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Comment by pfarnsworth | Hacker News Reader

I chalk it up to the fact that everyone here believes they are going to be the CEO of their own multi-billion dollar startup, and when that happens, they want their own $100M/yr pay package as well.

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Or it could be people thinking "just because someone has more money than I doesn't mean they took it from me. Good for them."

And then there are people with basic intelligence that understand that, basically, yes they take that money from the rest of the people. You know, mostly because money doesn't grow on trees.

When a certain part of economy inflates some other part deflates. And that other part might be more important than unicorn companies that are pure bubbles full of hot air offering exaclty 0 in the society.

I hope you cheerlead with a lot of gusto for the golden boys. After all they didn't take money out of your pockets? Right? Right???

It's not a zero sum game. New wealth can be created.

And yes, if Yahoo decides to pay ridiculous compensation to their CEO, I don't care. I don't own any Yahoo stock.

But they absolutely took it from me when they are being paid by a publicly traded company.

I am more convinced every day that the marginal income tax above a certain limit (my proposal is 100 * 2000 * minimum wage per hour, I'm willing to go lower to build consensus) above which the income shall be taxed at 90% of the additional income. It is the right thing to do. I want companies to go to the executives and say "look, it costs us too much to give you any more money. Please try to cooperate."

It is the right thing to do.

It only your money if you own stock in that company.

If you do own stock, then get enough shareholders together to vote on executive compensation.

That's the proper mechanism. If you can't get enough shareholders to change things, then I guess it's not that big of a problem to most.

The other option is just don't own stock. That's your choice.

I don't know how a small investor or an individual with a retirement plan can do that. Corporations accepted the controls when they decided to play in the big kids pool.

I understand not every decision can be made in a centralized manner but I think a progressive personal income tax is the right thing to do.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - Ronald Wright

I always thought this quote was a great example of "those poor people are too stupid to figure out what's good for them. No worries, i'm smart enough to know what's best"

Poor are often uneducated and ignorant of how they are being taken advantage of, yes.

Has anyone actually asked them what they want?

What a strange question. I've been poor for more than one period of my life. And I've had differing ideologies at differing periods, including both full-blown objectivist libertarian and full-blown ban-money communist. I can tell you though that it has nothing to do with ideology, and more about getting to a basic standard of living. The government of the US is extremely corrupted and wasteful, and unable to support this standard of living for many, and the propaganda fed to the public, poor or not, is meant to convince people otherwise. Poor people in China believe the country should go back to full communism. Plenty of poor in the US believe that the country should deregulate as much as possible. What do you think causes this difference in opinion? Could it be genetic? Or perhaps it's the ideas they are fed through the education system and top-down controlled media.

That is, after all, the hope that a lot of Silicon Valley startups (and VCs, naturally) depend upon.

It was very liberating once I'd got that idea out of my head.

Incorrect, most of us just like to build stuff. The money is a nice perk to continue building even more stuff.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur means people like Elon Musk not corporate CEO's like Marissa Mayer...

I think every major company has three management stages: creators, maintainers, and mooches.

The creators are the ones who bring things to life and redefine or create markets. There are very few of these people and they're often hard to work with because their very mindset requires them to ignore the rules. Elon Musk and Steve Jobs fall into this category.

The managers are the ones who can take something that exists, refine and grow it, and provide stability over a longer run. They tend to be rule followers and understand "the formula" and how it works. They may occasionally have those "creator" flashes and make a leap but that's not their purpose or goal.

Finally are the mooches. They know the rules and go through the motions so they're easily mistaken for the "maintainer" types but they're not there to promote stability. They want to get their piece of the pie and move on.. like locusts.

I always laugh at this because there are only room for so many $100M/yr people in this world, at least until technology takes another huge leap forward. But more importantly until that happens, I think we probably have all the ones we can handle, or at least the majority...

cosigned

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