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0 pointsLatteLazy5y ago0 comments

If you're a ceo and have 10k employees, and you get them to accept 1k a year less each in wages, you made the shareholders 10m. So it makes sense you get 1m extra. (1k a year for a full time employee is 50c/h roughly, less if you factor in pay linked benefits and other costs).

Hilton has 173k employees. So a ceo who can get minimal amounts more out of them or cut the cost of them even slightly is worth a fortune.

I think this is the real driving force behind the ceo pay numbers we've seen: more big companies where a single ceo or a small top-team have huge leverage.

I'm not making a moral arguement. Just a practical/Economic one. I think "leverage" is a better concept here than "responsibility" (which carries moral implications...)

0 pointsLatteLazy5y ago0 comments

Hilton has 173k employees. So a ceo who can get minimal amounts more out of them or cut the cost of them even slightly is worth a fortune.

I think this is the real driving force behind the ceo pay numbers we've seen: more big companies where a single ceo or a small top-team have huge leverage.

I'm not making a moral arguement. Just a practical/Economic one. I think "leverage" is a better concept here than "responsibility" (which carries moral implications...)

0 comments

7 comments · 2 top-level

danaris5y ago· 3 in thread

I'm definitely making a moral argument, because I am a moral person, but for those for whom such arguments hold no sway, I am also making also a practical, economic one: We have ample evidence, from the way things have gone over the past few decades, that increasing inequality in an economic system is bad for the system as a whole.

LatteLazyOP5y ago

I agree, but that's not something any one ceo can control. All he can do is maximise his own pay.

aaron-santos5y ago

Yep, and probably preaching to the choir here. That's usually why these conversations tend toward criticizing the systems that encourage these incentives.

loceng5y ago

Indeed, you need to properly fund/fuel/lubricate the largest segment/cog in the capitalist system - the consumer; UBI tied to inflation.

alephu55y ago· 2 in thread

The important questions remains: Why is it possible to reduce salaries without losing your workforce? If it's because the economy is shrinking and job supply is dropping, CEO salaries should be less competitive too and share prices should be dropping but we see the contrary.

There's something more than basic market dynamics at play here, inequality is being systematically nurtured which I think is the premise of the article.

LatteLazyOP5y ago

Because we automate away jobs.

If you can fill more orders with fewer employees you go up in value, either as the ceo or the company share price.

Weve been automating away jobs in all sorts of places for decades. Sometimes that's robots. More often its just production method changes. No more need for skilled taxi drivers when you have GPS etc.

29athrowaway5y ago

We automate tasks, not necessarily entire jobs.

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