Are you including stock stuff in this calculation?

I had a recruiter reach out to me for a job that was focused on facilitating people using stock as collateral to get personal loans. I think that's one of the mechanisms rich people use to leverage their non-cash wealth without paying taxes. I told him that sounded like it should be illegal, and that was the end of that.

1. As others pointed out, salary is only one part of executive packages.

2. Their CEO is not the only exorbitantly paid executive.

3. Even if that was so, cumulative effects across society from this standardized system of disproportionate remuneration can be massive. Every major firm, or nearly every major firm, pays into this system - every firm that goes under on a narrow margin is killed in part because the grain supplier must charge an extra 3% (using a random-if-high number for demonstration) over the rest of their costs and profits calculations for the exorbitant wage of their execs - that price is factored into the flour supplier's cost - who also then must charge an extra 3% on top of that for their execs- that price is factored into the bread supplier's cost - likewise, who must charge an extra 3% for THEIR execs - and that price is factored into the local grocery store, who, again, must both factor the raised costs caused by paying all the previous companies' execs, and pay their own execs the remuneration they are accustomed to. The end result is a massive burden on the consumer that many do not fully understand is inherent to the system.

4. Even if we exclude cumulative effects, a 20 cent raise is 400$ per year per person.

Meh. Giving bonuses, dividends, and then posting profits, whilst paying a dogshit wage is incredibly tone deaf. Do you know who generated that wage?

If you have to point to one single problem it's shareholders, Dodge vs Ford (1916) established shareholder supremacy, so the point of any company isn't to produce widgets or employ people or pay the CEO, it's to produce value for the shareholders, end of story. All things serve this master purpose.

I worked at a privately held $1b manufacturing company recently, they were doing record profits, cut employee bonuses based on some bullshit metric we "failed to hit," all the money was just pouring into the owning family's pockets. Their private helicopter trips were the purpose of our labor. Their shopping excursions to Europe. Sadly, this is a highly politically active family in conservative politics, funding the Heritage foundation over decades.

The harder they try to do that the more our stock moves in the other direction.

I guess the short sellers are happy.

You think these golden parachute fucks are going to learn ???!?

Hilarious.

If profits go down, shareholders will just move on to more profitable stocks.

Any publicly traded company is going to be the same.... Many privately held companies will also be the same, it's just that the shareholders will be the ones running the show.... Which might be worse in some cases.

Unemployment insurance for example.

Most states only give unemployment benefits if you're let go, not if you quit in most circumstances.

None of this is wrong, however, management wants the more tenured (read: more experienced) people to move on because they're earning more than others.

They believe, often incorrectly, that the skilled workers job can be filled in for by the rest of the employee pool, and they will just fill in the hours gap with a lower-paid newbie.

In reality, the higher paid/higher experience people are often holding things together, so when they walk out the door because you treated them like they were nothing, all hell breaks loose; often resulting in most of the team leaving.

On paper, this makes management happy, because the cost of wages goes down, but when the revenue also takes a dip because shits fucked and nobody knows how to fix it, they (hopefully) start to realize how dumb of a decision they made. Unlikely as that seems.

At a previous job, there was a fairly typical air of nobody taking about wages. I have and continue to be of the mindset: fuck that. If I'm making more than you, and you're doing the same job, you should go get yours. If I'm making less than everyone else, I need to go get mine. If the current employer won't pony up, then find someone who will... Anyways, as a direct result of a discussion I had at work, with coworkers, one of the longest standing employees found a better job. Good thing too. I wasn't there for a while lot longer either (not wage related for me, but still).... It was not a great workplace.

What I'm hoping we see is that the highly skilled talent walks out, and they have to pay more to get someone similarly skilled to replace them in order to keep things running.

But that assumes these capitalist fucks learn anything at all. In my experience, few ever do.