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Raising minimum wage?
I've noticed the minimum wage has been going up steadily in various parts of the U.S. over the last couple of years. Today there was a story about it on the front page of the 'paper, and it sparked a debate in the newsroom.
My argument was that raising the minimum wage doesn't help those at the bottom, but actually hurts them. When employers are forced to pay their employees more money, many will have to lay off some of their workers in order to pay those they keep the new higher wage. This also, of course, leads to price inflation. Don't be fooled, when wages go up, the price of living goes up, hence minimum wage being higher in the parts of the country that require more money to live. I honestly don't see the benefits of continuing to raise the minimum wage, but I'm open to arguments for it; I just haven't heard a good one yet. |
Inflation?
You can't freeze minimum wage indefinitely, and you can't tell me the minimum wage is the biggest factor on inflation. Or can you? |
im sorry, but Prove it.
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You might get a chance to test your theory. Schwarzan.... Shwarts.... The 'Governator' is about to sign an executive order which lowers the wages of over 200,000 California government employees from $8 an hour to $6.55 an hour. We're planning on protesting over the weekend, but there's little hope as Schwarzenegger has ignored our previous protests (even the big ones). He's trying to fix the $15b budget deficit.
After a few months of this, it's possible that we could see an effect on some of California's economy. I suspect that it could be a rise in homelessness and possibly strikes. I don't mean to threadjack, but as someone who lives here I'm sure you understand that $6.55 just isn't going to cut it. I doubt I could survive in San Jose for less than $25k a year. |
I agree with GD, I thought that minimum wage went up as the cost of living did, if even then. Some salaried jobs offer a cost of living raise yearly. Is this hurting the economy also?
I don't see a problem raising minimum wage to keep up with the constant increase in cost of living. Things recently have gotten worse so there needs to be an increase more than ever. Wil, I can't believe that Cali is lowering minimum wage. That is one of the most expensive states to live in. Even as teachers, we couldn't afford to live in San Francisco the way we are used to in Chicago. |
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There are myriad reasons for the inflation present in the US economy. The biggest? I dunno, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the massive amount of cash the Fed prints and the fact that it's not backed.
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The economics of minimum wage are pretty darn complicated. More than I understand, anyway.
The good ole' wikipedia has an introduction: Minimum wage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The argument in favor of minimum wage that works best for me is the fact that it provides a good minimum floor for wages. Otherwise, low-skilled people have precious little bargaining power in employment situations. It's depressingly easy for employers to exploit employees otherwise. Minimum wage is at least 'some' money, even if it isn't enough to live on in many parts of the country. |
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Zapatista! |
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That's it. I'm gonna say it. GirlDetective for president. :thumbsup: |
Whisper afl-cio in my ear and I purr. meow.
(Im not too worried my words will be used out of context in the next election - after all, whats the likelihood of a girl getting elected?) I dont think Ive ever heard of minimum wage going down. Thats really catastrophic and sets a terrible precedent. |
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Governments never try to eliminate unemployment altogether. They consciously use that as an essential consideration. (Forgive me if this doesn't make sense; I'm tired....) |
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Look, the truth is that shareholders need to put pressure on the executives to cut their multimillion dollar salaries, expense accounts and other perk and PAY the workers more for those companies still having US workers.
In cutting these people's pay and perks and make them actually accountable and base their salaries on performance, you might see increases in business. Then you pay the worker more and the worker has more incentive to work harder and be company loyal. The worker works harder, has more disposable income and isn't worried so much about living paycheck to paycheck, they have less stress, can buy more and the economy moves forward at a galloping pace. The added benefit is tax revenue increases without raising taxes. Look at it like this....... the CEO of company X makes 10 million a year. Company X employs 1,000 workers. Now, that CEO pays let's say 2.5 mill in taxes because he has a good accountant. Now with the rest he's taking tips, buying his wife jewelry, a yacht, some foreign cars, invest in "safe global companies" and so on, nothing that really helps the local economy. But, you cut his wages in 1/2, give that money to the employees as raises.... they go out and buy furniture, American made cars, appliances, maybe invest in companies stocks, buy real estate, new houses get built, invest in community businesses and support the community. Infrastructure gets rebuilt, the inner cities and downtowns can begin to get cleaned up, meaning more jobs, meaning more tax revenue and business is brought into the community and so on. The workers have more money to send their kids to college, less tax money to support the colleges, fewer loans needed. The colleges, if they receive ANY governmental funding in any way, should be legally obliged to freeze tuitions and can only raise it once every 10 years. The community begins to thrive, more people support Company X. Sales for Company X start to increase, the CEO begins to make his incentives, the employees make their incentives. There is less turnover, which means less training and fewer man hours lost, which means better quality products because of stability. That is how capitalism and the market NEEDS to work. That is how a country and it's citizens maintain an economic harmony. If we cannot do that, if we choose not to DEMAND that this happen, if we continue to let the rich get richer on the backs of the working class we will continue to fall downward into oblivion. We no longer have the option of waiting for all this to work itself out.... WE MUST DEMAND THAT THIS IS DONE NOW. We also need to make sure companies get penalized for outsourcing jobs and exploiting workers in other countries. If GE, FORD, Microsoft, Nike, etc.... choose to send jobs overseas, then they must pay those workers the same wages as they do here AND be held responsible for the lost tax revenue lost by the workers they took jobs away from. Neither party nor MAJOR presidential candidate will ever say this or propose any idea like this. Why????? Because both parties are wanting those CEOs money and donations and support. NEITHER PARTY, NEITHER CANDIDATE GIVES A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOU OR YOUR PROBLEMS.... ALL THEY WANT IS THE POWER TO PUSH THEIR AGENDAS: GUN CONTROL, PRO-LIFE/ABORTION, ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT TAKES MORE RIGHTS AWAY FROM YOU AND GIVES THEM MORE FUCKING POWER. How many on this board truly think cigarettes, trans fat, Howard Stern, Janet Jackson's tit, abortion, gun control, speed limits, and so on need to be given to FEDERAL POWERS?????? Hopefully, not many of you. I would much rather live in a world where I am paid a respectable wage and have some disposable income, where the economic classes are closer and in a world where I CAN MAKE THE CHOICE OF LISTENING TO WHOM I WANT, WATCHING WHAT I WANT, OWNING OR NOT OWNING A GUN, LETTING WOMEN DECIDE THAT CHOICE {PROVIDED THE FATHER DOESN'T WANT THE CHILD}, HAVING THE LOCAL CITY, COUNTY, STATE SET THE SPEED LIMITS, HAVING BUSINESSES DECIDE BY THE MARKETPLACE WHETHER THEY WANT TO HAVE SMOKERS THERE, AND SO ON...... THEN TO WATCH MY COUNTRYMEN LIVE IN POVERTY, FORECLOSURES, AND DICTATED TO. GIVE ME FUCKING LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND FREEDOM AND WE ALL WILL HAVE A BETTER, HAPPIER, MORE PROSPEROUS, BRIGHTLY FUTURED COUNTRY IN WHICH TO LIVE..... TAKE MY LIBERTIES, MY EQUALITIES AND MY CHOICES AWAY AND WE ALL WILL DIE IN BONDAGE AND INDEBTEDNESS TO GREEDY, POWER HUNGRY BASTARDS THAT NEVER GAVE A SHIT ABOUT ANY OF US BUT FILLED US WITH GRIEF, DEPRESSION, HATRED AND ANGER. IT IS YOUR CHOICE..... IT IS YOUR NEIGHBORS CHOICE..... SPEAK OUT NOW, DEMAND CHANGE NOW OR DIE LIKE COWARDS IN DEPRESSION, ANGER, HATE AND HAVE THE FUTURE GENERATIONS LIVING IN WORSE SHAPE THAN WE EVER IMAGINED AND CURSING US FOR NOT DOING ANYTHING WHEN WE STILL HAD THE CHANCE TO SAVE THEM. |
The rationale for minimum wage/maximum hours, as I see it, is to prevent sweatshops, basically. We as a society made a decision that there are certain minimum working conditions that we insist on if someone is going to work for pay. There's a tradeoff for that, which is that if someone has no skills or skills that are worth less than minimum wage, s/he is unemployable - the employer is prohibited from hiring that person at the wage that s/he is actually worth, so s/he won't get hired. Thankfully we have not recently been in an economic situation where the legal minimum wage has much effect, because lately the legal minimum wage has been for the most part below market-based minimum (with some exceptions for extremely low-skilled jobs that are filled mainly by part-timers and students). I'm OK with minimum wage laws precisely because they usually set the minimum wage below almost all of the market - it prohibits sweatshop-like conditions while still not interfering with market mechanisms. And I'm OK with raising it so long as it's below that level.
