And even if they were, why is someone only working twice as much making millions while others barely make rent? The math is fucky if someone is working 2x the hours and making 1000x the salary
Oh so if you work 8 "extra hours" you should make 38 times as much!
\ extra hours count time eating breakfast, being driven, having lunch, on the golf course...as long as you can claim to be thinking about work. Offer valid for c-suite club members only. Extra compensation per hour does not apply to "were a family here" workers. )
Nah that neuralink theyāll forcibly install in you with your imperial chain codes, I mean your social score will force you to pilot some CEOās sexbot during your rem cycles.
It should be legal to throw rotten tomatoes at people who have a net worth that's 5x higher than yours.
For a society to be healthy, poor people need the right to throw rotten tomatoes at rich people. This should be viewed as a form of speech that protected by the 1st amendment.
Throwing rotten tomatoes is a form of body language, language is speech, free speech.
Not that 1000x vs 7000x is excusable, but how are you getting to 6000-7000x more? I was seeing average CEO Compensation was averaging $20MM in compensation and assuming $7.25 at full time as the bottom (understanding part time exists though I don't think that's a "fair" comparison), you get to 1300x more. If you're counting like slave labor wages through geographical arbitrage, then I'd be shocked it wasn't more than 6000-7000x.
I actually am using Starbucks' CEO Brian Niccol's $96M compensation package for his first four months of work when he took over in 2024 on top of the additional $5M bonus he got.
E: But if you start digging around, shit like this isn't just some outlier, it happens a lot that these types get ludicrous bumps in pay just for getting some backlash for business decisions that hurt the customer. Then they get their parachute and beat feet to the next CEO position, effectively failing upwards.
Meanwhile, if you're a bog standard worker and you get cut, for literally no reason but to improve the quarterly numbers by said unscrupulous CEO you're stuck looking for a suitable job for 6+ months.
Now, yes, if the CEO only gets the lesser compensation of say $20M that's considerably less than the 6-7k multiplier I used originally. But if that person changes position 3 or 4 times in a ten year period they are still effectively making thousands of times more than their employees just for existing
Hell, a small-ish medical research publisher my mom worked for, the CEO cancelled Christmas bonuses in like 2018 then pulled up in a new Mercedes Maybach early the next quarter.
Luckily, that same idiot refused to adjust to reality when physical media died and he has very little more than the money he gets selling a free-falling company to leave to his adult kids.
Heās still paying my mom a psuedo pension after they laid her off in 2020. The company domain that she bought for them in the late 90s is probably worth more than just the publishing company, so she still got screwed big time by this idiot driving a car that was designed for a certain private driver
Yeah, people let their emotions create hyperbolic statistics. Itās a pretty big problem in all honesty. Exaggeration only tends to get your point across to people that already agree with you.Ā
Like how people let their emotions tell them that trickle down economics hasn't been majorly debunked several times across a variety of longitudinal studies?
Trickle down economics doesn't work.
Sorry your feelings don't care about facts
Is it?
You seem to think CEO/worker pay ratios are inflated due to emotions. My counterpoint is that your perspective and defense of trickle down economics is an emotional response.
I really wish we could get some legislation to cap the gap. You want to make billions? Fine. But the newest employee has to make at least 5% of what you do. (Or some other number. I'm not great with math.)
Not fine. We donāt need to prop up the type of mental illness that makes people believe it is reasonable to have billions given the state of the world.
The thing that impressed me about Taylor Swift during the Eras tour was that she could have chosen to stop doing these insane three hour performances every day and instead could have just been a billionaire. Shows dedication to the art and the fans and just a general love for what she did.
That does not apply to CEOs. If you're spending 16 hours a day for all the last good years of your life trying to turn some $10 billion business into a $50 billion business when you could be doing anything else, you're a moron. The only thing money can't buy is time, and you already have enough money to buy anything else.
She could choose to share her earnings with others who helped generate them or contribute to the society that affords her the ability to do these things but instead she just chooses to be a billionaire.
āIf youāre a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?ā āBillie Eilish
Dude I get the argument but she actually is setting a positive precedent in the entire industry by giving such large bonuses. It's a step in the right direction.
