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I think you have a mistaken impression of the scale of CEO pay for large corporations vs. total payroll. Tim Cook is one of the highest compensated CEOs in the

I think you have a mistaken impression of the scale of CEO pay for large corporations vs. total payroll. Tim Cook is one of the highest compensated CEOs in the world. In his best years he’s paid something like $100M all-in. Apple has around 165,000 employees. Dividing up half his salary amongst them would be about $300 each.

bombcar 3y ago
People are really, REALLY bad with large numbers.
flangola7 3y ago
You're not wrong on that specific point, but it still misses the forest for the trees.
leptons 3y ago
That's called cherry picking. Most of Apple's employees aren't slaving away in factories, and they already get paid well. Apple also outsources the really shitty manufacturing work to people making slave wages in other countries where they don't even have a choice not to work. If you can cherry pick, then I can too. Rivian's CEO made $422,140,679 in 2021, and they have 14,122 employees, so half that salary divided by number of employees comes out to $14,946 per employee. Not a bad bump in pay especially if you're in a factory putting together car parts. The CEO of "Lucid Group, Inc." made $565,591,512 in 2021 and they had 7,200 employees, so the figure there is $39,277 per employee. Trust me, Peter Rawlinson will do just fine making only $282,795,756 per year. The CEO of "Bright Health Group, Inc." makes $180,813,849 per year and they employ 1500 people - split in half and distributed to the employees they would get a pay bump of $60,271 per year. So yeah. You can cherry-pick all you want, but the fact is that CEO pay is too damned high, and it's no wonder people don't want to go slave away in factories making a few dollars while the CEOs can afford 3 mega yachts and 12 vacation homes.
- twoodfin 3y ago
  If you dig a little deeper into the Rivian and Lucid cases, you’ll see there’s no cash to spread around: Those are all long-term, incentive-based packages in currently illiquid equity. There’s a non-trivial chance their net value will be much closer to $0 than those headline numbers. Re: Bright Health Group, similarly a one-time incentive grant which will likely end up around $0 given the firm’s struggles. I’m not claiming all CEO pay is wise, of course. But “take 50% of CEO pay and redistribute it to the workers” wouldn’t move any needles. Satya Nadella can surely afford a few nice yachts at this point, but in aggregate Microsoft handed out $7.5 billion(!!) in stock to its employees last year. His $55M was a drop in the bucket, and given what he’s done for those employees’ stock over the past decade I’d think they’d consider pay like that a bargain at twice the price.
  - leptons 3y ago
    [flagged]

bombcar 3y ago

People are really, REALLY bad with large numbers.

flangola7 3y ago

You're not wrong on that specific point, but it still misses the forest for the trees.

leptons 3y ago

That's called cherry picking. Most of Apple's employees aren't slaving away in factories, and they already get paid well. Apple also outsources the really shitty manufacturing work to people making slave wages in other countries where they don't even have a choice not to work. If you can cherry pick, then I can too. Rivian's CEO made $422,140,679 in 2021, and they have 14,122 employees, so half that salary divided by number of employees comes out to $14,946 per employee. Not a bad bump in pay especially if you're in a factory putting together car parts. The CEO of "Lucid Group, Inc." made $565,591,512 in 2021 and they had 7,200 employees, so the figure there is $39,277 per employee. Trust me, Peter Rawlinson will do just fine making only $282,795,756 per year. The CEO of "Bright Health Group, Inc." makes $180,813,849 per year and they employ 1500 people - split in half and distributed to the employees they would get a pay bump of $60,271 per year. So yeah. You can cherry-pick all you want, but the fact is that CEO pay is too damned high, and it's no wonder people don't want to go slave away in factories making a few dollars while the CEOs can afford 3 mega yachts and 12 vacation homes.

twoodfin 3y ago
If you dig a little deeper into the Rivian and Lucid cases, you’ll see there’s no cash to spread around: Those are all long-term, incentive-based packages in currently illiquid equity. There’s a non-trivial chance their net value will be much closer to $0 than those headline numbers. Re: Bright Health Group, similarly a one-time incentive grant which will likely end up around $0 given the firm’s struggles. I’m not claiming all CEO pay is wise, of course. But “take 50% of CEO pay and redistribute it to the workers” wouldn’t move any needles. Satya Nadella can surely afford a few nice yachts at this point, but in aggregate Microsoft handed out $7.5 billion(!!) in stock to its employees last year. His $55M was a drop in the bucket, and given what he’s done for those employees’ stock over the past decade I’d think they’d consider pay like that a bargain at twice the price.
- leptons 3y ago
  [flagged]