The other rationales I have seen for raising it don't have any rationale that couldn't be applied to a number double or triple what the current minimum is. So why not double or triple it? The answer has to be that once you double or triple it, there are tradeoffs that will hurt the macro employment level - but then it you have to acknowledge that there are tradeoffs at EVERY level. They just happen to be more favorable overall with the minimum wage at low levels. Timing-wise, I think GD and Shesus are correct that increases in the minimum tend to follow increases in cost of living. That's how our political system works - it isn't proactive, it's reactive. In terms of pan's post - pan, there isn't enough money in CEO salaries as an aggregate group to make a noticeable difference in workers' lives. If a company has 50,000 employees and the CEO makes $20million, you could take his whole salary away and divide it up -- and each employee will get $400. (Most CEOs of public companies make a lot less than that.) But then you still need a CEO. Good ones don't grow on trees, and you'd still need to find and pay the new CEO. So what do you suggest - outlawing CEOs? Good ones create lots and lots of wealth and lots and lots of jobs. We can argue about how much they should be paid, but it would need to be a lot of money any way you slice it - if your'e responsible for billions of dollars in assets and tens of thousands of jobs, you should be paid a lot of money. I know I couldn't possibly do that job, and I bet you couldn't either. Even some of the people who DO that job aren't very good at it (which is why CEOs get fired). The really good ones are unbelievably talented people. |
Good post, loquitur. It makes a lot of sense out of the issues.
And on the issue of CEOs, you'd be hard pressed to get investment dollars if you don't have good management. It all comes down to the management of corporations regardless of other factors in many cases. And without investment dollars, everyone in the company suffers. |
i haven't time to do justice to this, but i'll just note that what separates the logic of the first part of pan's post from loquitor's really is a politics of wealth creation. in the land of neoliberalism, it is a commonplace to claim that capital creates value. in the land of social-democracy (loosely speaking) it is the expenditure of labor power that creates value (working people, reduced to the bearers of labor power via capitalist wage relations)---this split is amongst the oldest ideological conflicts within and about capitalism.
at the descriptive level, there's an obvious symbiosis at work. at the political level, that i have a marxist side indicates where i think the emphasis should fall. gd: afl cio? sector monopoly trade unions? the worst possible model for thinking about organization of working folk. but as we now know, it's organization and is better than contemporary powerlessness. but still.... |
Loquiter said :
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rb : I know its pedestrian, but I wanted to get my point across. Put your paddle away...or was that a whisper?! |
As an indirect investor via 401k and IRAs, I want the CEO to create wealth for the corporation. In order to attract a CEO who can do such things, one must compensate in order to attract the talent.
As a direct shareholder of stock, I demand that the Board of Directors be competent in selecting and approving CEOs and their compensation package. There are some like Steve Jobs who get little to no salary, just stockholder options and the benefits of those options. Average citizens cannot demand it of private or public corporations, but shareholders and investors can. They have and continue to do so. Pan, if you don't know or understand this, you are out of touch with how the system works. With regards to upping the minimum wage, there are some in the lower tiers of the workforce that are psychologically tied to the minimum wage. They see that as the base line from which they are trying to move away from. So if you up minimum wage to $12 an hour all those people who were getting paid $12 now feel like they are worth more than "minimum wage." I always hated managing people during minimum wage increases becasue it always lead to losing 1 or 2 people who felt they were entitled to a raise because minimum wage was increasd, so they should be increased as well. |
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See there was a time in this country when the CEO lived and died by what his company was able to produce. If Goodyear had a strong year the Seiberling family made money, if Hoover had a bad year the Hoover family didn't make as much that year, and so on. But today..... we pay these guys millions, they come in run a company into the gutter and get bonuses. There are a few good ones maybe like Jobs, Ford's CEO who took a cut in pay, and a couple others but anymore.... it's not about the company it's about how much they can make and what's in their severance package. You want to pay someone 500 times the company's average worker, then he better fucking produce 500 times what they do. Another argument above was Quote:
Secondly, there aren't many companies that have 50,000 employees in the US. If you take my example CEO of Company X making 10 mill a year, that includes perks and cut it in 1/2 then give the 1000 workers an equal share, you increased their pay 5000 dollars a year. May not seem like much more but an extra 100 dollars a pay, I'm sure can really help a lot more of those workers than that money helped that CEO. And if you take other executives pay and do the same, those workers will see even more. If you read what I wrote, you'd also see that in paying the workers more, making the CEOs, boards and upper management more responsible for company growth, you'd see that I said as sales increased so naturally would their salaries. I'm sorry, as a stockholder I want to see a CEO maintain a strong company that workers are treated fairly, the company maintains a strong community bond, the company maintains a strong positive image on it's products and if it shows a loss the CEO and upper management show losses in their bank accounts. If a CEO can't accept that challenge then, perhaps you have the wrong man/woman in the job. How much money is enough? When does one realize they have too much? When you see your country failing and people losing homes, jobs, pride and their dreams.... how much buys you a true good night's sleep? In the end, it's never been the rich that have started revolutions, spoken out or fought for equality..... it has been the poor who have been taken advantage of, who have gotten to a point where they see nothing to lose and everything to gain in changing the system, either peacefully or in most cases very violently. We will soon come to that point. And again I ask, what are you doing now to try to make changes so it won't happen. People right now are looking for a savior president to pull us out of all this shit. When he can't or won't and more people lose their houses, jobs, dreams and pride..... we will see the people rise up in masses demanding change and that hope and pride and their dreams given back. YOU as a stock holder have the chance now to speak out and demand CEO, Board, Upper Management accountability to the stockholders and the workers NOW. You as a citizen, as a member of society and as gatekeepers to the future generations of this country have an obligation to speak out NOW. Here's some links to read..... CEOs Are Overpaid Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS 2008 Executive PayWatch |
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Unions helped stop that. Unions made sure that the workers got their share. However, unions got to powerful and to corrupt and needed limiting... but when we did that the CEO's and upper management then became too powerful, greedy and corrupt. Now, we need to find a balance between the 2 or we will become a third world nation and if we become a third world nation, so goes all of the world and we enter a whole new feudal society/dark ages. If we, here in America get our shit together and correct this NOW, we can set examples for the rest of the world. If we don't we show the rest of the world Capitalism fails and in the end this great society our forefathers built so proudly and with so much hope, will have died because we did nothing and our future generations will be left to wonder why. |
