4 ms·
They literally are not taking on the risk if they get the high pay whether they succeed or lose. The not being able to see your kids in the evening is one thin
by lovich 8y ago
They literally are not taking on the risk if they get the high pay whether they succeed or lose.
The not being able to see your kids in the evening is one thing, but the high paid executives also get around that too. For instance Marissa Mayer having an office in the headquarters converted into a daycare for her child. Did her employees who were also on call(and forced to stop working remotely) get the opportunity to use company property for a daycare for their children?
My point is that these arguments about why it's worth it to pay executives these super high salaries no longer hold any water, because we've seen that they've rigged the game to be effectively riskless to them.
Only getting 80% of your expected payout when you run a company into the ground _and_ remove payouts to the other employees is not a risk to justify being paid 100s of times more than an average employee. It's just another case of making the risks public and the gains private
- anonuser123456 8y agoThe risks are entirely private. Shareholders and lender capital is at risk, not the general public.
- lovich 8y agoThe general public includes these employees who are not getting their bonuses/severance that was promised because executives need to be paid out first. Then we have people who need unemployment to cover their lives that would have been covered by said payments. It's the same issue with Walmart and McDonald's paying too little to live on and teaching their employees how to sign up for benefits
- eigenvector 8y agoWhen a big company goes bust and lays off thousands of workers or even defaults on pension obligations (I know Sears did in Canada I don't know if they did in the US), it's the public who pick up the costs through unemployment benefits and welfare payments.
- rlucas 8y agoYour point is well taken when extremes occur (public purse ultimately probably backstops both unemployment and pensions via PBGC) but it’s important for readers to know that’s not the normal case even in a bankruptcy. Unemployment is structured as an insurance program, not a dole, and in theory an employer has paid in over the years enough to actuarially pay for it. Same thing with pensions. The system does have some “normal accident” anti-fragility type stuff built in. But yes, 1. in a catastrophic outcome the public purse will get hit for hard costs and 2. even the “insured” benefits mask lots of externalities that the corporation doesn’t bear but employees and municipalities etc do.