I've got nothing against capitalism, but why should CEOs be paid 500 - 1000 times their average employees salary?

americans are disgusting
they praise ppl who shit on them and look down on them, moreover they hope they believe theyll "make" it
absolutely disgusting

High level CEOs are sinecurists from rich old money share holder families.

No it's not

10-30 times the annual salary of regular worker seems fair
Fairly lavish payment in company stock seems fair, if he fucks up, he gets hurt

Anything above that is beyond ridiculous

Why would someone take such a job if they have no time to spend that money? Doesn't matter if you're a millionare if you're too busy to actually do anything with that money.

>Theres a lot of complex human interaction, negotiations and tough decisions
Such as?

>On top of that, the CEO has to answer to a daily shit storm from shareholders on why the firm's quarterly profits dipped by 0.1% last week, and SJWs from the media on why he's laying off 1000s of workers and taking a $5 million bonus at the same time.

Maybe that CEO shouldn't take the bonus if things aren't doing well.

>stress from inevitable relationship troubles / divorces that kind of lifestyle would toll.

Sounds like you shouldn't get married at all if you're planning on becoming a CEO. No time for relationships since you are married to the firm.

>10-30 times the annual salary of regular worker seems fair

Do you honestly believe that CEOs just hoard all that money and don't spend it?

If you reduce their salaries, you would just decimate entire industries for private jets, mansions, horse racing, private islands, jewelry, designer suits, sports cars etc, all of which hire hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

Even Private Jets have be built by someone and flown by someone, who has to get paid at the end of the day.

This attitude is exactly why you are not going to be successful in life.

The actions of the CEO can make or break the company. CEOs do in fact have a lot of decisions to make, and if they make a wrong move they can very easily tank an entire company. Contrary to what movies tell you CEOs do not just sit around doing jack shit all day. And like another user said, the shareholders and board of directors have the real power.

>If you reduce their salaries, you would just decimate entire industries for private jets, mansions, horse racing, private islands, jewelry, designer suits, sports cars etc, all of which hire hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

>Even Private Jets have be built by someone and flown by someone, who has to get paid at the end of the day.

Are you telling me that if you gave that money to the workers of the company they wouldn't spend it? That money would just go to different industries. Some industries, like the ones you listed would shrink, but others would grow.

the attitude will give him a long and peaceful life, while youll die in cancer chasing shekels, shitstain

This is Veeky Forums. Also if you have a problem with this method, then become a CEO and do it your way. Too bad you fags have an inferiority complex and just see money, then get all greedy.

>Are you telling me that if you gave that money to the workers of the company they wouldn't spend it?

Spend it on what? Private jets? kek

>Some industries, like the ones you listed would shrink, but others would grow.

So you're fine with tens of thousands of people losing their jobs as long as le ebil CEOs get their pay cut?

>people are actually biting
Veeky Forums is so pathetic

>Even Private Jets have be built by someone and flown by someone, who has to get paid at the end of the day.
In the past rich people had a few expectations on them before getting praise like investing and making the economy more efficient.
Now cucks will literally praise them for buying dumb shit so they can make other rich people richer.
Though my first guess will be that you're the spoiled rich kid in question.

Capitalism is entirely within the humanities domain for Veeky Forums discussion.

>why should CEOs be paid 500 - 1000 times their average employees salary?
The probably shouldn't. That seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon. Also it's actually really hard to judge a CEO's performance, because the full consequences of their actions usually aren't obvious until years after the fact.

t. MBA student

I don't know about CEO's, but the owners of a business need to have a really strong incentive to make the risk of trying to build a business or else ending up in debt.

>That seems to be a uniquely American phenomenon.

Interesting, cause so is economic success.

Because in creating the company he took 500-1000 times the risk as the employee will

They're in charge of strategy and resource allocation you mongoloid.
>They fuck up seven times out of ten
Source: user's asshole

Everyone knows the CEOs of big corporations don't deserve what they're paid, but they do actually have responsibilities.

She looks like she is faking her happiness

>you would just decimate entire industries for private jets, mansions, horse racing, private islands, jewelry, designer suits, sports cars etc
Doesn't sound all that bad to be honest.