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It already works that way. Many of the executives and executive commitees are tied to extensive bonus programs that are tied into bottom line figures. No increase in profits, no bonus. There are even programs for the lowest workers called profit sharing. There are even employee share discount programs where employees can purchase stock at discounted prices. There are gifts of stock, performance options and other very real compensation programs at many companies. Not all participate in them, but that's no different than the old days of "full medical and full dental with optical." -----Added 25/7/2008 at 02 : 30 : 49----- I'd also like to point out that a board of directors is not one individual. They make decisions based on voting. I'm on the Board of Directors for the company that owns the buildings we live in. We have a $2M deficit. We have to raise funds in order to meet that shortfall, but instead of passing an increase maintenance to the shareholders to meet that, we only passed an increase of 10% which is about $1M shy of what is required. What does this have to do with anything? Well it takes a majority of votes by the Board of Directors to pass any resolutions. So if they don't get the votes, it doesn't matter what the shareholders demand. |
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What profits are they bringing? I guess you missed my point that IF you pay the workers more, allow them more disposable income, they buy more, they work harder so that your products are better.... and in turn YOU make more, the shareholders make more and ALL profit. Where exactly has the Dow been going? But those CEO's and upper management guys are making you dividends and your stocks are skyrocketing because the profits are pouring in ..... :thumbsup:. Yeah. Ok then. Let the average guy lose his house, watch his dreams go to Hell, but you make your fucking profit and pay that CEO to ship more jobs out. Good luck with that. |
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If they get paid more. IF IF IF IF. More doom and gloom. But the reality isn't that. Yet, there are companies that are profitable that are listed on the NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ. They may not be record breaking profits but they are profits nonetheless. Just like when the companies that you have mentioned are profitable there are others that are not. That's why investors are not supposed to only invest in one sector, but to stay diverse so that they can ride out the rough patches. FWIW, I want the average guy to lose his house if the average guy bought it with an interest only or ARM loan. Screw him for signing a marker that he couldn't cover. Just like I wanted gas to go up to get those casual SUV drivers. You play you pay. It's that simple. |
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pan, a company with only 1000 workers likely won't be paying its CEO $10million in comp. You need to have revenues of several billions to be in that sort of league. That's why your example doesn't make sense.
Roachboy, I think you're oversimplifying (besides calling me "neoliberal," which is kinda funny). I don't think it's capital that creates wealth. Capital can't do noodlysquat without labor because you can't eat money and someone has to run the machines. But labor can't do much on its own either. Capitalism is a cooperative venture - both segments contribute their bit and take out of it what they can in a fair exchange of value. They allocate risks and rewards among themselves according to the market. Pan, I'm curious - what is the reason for your objection - do you think CEOs should make less simply because they make a lot and you don't think anyone should make that much money? Or do you think most CEOs don't earn their compensation? The approach you would take to the issue will vary depending on your answer. If it's the first, then basically you're advocating some variant of socialism. If it's the second, then it's an issue for the board and shareholders to address - it's their money and their fiduciary obligations that are on the line. In a free country, people are allowed to do stupid things, like pay a mediocre CEO more than s/he is worth. It might not be wise, but it's really not your problem. The fallacy in your reasoning is that you assume any reduction in the CEO's pay would go to the employees. Not so. It might go to investments, new equipment, cash for stock buybacks, shareholder dividends or other corporate purposes. You can't assume that the CEO's pay comes out of other workers' pockets - you simply don't know which pocket it comes from. |
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There has been a growing trend for companies to buy up their existing stock to go private. They got tired of getting beaten up by shareholders to have record profits each and every quarter. Our company sold off some assets. We thought they'd keep the cash liquid for operating expenses, but instead bought back stock. |
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Some CEO's are strong and do what it takes to keep workers working and make sure the company grows even in the worst of times, maintaining the best environment possible. However, the vast majority of the big companies these days don't. As for their severance packages, I'm sorry if they run the company down, they don't deserve anything when they are fired. There have been companies in the recent past that have been destroyed because of upper management's golden parachutes. The stock holders lost, the workers lost but those who were supposed to be the leaders of these companies actually gained millions. If you can't find a CEO willing to take risks and knows he profits when the company and workers do and loses when the company does.... then you have the wrong person in that job. Sorry, but recent past events and current events show the CEOs are so invested only in themselves that they will bankrupt a company and cost thousands their jobs if that means they can make more money than they will doing their job. I just want accountability and a fair distribution of wages. You want to say the CEO has more to lose if the company loses.... then fucking prove it. I have yet to see such proof. |
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For years when minimum wages were first legislated at both the state and federal level, economists were divided on the impact. In the last 10-15 years, more and more studies suggest that that the impact is positive. There is little question that the overall impact of a minimum wage is positive, as the following facts make clear:There is plenty of research for those interested....and yes, I am glad this is not a pub discussion! |
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Egalitarian, capitalist societies with proper regulatory structures are supposed to limit fat-catting. Unfortunately, looking at CEO profits lately, it seems to me that this model has broken down a bit lately. I'm not sure exactly what the cause is, but I wonder if institutional investment has something to do with it - when the CEO and board of directors vote themselves unreasonable pay, the shareholders are supposed to revolt and kick the bums out. But when a lot of companies are majority-owned by big banks and institutions, who are in turn run by execs who want their *own* pay raises... Quote:
A couple I can think of: 1) Transparency - shareholders need to be able to understand the financial structure of the companies they invest in, and know who's making money at the top. 2) Regulation - conservatives love to bash this, but I think regulation is absolutely key in all sorts of areas. I'm absolutely a capatalist, but I don't believe that the invisible hand will always produce what's best for society as a whole any more than I believe in the tooth fairy. 3) A progressive...but not too progressive...tax structure, especially one that taxes income from work at the same or a lesser rate than income from investing. Let me break out my reasoning for the third point a little more. First, I think it's obscene for a rich country to allow people to have inadequite basic necessities. If people can't or won't provide for their own basic food, shelter, and medical needs, then I think it's totally appropriate for the government to do so. And I did say ~*basic*~ needs. Government-provided stuff should be as basic and utilitarian as possible. If you don't like it, then work for something better. Whether you implement that as a government-mandated 'minimum income' for everyone, or as government-provided food, housing, etc, doesn't matter so much to me. Second, our current tax system seems tilted very much towards taxing income that's the result of work far more than income that's the result of investment. Which is exactly backwards to me. Investment is absolutely necessary, of course, and we shouldn't discourage it to much. But how does it make sense that someone who worked to produce something of value gets taxed *more* than someone who invested money? |