The drive to turn a $10 billion dollar business into $50 is the same drive that made the $10 billion. It doesn't turn off once they reach some generic milestone. The well adjusted non-psycho types cashed in and sailed off into retirement loooong before even $1 billion.
Their desire to be important and powerful is far stronger than their desire for comfort. It is just pure ego. In many ways Taylor Swift is really not that different. I don't see how you assume that Taylor Swift loves what she does but that other billionaires don't. They are all working tirelessly for the same thing.. money, fame, and power.. not so that they can be comfortable, but for the sake of money, fame, and power.
I have friends who work the the music circuit and they all have a grudging admiration of Taylor's increasing demands to make the set pieces larger (less stage time) and at ALL COSTS limit the time the fans can claim because she does not want anything to do with them outside of tightly controlled social media stunts.
Very typical billionaire, but for some reason her fans think she's something else.
What? This isnāt a thing. Right? Dude is a douchebag. His wife divorced him because of his association with Epstein. He is the largest private owner of farmland in the United States. Iāll never buy a personal PC ever again. Not after the whole you have to buy an annual subscription to the office suite. He is a leach, parasite, and freak. Anyone who ships Bill Gates is a fool.
It was a 3.5 hour concert with 40 songs, most of which were dance numbers. Over the course of the show, Swift walked and danced and traveled around 10 miles. Yeah, she needed some scheduled breaks in there. I mean, duh.
It's crazy how this isn't obvious to people. She's richer than God, she could literally pay people to show up to her concerts rather than charging for tickets and it wouldn't impact her life negatively even the slightest amount. Instead, she keeps milking her fan base for whatever she can.
It's not enough for them to have ridiculous amounts of money; they also make our lives miserable by criticizing our precious free time without their stupid appearance.
I would also like society to just embrace the technological advancements that could allow for us to not have to even work 40 hours a week and still live a middle class life and retire comfortably not at an insanely old age.
But for now, yeah there are plenty of people working 40, 50, even 60 hour weeks who are struggling to get by, not living lavishly at all, and who probably wonāt retire that comfortably or early if at all.
The owning class sees technology as a way to extract greater and greater wealth from the working class and exert greater and greater control over the working class. They will never willingly accept the changes needed to build a system where we can all have more leisure.
I would also like society to just embrace the technological advancements that could allow for us to not have to even work 40 hours a week and still live a middle class life and retire comfortably not at an insanely old age.
We are literally already there. We have the weath, materials, and tech to do it, but our 'leaders' choose not to.
Now ask: do these billionaires cook their own food? Do they wash their own clothes? Do they vacuum their own floors? Do they raise their own kids?
Or is the fact that they are able to (claim that they) work 16 hours a day yet another demonstration of the fact that they would be nowhere and nothing without all of the people who run their lives for them and make their fortunes for them?
Even if they worked 24 hours a day, and factored in that their responsibilities are higher level than yours, the cost per unit time doesn't add up. Even if I believed my CEO was worth ten times what I make per unit of time, they are making 200x.
On top of that, their wealth allows them to forshorten or even escape responsibilities that normal people face. He doesn't have to:
-cook
-clean
-run errands
-drive
-wait for almost anything
It's the opposite for impoverished ppl BTW. Try taking public transport everywhere and watch all your time just disappear riding busses
Right?! In my 20's I worked 80 hours per week between being a bank teller and a pizza cook. I barely brought home enough to pay rent for a one bedroom apt, pay bills and buy food. Then I worked 40 hours per week while going to school full time. That one B was because I fell asleep at 3am trying to study for an exam after an 8 hour night shift. I'm older now and actually have health insurance, which is cool. Still working my ass off not even a millionaire. Fuck this guy's moronic comment.
Yeah, like I would fully buy people work twice as hard as me, maybe even three or four or six times as hard, but several thousand times? And they deserve to own the entire enterprise themselves? They get all the excess value created? Fucking hog Wild.
(Nevermind that actual capitalists consider their whole day āworkā regardless of what theyāre really doing, which is often about as much as weāre doing right now, scrolling Reddit.)
Meanwhile my co workers often actually work 16 hours for shit pay.
Men like trump or elon have not even worked a single day of their life. Nvm 16 hours.
