4 ms·

Shall we also discuss how much of other people's work capital is 'entitled' to? E.g Uber's executives are very well compensated, and are nothing but middle-men

• leetcrew 8y ago
  if they're as easily replaced as you say, they won't be very well compensated for long.
  • deogeo 8y ago
    'Easily' in terms of labor. But it was only possible to create an opening for that labor with the use of law - i.e. collective action. Just like how FAT32 is also easily replaced, yet Microsoft reaped patent profits from it for decades. There are countless other such parasites.
  • raxxorrax 8y ago
    It seems pretty naive to think these market mechanisms are the primary factors affecting wages. Maybe this is the case in the US, certainly not in Europe. Otherwise teachers and caregivers would earn at least as much as engineers. Top managers wages are completely fictitious. Investors generally don't care though, since it is basically nothing compared to turnover as a whole.
    • hattar 8y ago
      In the US there’s an excess of teachers (unsure about caregivers) and it seems the market forces are expectedly causing low salaries. I believe as an American I’m missing some important context to understand this comment.
      • gowld 8y ago
        There's an excess of programmers too. Oh, good programmers are scarce? Good teachers are scarce too
        • dexen 8y ago
          >Good teachers are scarce too You have named the very reason the teachers are angrily protesting any and all attempts at evaluation of teachers' productivity. Or introduction of private (i.e., market-based) schools competing with the state run ones.
      • raxxorrax 8y ago
        Context: A lot of countries in Europe have problems filling positions with teachers and caregivers, because younger people tend to evade these careers because of bad economic conditions and huge workloads.
        • lotsofpulp 8y ago
          I would say that is still market mechanisms affecting wages. The purchasers (taxpayers) are not willing to pay sufficient wages in order to incentivize [the right] people to pursue it as a career.
          • falcolas 8y ago
            It's my opinion that taxpayers are the worst people to drive business decisions around education. The median tax payer will only care about education quality and availability for around 15 of their ~40 years as a tax payer. For those remaining 25 years, they will tend to prioritize money in their pockets over a teacher's salary; a situation that does not align with the betterment of our society at large.
            • lotsofpulp 8y ago
              A million dollar teacher won't be able to do their job effectively if the child lives in a broken environment, so it's something that has to be attacked from all angles simultaneously, from the teachers, to providing the child's parents (and neighbors) with economic opportunities (and/or educating them), and even then it would be a slow process taking effect over generations, so no politician could claim it. Seems almost impossible to accomplish in a democracy.
              • ABCLAW 8y ago
                There are plenty of million dollar teachers, but they work in private tutoring or corporate education positions. The million dollar teachers will do things like actively manage the student's home life or business trajectory, give them personalized curricula, connect them with opportunities to gain hands-on experience, etc. Not saying you're wrong re: the incentives or anything, but a lot of people don't even know this segment of the market exists.
• AlgorithmicTime 8y ago
  In the Uber case, this seems like a self-correcting problem. Because Uber's so easy to replicate, Uber competitors will lower the amount Uber's management can take for themselves to the lowest sustainable amount.
• bryanlarsen 8y ago
  Uber's executives rely on: - the rule of law and a court system that allow VC's and others to sign billion dollar contracts with only minor fears of being cheated - a large supply of underemployed people rich enough to own a car, but desperate enough to cash in the depreciation by driving for Uber - a massive public road system - a market - and much more. For all of this, they pay very close to nothing as their income is mostly capital gains.
  • AlanSE 8y ago
    It's very strange for you to argue that executives pay mostly income tax. From the perspective of a corporation, their main concern is paying corporate tax. The people who own the shares then make gains from capital gains. Uber is a growth company, so we can expect that corporate tax has little effect on them, for the simple reason that they're not making much money (by design). Still, their capitalization has some notion of corporate tax baked into it, because if they become a giant and start returning earnings to owners, then this will be impacted by corporate tax. I don't like that we have this complicated system of double-taxing corporate earnings at lower rates, as opposed to taxing earnings as income for the owners of the company. I know that many companies find ways to skirt corporate tax... but not all, and not really the majority (but preferentially the huge companies). I also know that the combination of these two taxes may not total to what the individual owners would have otherwise paid if the earnings had been ordinary income. Still... it's not as simple as "capital gains".
    • ultraluminous 8y ago
      "...many companies find ways to skirt corporate tax... but not all, and not really the majority (but preferentially the huge companies)" So that's basically the case for progressive corporate tax. Everyone acknowledges that small/medium business pay the full tax rate, while large/huge corps always never anything close to it. With progressive taxation you can directly impact the latter and not the former.
      • ozzyman700 8y ago
        Why tax productivity at all? A land value tax redistributes gains in productivity to the government in the form of tax levied on the value of land - the value of the improvements on the land.