If the government is going to control wages by enforcing a minimum wage rate I wonder why they set the number below the poverty level. Why not make the minimum wage something that people can live on like $15 an hour or so and since we are in the wage control business why not set the maximum wage as well? Maybe something like the highest paid person in a company cannot make more than 100 times the lowest. Executives would be scrambling to raise the lowest wages.:)
I also wonder why Arnold decided to balance the budget by lowering the wages of the lowest paid workers instead of lowering the wages of the highest paid? |
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Then, lets punish the people who have to drive to work, let's destroy the trucking industry, let's truly push inflation, let's really rip apart the rest of the economy by pumping those gas prices higher to teach those wealthy bastards who drive Hummers a lesson. Sure, the poor slob and his family barely making it now goes bankrupt in the process, but those SUV drivers will suffer a little bit. How very humanitarian you are. :rolleyes::shakehead: BTW, no Loquiter I am not against people making as much as they can. I am against CEOs and upper managements taking huge salaries and benefits while their workers make wages that barely allow them to live. I am against watching CEOs and Boards of Directors outsource jobs, lay off 100's, and post huge losses while they pad themselves with higher salaries and bigger benefits. I believe those people should enjoy windfalls only when the companies that employ them do and suffer losses when the companies that employ them suffer losses. Thank you Robot Parade and FLSTF for great posts. Robot, I must say that your post is one of the best I have read in a very long, long time. :thumbsup: |
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Noble? Fuck that. I didn't bite off more than I can chew. I'm not the spendaholic. Why do I have to go to rehab? I saved money while people took out home equity loans. I saved my money and didn't refinance and take cash out of my primary residence like it was an ATM. I didn't lease a car and wind up in a leasee trap having to release a new vehicle every end of contract because someone didn't save for a downpayment to buy another vehicle. But you keep telling yourself that we still need to go out and buy or spend our way out of this mess. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/business/20debt.html No, see as far as I can tell there are people who saved their money and are buying bargains now. I just bought another house, my third in fact. It goes out on the rental market tomorrow. There are people buying up real estate owned (bank owned properties) at record speed. And no I didn't buy this property with an interest only mortgage, 20% down, cash from savings. Not some exotic piggy back loan, 0% down payment. Maybe I should have just squandered my money and equity because Nanny State will take care of me and bail me out of trouble. Another company will buy up their assets, no different than bargain houses. Companies buy up other companies all the time. Hey but you'd rather bail out people and companies who made mistakes. No consequences for them or their actions. Great! You keep telling yourself that story, because as far as I can tell there are plenty of people out there doing just fine even some people who are making minimum wage. It's a simple process really. It's called living within your means. Your spending cannot exceed your income. |
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nobody will ever see limits on how much anyone can make in America, never happen. Quote:
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Second, there are people who bought more house they can afford, even with a reasonable interest rate. They're going to lose their house. However, I think the guvment could maybe help out - like offer incentives for low-interest loans, based upon what their credit score would be without the defaulted mortgage, or something along those lines. Third, there are the people who just got fucked. They didn't understand the terms of the loan they were taking on...their realtor/mortage company promised they'd be able to refinance before the ARM blew up, or hell, they just gambled wrong - hard to tell the difference between these options, really. I think we (the gubmint) should help these people out. Personally, I liked the idea of allowing judges (or more practically, a state-appointed arbiter) to rewrite the terms of the mortgages. With proper guideles (ie, minimum interest rate so the lender isn't screwed), an arbiter can look at the individual situation, and make a call that's fair to both parties. Why? Why do these people deserve a bail-out? Well, some of them were simply misled. Sure, they should've known what they were getting in to. Personal responsability is great. But they trusted the mortgage company and the realtor not to sell them a loan they couldn't afford. Are they any more at fault than the person who goes in for an oil change and leaves with $300 worth of 'repairs' that he just 'had to have'? We go to professionals and would like to not be fucked in the ass. When the mortgage company says 'you can afford this', and 'sure, you can just refinance after three years before the arm adjusts, no problem', we expect that to be true. And lots of people were told exactly that. Even more than a matter of who deserves to be bailed out, consider the impact on society as a whole? Is it better to have the banks make a little less money than they'd hoped, or have thousands of families lose their homes, the homes stand vacant, etc., etc. What really drives me nuts is that the same congress that argues for months whether people who took on bad loans deserve a 'bail out' jump into action in a matter of weeks to bail out a bank, because allowing it to collapse is unacceptable. Now, it's probably true that the consequences of allowing companies like Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac are bad enough that we are better off bailing them off than not. Fine. But shouldn't the companies (and their CEOs and shareholders) face some consequences for their poor actions. And guess what, the consequences of having a few thousand people kicked out of their homes are pretty bad, too. Quote:
Now, maybe the gubmint should do some things to smooth things out a bit. Give people time to adjust to the inevitable. But oil is going to run out. We need to deal with it. The sooner, the better. Quote:
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Pan, how do you feel about baseball players making huge salaries? Movie stars?
You don't see that the market for different kinds of talent works more or less the same, and that really good CEOs (or those who are expected to be really good CEOs) get huge compensation? If you pay a ballplayer a big hump of money and he has a bad year, or you pay an actress a huge payday for what turns out to be a flop, what do you think should be done about it? What is done about it is that they keep the payday and then they are tainted goods for the next job they try to get - which is approximately what happens to CEOs who don't deliver. They get fired and then have some problems getting a comparable job next time around. Why is this such a mystery? Why are people so hung up on the fact that some people make a lot of money? |
It is worth mentioning that high compensation and high severance packages for CEOs is a necessity to draw these highly talented executives into these positions of running large companies. These men and women can probably do any number of things to make the same amount of money (or more) rather than be the one responsible for the helm of a modern multinational corporation.
