Political Memes

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.

1. As others pointed out, salary is only one part of executive packages.

2. Their CEO is not the only exorbitantly paid executive.

3. 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.

4. Even if we exclude cumulative effects, a 20 cent raise is 400$ per year per person.

Meh. Giving bonuses, dividends, and then posting profits, whilst paying a dogshit wage is incredibly tone deaf. Do you know who generated that wage?