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Looking only at the base pay completely misses the picture for CEO compensation as you have noted. Obviously Bezos didn't make $13B in a single day from his $8

Looking only at the base pay completely misses the picture for CEO compensation as you have noted. Obviously Bezos didn't make $13B in a single day from his $80k/year salary. Imagine if he took that 13 Billion Dollar single day income and spread it across every employee at Amazon. That would be a life changing amount of money for almost every warehouse worker. Roughly $22,500 each. And that's just one day for Bezos. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/21/bezos-record-multibillion-dollar-net-worth-gain-bloomberg.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/21/bezos-record-multibillion-do...

valuearb 6y ago
He never made $13B in a day. It's just a stock price fluctuation that can be given back tomorrow. He doesn't get to spend it. And even if you count stock fluctuations as income, he never earned it in one day, he earned it over 25 years of work.
turbinerneiter 6y ago
The value of Amazon is based on their labour force and their willingness to work under the conditions they do for the pay they get. If you give all of them 22k, a lot of them will use that money to jump ship. The value of Amazon will go down. The value of a corporation is the _willingness of their staff to cooperate_. For low skill workers, higher pay can enable them to work their way up to higher skill jobs, which reduces their willingness to cooperate at the low wage job, which reduces the value of the cooperation. I feel like I just earned a nobel price in economics, but I guess a real economist will quickly put holes in my epic bubble^^
- jandrese 6y ago
  LOL at the "you gotta treat them like slaves for maximum productivity" argument.
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    I mean I'm not making the argument that this is a good idea, but if your company runs on low skill workers working very hard for very low pay, keeping them low skill is key to keep them willing to work that job. Maybe I'm being disrespectful to these job, assuming that skilling up won't make them more productive and valuable.
sigstoat 6y ago
this focus on the value of his stocks, and their fluctuations, is silly. not only could he not liquidate all of his holdings in under a few years without killing the stock price (and making the later sales worth less), but part of the value of amazon is bezos' oversight. if he dumps all his stock, the public elects a new board, which elects a new chairman, and they pick some new CEO, amazon wouldn't be worth as much as it is now. (also he'd bleed away a chunk of whatever he sold off in capital gains taxes. his cost basis is presumably somewhere near $0, since he founded the company and has held from the start.)
- jandrese 6y ago
  $13B is not even close to "all of his holdings". It is about 6% of his total net worth. It would also be around $17.5% of what he earned in 2020 alone. The capital gains taxes would be offset by having a 13 billion dollar charity donation. Amazon Workers Fund.

valuearb 6y ago

He never made $13B in a day. It's just a stock price fluctuation that can be given back tomorrow. He doesn't get to spend it. And even if you count stock fluctuations as income, he never earned it in one day, he earned it over 25 years of work.

turbinerneiter 6y ago

The value of Amazon is based on their labour force and their willingness to work under the conditions they do for the pay they get. If you give all of them 22k, a lot of them will use that money to jump ship. The value of Amazon will go down. The value of a corporation is the _willingness of their staff to cooperate_. For low skill workers, higher pay can enable them to work their way up to higher skill jobs, which reduces their willingness to cooperate at the low wage job, which reduces the value of the cooperation. I feel like I just earned a nobel price in economics, but I guess a real economist will quickly put holes in my epic bubble^^

jandrese 6y ago
LOL at the "you gotta treat them like slaves for maximum productivity" argument.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  I mean I'm not making the argument that this is a good idea, but if your company runs on low skill workers working very hard for very low pay, keeping them low skill is key to keep them willing to work that job. Maybe I'm being disrespectful to these job, assuming that skilling up won't make them more productive and valuable.

sigstoat 6y ago

this focus on the value of his stocks, and their fluctuations, is silly. not only could he not liquidate all of his holdings in under a few years without killing the stock price (and making the later sales worth less), but part of the value of amazon is bezos' oversight. if he dumps all his stock, the public elects a new board, which elects a new chairman, and they pick some new CEO, amazon wouldn't be worth as much as it is now. (also he'd bleed away a chunk of whatever he sold off in capital gains taxes. his cost basis is presumably somewhere near $0, since he founded the company and has held from the start.)

jandrese 6y ago
$13B is not even close to "all of his holdings". It is about 6% of his total net worth. It would also be around $17.5% of what he earned in 2020 alone. The capital gains taxes would be offset by having a 13 billion dollar charity donation. Amazon Workers Fund.