The likelihood of a CEO getting fired is extremely high in just about every CEO posting when compared to other careers and positions. When a company brings a new CEO in from outside, it is usually done when they are in a tight spot financially. In some cases, companies are trying to restructure to survive. This is why the position is being filled, a CEO left or was fired. So, we must keep in mind that taking a CEO position is often a high-risk situation. The pay is high for this reason, in addition to the fact that the company wants to attract hard-to-find talent. The severance agreements are high to encourage CEO risk-taking. If the penalty for being fired was high (i.e. no severance), any CEO would be tempted to stagnate and play it conservatively so they can continue to receive a salary and possibly stock options. The problem with that, is conservative CEOs often run into trouble with the company because risk-taking involves pursuing new ventures and initiatives that are necessary for growing the business. With stagnation, the CEO will lose stock options and other bonuses from a loss of performance and company profitability, but they will still have their salary. But they will likely get fired. In this case, everyone loses. By having high salaries, bonuses, and severance packages, a company can remain competitive in being able to attract risk-taking and talented executives into a CEO position that is, by all means, not intended to be a long-term contract in and of itself. It is all about performance. That said, it is also important to note that the disparity between CEO compensation and employee compensation is more market-based than it is based on bad practices. Companies also realize that to remain competitive with employee talent, they need to have compensation that is competitive within their respective industries. But this is another issue. What about minimum wage? Well, where does it exist? Mainly in the service sector, such as retail, entertainment, and food services. The raising of the minimum wage is a necessity depending on economic indicators. It is a challenge that many companies need to deal with, and to suggest an easy solution is idealistic, as this is also something that is market-based. If they hadn't raised minimum wage when I had first started to earn one back in the early '90s, minimum wage earners would still be making CDN$4.55 per hour in Ontario today. Try living on that. |
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For instance: Executive Pay: CEO Pay Up 298%, Average Worker's? 4.3% (1995-2005) So, if that article is correct, since 1990, corporate profits have doubled, CEO pay is up about 300%, and the average worker is making...4.3% more. Why? |
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But in regards to the average worker, a 4.3% increase is more than double the average annual rate of inflation for that same period, so workers are generally better off. I doubt you could have increased worker pay by as much as 300% and still maintain profitability. Even something like 5% or 6% would be unsustainable. Worker cost is generally a high one as an overall percentage of business costs. I know it doesn't sound fair, but I will repeat what I said in my previous post: This is more market-based than based on "fairness," whatever that is. EDIT: I just realized that this is a "cumulative" increase, which means inflation has eroded worker earnings by as much as 16% to 18% over the period. Okay, well, that sucks. Fine. But I still say this is market-based. I blame globalization. |
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Why does it seem to be that immigrants (both illegal and legal) seem to be able to better themselves and their position over time both fiscally and socially than those that are born here? Quote:
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According to the NY Business Law Board of Directors are not allowed ANY compensation. It is the same from state to state. It is a volunteer position on top of their normal day to day job. The CEO doesn't set his salary. The Board of Directors sets the salary of the executive management team, including the CEO. Now, again this is about attracting talent. If I'm on one board of directors, the chances of me being asked to be on another board is very high, because I've got a talent of sorts. So there are a number of executives that are employed by one company and then sit on the board of others. Why is that? Because they understand how business should be run and how to increase profits and direct executives. Understand that CEOs bring major changes and budgets to the BoD who then approve or disapprove things. They work in tandem for checks and balances, not for conspiracy. |
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I'm way to young to have the experience necessary to be one of these super-CEOs, but eventually I might. I can't imagine a company slashing worker's wages or not continuing to pay them to match the cost of living just so I can get my second yacht being a smart business move. Maybe it's because of my opportunity to be pro-labor despite being in a management position, but it feels unbalanced to completely favor the man of vision over those who make the vision a reality. It should be equal. |
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Even just managing people, you have that same responsibilty whether you like it or not. If my boss says to lay off X members of my staff, I have to do it. I may not like it, but it is a requirement of my position. I fought for every nickel, dime, and dollar that my staff got. My team got paid more than any other because I documented their workload and showed it in comparison to other teams. I was not really liked by other managers because I made them look bad. It's not friends, it's business. A wise executive said to me once, "As the manager of people, you are responsible for the quality of the food that is on your employees table." I take that to heart when I have any direct reports, but sometimes things like budgets get in the way. Sometimes that's the reality of the minimum wage issue. I get a pot of money that is my budget. I have X amount of headcount and have to divy that money up between them all. Once I make everyone's pay commensurate with their experience and tenure, there's little left for favoritism and extras. -----Added 28/7/2008 at 10 : 57 : 10----- Further, I hated merit review time. It is a farce for the most part. Again, I get a pool of money, which is usually around 3% increase of the budget. This means I can give everyone a 3% increase. How do I reward the guy who busts his ass and works more than everyone els? But what about the guy that fucks around? I can give everyone 2.75% and then have a point or two to give away if my staff is large enough. Or I can give the fuckoff less of a raise and pass that to someone else. So I did just that for someone who watched soccer all the time while everyone busted their ass. I gave him a 2.5% increase and he went ballistic. I decided that he could either take the 2.5% increase or he could look for another job. He thought he had me cornered, but by the end of the day, he was packing his things and out the door. C'mon will, you should know this stuff about budgets and employees. If you don't, you didn't really manage, you supervised. |
Will, I don't think there is any CEO out there who cuts little people's salaries for the purpose of freeing up money so he can buy a second yacht. That's a cartoon, that's not reality.
What's going on with CEO salaries is, as I said, similar to movie star or sports star salaries. There are a tiny number of people who are qualified for them and the competition to attract the talent is intense. It's a high-risk, high reward job, and there are lots of flameouts. I'm really amazed at why people find this to be so mysterious. The rewards of being at the very top of one's game are enormous relative to the second tier - and this is true not just for CEOs but for any similar kind of endeavor where the talent pool is shallow and the stakes are high. If CEOs were easy to replace they would be a lot less expensive. But they're not. |
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I was a good manager because I was able to prevent the ignorant people around me from abusing the underlings. Abused underlings, to quote Office Space, work just hard enough not to get fired. -----Added 28/7/2008 at 11 : 16 : 55----- Quote:
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I'm not sure why you brought the owner's salary into the picture. You don't think the owner of a company, who put their own money up and risked financial ruin to get the company off the ground, should benefit more than the teenager he hired to hump a shovel? |
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You worked for a private company. You worked for a small company. What the OWNER decides to make as salary was probably not that amount at all. Not to mention that it is the OWNERS choice as to what to pay his employees. I'd also state that forming a union is noble but hey great! I'm a small business owner. I've got lots of ways to prevent my employees from unionizing. From outsourcing human resources to firing employees who talked about unionizing. See it's all great to say and do these things, the reality is, the guy who signs the checks decides who stays employed. Again, the quality of the food, I'd choose to not give you any food. |
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and again, so they got a little more in wages... .whooop. the "owner" still took home more than the lion's share. You know why that's fair? Because the owner takes all the risk. The owner puts up all the capital money, equipment, and expenses. That's business 101. Again, not much different than the CEO. |
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Actually no it isn't. If there's 1 illegal alien willing to do the work, there's another few also willing to do it. ALL labor is replaceable. Even cheap mexican labor... |
We're getting a bit sidetracked on a different issue (which has lead to rather unspeakable things in the past :expressionless:).
Neeways, it's okay to admit that while the CEO is important, the men and women upon who's backs the company stands are also important. McDonalds doesn't work without servers. Toyota doesn't work without guys in dress shirts and clip on ties. |
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Labor is pretty much supply and demand. The most stable and reliable job is accounting. Sorry it's not sexy or glamorous or exciting, but it pays the bills and puts very good food on your table. Of course, most people don't want to hear this and would rather whine and complain that the "man" is sticking it to them because they can't get a job as an artist, actor, underwater basket weaver, feminist, philosopher, poet whatever. People make their choices. I decided I didn't want to work a shit job anymore so I learned what I needed to do to get a better one. I worked my ass off at Starbucks, saved my money and went to community college at night. My customers loved me because I worked hard and gave good service. As a such, I felt comfortable enough to ask them how they got where they got. Pretty much all the same answers. They went to school. Some of my coworkers did the same. However, others would rather spend their money on cigarettes, tattoos and piercings. Then they would sit around in their free time while complaining how the world was keeping them down. It's what you make of it. Develop your skills to make yourself competitive and your wage will increase. Work hard. Most of my coworkers always made fun of me for working hard. They would say, you don't own the store, why do you care? Or they would cut corners etc. I didn't mind because it just reduced my competition. Now these people are serving me my Starbucks and pumping my gas and I tip them too when I feel like it. Sky's the limit if you work hard and put your mind to it. Not bad for a son of immigrants that came to this country with $50 and 2 suitcases. First thing my parents did was learn English because they knew they had to if they wanted to get good jobs. |
this is all very strange.
