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Washington Post Special Report: Breakaway Wealth

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by YankeeFan, Jun 19, 2011.

  1. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    I'm positive they could fill that CEO position for much less too, but I doubt it's ever going to hit the market as an open job.
     
  2. sportsguydave

    sportsguydave Active Member

    So by that logic, when a company sheds jobs and shrinks in size ... as many companies have been doing here for years ... then the CEO's pay should shrink by a corresponding amount. Since he or she is running a much smaller company, with much smaller profits, they should get paid less.

    That sound fair?
     
  3. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Wealth can sure in the hell be immoral. It can be quite moral, too. And amoral, for that matter. Wealth of itself is nothing, meaning-wise, without intent and effect.
     
  4. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    The CEO isn't doing 10 times the work, either. There are only 168 hours in a week.

    And if there's more profits, it stands to reason that the company can afford to pay more. They choose not to.

    True, it's negotiated with the union and the company can go get other people. But how well would the company operate then if they only paid $12 an hour with constant turnover? In this case, the company's good wages retain employees, who have a stake in seeing the company grow.

    Problem is, those wages should be better. Part of that is on the union, which should be hammering the company on this in the next contract negotiation. But the company should also be rewarding the people who are making it possible for them to grow 10 times.

    You hear of companies cutting wages when profits are down. Well, if profits are up, wages should be up, too. Only in this case, a worker who has been at the company for 40 years is actually worse off now than when they started.
     
  5. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Of course you could fill it at a lower salary, but could you fill it with someone who could grow the company like the current CEO for a lessor salary?

    Top CEOs are in demand.

    And, while everyone has their own skills -- we've all seen shows like Undercover Boss, where the boss struggles in the lower paying jobs within their company -- I'm betting that I could hire and train someone to, "process, pasteurize and package the milk," pay them less than $23.00, and not show much of a difference in the work.
     
  6. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    "10 times the profit, thus 10 times the work" is a howler. It could be market and consumer trends that have nothing to do with the abilities of the CEO. It could be HR hiring a great crop of underling that are not his hiring bailiwick. It could be a shit-ton of things that have nothing to do with the CEO's skills. See "causation vs. correlation."
     
  7. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Yes -- especially if profits are shrinking.

    Now, they'll pay games and say they still "outperformed" their goals. That's often a crock of shit.

    Some CEOs have masterfully guided companies through bankruptcy and on to success. They do deserve credit and pay for saving jobs and putting the company on solid footing.

    But CEOs who drive their companies into the ground should not flourish.
     
  8. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    What about CEOs who farm out American jobs as part of that tenfold increase? Oh never mind, I know that's fine by you.
     
  9. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    I never said "10 times the size of the company = 10 times the work."

    But managing a bigger company requires skills that few people have. It's a big job and, if the company is run well, and the person has been responsible for some/all of that growth, his/her pay should reflect that.

    If you're processing milk at a dairy factory, your actual job probably hasn't changed much with the growth. Maybe there's more automation, but you don't necessarily have more responsibility.
     
  10. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    What particular value did Citigroup's CEO bring? Yahoo's? AIG's? GM's? None. In fact it can be argued that they were quite a bit worse than thousands upon thousands of other people who could have been in those jobs. But it is a closed society where they sit on each other's boards and decide how badly they are going to get to pillage each other's shareholders, and they all have option-rich and fail-safe deals that in the worst-case scenario -- firing -- leave them with eight-figure severance payments. There is no recourse, and they know there will be no recourse as long as they continue to sit on each other's boards.

    This is the bank bailouts and the bonuses and the "we need to retain these people" crap all over again. Retain them for what? Based on the splendiferous job they did previously?

    Whether previous eras' executives would have engaged in similar fleecing of the public is a matter of opinion. I happen to believe it's part of a larger issue of a split America that started with the myth of trickle-down economics. There is a distinct lack of morals among businesses and business school graduates today, and it hasn't always been that way.
     
  11. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Vanderbilt and Rockefeller don't see a problem with this...
     
  12. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    I'm not "pro moving jobs overseas." I'd much prefer to see it not happen.

    But, in a global economy, many of those jobs wouldn't be competitive here any more. I'd prefer to see the company still remain based here and grow than go out of business.

    Nike and Apple don't make sneakers or computers here, but they still employ a lot of people here. And the people they do employ here make good salaries.

    Would it be better if we put them out of business instead of have them do their manufacturing overseas?
     
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