If Ryan Cohen took a salary in that leauge the bear thesis would still be alive and the turnaround of GameStop might never happen (or be significantly delayed). My executive chairman has other plans 🙌
If Ryan Cohen took a salary in that leauge the bear thesis would still be alive and the turnaround of GameStop might never happen (or be significantly delayed). My executive chairman has other plans 🙌
Executives of large companies should always be paid wholly or mostly in stock and not allowed to hedge. This is the only way to be aligned with any 1%er that I can think of, when their interests and those of the common shareholder are unified.
Why should the shareholders interest even be prioritized. What about customers? Or employees? Or the business itself?
This priority on short term profits for stock price is toxic to functional capitalism.
I agree more than I disagree actually, but the nuance I’d add is that I think share price should be much less of a focus than company profitability and dividends, as the whole point of owning stock is in owning the excess profits. Trading firms have made the markets into a casino while low Fed rates have made actual profitability more of a side quest for most publicly traded companies. Look at Rivian, nearly worth a trillion dollars before they even had full production? Ludicrous speculation at the cost of everything is the main course for most traders.
Aside from discussing the urgent need for market reforms to make sure companies trade more closely to their fundamental value, I spend more of my time worrying about customers and workers as well. We have a nation addicted to literal slavery through the 13th amendment, it’s a disgrace. Putting more people in prison is literally in the interest of certain for-profit prison company shareholders. It’s sick.
Saint Milton Friedman (bless him) said that the only societal responsibility of a CEO is to increase the wealth of the company’s shareholders.
You wouldn’t want the CEOs to disobey the sanctified word of Mimil? The shareholders could go broke, and then how would the wealth treacle down? Did you think of this? No, you only think about not starving, you egoistical prole.
OK some priority is reasonable, the company needs to make some money to pay for investments.
But I absolutely agree, why are we rewarding companies that are practically doing con jobs on their customers?
deleted by creator
Why should a car owners commute be prioritized… what about disabled? Or downtroden? Or the dealership itself?
This priority on personal vehicals for daily use is toxic to functional transport.
Unironically yes. Check out Strong Towns.
What shareholders want isn’t what the customers want, what shareholders want isn’t what personnel want, what shareholders want isn’t what the public wants either.
The shareholders want to fuck the customer, they want to fuck the employees, and they want to fuck the business itself. Fuck the shareholders. They didn’t make the business successful, they didn’t have the vision that created the value in the first place, they’re leeches that ruin the business for short sighted goals.
Fuck the shareholders, and fuck the executives.
deleted by creator
I realize that many people’s retirements are tied up in stocks as well. That doesn’t make us “shareholders”. Without voting rights or a say, we’re not really vested in the same manner executives are. When our 401k’s go off to a fund manager that makes the decisions for us, we’re not really “in the game” as it were. Ideally a company’s stock price should be tied to the health of the company, instead what we have are artificial prices inflated by mechanisms such as stock buybacks or the stock price is speculative.
Either way, it’s a shit show for us (you know, regular people) and only great for the 1%'ers. I think tying up retirements like we have been is a mistake, look at the many examples of people who lost their retirement assets due to MCI Worldcom, Enron, and Madoff.
It’s a joke.
deleted by creator
No, they should be paid wages like everybody else, and also hired and fired like everybody else. The idea that a CEO is some kind of special superstar with talents nobody else have is ridiculous. The current situation is a scheme to help keep the 1% in the 1%.
I’m happy to talk about what should be the case in a perfect world, but what I was talking about here is what sometimes is the case and less bad than usual.
Threy are paid wages like everybody else. And a CEO of a fortune 500 company will have special skills that nobody else has. The skills can be learnt mostly. But at companies this big, a CEO is an asset, a good CEO that can provide more growth and profit than anyone else will command a salary, and the market forces ensure that the salary they earn is inline with how much value they bring to the company.
And these people still pay tax, and a lot of it. It’s not possible to argue that a CEO is overpaid because CEO pay at this level is defined by the Market.
You must be disconnected from reality to think like that. What incredible skills do Bezos and Musk have to gain 10000% more than all of their employees combined?
Most businesses thrive despite CEOs, not thanks to them. Worker-owned cooperatives are reliably more stable.
Have you heard of the Panama papers?
Oh god here we go. Capitalized “Market” and everything. ALL HAIL THE INVISIBLE HAND! MAY IT BRING US JOBS, HEALTHCARE, AND A WELL DIVERSIFIED BUT NOT TOO CONSERVATIVE PORTFOLIO SO I CAN ONLY WORK UNTIL I’M 70 INSTEAD OF 75. AMEN.
What does this mean? Is it not fact that in the capitalist system of the US, the market is a real thing. It’s not just something people say, it is the economy, and economics is based in mathematics (at least they try to base it in mathematics).
deleted by creator
CEOs of large companies have power because large companies have power, but ultimately the people with the most power are the controlling board members of a company. The board chooses a C level executive’s salary based in what they think that person brings to the table in terms of monetary value, obviously they don’t know for certain, they don’t have a specific number, but for large companies like the ones on this list, it must work pretty well for most of them, or they wouldn’t use this method. Ultimately, the board cares about profit and growth, and they treat the people at the C suite as tools to get that profit. Companies pay a lot of money for something that will make them more money, and so when you think of a CEO as a person you will never be able to justify their compensation, but when you think of them as an object for making profit, you can see how it becomes more justifiable.
asdfasdf
I’m not saying they are at the mercy of their job, how can you be when you have a hundred million dollars. My argument is that CEOs aren’t payed on the same principal that a regular employee is paid, they are paid like a business tool rather than an employee, as if they are some object that generates profit. And I’m sure it helps to be on good terms with powerful people, and being the CEO of a fortune 500 company would make you a powerful person too. But ultimately a CEO is paid according to the value they bring to the company and for that reason alone.
Give up. These conversations are dominated by teenagers who are bringing their vast experience working a shit job for an hourly wage.
They think they’re making some moral/social outcry against a symptom of capitalism, thinking that if we could just cure the symptom, the disease will improve. (Same people say nothing about athlete’s pay, but here we are. LOL, that one used to be a source of public outcry.)
CEOs get these salaries and benefits because the market is willing to pay it, thinks it’s a fair deal. There’s nothing more to it.
If you have a billion-dollar company, and you want the best leadership, you pay for that. Want some dude who says, “Sure, I can handle it. Only need $250,000/yr. I got this.”? Of course not. You want someone with a track record of handling… whatever it is you’re hiring for.
Sure, sometimes they fuck up, just like any employer. But do these people think they’re smarter than the Alpha board of directors?! Yes they do.
And spare me the, “They don’t work 1,000% harder!”. Yeah. We know because it’s obvious to any simpleton. That’s not a point worth making.
And spare me, “The workers should get that money!” Dude was bitching on reddit about American Airlines, their CEO and pay. I did the math. If you stripped him of every penny and spread it around, worked out to $.02/hr. more for each employee.
CEO pay ain’t the fucking problem. It’s only a symptom of unfettered capitalism.
And one last addition to my rant. :)
Listen: People pay you for what you can do for them. That’s how you make money. Hard work barely figures in.
Don’t get me started on making social connections. Somehow these people forget we’re apes and that sort of thing is important.
Don’t they get massive RSUs on top of the obscene salary?
Yes, but RSUs aren’t actually stocks, and I don’t think of them as a very effective way of unifying the interests of an RSU holder with the shareholder per se.
Source: https://ceoworld.biz/2017/02/28/advantage-rsus-ceo-compensation-package/