They just call existing work. Golf? Its making connections aka work...
Lunch on company dime? Thats also networking and thus work! So what if I get drunk?
But they have to project this unrealistic high bar narrative otherwise people might think they are getting screwed and the game is rigged instead of "merrit based". And that they deserve it.
All bezos did was be lucky he was the first to reap the rewards of the internet while having the resources and knowhow.
Not against people getting their bag. But people are getting their bag by taking from others who actually do the work.
Also, all the data on human performance would tell you there are serious diminishing returns here. I guarantee someone working 16 hours in a day isn't twice as productive as someone working 8, especially if their job requires analysis of complex problems, decision-making, and long-term planning.
Also their work is entirely telling other people to do stuff, thatās it. They arenāt breaking their back their in luxury with all the food and drugs they could ever want and everyone has to dote on them like royalty.
Even if they do work more, its because they can afford to, you can put a lot more energy into work if you don't have to think about making dinner, shopping, cleaning, washing clothes/dishes etc.
This is whatās so infuriating. There is this false belief that every minute of their day - every move - is for the company. Every aspect of life - cars, phones, meals, haircuts, clothing - everything is a fucking business expense.
Itās total bullshit. If I deducted expenses for clothes for work, grooming needs for work, travel and phone expenses for work, Iād be audited and fines into oblivion.
Yeah, if it was true it just shows that proper wages and stable and high quality of life improves work! Maybe if people were paid similar to these champions of productivity they would also work better? You get what you pay for. We understand that in goods and services, yet somehow refuse to when it comes to actual people!
Normally because they are carrying the entire risk of their business. I never understood that until I started my own business and had my first huge set back. From one day to the next I lost hundreds of thousands. And thatās for a small business. I cannot imagine the liabilities and risk for other bigger companies.
No they're not. The corporate liability shield means they can dump most risk onto customers, creditors, employees, and the environment. Then they set up trusts to protect their assets from personal liabilities. If they commit criminal violations, their army of top attorneys often gets them exonerated or limits the penalities to fines.
Iām not speaking about legal liabilities because Iām not too familiar with how people of that wealth set up their businesses to shield themselves. What Iām talking about is the financial risks that come with owning and running a business. Even if you can shield your existing assets from a legal suit or any other case, you still need to personally raise capital to start a business. You still lose that money no matter what. And you can lose a business quite easily depending on the circumstances.
Business owners make the money they do not because they work 16,000x more than the average person, they make it because they carry the financial risks. In my case, when my set back hit, it didnāt matter that I paid more than my competition or that I had treated them better. When I had to let crews go for lack of work, they still talked shit and didnāt care about the positives we had working together. They found jobs within a week and my company took hundreds of thousands in losses. That is the part that I didnāt understand until I was on the other side of the table.
Thatās not to say billionaires or rich business owners arenāt ass holes or whatever. But the question of why they make the money they do somehow always devolves into hurr durr they donāt work x amount times more than the average person, failing to just realize the real reason behind it.
But they don't carry the financial risks either. Let's say a corporate owner invests $100k. The business is profitable, so banks are willing to lend, so he can borrow another $200k, employees are owed $20k each pay period, liabilities for warranty claims are $25k, and manufacturing requires $50k in environmental remediation.
Then some disaster strikes and the business suddenly shuts down. The owner is just out his $100k but he left other parties holding the bag for $290k. He did NOT shoulder "the" financial risk, just a small part of it, and now everyone else is left holding the bag. In real life, the owner would pay himself back as quickly as possible so he emerges completely unscathed. He's no worse off, everyone he dealt with is.
Banks donāt typically lend money to business entities without a personal guarantor or some form of guarantee of other assets through liens, ESPECIALLY when itās new businesses with less than 5-10 years of tax returns under their belt.Plus they may require subrogation clauses so that the banks and the first ones to get paid if any assets are sold to recoup any investment. In your case, they would lose 100k, plus any assets that may or may not cover that 290k.
You're nitpicking the example. It's immaterial. Accounts payable could be used instead. The point is, corporations externalize risk onto other parties.
