CEOs work harder every hour than their wage slaves do every season.

[Ryantology]

Listen the only force that keeps a corporation in check is another corporation.

If that doesn't change, everybody is fucked.

[Lemonvariable72]

Listen the only force that keeps a corporation in check is another corporation.

If that doesn't change, everybody is fucked.

well too that you need to neter the whole coporations are people bit.

[Odysseus]

@Tiberius: not possible with staples like food, etc especially for those skating on the poverty line

[Tonus]

Listen the only force that keeps a corporation in check is another corporation.

Unless they buy out that other corporation.

US history shows that if allowed to operate with little or no interference, owners of large businesses will treat workers very badly and live lives of such excess that would make today's billionaires weep from jealousy. I don't think our problem is that government seeks to regulate business. I think it's that government officials are too easily influenced by corporate money. It's our "regulated" market that has allowed companies to become so large that when they run into financial trouble the government offers them massive bailouts because they are "too big to fail."

I think we need to stop sending so many tax dollars to Washington and make clear that any company that is "too big to fail" is too big to be allowed to exist. The relationship between government and business should be almost adversarial. Regulations should be used to keep business from harming the country and from harming other businesses, instead of being used to raise barriers to smaller companies and thus protecting larger companies, which then encourages companies to become larger and larger and wealthier and wealthier at the top. If you have entities that are "too big to fail" you have made yourself a hostage to them. I don't know what you call that, but it's not a form of government that protects anything.

[là bạn điên]

What a private company pays its workforce is exclusively a matter for the Shareholders and Workers of that company and no one elses. the Shareholders own the company and they want the maximum returns on their investment. Contrary to the juvenile nonsense they don't pay very high wages to CEOs out of some sort of 'class solidarity' they do so because the CEOs have a proven track record of getting results. Shareholder want value for money.

In the same way sports teams pay vast amounts of money to players because its the individual players who will make or break a team (along with the Manager and coaches) the man who mows the grass or sells tickets or fries the burgers is pretty much irrelevant, if he left someone can take his place immediately.

[TaraJo]

Depends on what you mean by "deserve". Did they do a large enough amount of work as a CEO to merit such a large amount? Probably not.

Have you listened to how they talk about the poor people of the world? The idea there sure seems to be that they didn't do enough work to deserve more than minimum wage. Why can't we apply the same logic to the people at the upper end of that spectrum?

CEO's get paid large amounts; it's the way things are, mainly because there are precious few CEOs, and even fewer good CEOs. Running a large corporation isn't a job that just anyone could do; most of us (myself included) would fail if we tried it.

And, yet, many of those CEO's still get paid obscenely large amounts even when they run their company into the ground. The executives that ran the banks into the ground, necessitating the bail outs from 2008? They still got pretty hefty wages, with those bail outs going for many of their bonuses. Hostess went bankrupt shortly after their executives got big fat bonuses themselves, while those same executives were demanding their labor force take a pay-cut. Naturally, they only blamed the labor when the company went under.

The good news though, is that you can directly influence the amount of money a CEO gets paid. Just stop buying products / services from their company, and get enough people to do the same.

Not always an option, especially in rural areas. If you don't want to contribute money to the oil companies, well, too bad because you still need to drive a car to function and every time you fill up the tank, you contibute to them. You want to go shopping without contributing to Walmart? Good luck if Walmart is the only store within 30 miles. It gets worse when poverty is added tothe mix and people have plenty of other options, we just can't really afford any of them.

[houseofcantor]

Meh. I wouldn't do it. Ya gotta be a psychopath for that job, and I ain't that kinda psychopath. And I don't see how it could be fixed without 'watching the world burn,' so I'm just gonna sit over here and ignore it and obsess over my Gwynnies.

[Mister Agenda]

The issue here is value of labour. You get just about any body that will make a good employee at macdonalds, where as few people have what it takes to run one of these massive companies. Some of those guys spend 16 hours a day building those companies from the ground up, others slit some throats to get into position, and many do both.

I understand that and I'm not suggesting that a burger flipper deserves to earn wages equal to the salary of the CEO. I'm suggesting that the difference in labor value is not exponential. CEOs should make more, no argument there. What I want to know is, what is the justification for CEOs making obscene amounts of money off the backs of people he pays so little that those people can't afford to live a life secure from poverty?

I can never be a libertarian because I cannot come up with even the slightest justification for the proposition that people who literally have no material need should be able to continue accumulating unnecessary personal wealth at the direct expense of people who can't afford basic survival with (or in many tragic cases, without) government assistance, let alone a moderate, minimally secure lifestyle.

CEOs of major companies can still be ridiculously wealthy while paying their employees enough for a financially-secure lifestyle. Owners of small businesses can still make enough for a comfortable lifestyle while paying their employees enough for a financially-secure lifestyle. If they can't, why should they be owning or operating buisnesses? They are clearly not good at it.

The big money CEOs (most of them are not Fortune 500) are so highly paid for much the same reason basketball stars are highly paid: they're a scarce commodity that makes a big difference on how much the franchise can bring in, so there's a bidding war for their services. They're paid what it takes to keep them from working for someone else. They're offered golden parachutes so if it doesn't work out they leave quietly--like a prenup to avoid a messy divorce, it's worth it. Capping their pay and benefits to, say, 10x the pay of their lowest paid employee would have...interesting...economic effects.

[Assimilate]

CEO's obviously aren't the enemy, but I think CEO's pay is a vital part in making an argument. CEO's are obviously in the position they are in for a reason, and yes they deserve to get paid. But most corporations don't seem to care much for a majority of their employees. I don't think cutting a CEO's pay is the answer, but if you can give a CEO a multi million dollar raise, then you can obviously afford giving out raises to other employees.

[kılıç_mehmet]

CEO's obviously aren't the enemy, but I think CEO's pay is a vital part in making an argument. CEO's are obviously in the position they are in for a reason, and yes they deserve to get paid. But most corporations don't seem to care much for a majority of their employees. I don't think cutting a CEO's pay is the answer, but if you can give a CEO a multi million dollar raise, then you can obviously afford giving out raises to other employees.

Very true. CEO's aren't the real cause of the problem.
The real cause is that the companies fail to recognize that if a company makes profit, workers are also entitled to get a portion of that profit.
In my view, a worker that works knowing that his work is appreciated by his boss is a lot better than one that feels more and more like a serf with each passing payday.