3 ms·

CEO pay is not zero sum. Employee wages can increase with (and even because of) CEO wage increase.

diggan 1y ago
> Employee wages can increase with (and even because of) CEO wage increase Did they? Usually executive pay is increasing faster than typical employee's pay, is the article saying that they're increasing equally?
- simianwords 1y ago
  They are increasing but not equally, nor did the article suggest it. I'm trying to suggest that CEO pay increasing is not necessarily a bad thing (which the article may have tried to imply).
ddddang 1y ago
[dead]
miltonlost 1y ago
Okay, I want to hear how CEOs wage goes up leads to employee wages going up without something like trickle-down coming out. That causal mechanism is completely unobvious in my mind.
- simianwords 1y ago
  CEO wages increasing are due to competition amongst a few candidates who have the experience and competency required to run a big organisation and this drives up the wages. If you have a company you want the best person to run it and if the best person costs a lot you might still want to hire them. Why do you think they are being paid that much? Its because the company gets back way more than they spent on the CEO wages. Profits increasing for the company is a good thing - you can use it to further improve your company by hiring more people or hiring better people by paying them more. Profits increasing is also good for the country - more taxes collected.
  - Draiken 1y ago
    What a load of crap. CEOs are elites that were born into money in the majority of cases. They fail upwards while not doing any real work and reaping the benefits from the thousands that do. Yes a CEO has an impact on the business but so does everyone else. Ultimately he's one more piece of the puzzle and absolutely nothing can justify this salary gap. Anyone with any sliver of common sense knows they aren't worth 400x more than everyone else. Fire the CEO and the company continues. Fire all your workers and let's see what happens. If anything the real reason they're paid so much is so the shareholders have an easy scapegoat to fire (with their golden parachutes) while pushing for short term profits as much as possible.
    - simianwords 1y ago
      What does paying them a lot have to do with scapegoat? Instead of paying them 50M pay them 200k? Why not?
      - Draiken 1y ago
        These are rich people hiring rich kids exactly to extract as much money as they can from the companies. A huge salary or bonus is the best way to do that regardless of company performance in the long term. Take a look at this: https://www.theyrule.net/ https://www.theyrule.net/ These CEOs are sons, brother in laws, cousins, friends, etc. from the same group of people that populate the boards. The corruption at the top is absolutely blatant and that's where huge chunks of money generated from the folks that actually do the work ends up. There are even studies on companies that self-organize without CEOs being more efficient than "regular" companies. The sad truth is that having a dictator at the top of every company is not as good as people make it out to be. You may get a good dictator, but it's way more likely you don't.
lm28469 1y ago
It mostly didn't for the past 50 years though: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/23410.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/23410.jpeg That's the whole problem, nobody would care if they could afford the same standard of living as their parents.
- simianwords 1y ago
  > nobody would care if they could afford the same standard of living as their parents This is untrue - the consumption patterns (after accounting for inflation) of the bottom 20% in 2025 are way higher than in 1970s. Almost 60-70% higher. Almost everyone is better off today than before. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59510 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59510 has some clues. I encourage you to do your own research on it. Try to answer this question: are we as a society materially better off today than 50 years ago? Surprisingly your image while it doesn't show the full picture, still shows that the living standards haven't reduced.
  - lm28469 1y ago
    "b-bu-but people can buy more slop and chinese gadgets, why aren't they happy?" That's how you sound... they're unhappy because they can't afford a house or kids, because jobs are increasing precarious and unstable, &c. not because toilet paper and avocados are now 5% cheaper than in 1949 My (unskilled, uneducated) grandpa worked in the same place his whole life, afforded 4 kids and a flat on one income. I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      This is a different argument from real wages having not increased for 50 years, which is false.
    - simianwords 1y ago
      They can't afford kids because of a totally different reason. The poorest countries have the highest fertility rates. The richest ones the lowest. Yes housing is proportionally higher but home ownership is pretty much constant https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N Crucially the cost of everything else has come down dramatically to balance for rise in home prices. > I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids. This is true but this is not because CEO wages are rising but despite it. IMO this is happening because people moved to the cities and enough houses were not built in time (you try to answer the question as to why). Your grandfather probably lived in a rural part of the country and could afford a big house where there was no demand - something you can still do now. There is another reason housing prices have also gone up which is not talked about often - while prices of other things reduced people had more to spend on other things. They chose to put remaining on housing because.. well where else would you put it?

