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CEOs should be able to get paid how much ever the company/the board/the stock holders are ok with paying them. No limit. BUT that pay should be linked to the p

CEOs should be able to get paid how much ever the company/the board/the stock holders are ok with paying them. No limit. BUT that pay should be linked to the pay of everyone else in the company: the average pay or the minimum pay or whatever have you. I think the point gets lost in the fairness. It’s fair to pay them more for their hard work. But it’s not fair to pay the CEO enormous sums while the employees struggle.

Buttons840 7y ago
> No limit. I've seen a lot of talk about hard limits online recently, I don't like it. A very high tax rate for the extremely rich I am much more OK with. 75 to 95 percent of income above 10 million seems fine. I wouldn't even tax stock holding. Let people sell 10 million in stock each year and avoid the high tax, nobody will struggle on 10 million a year. And if their money is still growing like crazy in the stock market, fine, tax it when it comes out.
- holy_city 7y ago
  >A very high tax rate for the extremely rich I am much more OK with. Let's get rid of the 15% cap on "long term" capital gains first. A dollar earned is a dollar taxed, no matter where it comes from.
- uxp100 7y ago
  This has a kind of weird, not necessarily bad effect. Since the main way this changes the CEOs life is their relationship to capital. With income "caps," you no longer own a private jet, but you still fly on one. The company hires your chauffeur, owns your vacation home, owns your private jet, hires your personal assistant, hires your other, more personal assistant, pays for your chef and maid, etc. CEOs still live a life of luxury, but they are unable to acquire massive capital. If software engineers are labor aristocrats, CEOs become labor space emperors. It definitely is more of an "east-coast" style of wealth, the kind of thing that shocked the "Traitorus Eight" when they were working with east coast finance to found Fairchild (if I'm remembering my history correctly.) But high marginal tax rates on the super rich were in effect at that time and they didn't understand the alternative either.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  I have literally read of a conversation between the wives of two high income individuals, where one said, "The thing about 40 [million dollars a year income] is that, after taxes, it's only 20". Sure, nobody will struggle on 10 million a year. They won't go hungry. They won't have to worry about an unexpected car repair bill. But they will struggle to live the lifestyle that they've come to expect to be able to live. That will feel like struggling to them. And they will complain bitterly about having to struggle, and the rest of us will mock them for it, and say "You have no idea what struggling is."
mdorazio 7y ago
Why should it be tied to other employees’ compensation? Fairness and capitalism-based business generally don’t go together. That kind of thinking leads to all kinds of problems. For example, is it fair for an employee to jump ship for a higher salary offer elsewhere and leave their coworkers to pick up the pieces? Is it fair for some employees to make more than others just because they're better at negotiating? Is it fair that software engineers make several times as much as teachers just because the thing they're good at happens to be in high demand right now? I would say no.
- iscrewyou 7y ago
  Isn’t that the mantra? Yoi are assuming that once you leave, the company doesn’t hire your replacement. You are supposed to leave your first few employments if you want to make big gains in your salary and not be stuck with the annual set amount of raise? Hell, I did that and doubled my income. The last work hired someone else and paid them what I got paid. Tying the CEO salary to employee compensation wouldn’t change that. CEOs get raises because the company is doing better. Isn’t the company doing better because the employees are doing better work? So why does just the CEO get paid more? Who not the employees with him?
  - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
    The argument here is that the value of a company is actually in the imaginations of the Important People who make Big Deals with it. This value may be related to the stuff done by workers but the CEO's personal relationship with other CEOs carries as much weight as "observed reality". This is one of the major reasons that so much totally shitty "enterprise" software is made
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  You've convinced me, we should ditch the capitalistic model.
- Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
  > Why should it be tied to other employees’ compensation? If a company is doing exceeding well, why should only the CEO see the benefit, and not the people doing the grunt work of actually building the products that lead to the company's success? > Fairness and capitalism-based business generally don’t go together. They don't, but they can. > That kind of thinking leads to all kinds of problems. For example, is it fair for an employee to jump ship for a higher salary offer elsewhere and leave their coworkers to pick up the pieces? I would say no. I would say yes. People jump to new jobs for a higher salary all the time.
nostromo 7y ago
This is a "sounds good but is actually terrible" idea. Outsourcing would skyrocket and millions of low paying jobs would be lost and sent abroad and to sub-contractors because you've just created a strong incentive for the CEO to fire the lowest-paid workers in their company.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  tie those too
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  all jobs including outsourced ones should be pegged. It should be something like you're allowed to earn 200x the average worker including bonuses, including outsourced employees, contractors, freelancers both foreign and domestic. Maybe also have a bonus structure that's add/subtract 10% to that # for jobs created/lost, so if you added 1% (USA based) increase in jobs you can get a 10% bonus, so if you earned 10 million, you can get 11 million. If your company had to lay off 1% (USA based) of workforce, then you have to take 10% less as a penalty. The idea is to encourage a healthy economy locally in America, while keeping wages up across the board. Then there are only 2 ways for the CEO to rise above current pay: 1. raise wages. 2. hire more people. Both of which stimulate the economy.
  - brianwawok 7y ago
    How about pay of your suppliers? You assemble cars. The radios are made by a company making radios in China for $1 a day. Okay so you include those. Now miners. The metal that goes in the radio is mined by a guy for $2 a day. This link CEO pay to worker pay thing sounds really good on paper, but I don't think you could actually do it in a way that would not encourage very bad events (like lay off half your staff)
    - gremlinsinc 7y ago
      those are totally separate companies w/ their own ceo and own pay structure to worry about and outside of scope/beyond control. I also tied it to % increase/decrease of employees. So if you increase by 1% your employees, you would be allowed a 10% increase bonus, so if you earn 10 mill, you now earned 11 mill if you hire 1% more staff this year over last year. However if you lay off 1% you lose 1 million because it's also a penalty. So laying off half your staff obviously does NOT help in this situation.