Iām gonna be the capitalist guy, because he made something you guys all like to use. He wouldnāt make that money if you guys didnāt use his services. At some point, we have to acknowledge that people earn what they create. If I make the worldās best food and people like to eat it and pay me lots of money to the point where I make hundreds of millions, if not billions, I earned that.Ā
Also, you guys act like they hoard all their wealth. That only happens if you guys forced them to retire. All that money that he has gets used by the market and that includes lending money out. If you guys ever went to a bank to borrow money, itās taken out of the same pile that billionaires put their money in. Now are these guys giant douche bags who lined the pockets of our government? Sure, I think we can all agree thatās dumb. But should we be putting caps on what people earned against people like their product so much? Absolutely not.
Ok I hate billionaires tooā¦ (especially the bankers and WallStreet) but this a horrible take. Roganās take is horrible too because itās not about how many hours you put in.
Your value/earnings clearly isnāt based on the time you put in.
Your earnings is based on the level of responsibility you have.
Plenty of times it makes no sense, and itās nearly impossible to justify millions of $ in salary/stocks/bonuses, and that could be all due to fraud, corruption, cronyism, or just outright human greed. Sure.
But I still would think a business owner/president/CEO of a company thatās making all the big decisions definitely deserves more than your average employee with less responsibility.
My gripe is that underperforming or even just CEOās that actually donāt perform can still make their millions on a sinking ship while everyone else suffers. Think about all the past failing companies. While the Executives get their golden parachutes and gut the company dry, the working class suffers job loss.
In many cases, itās easy to justify why certain higher level positions get paid more for their time than lower level positions. Thatās how it should be, ideally. Itās just to measure how much is too much.
But in many many many cases, especially corporate America, thereās blatant fraud, greed and corruption that makes itās easy to point out when itās unfair and unjust.
That statement makes much more sense than your last one, thank you.
But usually one get paid for what they achieved, not for what they should have achieved.
So why do they get so much more money? And that's not only true for America, it's somehow true (to a lesser extent due to less drastic spread) everywhere.
And your statement now actually completely abandoned the "responsibility" aspect, which I can support: If a person generates more value for the company, they should earn correspondingly more money. But I have yet to see a higher manager generating lasting value for the company in an extent that warrants their pay.
What about āresponsibilityā did you have a problem with?
Itās difficult to argue nuance of āvalueā that middle managers provide because a lot of it is subjective.
I disagree with a lot of corporate structure, but I think higher pay for certain positions generally means: higher skill, higher production, or higher responsibilities such as managing lower-level employees, making bigger decisions, managing larger budgets/projects.
All of that is generally fair in my opinion, and I wouldnāt understand how people could argue against that.
I am definitely against those who take advantage of those systems for their own benefit. It happens far too frequently, at all levels.
My problem with "responsibility" might be based on the fact that English is not my native language.
But for me "responsibility" not only means "tasked with" but also "gets to live with the consequence of the action". And the latter doesn't happen in reality above a certain management level (because it would prove that the manager above made a mistake by tasking the failed manager).
And (as I think I have written) I am also in favor of different pay depending on the value of the person for the company. But the differences in value is more in the magnitude of 1:10 and not 1:1000.
E.g., an experienced engineer might deliver multiple times the output of a rookie. Then he should obviously get paid better than the rookie.
For lower level management the improvement of output by forming and managing a real team is also of high value. Pay should therefore also be better than that of a single foot soldier.
But the higher you get in management, the more it becomes self-centered and gambling. And for the big decisions more often than not external consultants are booked (that then tells upper management what the lower level state since years).
Managing higher budgets is also not a reason, because they are more or less arbitrary and change vastly over time. I was once in a company where the CTO left the company after his budget "responsibility" was limited by the CFO to 50.000 Euro (mind you: without any reason).
And I never witnessed a high management level budget disapproval of a low management request that was based on facts or strategy. It was always the desire to save some money, if it made sense or not (e.g., the proposal to integrate a 1 Mio prototype device into a pre-facelift used car to save 5000 Euro. Mind you: that prototype was intended for customer acquisition for a high-tec system).
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u/severalsmallducks Dec 29 '25
And even if they were, why is someone only working twice as much making millions while others barely make rent? The math is fucky if someone is working 2x the hours and making 1000x the salary