>creating the company

"CEO" doesn't mean "created the company." People who start their own business sometimes give themselves the title of CEO, but CEO doesn't mean "company founder," it means "chief executive officer." You can bring in a CEO for existing companies at any point in the company's lifespan.

You sound like jordan peterson

Companys want good CEOs, because a CEO's decisions can make or break a company. Companies can poach each others' CEOs by offering them more money. Hence companies need to pay their CEOs generously to keep them from being poached, and it becomes a salary arms race.

I find it hilarious that people in this thread feel like they have the right to dictate what a CEO is or isn't paid. Their salary is a function of the free market and what their company's revenue and board will allow for. Your feelings stem from a combination of pathetic jealousy, discontent with your life, and the inevitable realization that you simply can't compete.

Likewise, 'moral' is a much more nebulous concept that is hard to invest in without a great measure of 'good faith'. Each bottom-end worker is basically impossible to account for. You can hire them, you can fire them, but you can't control what they really do. You can hope that they'd work more efficiently for more money, and I'd like to think most people would, but most companies just aren't willing to invest in them to find out, especially while they're competing with other companies.

Since its the norm to pay low-end employees so little, they realize that those employees probably won't leave to go somewhere else to make more for quite some time (because they'd have to find that place) and companies are willing to give small raises across the board just to keep the illusion that they're worth staying with, but only what is calculated as just enough to keep them from seeking employment at some other shitty job.

Basically the concept of paying low end employees very little monopolizes the job market in a sense - Making your ability to compete for your own wage extremely rare unless you have a very unique or valuable skillset outside of the majority.

I don't have a problem with CEO pay, I have a problem with obscene bonus schemes and golden parachutes, which get paid even if he ran the firm into the ground. Case studies: AIG and Lehman Brothers, and basically every major bank that had a role in 2008 crisis.

It actually has more to do with the fact that most people are ungrateful shit bags and higher wages simply do not scale with increased efficiency/productivity.

Soubds like something a factory owner from 1800s would say.

Why should I be pissed off some chad from a rich well connected family is making out like a bandit while wages have been stagnant for 20 years and companies kick their wagecucks to the curb the moment things get real but CEO chad walks away with a 10 million golden parachute

Why are you so cuck brained?

Because that has nothing to do with Chad you imbecile

No it's something that anyone that has actually tried to operate a business in the United States would say

the CEO is literally never some dickbrained chad. you just believe they are to compensate for your own shortcomings. stop being so pathetic

No banks should have been bailed out. That was a fucking terrible mistake.

Now they blame immigrants and poor people

>he insulted me
>let's chimp out and put a social democrat government!
Let's see how long do you last without USA gibs

>chasing shekels
Lmao this is what people actually believe

Let's accept for a moment that CEOs are truly worth what they are paid: a thousand times more than the average employee. This implies that CEOs are paid based on fair markets prices: it is really the market that determines how much they are paid. Let's just accept those things as true for a thought experiment.

Now imagine a CEO's job is split into a thousand pieces. Each of those pieces is delivered to an average employee working an eight hour shift. You fully employ these people doing nothing else but 1/1000th of the previous CEO's responsibilities each, in something like an assembly line. Even if the CEO's job is impossibly difficult, and only the best minds of the world could handle it all at once, surely an average person could handle just 1/1000th of the job.

This new system being an assembly line, and knowing what we know about assembly lines, the workers might even get more efficient, doing the work of two CEOs. You could probably assign clients their very own employee, have five people making contacts at conferences instead of just one, have a hundred people working on collaborations with other companies, etc. The business would become more efficient. Or, each of the employees could all work for ten hours a week, and you could pay them less. Or, you could fire all the below-average performers, that is, exactly half of them, and redistribute their work to the remaining above-average performers, and save on the payroll.

So, if both of our original assumptions are true, why do businesses not eliminate their CEO positions and redistribute their work to 1000 people? It would be better for the business in every way -- they either get a more efficient business or more money. But no businesses do this. So there must be a flaw in our original assumption. It simply MUST be true that CEOs are not worth what they are paid, and therefore the market does not really determine the pay of CEOs.

>muh free market prices

CEOs can pay themselves such high salaries because they simply can thanks to zero regulation on limits to their bonuses.

Without any government regulations, the "free market" would drive worker wages right down to zero and implement slavery or indentured servitude.

