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bigloser42 t1_j5mefff wrote

It’ll never happen but we need laws capping max CEO pay at some percentage of the average employee salary.

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sillychillly OP t1_j5mifog wrote

I agree! I'd like something like a top executive to lowest paid worker compensation ratio balance requirement.

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firebat45 t1_j5nl2rk wrote

Lots of CEOs are paid $1 annually. Just one example of how the rich will always be able to pay accountants to figure out loopholes while the poor suffer.

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_AlreadyTaken_ t1_j5olw1j wrote

You include all compensation including stock options and bonuses

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firebat45 t1_j5pce7f wrote

My point is, that is very difficult to do. Probably by design. You can try to put some sort of limit on pay and to accommodate for all compensation, but you will never be successful. People make careers out of figuring out how to circumvent those types of rules.

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thefinerprint t1_j5mxi7c wrote

So the CEO of a 100 person company would be paid the same as the CEO of a 100,000 person company? It would need to scale somehow.

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trevor32192 t1_j5my4oo wrote

It does scale with the lowest paid worker.

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Adventurous-Text-680 t1_j5n6118 wrote

You are basically arguing you feel internships should be abolished because no company would commit to hiring them.

You are also ironically pushing the idea of everyone working from home so they don't need facilities staff which tend to be unskilled labor that is low paying. This would reduce unskilled labor opportunities and place a burden on the labor market.

So software companies would be allowed to have better compensated CEOs than say a 10 person mom and pop store that needs to hire part time college students as cashiers. Assuming of course the mom and pop store can pull in enough money based on the ratio.

Furthermore you are pushing forth the idea that a newly hired person at the lowest level should be paid the same as the person with multiple years of experience otherwise reducing the CEO compensation. This would ironically lead to infighting among the workers when new hires are getting paid the same as experienced workers but not being productive.

The ratio idea basically pushes companies to not want to hire inexperienced workers and want to outsource all unskilled labor. Those consultating companies will drastically increase the cost of everything and the production costs increases.

However it misses the biggest issue. You think it will give better pay to lower paid workers but in reality they're isn't any cash for that pay in most companies without increasing the cost of goods and services. Instead you are basically telling companies they can't give as much stock to their CEO and that's about it. Lower paid workers don't want company stock and they certainly don't want the value of their compensation to be based on company performance.

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trevor32192 t1_j5o3drn wrote

It's amazing that you said all that, and none of it is true or relevant. Nothing is stopping companies from having janitors, nor forcing companies to pay someone with no experience, the same as someone with 5 years experience. There is plenty of cash in most companies to pay low wage workers. If there isnt enough money in a company to fairly compensate staff then they shouldn't be in business.

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Adventurous-Text-680 t1_j5s2xim wrote

I am confused because you literally mentioned that companies should limit CEOs compensation based on the lowest paying wage. I am mentioning that would not have the intended effect of reducing compensation and potentially create incentive to reduce low wage employees by outsource when possible making what your are suggesting pointless.

You can't increase pay for low wage employees unless you increase the minimum wage. That is what increases pay to ensure a livable wage not trying some round about way to limit ceo compensation.

You would be surprised to know that not all companies have enough money to keep all their employees and us why we are seeing layoffs. The problem you don't seem to understand is liquidity.

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trevor32192 t1_j5t0dud wrote

Lol it doesn't limit Ceo pay it keeps a ratio. Raising the minimum wage is good until we dont do it for 30 years, and it massively falls behind.

If your company has to rely on keeping its employees in poverty, then it should fail.

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Adventurous-Text-680 t1_j5thnoz wrote

You don't seem to get it.

People are willing to work low paying jobs because there will always be someone willing to work for less. Low skill jobs have a lower floor. Look at Uber drivers. Many barely make profit after you include wear and tear on their vehicle along with fuel costs. In fact, Uber eats to great then as independent contractors so they aren't even employees and dont have the same protection.

You seen to simply not understand the world. Do you really think it would be easier to pass a law limiting CEO pay by the lowest wages employee than a minimum wage increase?

You are being optimistic about how companies would get around such a law. Low waged workers will likely become contractors or the law will become average pay because no one would accept restricting one person's compensation based on someone else's compensation. It doesn't necessarily increase pay for low wage workers like you think.

