this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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“After giving our executive team record bonuses, we can’t afford to pay you a living wage.”
Potato, potahto.
The budget doesn't prioritize you.
Well, it does… Just not in the way you think. It prioritizes how much labor they can exploit from you before you quit. Or form a union.
The doesn’t account for, of course, all of the money they spend on lawyers to weasel their way around the law. Actually paying their employees a living wage would cost not only much less than that, but it would provide them greater profits as well.
They’re not doing it because it really makes business sense. That’s just an excuse. They’re doing it to be fascist and cruel. Because that’s what fascists are: cruel.
I mean yeah of course. That's exactly how it works. And here in the South good luck with having a good union.
Thankfully, a totally normal part of my trade is self-employment.
Oh FFS, don't be silly. They're fucking us exactly because it does make sense on paper. They don't have these cruel, fascist notions. They simply don't care as long as Excel tells them they're coming out ahead.
That's a very homo economicus view that's fallen out of favor since the 1990s. Firms make deeply irrational and damaging decisions based on the irrational notions of the decision-makers. As long as those irrational notions are not sufficiently damaging to sink the business in competition with other businesses, they can persist indefinitely.
Any reputable workplace study shows, inconclusively, that happy employees are the most productive employees. Collectively, that makes a huge difference in the companies bottom line. If the company spends more money, just so they can squeeze every last iota of work out of an employee and pay them as absolutely little as possible without them quitting, that actually cost more money in the long run than just paying their employees wage.
But, philosophically, the executives are psychopathic, fascist, assholes, so they would rather lose some money as long as they continue being cruel, rather than pay anyone a living wage and make more money.
That is a cruel fascist notion, they literally function on dehumanizing people
Meh. Lemmy hates me when I point this out, but executive compensation is a drop in the bucket vs. gross or even profit. It's just not a big deal, but they make a fine target to shoot at. Easy to see and focus on.
Did the math on American Airlines a couple of years ago. If their CEO took a $0 salary, every single employee could get a $.19/hr. raise. (It was worse than that, but I forget, don't want to exaggerate. Think it worked out to <$250/yr. bonus, if that. Chicken change.)
They're fucking us by death of a thousand cuts, but CEO pay isn't it.
If you have to point to one single problem it's shareholders, Dodge vs Ford (1916) established shareholder supremacy, so the point of any company isn't to produce widgets or employ people or pay the CEO, it's to produce value for the shareholders, end of story. All things serve this master purpose.
I worked at a privately held $1b manufacturing company recently, they were doing record profits, cut employee bonuses based on some bullshit metric we "failed to hit," all the money was just pouring into the owning family's pockets. Their private helicopter trips were the purpose of our labor. Their shopping excursions to Europe. Sadly, this is a highly politically active family in conservative politics, funding the Heritage foundation over decades.
Are you including stock stuff in this calculation?
I had a recruiter reach out to me for a job that was focused on facilitating people using stock as collateral to get personal loans. I think that's one of the mechanisms rich people use to leverage their non-cash wealth without paying taxes. I told him that sounded like it should be illegal, and that was the end of that.
As others pointed out, salary is only one part of executive packages.
Their CEO is not the only exorbitantly paid executive.
Even if that was so, cumulative effects across society from this standardized system of disproportionate remuneration can be massive. Every major firm, or nearly every major firm, pays into this system - every firm that goes under on a narrow margin is killed in part because the grain supplier must charge an extra 3% (using a random-if-high number for demonstration) over the rest of their costs and profits calculations for the exorbitant wage of their execs - that price is factored into the flour supplier's cost - who also then must charge an extra 3% on top of that for their execs- that price is factored into the bread supplier's cost - likewise, who must charge an extra 3% for THEIR execs - and that price is factored into the local grocery store, who, again, must both factor the raised costs caused by paying all the previous companies' execs, and pay their own execs the remuneration they are accustomed to. The end result is a massive burden on the consumer that many do not fully understand is inherent to the system.
Even if we exclude cumulative effects, a 20 cent raise is 400$ per year per person.
It’s the problem of being infested with parasites. Each individual parasite can complain that it barely takes any blood to keep them fat and bloated, but once all of the parasites are added up, you’re left with a sickly society.
Meh. Giving bonuses, dividends, and then posting profits, whilst paying a dogshit wage is incredibly tone deaf. Do you know who generated that wage?
Shareholders evidently