a/ when folk think about wage levels, they now by-pass questions of control at the level of the firm or sector and think wage---market relations and higher wages-->inflation. during the fordist period, which dissolved in the early 1970s, higher wages for working people were fundamental to integration of working people into the machinery of consumption---the politics of wages were entirely different--and strange (though this is not the only explanation) the fordist system worked relatively well. you know, more equitable, more stable than is the current barbarism. b/ there's a bizarre-o moral economy abroad in the land as well, thanks in large part to the workings of the conservative media apparatus----which has managed, by smart packaging of empty bromides enabled by deep funding which enabled the Key Factor in Ideological Conflict---repetition---to be worked to their advantage---which managed to convince people that a ceo "works harder" than someone with a minimum wage job. fact is that in terms of expenditure of physical energy, the opposite is true. the more onerous the task, the less you get paid for it. sitting in a chair is not that hard. it really isn't. this entirely counterfactual notion of the hard-workin, hard-drillin ceo is self-evidently nonsense, but it is interesting as an index of the extent to which reasonable folk have taken over images of the world for themselves which not only explain but justify the extent to which they are fucked or, just as bewildering, the fact that most other people are more fucked than they are. by virtue of social and economic position. it's like the denial of class across the board by americans, who operate inside a brutally stratified system. distance distance=passivity passivity. |
really, now, Roachboy, do I detect a "false consciousness" argument wafting out of that last post? Surely you should know better. Give people some credit for thinking for themselves. As for the CEO being hard-working, well, most are, but they're not paid for physical hard work, they are paid for a constellation of traits that is rarely found together all in one person, which is why they are so eagerly sought after and so highly paid. Not many people have vision, leadership ability, financial savvy, product knowledge, people skills, economic understanding, aggressiveness, analytical ability and other stuff all rolled into one package. That's why there are so few truly great CEOs. Think of Lou Gerstner or Jack Welch or Steve Jobs. It takes enormous talent and intelligence to run a multibillion dollar, multi-10,000s of employees organization, position it for the future, support the various constituencies, institute change, etc etc etc. I could never do it (which is why I'm in a job much more closely suited to my skill set). I expect most of the people here couldn't either.
Will, you are right that the people who do the work, down in the bowels of the corporate hierarchy, should be respected. I don't know how often I have posted about this - not very many, I suspect - but I have long been a staunch advocate of the view that any boss who does not treat his/her employees well is an ass, and deserves to lose his shirt. "Well" is relative and subjective, of course, but the fact is that for any job that requires a modicum of judgment - and most do nowadays - it's very hard to find good people whom you trust and who don't have other baggage. At my firm I don't do the hiring (though I have some input to policy) but I can tell you we always make sure to take care of our employees because we don't want to lose them and because replacing people is a horrendous job (the only thing worse is firing people - firing someone is the worst part of being a boss, even when it's well deserved). People are not fungible in most jobs. However - the fact of the matter is that my firm exists because a couple of my partners founded it 20+ years ago and took a risk, because I and my partners bust our butts to bring business in the door and take care of the clients, and because I'm wiling to take the risk of having my assets on the hook to our landlord for our lease (which means that if we have a downturn in business I can lose everything). I'm very eager to keep our employees happy, but the fact is that they get paid, in full and on time, twice a month, with no risk and no obligation other than to show up and do their job. If there is a business downturn, they will still get paid but I might not. Matter of fact there have been times I have gone two months without a penny of income because business was slow -- but we damn well made payroll, and the employees got paid, as did the landlord and the electric company. So yes, I do think I'm entitled to make more than my employees. A lot more. I do a lot more to create wealth than they do. (Why didn't we lay people off when business was slow? Easy - bad times don't last forever, but good people are hard to find. I'd rather keep good people and take the hit myself than have to scramble when the business picks up). And I can tell you with 100% certainty that most bosses are more like me than like the cartoon image that people around here are peddling. I know because that's my client base. |
that's an interesting claim, made in passing, sir.
so you oppose the notion of "thinking for oneself" and thinking through ideological categories? how do you manage that? it is perfectly reasonable to see "thinking for oneself" and thinking through ideological categories as the same action. if an ideological frame impeded action, it wouldn't be particularly functional. they have to be inhabited/inhabitable to operate. that they are inhabited/inhabitable doesn't mean that therefore they aren't ideological. don't be fooled by the word ideology into thinking that once you say it you set yourself up as outside ideology. there's a sense in which ideology is a resticted variant on ontology, and ontology simply the set of rules that you work through in the process of making elements (words, for example) function. the rules that shape usage aren't contained in that which is used--the world is not a collection of things. ideology operates at the level of how you organize your sense of the world, of the political order, etc. that everyone is caught in one or another set of images of the world does not mean that therefore all are equivalent. unless you're playing a relativist game. but if you're doing that, then you can't make the argument that a false consciousness argument is any better or worse than any other. now i'm thinking about steve jobs. so far as i know, in my world, he is a guy who turns up on monitors from time to time extolling the virtues of his brand constellation, which includes the commodity "steve jobs," over other commodities. one of his skill sets clearly involves the successful branding of "steve jobs"---you or i may or may not also have the skill set required to brand "loquitor" or "roachboy"----but you're correct, neither of us has the requisite skill set for the successful branding of "steve jobs." it isn't particularly clear what the skillset required to successfully brand "steve jobs" might be--chances are that there is no abstract skill set, no a priori skillset, but rather a skillset that was developed situationally. so i expect that you or i or most anyone else could adapt to such a situation, and could develop the requisite skillset for the successful branding of our own "steve jobs"-like commodity. and while those skills are perhaps specialized, fact is that no amount of exercise of those skills is as demanding as, say, working in a quarry. nor is there any reason to think that folk who are in positions like this "steve jobs" commodity are ubermenschen. they do have better marketing machinery around them, in the way that, say, bjork has better producers around her than, say, roachboy has. the explantion for that is simple enough. |
who said anything about ubermenschen? Many of them are terrible people with huge egos, they just happen to be very talented at running huge organizations. Roachboy, you're confusing a recognition of someone's talent with a value judgment about them as people. Those are very different exercises.
