this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by jeffw to c/news
 

The historic UAW strike puts an exclamation point on more than a decade of efforts by Washington lawmakers to narrow the pay gap between top executives and workers.

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[–] [email protected] 134 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And between 1978 and 2021, executive compensation at large American companies increased by more than 1,400 percent, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said.

This is really the problem. No one can convince me that being a CEO is 1400% more difficult now.

[–] wavebeam 23 points 1 year ago

Had the shower-thought today: there are not enough reports of CEO suicides. Like, I assume the thing they’ll tell you about their job is that it’s hard to handle the stress of holding so many people’s livelihoods in your hands. But I don’t ever see CEOs getting fired for too many layoffs, and when they do get fired it kinda doesn’t matter because they’re so rich it doesn’t matter much. If it were true that it’s a difficult thing to handle, in any way that at all relates to the working class struggle, you think it’d have a high suicide rate. But it doesn’t…

[–] SCB -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Jobs aren't paid based on how difficult or stressful they are

[–] FinalRemix 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well they're certainly not based on what value they bring, either, except maybe to themselves and the ever-useless shareholders.

[–] SCB 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If the people paying did not believe they were getting their money's worth, they would stop paying that much. The problem is, the ceiling is set by whoever can realistically pay the most.

My entire point is that CEOs are obviously overvalued, due to the ability of extremely large firms to pay exorbitant salaries via stock. This creates a negative ripple downstream that hurts a lot of smaller businesses.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the people paying did not believe they were getting their money’s worth, they would stop paying that much.

No they wouldn't. They're the same people as get paid that much elsewhere. They have no incentive to lower the bar.

[–] SCB 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're mixing up who is offering what

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, I'm not. Who do you imagine sets CEO pay?

[–] SCB 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Competing firms and to a lesser extent the CEOs themselves, all have input. It's a market.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's nothing like a market. Who do you imagine the individuals are who set the CEOs pay, and how do you think their pay is decided?

[–] SCB 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Generally, but not always, the board will set a price range for CEOS. In smaller firms, the C-suite or President will, in some rarer cases the owner will have sole vote.

You seem to think CEOs dictate their own wages, which makes no sense. That's not how getting a job works.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Exactly

Furthermore, the boards themselves typically include fellow C-Suite executives, leading to elite back-scratching as well as a never-ending upward spiral of executive compensation as companies compare their CEO salaries to others.

They're not incentivised to get the best value for money. They're setting the benchmarks by which their own pay is decided.

[–] TruTollTroll 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that why doctor are so under paid/s they aren't based on skill or education?

[–] SCB 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Doctors are highly paid because they are scarce. You'll note that surgeons in the UK, as an example, make about a third or less of what a US surgeon makes.

Our residency system, coincidentally, induces artificial scarcity of doctors

[–] deweydecibel 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"I don’t want to hear whining from these companies that they can’t afford to pay workers what they’re worth,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said on the Senate floor Thursday.

Senator Brown is the last thing I have to be proud of as an Ohioan. And he's retiring, almost certainly to be replaced by a Republican.

[–] jeffw 5 points 1 year ago

Ngl, I read that he was the thing you were “least” (not “last”) proud of and I was gonna say, there’s a lot worse from Ohio lol

[–] SCB 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

“The argument that firms would make is that the job of a CEO has gotten exponentially more difficult in terms of responsibilities, litigation risks and outside pressure,” Dambra added. “Stock-based compensation allows for an alignment of interests between shareholders and managers. These are market (i.e. competitive) prices, and CEOs that are underpaid relative to their peers would leave.”

This is actual relevant information from this article, and a spotlight shone on why CEO pay actually needs a cap.

The pay difference between a CEO and manufacturing laborer is irrelevant to any discussion about CEO pay. The externalities of poaching CEOs from underfunded competitors can and should be seen as anti-competitive practice.

Taking the CEOs entire paycheck and distributing it to workers gets the workers pennies, each. Worker pay and CEO pay are not linked at all.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Taking the CEOs entire paycheck and distributing it to workers gets the workers pennies, each. Worker pay and CEO pay are not linked at all.

This is mathematically true (ish) but it misses the point. Super-rich people don't spend their money, they use it to outbid other rich people for control of existing assets, control media platforms, and schmooze politicians. So your rent and bills go up while your pay goes down.

You need much more than simple arithmetic to describe this problem.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

By that logic, every front line worker should've received a 1400% increase during COVID.

[–] SCB -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You seem to think this money is given as a gift, or as some sort of recognition, and instead it is how they purchase talent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Then those talented people will have to come up with a new way of doing things. Humans as a species are sensitive to relative wealth differences. It's hardwired. Riding tide lifting all boats kind of thing

[–] SCB 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Rising tide lifting all boats kind of thing

That's not what this means.

The argument "you have to make less money because I want you to" is not a very strong one.

[–] Travalanche 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's kind of a false equivalency though. Most laborers are not given any stock-based compensation, and those that are rarely given enough for it to make much of a difference in lives, if they're even employed there long enough to accrue much. If motivation and alignment of interests between shareholders and employees is actually their argument, shouldn't all employees be given similar stock-based compensation then? I don't believe that businesses should be based on shareholder value at all (let alone the fact that the stock and debt markets seem to run our entire economy now), but based on actual, delivered value of services or products to customers. The argument that shareholder value is more important than employee pay and benefits (or human/environmental/legal rights, as it actually plays out) just creates more ways for people to be exploited and held down.

[–] SCB -4 points 1 year ago

What do you see as a false equivalency? My point is the actual harm skyrocketing CEO pay does is result in a more difficult time for companies that get their C-suite poached away.

I'm not equating anything. Worker pay is independent from CEO pay in that capping CEO pay has no expected impact on employee wages. Companies are already paying the market rate - they're unlikely to just raise wages forever because of this.

We can have our own opinions on the ethics of that, but if we're not running companies, that doesn't matter. If you wanna fight for fair wages, you've got to live in reality.

[–] fsr1967 3 points 1 year ago

“Stock-based compensation allows for an alignment of interests between shareholders and managers.

And ignores the other stakeholders in the equation, such as employees, customers, and community. People forget that there are two (that I, at least, know of) kinds of Capitalism. We have gone the route of Shareholder Capitalism, and look where we've ended up. But Stakeholder Capitalism, which considers all stakeholders to be important, is a real thing and is, perhaps, a better model for society in general.

Sadly, that's not what they're teaching now, and it's not how the CEOs, Boards, and markets think.

[–] MossBear 1 points 1 year ago

10:1 wage ratio should be the law. Less if possible.