>Now imagine a CEO's job is split into a thousand pieces.
Here's your problem. The "worth" of the CEO is derived largely from their responsibility to the whole corporation and every employee, at least in theory. If your company shits the bed, the board kicks YOU to the curb, even if it was the result of logistics/employee misconduct/whatever. Of course, in real life, CEO's often find workarounds to get out of this responsibility.

>why don't the passengers fly the plane

>Now imagine a CEO's job is split into a thousand pieces. Each of those pieces is delivered to an average employee working an eight hour shift. You fully employ these people doing nothing else but 1/1000th of the previous CEO's responsibilities each, in something like an assembly line.

This is what plebs think about the matter:
>if my job which consists in menial, monkey sees, monkey does activities, therefore other people's jobs must be structured in the same way!

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for punishing any criminal activity committed by CEOs such as fraud or money laundering.

But to punish a CEO just because some exogenous black swan event negatively affected his firm's 3rd quarter results is just retarded. How would you feel if you worked long stressful hours, 7 days a week, and then get told you won't get paid for the rest of the year just because you couldn't predict 6 months into the future with 100% accuracy?

Well that's my point, the reason why they get paid so much is because they're constantly at risk of being held liable for anything that goes wrong.

no that would be the CSO you mong, CEO is literally just a title for personality (tim cook, mark zucc)

And yet he cashes out the bonus anyway or gets fired and gets cushy severance deals :^)

kek most companies don't even have a "CSO"

ITT: Resentful poorfags

If you spent the time whining about how others are rich doing shit that'd make you money you'd actually be somewhere instead of shitposting on Veeky Forums about how rich people are meanie poo poo heads.

>implying there is anything separating the pilot and passenger other than education
remember that fighter pilot was a real job during wartime that was open to just about anyone that wanted it, and I bet you it was considerably more difficult than modern day auto-pilots

>b-but, muh CEO genes!
show me where they are in the genome

>implying the banks didn't pay the loans back with interest the following day

Fuck off

>CEOs are paid billions to take the risk of getting fired for things that aren't their fault
you realize basically every employee is at risk for getting fired for things that aren't their fault, right?

my father, who is an old-school programmer, once almost got fired for strongly advocating RAID systems. bosses chose to ignore him, very important data failed, guess who the punishment landed on? not the bosses!

>Muh anecdotal evidence!

>once almost got fired
What a horror story. The difference is that your boss not liking you is not inherent to the structure of a corporation, whereas the CEO being liable is.

What century are you from? Are you advocating a return to the guild system? A fundamental aspect of capitalism is splitting complex work into simpler jobs to be done by a larger number of lower paid employees.

Go back to burning mechanical looms, Luddite.

>I deserve a safe and secure job

Employees don't deserve anything other than what they are worth on the free market.

>he can't recognize instances in which anecdotal evidence is relevant

Which is it, boys? It's not inherent or it is?

>>implying the banks didn't pay the loans back with interest the following day
They didn't you stupid fuck. Besides they were not loans, they were capital injections, which were used to pay bonuses for the leadership that fucked everything up in the,first place.

The position of CEO is "worth" a very high wage because the structure of a corporation depends on the CEO being liable. Any given individual employee is "worth" the wage that they accept upon employment. These things aren't contradictory. I'm not sure what your point is.

You get paid what you are worth to the company or what you consider yourself worth to the company.

I work and I get paid fuck all, but I know that the company doesn't value me more than that so I will not ask for more than what I value myself and in my opinion what the company should value me

Objectively false

>My dad's specific experience at his specific company should reflect on nation-wide policy regarding CEOs

>that was open to just about anyone that wanted it,
lol no

It may well be possible to train 99% of the population to fly a plane and have everyone fly rented single seater planes everywhere but it would not be economical. The equivalence still stands.

The analogy demonstrates "division of labor", even K Marx recognized this as a thing. It is not a conspiracy to keep you down, trust me, it is an example of how material conditions affect society.

>implying there is anything separating the pilot and passenger other than education
Most CEOs have many peers with similar education but who are nowhere near as successful. There are other factors at play.

If you want to lower "obscene inequality", the best way to do it is by cultivating ubermensch virtues amongst the populace and helping them learn what it means to be an American. Instead of just Zuck pioneering some new technology you'd have about 50 others with the same gogetum attitude, it would be highly competitive and ol' Zuck or whoever gets the top dog position wouldn't have quite such a large share of the new business.