It's better to actually directly help those that need to have their wage increased.

Plus what happens if you have part time employees? They get paid a lower compensation due to no health care and less vacation. Now you can't have that either which means seasonal help also becomes tough to hire depending on how the your proposed law determines "minimum compensation".

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trevor32192 t1_j5ucrrh wrote

This isnt rocket science. The minimum wage is just as difficult to pass aparently because it hasn't budged in 30 years.

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Adventurous-Text-680 t1_j5uslak wrote

False

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history

> The 2007 amendments increased the minimum wage to $5.85 per hour effective July 24, 2007; $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008; and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. A separate provision of the bill brings about phased increases to the minimum wages in the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and in American Samoa, with the goal of bringing the minimum wages in those locations up to the general federal minimum wage over a number of years.

States are free to increase minimum wage as well and many do regularly.

https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/minimum-wage-by-state/

The problem is that minimum wage usually doesn't mean livable wage and livable wage is very different based on the local cost of living for the area. NYC and DC need higher living wages than say some rural town in Alabama. It's why the federal minimum doesn't change as often.

So let's not pretend that minimum wage hasn't increased in 30 years when it's not even true federally let alone for many states. Especially when a significant portion have much higher minimum wage (some twice as much or more).

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GeneralVincent t1_j5p7hxv wrote

Unpaid internships are predatory.

Working from home is generally a net positive. I'm a facilities staff. Idc if everyone works from home, cut my job. I'll find a different one. And not every job can be remote anyways.

Large software companies already have better compensated CEOs then mom and pop stores. Obviously. If a small business fails because it can't pay it's employees a fair wage, then it shouldn't exist. Or it needs less employees. (Also the point is to pay the lower level employees more, which allows those employees to have enough money to shop at that local store instead of needing to go to Walmart to save every extra dollar)

If an employee has been with the company for several years and hasn't received a raise in that time... that's really not on the new employee. Also, capping a CEOs wage does not mean everyone else just gets paid the same all of a sudden. It's lessening the gap between the lowest and highest paid worker. Everyone else in between can be (and should be) adjusted as well.

That paragraph doesn't even make sense.

Assuming there actually isn't any extra cash (even though many companies do have extra cash) then absolutely many employees would enjoy and benefit from receiving stock options. I've worked at a place that did profit sharing, and a place that gave stocks as part of the total compensation. Both times I worked as a low level employees. Both times it made me appreciate the company more, have more pride in the work I did (as I was DIRECTLY profiting of my quality of work), and most importantly I was ending up with more money. Because stocks can be sold. For money. That's why CEOs are rich.

And I'm opening to hearing alternative ideas to fix the ever widening income inequality that is destroying the economy.

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jethropenistei- t1_j5oszvj wrote

Maybe more run of the mill employees having board seats and being compensated in stock along with cash would improve earnings disparity. CEOs would be less inclined to lay people off to protect the bottom line. Worker/shareholders have more incentive to increase profits, lower costs and to make sure they don’t lay people off.

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bigloser42 t1_j5oub49 wrote

You set the CEOs max pay as a percentage of the average workers salary, with the percentage on a sliding scale where CEOs of companies with more employees get a larger percentage. Cut employees, cut max CEO salary. Set max bonus’s as a percentage of gross company profit. No more bonus for CEOs when the company posts a loss.

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Fausterion18 t1_j5pj6vc wrote

This is how you end up with a company in a death spiral because no one wants to work for nothing.

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bigloser42 t1_j5ppcte wrote

You’d still get base pay, just not bonuses. And if nobody gets bonuses when the company is failing then you can’t just jump ship to somewhere else, you actually need to be competent at your job and turn it around.

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Fausterion18 t1_j5pu698 wrote

Nobody is going to try and rescue a sinking ship for base pay.

Turnaround specialists get paid the big bux for a reason.

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bigloser42 t1_j5puj8x wrote

They will if they think they can turn it around and get the big bonus options. You’re looking at a single company in a vacuum. If the same rules apply to everyone your options are be a CEO of a sinking ship, or don’t work. And if no established CEOs want to do it, someone new will jump in.