You also need to consider that your own "frame" is as influenced as anyone else's. Your view of the world is colored by your experiences and education and life history, yes? You can't assume that you have detachment and others do not. So this idea that your analysis of people as, in essence, brainwashed, really doesn't fly. You're not equipped to do it because you may just be as brainwashed as they are. I have years of training in trying to be detached and I still find I miss things. Brainwashing has nothing to do with it - being human does. For instance, no amount of advertising will persuade me to become a cannibal. No amount of advertising will persuade me to kill or maim another person voluntarily. I can't imagine I'm different from most in that regard. The reason is that I find those things morally reprehensible and logically indefensible. I'm capable of making that judgment. So why am I - or anyone else - not competent to make any of a myriad other judgments, from which soap to use to which health care plan to sign up for to which charity merits support? Why deny agency to individuals? Aren't they entitled to that basic human respect? Oh, and about Steve Jobs....... go google John Scully and you'll see the difference between Apple under Steve Jobs and Apple under the prior management (I forget the name of the guy who came after Scully but he also flamed out). Yes, he has created a cult of personality - but you can do that only if you have a personality that is cultable (is that a word?). If you prefer someone less flamboyant, with lower visibility, have a look at what Lou Gerstner accomplished at IBM. Again, this has nothing to do with being an ubermensch - it simply has to do with the fact that talent of various sorts is not distributed evenly in the population, and that people with different kinds of talents get rewarded differently. No one is paying me because I can roll my eyes, wiggle my ears and jiggle my adam's apple, even though I suspect my ability to do that puts me way out on the right tail of the distribution. But people do reward Johann Santana for being able to throw a small sphere in a manner that makes it difficult for other people to hit it with a stick. |
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Will, that was a response to Roachboy. he's the one who mentioned it.
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Dunlap first slashed Coleman factory workers, then got it into his head that he should have a fancy log cabin headquarters in the Rockies instead of affordable Wichita. Charles Koch's family is so dysfunctional, it makes the Bundys look like the Waltons. His HQ looks, I'm not making this up, eerily similar to The Legion of Doom HQ. He and his brother brow beat employees into making conservative campaign donations. Ilia Lekach is just an egotistical pink silk underwear fuckup. |
Poppinjay, read what I wrote. Your response is nonresponsive. None of the examples that you cited cut little people's salaries for the purpose of freeing up money so that they could afford a second yacht. In Dunlap's case, if I recall correctly, he fired people to improve the bottom line of the company, which was in a bad way and would have gone under without the costcutting. That's why he was hired in the first place. You can argue about whether he did it correctly or not (IIRC he also was a felon at Sunbeam), but corporate turnarounds have a long and perfectly respectable history - some are done by consultants and some by execs, but most do involve firing people. Companies that don't shed unneeded payroll tend to go bankrupt, which can lead to EVERYONE losing their job. Or is it your position that firing people is immoral, that companies are supposed to keep unneeded employees no matter what? I'm sure glad you're not running my company.
I'm not familiar with the other two examples you gave. But I doubt anyone fired an employee and used the savings for a yacht. Talk about stupid - a boss would have to be really stupid to do something like that. |
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You can argue that it was unseemly for execs to get nice packages when employees are being laid off, and on that I'll agree with you. But one didn't cause the other. You need to show me a causal link, Pan - show me that the employees would not have been fired absent the pay raise. That's what I was talking about. There's no causal link. The fact that separate decisions get made at the same time for different reasons doesn't mean that one caused the other. That's the missing link here. Delta was bankrupt - you really think the employees would have all come through the bankruptcy unscathed, no matter what happened to top management?
Plus, IIRC Gerry Grinstein retired once Delta came out of Chapter 11, and IIRC he was brought in specifically to steer the company through the reorg. Anderson was brought in to run the newly reorg'd company. I'm just going off memory here. And again, IIRC, the rationale for the pay package was that running a company newly out of bankruptcy is a high-risk proposition, which shouldnt surprise anyone, and that you need to pay to get good people or keep them. Again - you can argue with the reasoning, but to say that these decisions CAUSED layoffs is batty. |
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Exactly what is right about that? Delta's CEO didn't do that. And yes I provided a link... it's posted earlier it's the bill moyers clip. |
I didn't say it was right. I just said it wasn't causal. Things that happen at the same time aren't necessarily causal of one another, they can each be caused by independent causes. You can't show that NWA would have had no layoffs or even smaller layoffs if the management had not gotten a raise. I've done plenty of chapter 11 work and there is pretty much ALWAYS a spate of layoffs. That's one of the ways companies survive bankrupties, is by restructuring.
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loquitor: i don't remember saying anything about being outside of ideology.
i do remember saying the opposite. i don't see any necessary relation between the administrative hierarchies that capitalist organizations are built around and any particular set of competences distributed in a given population. you know perfectly well that one's actual competences are not the only, or even the most important, criterion for selection. this isn't to say the opposite is holds, that there's no relation--i think the relation is close to arbitrary (crossing in some cases, not in others)...the assessment is aesthetically motivated though--what you choose to emphasize, what you choose to downplay. anyone's is, mine included---but there's systematic data that you can appeal to that controls for this tendency. so i don't generally think in terms of individual Heroic Entrepreneurs in questions like this. you seem to like to alternate between individual Entrepreneurs and assertions about the world as if capitalist hierarchies and some "natural" distribution of skills are more or less interchangeable. i don't buy it. |
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I've had to lay people off before, it's not an easy decision to make which ones, let alone have to send down to the rank and file cost cuts and head count cuts across the board. You work day to day with some of these people and I expect to be paid more because when the time comes I have to do such stomach churning things. Now looking at a CEO I knew personally and was friendly with is Tom Freston. Why did he get fired from Viacom? Because after a year all the achievements he'd done for 20 years at MTV amounted to squat because he couldn't move the stock price with any of the decisions he made. Yes he had a golden parachute, $20M payout. Stock is still floundering... even after laying off 250 people including some long time executives. MTV Layoffs Include Execs -----Added 29/7/2008 at 02 : 43 : 40----- Quote:
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Even Steve Ballmer could not get an XBox 360 because of SOX compliance. |
Actually, didn't the Adelphia execs do something like that? They bought some expensive toys with company money and ended up going to jail I think. It was a few years back.
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yes, adelphia, enron, tyco, MCI Worldcom I believe who had CEOs and executives who were pilfering the company.
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Well, Roachboy, it's a lot less arbitrary than you think. The correlation isn't perfect but it's there. I see it in the law firms I deal with and I see it in the businesses I deal with. People who are full of shit and kiss ass a lot can go only so far because at a certain level if there are no results it shows and there's no place to hide. Yes, there are time-servers and goldbrickers everywhere. Those aren't the ones who tend to get ahead because they don't have the drive. There are people who have drive but no smarts, smarts but no drive, smarts and drive but lousy luck or timing -- and on and on and on. Plus, there is a different mindset for rising in an organization versus starting a business on your own. I see lots and lots of these kinds of people.
Here's a comparison to chew over. There is a large public company I represent, and my contact there is one of the in-house lawyers. He asks me a question, I do my work, and I try to figure out a way the company can do what it wants to do - but if the answer is no, it's no. He's not happy about it, but if he's sure I have really thought the problem through and exhausted every possible way, then he's ok with it. Then I have an individual enterpreneur, street-smart, aggressive, and if he asks me a quesiton, I also try to figure out a way he can do what he wants to do - but if my answer is no, he fights with me about it because he's not used to being told no. And it takes me a while to get him on board. Very different types of people. These are actually archetypes, believe it or not. There are entire categories of people like each of them. The first guy is very smart, but he's not going further. The second guy would succeed if you took everything away from him and plopped him down in the middle of the Kalahari. He won't be a CEO because he's too much of a lone ranger, but he will succeed. I guess this is a longwinded way of saying that even a non-perfectly-linear correlation is nonetheless a correlation. Yes there is luck involved. Doesn't destroy the correlation, though. |
loquitor---just to clarify, at issue here is basically the question of whether those who work for minimum wage or less *should* be paid that because of some correlation between skill set and wage level.
second, even if that's an argument for wage stratification (you know) it's hard to see why it would not be possible to hold that position and still support rising minimum wage levels. but there's obviously a frame-switch involved here and it's also clear that these are the arguments being debated at this point because of how the thread's unfolded---but just wondering about them nonetheless. i'll get back to the other points. |
What? you mean you're pushing us back from the tangent? Imagine that!!