> Employee wages can increase with (and even because of) CEO wage increase Did they? Usually executive pay is increasing faster than typical employee's pay, is the article saying that they're increasing equally?

simianwords 1y ago
They are increasing but not equally, nor did the article suggest it. I'm trying to suggest that CEO pay increasing is not necessarily a bad thing (which the article may have tried to imply).

ddddang 1y ago

[dead]

miltonlost 1y ago

Okay, I want to hear how CEOs wage goes up leads to employee wages going up without something like trickle-down coming out. That causal mechanism is completely unobvious in my mind.

simianwords 1y ago
CEO wages increasing are due to competition amongst a few candidates who have the experience and competency required to run a big organisation and this drives up the wages. If you have a company you want the best person to run it and if the best person costs a lot you might still want to hire them. Why do you think they are being paid that much? Its because the company gets back way more than they spent on the CEO wages. Profits increasing for the company is a good thing - you can use it to further improve your company by hiring more people or hiring better people by paying them more. Profits increasing is also good for the country - more taxes collected.
- Draiken 1y ago
  What a load of crap. CEOs are elites that were born into money in the majority of cases. They fail upwards while not doing any real work and reaping the benefits from the thousands that do. Yes a CEO has an impact on the business but so does everyone else. Ultimately he's one more piece of the puzzle and absolutely nothing can justify this salary gap. Anyone with any sliver of common sense knows they aren't worth 400x more than everyone else. Fire the CEO and the company continues. Fire all your workers and let's see what happens. If anything the real reason they're paid so much is so the shareholders have an easy scapegoat to fire (with their golden parachutes) while pushing for short term profits as much as possible.
  - simianwords 1y ago
    What does paying them a lot have to do with scapegoat? Instead of paying them 50M pay them 200k? Why not?
    - Draiken 1y ago
      These are rich people hiring rich kids exactly to extract as much money as they can from the companies. A huge salary or bonus is the best way to do that regardless of company performance in the long term. Take a look at this: https://www.theyrule.net/ https://www.theyrule.net/ These CEOs are sons, brother in laws, cousins, friends, etc. from the same group of people that populate the boards. The corruption at the top is absolutely blatant and that's where huge chunks of money generated from the folks that actually do the work ends up. There are even studies on companies that self-organize without CEOs being more efficient than "regular" companies. The sad truth is that having a dictator at the top of every company is not as good as people make it out to be. You may get a good dictator, but it's way more likely you don't.

lm28469 1y ago

It mostly didn't for the past 50 years though: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/23410.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/23410.jpeg That's the whole problem, nobody would care if they could afford the same standard of living as their parents.

simianwords 1y ago
> nobody would care if they could afford the same standard of living as their parents This is untrue - the consumption patterns (after accounting for inflation) of the bottom 20% in 2025 are way higher than in 1970s. Almost 60-70% higher. Almost everyone is better off today than before. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59510 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59510 has some clues. I encourage you to do your own research on it. Try to answer this question: are we as a society materially better off today than 50 years ago? Surprisingly your image while it doesn't show the full picture, still shows that the living standards haven't reduced.
- lm28469 1y ago
  "b-bu-but people can buy more slop and chinese gadgets, why aren't they happy?" That's how you sound... they're unhappy because they can't afford a house or kids, because jobs are increasing precarious and unstable, &c. not because toilet paper and avocados are now 5% cheaper than in 1949 My (unskilled, uneducated) grandpa worked in the same place his whole life, afforded 4 kids and a flat on one income. I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    This is a different argument from real wages having not increased for 50 years, which is false.
  - simianwords 1y ago
    They can't afford kids because of a totally different reason. The poorest countries have the highest fertility rates. The richest ones the lowest. Yes housing is proportionally higher but home ownership is pretty much constant https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N Crucially the cost of everything else has come down dramatically to balance for rise in home prices. > I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids. This is true but this is not because CEO wages are rising but despite it. IMO this is happening because people moved to the cities and enough houses were not built in time (you try to answer the question as to why). Your grandfather probably lived in a rural part of the country and could afford a big house where there was no demand - something you can still do now. There is another reason housing prices have also gone up which is not talked about often - while prices of other things reduced people had more to spend on other things. They chose to put remaining on housing because.. well where else would you put it?