>I have not experienced this undue blame, furthermore I have heard the experiences of so few people that I cannot recognize that this undue blame happens to many people frequently
Seriously, have any of you ever worked... anywhere? This complaint is so frequent that at every job at which I have ever worked, even the ones at which there were fewer than five employees, at least one person if not several people have complained about receiving punishment for a crime they did not commit. Sometimes I could see it happening to my coworkers before my very eyes. For some, this injustice jeopardized their job security to the point of expulsion from the workplace.

I mentioned my father's specific case because it brought the human element to a counterargument based in evidence I assumed to be universal. In other words, I mentioned my father because otherwise my counterargument would have been overly simple and boring, as if I was merely stating facts. So, I don't understand the nature of your objections. I might as well have told you an experience I had with brushing my teeth, and you came back requesting I supply evidence than anybody brushes their teeth.

>NEET thinks he has the right to dictate what people earn.

Seriously go take a long look at yourself in the mirror.

>I don't understand the nature of your objections.
Yeah clearly, because you responded with this pompous word salad bullshit. My post has nothing to do with your shitty dad story. Your point was that employees are also liable for things that go wrong. Yeah no shit. MY point is that the CEO is responsible for ANYTHING that goes wrong. That's built into what it means to be a "corporation." An employee being mistreated is NOT built into what it means to be a corporation.

>the analogy demonstrates "division of labor"
I am not quite sure we are discussing the same thing here. Sure, a pilot flies a plane for the price of $100,000/yr. And for this price, it really IS more economical to have one person fly planes instead of us all learning to fly our own planes. That is a correct identification of division of labor.

But that is not a valid refutation of my argument. My argument was that the position of CEO is exactly an instance in which it is not more economical to have one person do the work. For the price of 1000x the average employee's wage, it would be profoundly LESS economical to hire that person than to split up the labor of that person into a thousand smaller pieces, to be done by a thousand easier to find, and less skilled/experienced/educated people. What you'd gain from this trade is perhaps a lower cost per employee, fewer employees to pay, or greater business efficiency by more people having less on their plate to stress over.

>If you want to lower "obscene inequality", the best way to do it is by cultivating ubermensch virtues amongst the populace and helping them learn what it means to be an American.
As far as this goes, just listen to yourself.

>An employee being mistreated is NOT built into what it means to be a corporation.
That seems to be an unreasonable assertion to me. If it's NOT built into what it means to be a corporation, why is being punished for crimes someone did not commit, what you call "an employee being mistreated," a nearly universal experience for those who work? Are you telling me it's a random occurrence that happens to everyone, everywhere, all at once, but is NOT systematic?

I think it boils down to the pool of people who are appropriately skilled and connected (emphasis on the latter) essentially have a collusion that enables that wage level.
Those wages probably aren't that large in proportion to company expenses that it seriously affects the company competetiveness. Could be that regulatory environment gives large corporations the kind of edge they wouldn't have in a more laissez-faire environment so that their wages don't get competed downwards.

Distributism is the superior system. It's more effective if businesses are run locally and sustainably. And people work harder when they control their own economic destiny. We wouldn't have useless CEO's taking massive sums of money for little value.

you and your dad sound like cucks that let people talk shit to them. If someone blames you for something in which you have no blame you stand up and say so.

I would also blame everything on you because apparantly you just stand there and take it

...

>If someone blames you for something in which you have no blame you stand up and say so.
Not that guy but have you ever like... had a real job? The boss has the finger on the trigger, he doesn't fucking care that you're shouting at him. It's like charging a machine gun nest alone with a knife. He has all the power. You're worth less then dirt to them.

I've seen this shit happen all the time. You're naive if you don't think people stand up to it. I've never meet anyone where it actually worked.

It's not a matter of not standing up to defend oneself, it's a matter of the management believing you

>For the price of 1000x the average employee's wage, it would be profoundly LESS economical to hire that person than to split up the labor of that person into a thousand smaller pieces
This sentence made sense until about half way through.