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Fausterion18 t1_j5pvavs wrote

>They will if they think they can turn it around and get the big bonus options.

That's if they succeed, many companies are doomed to fail regardless of the best efforts of the leadership.

>You’re looking at a single company in a vacuum. If the same rules apply to everyone your options are be a CEO of a sinking ship, or don’t work. And if no established CEOs want to do it, someone new will jump in.

No, you'll just get all the shitty CEOs in the dying companies which will go into bankruptcy, afterwards someone competent may come sniffing around post chapter 11.

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bigloser42 t1_j5q1lm7 wrote

If the company is doomed to fail regardless of leadership, then it should fail the quality of the CEO is irrelevant.

If only shitty CEOs are going to run the bad companies, where do the good CEOs go once there are no longer good companies with CEO slots open? Either they’ll have to swallow their egos and take a lesser position or they’ll have to try to right a sinking ship in the hopes of a future payday.

Unless your saying there are more good companies than there are good CEOs, but that just means right now there are shitty CEOs getting massive compensation packages because their company is successful in spite of the CEO.

The only way to get a companies as a whole to raise the pay of their works to something commensurate with the work being done by their employees is to tie the wages of the companies leadership to the workers wages and their bonuses to the companies success.

We already have CEOs today making thousands of times the average workers pay running a company into the ground while getting huge bonuses because the stock is going up then getting massive golden parachutes when they leave. That needs to stop, and the only way to do that is to legislate it.

I’m not saying that the CEO should get a pittance. Something in the 500-1000% the average wage should be plenty, and if you have a sliding scale for bonuses where the more workers your company has the higher percentage of the gross profits you’re allowed to receive as bonus, CEOs of top-tier companies will still be able to get massive paydays. There will always be people willing to take the job, and if it weeds out some shitty CEOs that are only doing it for the money, so be it. Those guys probably shouldn’t be CEOs anyway.

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Fausterion18 t1_j5q423q wrote

>If the company is doomed to fail regardless of leadership, then it should fail the quality of the CEO is irrelevant.

But you won't know which companies are doomed to fail until you try, and without compensation they wont try.

>If only shitty CEOs are going to run the bad companies, where do the good CEOs go once there are no longer good companies with CEO slots open? Either they’ll have to swallow their egos and take a lesser position or they’ll have to try to right a sinking ship in the hopes of a future payday.

They work a lower level executive position. Much better than trying to rescue a sinking ship with an uncertain chance of success and minimal pay until you succeed.

>The only way to get a companies as a whole to raise the pay of their works to something commensurate with the work being done by their employees is to tie the wages of the companies leadership to the workers wages and their bonuses to the companies success.
>
>We already have CEOs today making thousands of times the average workers pay running a company into the ground while getting huge bonuses because the stock is going up then getting massive golden parachutes when they leave. That needs to stop, and the only way to do that is to legislate it.
>
>I’m not saying that the CEO should get a pittance. Something in the 500-1000% the average wage should be plenty, and if you have a sliding scale for bonuses where the more workers your company has the higher percentage of the gross profits you’re allowed to receive as bonus, CEOs of top-tier companies will still be able to get massive paydays. There will always be people willing to take the job, and if it weeds out some shitty CEOs that are only doing it for the money, so be it. Those guys probably shouldn’t be CEOs anyway.

Like which companies?

Also, tying to gross profit is another hammer solution that doesn't work for a lot of companies. Growth companies for example rarely bring much of a profit during their growth phase, and yet leadership is extremely crucial during this period.

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SSupreme_ t1_j5q1jgv wrote

Why? CEO’s like all public company officers are appointed by it’s board of directors.

If the CEO doesn’t perform they are replaced.

The CEO’s decisions have a much greater impact on the company’s success than a low level employee. Thus, the CEO is often compensated according to the impact they make. This compensation can take the form of stock(RSU’s), bonuses, and salary.

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bigloser42 t1_j5q1s67 wrote

…percentages can go above 100%. CEO should be in the 500-1000% range of the average employee salary.

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SSupreme_ t1_j5q4k1r wrote

I disagree. The larger the company, the larger the compensation that goes to management. CEO and other officer decision’s have a major impact on a company’s future success.

So they are compensated accordingly.

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