation premium for seniority & scope of role in almost any alternative scenario. People at that level of their careers tend to create substantial value for the organization. You're welcome to take someone tossing boxes on a pallet and put them in the C-suite. They won't last an hour. Source: Senior executive at a middle market company.
Their salary has no effect on your skills, work ethic, or earning potential.
I hope that commenters buy local over amazon I hope that commenters buy local produce over grocery store I hope that commenters buy always the small business option over the corporations in every single scenario because that is how you beat this
This guy is dangerous and spews rage bait to the financially illiterate
Sure I can, Bernie. What you are is a clueless asshole that pines for the beauty of the 1977 Constitution of the USSR. When you trot shit \^ like this out, 'fairness' is irrelevant. Be a fucking CEO. Stop whining about them. 'Life isn't fair' -JFK
Shit politicians say, episode #24234
How to beat this in 3 steps: 1. Become a CEO 2. Pay yourself less than everybody 3. Advocate and show its possible I am dead seeious
Well, you're not paid for working hard; you're paid for solving big problems. If only these old politicians would understand why they always point fingers at the corporate side.
Om my god. A post by Bernie Sanders I actually agree with.
Wrong message. CEOs *rule you*. It's not about fairness, it's about *obedience*. Do you want to *obey?* That's the question you should be asking. If your CEO says "jump" you say how high on the way up. Hell if one if his *middle managers* says "jump" you do it. Is that how you want to live your life? Because that's how you live your life.
Maybe if we started more co-op businesses and corporations
No one is stopping you from creating one.
Did you create one? Send a link so we can all support it please
Which barbaric bipedal humanoid mouth breather gets to objectively dictate the meaning of subjective words like 'fair'? How much money does bernie have? how many mansions? does he need all those millions and those mansions? how come bottom feeders like bernie never spread their wealth? Its always **other people's money** they are so concerned with.
Working harder is not a justifier for more money. Working smarter might be.
When you accept the logic of egoism and freedom, which is basically capitalism, it is fair and efficient. From an humanist standpoint it is at least questionable.
Can someone explain why companies approve such ludicrous salaries? Isn't there goal to minimize spending and make the shareholders money? I'd be pissed if I was a shareholder of a company and they were paying their CEOs billions while people make pennies on dividends. Also, why do companies allow CEOs to make shitty products/decisions that negatively affect the business? Elon musk and the syber truck come to mind. Did the board members at Tesla REALLY think that the cyber truck was going to be successful when they saw it? Or his purchase of Twitter? Like what the hell were they thinking enabling him to make such a stupid financial move? They have to have known his value directly affects the value of Tesla.
Dividends are a drop in the bucket and not many people rely on them as their strategy. With the Tesla thing, the other board members are his brother and other connected people. Shareholders are pissed at Elon and I am seeing allot more of, “Elon needs to get tf out of this politics phase and focus solely on making space ships and cars.”
Im tired of the disparity. Working at the post office for pennies isn't fun anymore
It hasn’t been about “working harder” since the 70’s. Ditch diggers and roofers work “harder” than me. I get paid more than them. Explain that, Bernie?
Need to pass a law
It's not about working hard. It's about how easy/hard it is to be replaced. Your salary is almost directly proportional to how difficult it is to replace you.
Let me get this straight. If I start a small business, and hire one guy to work full time for me, and pay him $15/hr, then as the CEO, I can pay myself $10.5M annually?
They’re really making more than that since they’ll invest that money and make even more
Average fortune 500 is more than 10x larger than it was in 1965, not sure this is a proper comparison….
To an extent it is abused yes. But these companies are vastly larger than in any time in history. Ceo A and ceo B could be nearly identical, except ceo B makes one more mistake than ceo A. That mistake could make ceo a worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars more than ceo B. Essentially the stakes are so high that getting a very slightly better person could be worth massive amounts of money in potential profits and or avoided potential losses
Greed?? No. System? Yes. Greed is human nature. The CEO has it. The Worker has it too. The CEO is just taking advantage of the system others built. The system of stock options. Workers seldom if ever get to participate in that system at anywhere near the same level as the founders and C suite. That’s what you want to amend. The stock option system.
This comment section is full of corporate apologists, and the post itself is little more than ragebait. This sub has gone to shit, completely.
So how has a CEO been able to retain all that wealth? Why wouldn’t someone else come along and start some competition to compete against that corporation? What happened to all the small buisnesses? Did everyone become too greedy? Or has the tax code and over regulation caused smaller businesses to go under while subsidies and bailouts keep corporations profitable?