If you are asking why not fire the CEO and hire someone potentially more talented for 1/10 of the price, that is an interesting question, which is an intriguing dilemma.

investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/112013/executive-pay-how-much-do-shareholders-really-care.asp

However you seem to unironically believe it is more economical to split the labor of a CEO into 1000 pieces.

The kind of "labor" of a CEO is administrative and executive, it is an intellectual task. Imagine if a computer finds the average movement of the joystick of 100 people playing a video game and makes the same movement in the aircraft's controls and only presses a button when 51 people press that button. Or imagine too many cooks in the kitchen.

>just listen to yourself
I realize it sounds far fetched, perhaps even shocking, but as I said the CEO has been educated to the same degree as many others so there are other factors at play. Luck plays a role, but even luck can be mitigated by the market. The more people probing possible avenues for economic growth, banks acting like insuance companies, covering the losses of unsuccessful businesses with the profits of the successful thereby allowing more risk-taking.

There are many ways to do this that would be much more succesful than hardcore Stalinism, if only more people would change their attitude to capitalism.

It is better spent like that and most businesses know that. The ones that do that peroform better than ones who don't. It's usually only large established businesses with their hands in the government that get plundered like that.

Alright, David, we know you're very brave for standing up to giants but some of us have mouths to feed and other things to worry about besides pride

>why should they get X
Because they run shit.
It's that simple. You do not need to justify your income when you're one of the top dogs.

Sometimes it's not even that. It's also a matter of, who's more useful to them.

shouldn't you be prepping the CEO to fuck your wife?

You get bullied because you allow yourself to get bullied.

You cannot make $500,000,000 per year if nobody is willing to pay you $500,000,000 per year.

No matter how "greedy" you are, you have to find someone willing to pay you that $500,000,000 in order to make $500,000,000.

So if you can get 500,000,000 people to pay you $1 each, you're golden.

>private jets
you know private jets cost several hundred thousand dollars in fuel to fly long distances? if the atrocious amount of money wasted on jet fuel was instead paid to workers, a shit ton more industries than saudi and other oil corporations would benefit.

>However you seem to unironically believe it is more economical to split the labor of a CEO into 1000 pieces.
Yes, truly. Why is this not the case? Of course, one who weaves clothes by hand has many responsibilities, and it is rare to find in one person all the skills needed at a very high level. Perhaps that one person, who has mastered all the elements of his trade, from the original design to the marketing of the end product, is deserving of high pay for quality goods. But that does not mean his work cannot be split into numerous smaller parts, able to be done by those will less experience or devotion to the art.

A college professor is, by nature, doing novel work. He works tirelessly to publish brand new studies in his field. It is the shining example of an "administrative, executive, intellectual" task. Yet, he never does it alone. He has a fleet of students behind him preparing the test tubes. Even so, he never publishes studies alone -- it is almost always the case that numerous professors collaborate to put together even the simplest study. We could find and pay the Saint of Science one thousand times the salary of the average college professor, but instead, we've decided to split up this fictional Saint of Science's job into a thousand smaller pieces, done by smart-enough people. And I reckon these thousand people are advancing their fields much more than any one man, even a demigod, could do, and maybe even for less pay on the whole as well.

Every conceivable job that may have once existed has been split into smaller pieces. The Wright Brothers created airplanes themselves, now airplanes are crafted by thousands of people at once. Countries were once led by individual rulers, now they are large bureaucracies managing all the previous responsibilities and more. If CEOs are like any other position in capitalism, that is, subject to innovation, assembly lining, and the market, then why are CEOs exempt from this trend?

>So you're fine with tens of thousands of people losing their jobs as long as le ebil CEOs get their pay cut?
luxury industries don't employ nearly as many people as other industries because rich people can only spend so much and so-called luxury items are really not all that special except to flaunt wealth

What if the increase in efficiency yielded by private jets (i.e. high-ranking decision makers can travel anywhere they need to at will) balances out the fuel expense?

Please tell me what you think a CEO does.

define "success". by all accounts our middle class is not nearly as strong as other western countries anymore, our healthcare is atrociously expensive, education is also expensive as well. wages have stagnated for 40 years

>but why should CEOs be paid 500 - 1000 times their average employees salary?

Because they can?

No offense, but there are certain things you can do to stop it.

For example, help and join unions, and start campaigning against unskilled immigration.

i bet you it doesn't