Buttons840 7y ago

> No limit. I've seen a lot of talk about hard limits online recently, I don't like it. A very high tax rate for the extremely rich I am much more OK with. 75 to 95 percent of income above 10 million seems fine. I wouldn't even tax stock holding. Let people sell 10 million in stock each year and avoid the high tax, nobody will struggle on 10 million a year. And if their money is still growing like crazy in the stock market, fine, tax it when it comes out.

holy_city 7y ago
>A very high tax rate for the extremely rich I am much more OK with. Let's get rid of the 15% cap on "long term" capital gains first. A dollar earned is a dollar taxed, no matter where it comes from.
uxp100 7y ago
This has a kind of weird, not necessarily bad effect. Since the main way this changes the CEOs life is their relationship to capital. With income "caps," you no longer own a private jet, but you still fly on one. The company hires your chauffeur, owns your vacation home, owns your private jet, hires your personal assistant, hires your other, more personal assistant, pays for your chef and maid, etc. CEOs still live a life of luxury, but they are unable to acquire massive capital. If software engineers are labor aristocrats, CEOs become labor space emperors. It definitely is more of an "east-coast" style of wealth, the kind of thing that shocked the "Traitorus Eight" when they were working with east coast finance to found Fairchild (if I'm remembering my history correctly.) But high marginal tax rates on the super rich were in effect at that time and they didn't understand the alternative either.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
I have literally read of a conversation between the wives of two high income individuals, where one said, "The thing about 40 [million dollars a year income] is that, after taxes, it's only 20". Sure, nobody will struggle on 10 million a year. They won't go hungry. They won't have to worry about an unexpected car repair bill. But they will struggle to live the lifestyle that they've come to expect to be able to live. That will feel like struggling to them. And they will complain bitterly about having to struggle, and the rest of us will mock them for it, and say "You have no idea what struggling is."

mdorazio 7y ago

Why should it be tied to other employees’ compensation? Fairness and capitalism-based business generally don’t go together. That kind of thinking leads to all kinds of problems. For example, is it fair for an employee to jump ship for a higher salary offer elsewhere and leave their coworkers to pick up the pieces? Is it fair for some employees to make more than others just because they're better at negotiating? Is it fair that software engineers make several times as much as teachers just because the thing they're good at happens to be in high demand right now? I would say no.

iscrewyou 7y ago
Isn’t that the mantra? Yoi are assuming that once you leave, the company doesn’t hire your replacement. You are supposed to leave your first few employments if you want to make big gains in your salary and not be stuck with the annual set amount of raise? Hell, I did that and doubled my income. The last work hired someone else and paid them what I got paid. Tying the CEO salary to employee compensation wouldn’t change that. CEOs get raises because the company is doing better. Isn’t the company doing better because the employees are doing better work? So why does just the CEO get paid more? Who not the employees with him?
- xkcd-sucks 7y ago
  The argument here is that the value of a company is actually in the imaginations of the Important People who make Big Deals with it. This value may be related to the stuff done by workers but the CEO's personal relationship with other CEOs carries as much weight as "observed reality". This is one of the major reasons that so much totally shitty "enterprise" software is made
anigbrowl 7y ago
You've convinced me, we should ditch the capitalistic model.
Sohcahtoa82 7y ago
> Why should it be tied to other employees’ compensation? If a company is doing exceeding well, why should only the CEO see the benefit, and not the people doing the grunt work of actually building the products that lead to the company's success? > Fairness and capitalism-based business generally don’t go together. They don't, but they can. > That kind of thinking leads to all kinds of problems. For example, is it fair for an employee to jump ship for a higher salary offer elsewhere and leave their coworkers to pick up the pieces? I would say no. I would say yes. People jump to new jobs for a higher salary all the time.

nostromo 7y ago

This is a "sounds good but is actually terrible" idea. Outsourcing would skyrocket and millions of low paying jobs would be lost and sent abroad and to sub-contractors because you've just created a strong incentive for the CEO to fire the lowest-paid workers in their company.

OrgNet 7y ago
tie those too
gremlinsinc 7y ago
all jobs including outsourced ones should be pegged. It should be something like you're allowed to earn 200x the average worker including bonuses, including outsourced employees, contractors, freelancers both foreign and domestic. Maybe also have a bonus structure that's add/subtract 10% to that # for jobs created/lost, so if you added 1% (USA based) increase in jobs you can get a 10% bonus, so if you earned 10 million, you can get 11 million. If your company had to lay off 1% (USA based) of workforce, then you have to take 10% less as a penalty. The idea is to encourage a healthy economy locally in America, while keeping wages up across the board. Then there are only 2 ways for the CEO to rise above current pay: 1. raise wages. 2. hire more people. Both of which stimulate the economy.
- brianwawok 7y ago
  How about pay of your suppliers? You assemble cars. The radios are made by a company making radios in China for $1 a day. Okay so you include those. Now miners. The metal that goes in the radio is mined by a guy for $2 a day. This link CEO pay to worker pay thing sounds really good on paper, but I don't think you could actually do it in a way that would not encourage very bad events (like lay off half your staff)
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    those are totally separate companies w/ their own ceo and own pay structure to worry about and outside of scope/beyond control. I also tied it to % increase/decrease of employees. So if you increase by 1% your employees, you would be allowed a 10% increase bonus, so if you earn 10 mill, you now earned 11 mill if you hire 1% more staff this year over last year. However if you lay off 1% you lose 1 million because it's also a penalty. So laying off half your staff obviously does NOT help in this situation.