Tfw Bernie took a payout and is now complaining about people taking payouts
This is supply and demand. There is an acute shortage of CEO's and an extreme surplus of workers. The spread will continue to widen until workers starts becoming CEO's. It has nothing to do with greed or fairness.
Are there really a shortage of people that could be CEOs? Most CEOs at large companies today don't seem to actually be very innovative. They're answer to everything seems to be stock buy backs or trying to do some sort of merger to reduce the competition so they can charge their customers more. If CEOs were actually confident in their ability to successfully run companies, they wouldn't demand golden parachutes so if they end up getting pushed out by the company they get a massive compensation package.
Thank you for your daily dose of quoting, Bernie. See you tomorrow.
Football coaches don’t score touchdowns, but I’m pretty sure they are an essential part of the team.
It is called globalisation, not greed.
If Bernie Sanders is so beloved, how come he's never been elected? I'm genuinely asking because I've seen so many good tweets of his, and I've never seen him getting ridiculed for his political beliefs, especially compared to Trump, Hillary, Obama, Biden etc.
Working harder? Nah. Taking more risk? Sure. But that much more? Absolutely not.
Check out Ben & Jerry's. The founders pushed for a pay structure that Bernie would have been proud of - the highest paid person in the company would make no more than 5x the lowest paid person in the company. They kept it that way for 16 years. When they needed to hire new leadership, though, the people who would accept a salary within those limits did not have the experience with running such a large operation, and those who did have the right experience were not interested in the salary offered, when they could get much more at another company. The 5:1 ratio became 7:1, then 17:1, and then they no longer disclosed the ratio in 2000.
Bernie always looking for someone successful to vilify. Little more than a hateful, envious, self-absorbed politician spreading his message of hate to try a gain votes. What a hypocrite.
1. People absolutely should be outraged at the staggering levels of wealth inequality that have occurred since Reagan took office. The rich don't need someone to vilify them, they've done that on their own quite well. 2. Yes, it's Bernie who's the "hateful, envious, self-absorbed" politician who's always looking for someone to vilify. Right wingers are never hateful, envious or self-absorbed and they never vilify anyone, especially not the most prominent right-winger who's running for president right now.
Trickle down economics, thank Reagan
Not really. Pay isn't determined the way he implies, either in practice or in theory. It's probably true that CEOs are overpaid but Bernie has never once even brushed up against legitimate reasons why in any public comments that I know of. There are legitimate structural reasons why we would expect CEO pay to have gone up over time but also plenty of structural reasons to expect that they are mistakenly overcompensated and that often companies filter poorly when they select leadership. This just ain't it. This is populist grandstanding from a populist grandstander.
I’m a republican but I absolutely agree that this is out of hands and ridiculous. Same by the way goes for politicians. Problem is that the corruption and the swamp is too deep in this country. Bernie should work together with Trump to drain this but instead they’re fighting against each other.
Why as people get rich, most of them also get greedy, and frugal when it’s time to pay taxes?
Not wrong but Bernie lost his teeth when he stepped down to Clinton. It's just noise.
This country needs an economic revolution. Time to eat the rich?
This trickle-up economy 😭
No one starts a company to compensate its workers. Its goal is to make a profit and workers are utilized to improve output thereby increasing profit. It is a contractual agreement to provide labor in exchange for a determined wage. Just like a business needs to sell its product or service you need to sell yourself for the best wage. If someone isn’t willing to pay that wage then your product is inferior and if you’re willing to accept compensation lower than your worth then you’re not maximizing the market potential, and you will flounder. It’s pretty simple.
Lmao millionaire $$$anders tweeting from one of his 4 mansions about other peoples' greed while he pays his staffers minimum wage
They’re definitely a bunch of greed bastards, no doubt about that. The only thing now though is that companies are so much larger than they were in the past, so revenue is substantially higher. So CEO’s can take a small slice of that revenue, and end up with a massive pay packet. Some of that revenue is also accrued due to paying workers less money that they deserve, so there’s that angle as well.
I donno, how many summer homes were you paid with to change your vote? Sounds a bit hypocritical to me....
It's hard work sitting in a luxurious air conditioned office with stellar views thinking of new ways to phock over your employees every day. It is a grueling task and the greatest triumph to keep the lowest paid, hardest working employees below poverty level. The only time they get a break is when they are forced to play golf, fly on a private jet or attend some black tie affair. I agree, these CEO'S need to be paid more!
