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Comment by bestcoder69 | Hacker News Reader

No, let's not blame the CEOs. Let's negotiate better contracts so they earn less and the little guy earns more.

If you set the CEO pay to zero and gave it to all the workers it would amount to a microscopic raise, and presumably wouldn't make the company any better run.

CEO salary / number of workers / number of working hours in a year = 14.75 million / 70k / 2080 = $0.10

Yes, that would be a stupid way to raise wages. I guess I assumed I didn't need to explain that I'm not suggesting a contract that literally says to only divvy up the CEO's salary. This is the most pedantic response to anything I think I've ever read.

The point is the amount of compensation you could give to workers from reducing CEO pay is insignificant when you divide it by the number of workers, even if you imagine an unrealistically extreme reduction in CEO pay.

While true, it is no reason for not doing so.

On the other hand if you cut the entire c-suite, other board members and top management in half there is a significant amount. Usually with companies this size there are many mini CEOs in divisions and it starts to add up.

I think you'll get a better discussion (if that's what you're after) if you tell us exactly what you're suggesting instead of what you're not suggesting. The idea of negotiating better contacts for workers is not a novel one, you're not breaking any ground there. So how, exactly, does that happen?

No ground is being broken in this comment section whatsoever, and I'm not in a position to break any ground either even if I sit for a while and think really hard (...fuck).

But to contribute what I suggest (again, without breaking ground): capitalists take 30% of all income generated, for themselves. I haven't looked up the financials for John Deere, but I mean that's the ratio when you take the U.S. as a whole. That 30% is a wayyyy bigger piece of the pie than divying up a CEO's income, which is probably a tiny part of that (on average) 30%.

Let's run the numbers again for a thought experiment:

- $15600000 CEO compensation [0]

- 69600 workers [1]

- 1760 hours average per US worker per year [2]

- $20.12 hourly wage for the lowest paid John Deere employees

$0.13/hour, 0.6%, or a bit over a dollar a day increase for the lowest paid group. That would be the increase if the JD CEO would work for $1, with all his previous pay evenly distributed to all employees. Not insignificant.

Now let's have a slightly different thought experiment. What if the CEO pay is cut by 50%, and evenly distributed only to the bottom 10%? A $0.64/hour, 3.2% or $5.09/day increase. That would be a very significant number to all involved.

I'm not saying this is what should happen or not. Just saying the number is significant.

[0] https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2021/1...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/278010/john-deere-number...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

Usually the lowest paid workers make up a significant percentage, not 10%, so raising pay for only 10% of workers doesn’t make sense. Of course you can run another experiment that distributes CEO salary to the lowest 0.1% and see an even more significant raise; that doesn’t mean anything.

To add on your point, the people I know on low pay really care about what seems like a small pay rise e.g. $20 to $20.50. This makes sense because after living expenses a worker is left with say $40 discretionary money to spend, yet a $0.50 pay rise increases the worker’s discretionary spending by 50% (for this example).

When you are financially struggling, a 10¢ raise (extra $4 for the week) can make a big difference.

One of my friends worked 40 hours and had $20 to spend on herself after her bills (which were frugal, since she didn’t earn much). Low pay sucks when you earn a discretionary $0.50 for every hour of work.

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