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And I'm not saying that CEOs and executives shouldn't be handsomly rewarded for their work. But my feeling is that lately executive compensation has gotten out of hand, *especially* for execs that underperform, and those who keep more of an eye on the stock price than on the long-term business. Not all execs. But some. On the other end of things, I think it's pretty clear that worker compensation hasn't kept pace, especially on the low end of the scale. I don't know all the reasons for this. I don't think 'the man' is keeping people down as a conspiracy. But I do think it's unhealthy for society, and should be fixed if we can. |
I still want to see any evidence that workers' salaries are what they are because the CEO is paid too well. You can be unhappy about either of those phenomena, or both, but I still think it's fallacious to say that one caused the other. The market for top executive talent and the market for regular jobs are distinct markets. One can be roaring and the other stagnating without there being any necessary linear causal link between them.
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loquitur, I'd like to add to that. I don't think a great number of minimum-wage jobs (or otherwise low-paying jobs) make up a sizeable proportion of the workforce of many large corporations where we'd find these wealthy CEOs. I'm under the impression that many minimum-wage jobs are found in small companies, many of them private. Think small retail, restaurants, etc. If I were working at a large company with a CEO worth millions, I'd expect a bit more than the minimum wage, especially if I were working at corporate head office.
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yes but there's a difference between working in the corporate office and then the "front lines" of the company.
There are many of the Fortune 500 that are in the retail sector which a good percentage of the workforce is probably paid minimum wage. Fortune 500 Companies click to show |
Woah, there's 500 there. Would you pull out some case studies?
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It's not going to be linear. It's going to show priority. Let's say a corporation lands record profits one year (enough to invest more in the company AND pay people more) and the CEO and most of the upper management gets decent (4%+) raises and the bottom stays the same or decreases. What does that tell you? It tells you that the priority is to pay the upper management. |
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right jinn.... will you can't just interchange upper management and get the same results, you can with the lower skilled workers.
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once upon a time, before unilever bought them out, establishing and maintaining a rational proportion between worker wages and ceo-level salaries wage was an important aspect of how ben and jerry's ran it's business.
when unilever entered the picture, there was a split between the two founders, with ben leaving the game. the main issue was the abandonment of this politics of wages/salaries. i mention this to indicate what should be self-evident: these relations are choices. the lack of a relation between executive compensation and workers wages is also a choice. it is a political choice--and eminently political choice---based on alot of factors, really--but one of which goes back to a sub-topic raised earlier, which is the conception/imagined mechanism whereby value is created. before unilevel, ben and jerry's operated under the assumption that it's workers created value because they made the product. the product was sent out into the market, the product was purchased blah blah blah. unilever's view is apparently otherwise, that capital creates value. in the first conception, it is the object produced that is the centerpiece of the understanding--the the latter it is the movement of capital. this is an instructive little story and i'm glad i told it. there's a ton of information on the web about this, debris from the wider controversy at/around ben and jerry's concerning the buyout. searches find it. addendum: if you think about it, in the shift from the initial to the present arrangement, working people go from being present to disappearing. so it is in this debate. |
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A CEO doesn't need to have that exact skill set. It's not a requirement for the vision. He can surround himself by and executive management team that does understand such things, that is the job of the CFO, who reports to the CEO. It is not the job of the CEO. |
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CEO that are successful seemingly do set realistic goals and when those goals are not met, are punished by Wall Street. It's a simple thing really. Listen to any shareholder's meeting if you are a stock owner and you'll see and hear how CEOs have realistic and unrealistic goals and vision. Will, I sit on a one board of directors, and interface directly with one CEO. I'm going to run for a seat on another board later this month if I can find the time. I also pointed out that out of 500 companies not any are run exactly the same. Each and every one of them has differences and nuances besides market sector and industry. What is the same for all of them is that they are all public companies vying for investor dollars. |
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there's the point at which the trade-off occurs. in the early 1970s, television night news would relay one or another statistic concerning GNP as the astrological indicator of the night of overall Well-Being. around 1972--around the time stock trade was internationalized, around the time bretton woods was abandoned in currency--the astrological Indicator of overall Well-Being became the dow-jones industrial average. that is another nice little story, one with many potential implications that will no doubt not be discussed. but i am glad i told it too. |
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Snapple was a small company at one time, when they got bought by Quaker, they lost that image. Recently they brought Wendy back as a spokesperson to try to recaputure that image, but the damage is done and people don't see Snapple as being a small boutique beverage company any longer. The only way to protect that 100% is to not sell out. Sometimes that is troubling for the partnership or owner who is trapped by their business and workload. |
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So no, my opinion isn't based on real schooling, but it is based in experience. Quote:
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How many CEOs don't have a formal education in economics? |
the problem may be one of scale, then?
once you go public, once your production capacity gets large enough to require the issuance of stock in order to finance aspects of operations, you make the fatal compromise? from that point on, any idea that working people create value and by extension wealth gets erased? it's still a political choice, how one views production. |
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See when I work for a small company I can call myself anything I'd like because it doesn't change the bottom line all that much. If you'd like to talk small potatoes, we can talk small potatoes, but what I believe we are talking about is big business large publically traded companies on NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, FTSE, etc. But since you seem stuck on the requirement of formal education as a criterion for succesful CEOs and successful companies... Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Larry Ellison, Dhirubhai Ambani, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Ray Kroc, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Kirk Kerkorian, and Richard Branson all started companies that have a lasting impression on today's market place. None of them had any formal education to back up their vision. Again, you get to pick who you want to invest in based on the management team and the peformance of the company. Investors vote for companies with their dollars. -----Added 30/7/2008 at 01 : 33 : 28----- Quote:
Whole Foods Market : Company : Declaration of Interdependence That's an attraction for some investors as the stock has done very well in the past decade. -----Added 30/7/2008 at 01 : 36 : 50----- here it is... Quote:
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Going to college and not completing it is consided not having a formal education. If you don't subscribe to that as the definition you are alone in that. Going to NYU for continuing education classes or non-matriculated attendance does not equal graduating from NYU. It is "taking classes." |
Put simply, you should be paid relative to the power you have to cause the company to make or lose money. A floor worker has almost no power to make a company succeed or fail. The floor worker's manager has more power, because he controls a number of employees. The manager's manger has even more power, etc, etc, ad nauseum. If what you say or do can cause the company to experience dramatic shifts in revenue or image, you should be paid for that responsibility. I'm not going to represent an entire company as a CEO without the money that should come with that responsibility. If the company goes down, its MY fault.. not Mr. Floor worker.
You seem to have veered away in your argument of semantics and "experience in the industry" with Cyn, but I still don't see how you believe that Quote:
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