Maryam M.-C.
Robert ReichWhat I always hear: “We can’t afford to pay our workers $15 an hour.”
What I never hear: “We can’t afford to pay our CEO millions of dollars a year.”
Funny how that works.
Peter Principle@rbreich Pretty predictable when you consider who they usually mean when they talk about "we."
4atatime
Danielle@rbreich it's so grotesque. And $15 is the bare minimum. People deserve lives.
OldTurk🗽Focus: #FreePeltier@rbreich half of all compensation goes to executives these days
Half. To a handful of people.
chicating@rbreich too many pols acting like their concierges, too, if you ask me.
@rbreich The big problem is the buybacks… the majority of profits going into buying back stock of the company, only to re-issue it next quarter.
@rbreich #CreditSuisse was basically plundered by the CEOs. While the #bank ran a loss, they paid themselves BILLIONS in bonuses. #finance #catastrophe #corruption
dlupham@rbreich What you do hear: "We can't afford to NOT pay our CEO millions of dollars a year". with the addition: "They won't stay if we don't pay them."
Coyoty> "They won't stay if we don't pay them."
This is where it turns into collusion. Boards are supposed to act on the shareholders' behalf. Since we turn over executives a lot anyway, boards should really be finding much better deals on them since they're not a long term investment.
But boards are stuffed with CEOs, so they have a conflict of interest.
A fun idea for activist shareholders: ban anyone holding an executive position in another company from holding a board seat.
Steve's Place@rbreich Somebody check my math. If a multi-billionaire owns a corporation with, say, 30,000 employees, and that unnamed multi-billionaire is trimmed by $12B/year, assuming everyone works 40 hours/week, 50 weeks a year, everyone gets a $200/hour raise.
People don't understand the scale of the transfer of wealth going on here. Every newly-minted billionaire is a blow to democracy. They have the wealth of nations in their petty cash drawers.
@stevesplace @rbreich
The OP talked about CEOs getting millions, not billions. Billionaire bosses are far less common.
Here's my maths, different angle. Never mind raises; who gets to have a job at all?
$15/hour * 40 hour/week * 52 week/year = $31,200/year
$1million bonus / 31.2K/employee = 32.05 employees.
So, for every $1M a CEO gets in bonus, 32 employees could be retained for a year instead!
N.B. I ignored costs like pension/training/healthcare, so maybe 20 employees.
CharlieI heard somewhere that mercantilism and capitalism both are incentivized to extract the most labor from the "productive" workers, the goal is to pay people as little as possible so they work as much as possible, presumably bonus points are earned for keeping those workers in fear of their ability to live while this happens.
I'm not confident this is right, I have no formal training in this, but it sounds correct to me.
Martin Jost
Aviva Gary@rbreich priorities
Pet Pharmer@rbreich It's the no-brainer option of how to pay workers more. Don't make consumers pay more because the guys at the top can't give up any of their share. It's criminal - they're ripping us all off. 😡
M8_djust a boring reminder: human rights is written in USA constitution.
so sad nobody look at it any more, hh
jesse 
@M8_ remember, in the 1700s the only people considered human were men who were european, rich and owned land and/or slaves. anyone else was either property or dead.
hihi, good point, also your add-ons, for the definition, the think it's citizen rights with equality, plus all workers always including men, by inflation rates, the actually base pay should increase at least 20-30% since a few yrs ago...
Preston von Gabbleduck
The Reply Guy@rbreich You're comparing apples and oranges. The people that would make the first statement are different from the people that would make the second statement. No inconsistency!
Citizen_JL@rbreich it’s like a freak of nature
Steve BarnesWell, here you go.
xs4me2Well it does not, and that is the problem…
@rbreich because CEO's are the problems in here.
rich people in general, don't care about people that they need to be profitable.
rich people in general, don't care about people that they need to be profitable.
R. George@rbreich if the minimum wage grew in line with productivity, it would be $26 now. I guess the difference went to CEOs instead.
TobiWanKenobi"We can't afford to pay the poor and disadvantaged social welfare money because then there'd be no incentive for them to work."
"We can't afford to pay our workers more."
Another great example for strange logics used by capitalists to justify their thievery.
Jason Anthony Guy@rbreich “Without a CEO, those workers wouldn’t know what to do!” (said some CEO somewhere).
@rbreich A killing Joke. For those on the dirty - end of the Militant Nhilist's sticks.
Бджілка робе кусь@rbreich Yeah, it's ultimately because the world is full of barely literate people that can be employed as a code monkey for a couple of dollars, and not so many people that can perform reasonably well as a CEO, or for that matter, CTO, CFO, whatever.
This is of course bad. And the solution for this is the reform of the educational system, so more people could choose a better job, and also be better at horizontal organization, creating unions to protect their rights etc.
Chris Raymond@rbreich even worse is that if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation or productivity, it would be $24, not $15.