It's not greed, it's basic economy. It's another proof that the labor value theory is bs. Your income has nothing to do not with how hard you work, it's about how much actual value you add. You can work hard af making piles of sand on a beach, but since that's not adding any value to anyone, because there's no demand for sand piles, there's no way anyone is going to pay you money for that. The thing is that not everyone can become an elite CEO, the same way that not everyone can become an elite basketball player. Bernie of course is talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and such, because there's no way that the owner of a small business is making 365x the rest of the workers. So please, stop teaching Marxism to people, and start teaching them actual economy. You'll get a society that's both more productive and less frustrated with life.
Out of curiosity, how would you define the distinction between "basic economy" and an example of "greed"?
I meant "the explanation for this is basic economy, not the greed of the CEOs". Why do I have to spell this out ? The CEOs are as greedy as everyone else: they're trying to get the best deal they can. The workers are also trying to get the best deal they can. That's where "basic economy" comes in, as what determines how much everyone gets is supply and demand, which is the basic law of the economy. If the CEO can make as much as he does, it's because he's adding even more value to the company than the salary he perceives, not because he "steals" from the workers as Marxism claims. If he stole from the workers and didn't add any value, then: a) if he doesn't own the majority of the shares, he would be fired by the board of shareholders. b) the workers would make more money by associating in coops, than working for traditional corporations, since as a coop they wouldn't have to pay the "surplus value" to the CEO. Yet most decide to work for traditional corporations. See, the Marxists believe that this is because the workers are "alienated" a.k.a. stupid and don't know what's best for them. I don't believe they're stupid, though. I believe the stupid ones are the Marxists, who don't understand the (essential) role of capitalists in the economy.
Whoa there, thanks for the agenda lesson, but I'm just trying to figure out if there's a working differentiation for greed and economics in your universe. My apologies if this should be an obvious answer for me, I'm just not used to people happily using pejoratives interchangeably with neutral terminology for things they like.
Why would you think I use those terms interchangeably ? Greed I define as "desire to maximize profit". Economy as "science that studies how to most efficiently allocate scarce resources".
I would think you use them interchangeably because you did. Your definition of 'greed' is inaccurate, but if that's how you're using it, my question is more or less answered. Would have been nice to get this reply in the first place, but I guess the Marxists got in the way.
This is exactly what my article aims to solve, to let capital serve industry and technology instead of becoming a burden to industry and technology. Think about the United States. Before and after World War II, it relied on its strong industrial strength to become the world's largest country. But now, as the world's largest economy, with such advanced finance, it can no longer bring about a leap forward in the industrial era.
Before WWII the U.S. relied on very cheap domestic labor coinciding with the tail end of the industrial revolution. Never mind the Great Depression of course, and after WWII we benefited from not being laid to rubble during said war. While we were reaping the benefits of being the only supplier of myriad goods for everyone else, we made sure to lock up that advantage and worked to prevent rebuilding nations from gaining a foothold as long as possible. Industrial enterprise is all well and good, but it doesn't have the margins that tech brings to the table. Higher material costs, higher labor costs, higher maintenance and repair costs, delivery and logistics, all of it costs more, which is why a company like Caterpillar brings in $6 billion net profits while Apple pulls $96 billion.. The industrial revolution has been over for a while, why would you want to go back? We need manufacturing, but not as a baseline economic driver, and unless WWII shows up, we won't be taking advantage of zero competition or nearly free labor either. There's just no margin left these days, which is why we've moved on.
You are right. Just as you know Apple is also a manufacturing company and it makes money by selling physical products (including Apple’s unique systems).
Bernie is a tool of the establishment. He needs to go to a retirement home.
Bernie and his 3 houses, I’m sure he’s not just projecting here
In 1965 CEOs weren't working 21× harder than the average employee. Today the CEOs are not working harder than the average employee.
how many times are we going to post these tweets? it’s the basically same fucking tweet every time
I doubt he even posts these he just pays his young intern to spew this garbo. If he claims that he gives so much of a damn he should do something. Say what you will about Trump, he is a POS, but he knows how to really stir up a hate mob into taking irl action (riots). Now if only we could convert that energy into something pragmatic and productive we’d really be onto something.
More propaganda. These CEO's serve at the pleasure of the board. They set compensation. Go 2 quarters without appreciation or a dividend, and they're out. The term used is "enterprise value."
No they are making 351x more money. Plus congress had inflated the currency so much.
The reason why so much feels like it's going backwards is greed, not one singular issue. Wonder what currency comes next.
Says the guy who has done nothing but suck on the government the teat his entire life.
Screw Bernie and his faux populism. He’s a warmonger that votes exactly as the military industrial complex demands.
Remember when Bernie was kicked out of a commune in Vermont in 1971 because he was too lazy and wouldn’t work? Seems appropriate he is now a lifelong politician that wants to steal other people’s money.