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Comment by rychco | Hacker News Reader

I’m incredibly happy to see wages at the bottom rising, but I think there’s a serious lack of discussion around obscenely high executive pay.

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Discussion can be had all year long, but the executive caste will maintain it. There's no law or peaceful incentive to change the tendency. It's important to them that the plutonomy be maintained and extended.

I’d go further: the myth of “discussion” as some sort of tool to resolve these issues benefits them and them alone.

Carl Schmitt critiqued liberal democracy with this very same premise. The myth of the disinterested neutral "discussion" seeking consensus optimal solutions, (vs the reality of factional interest groups fighting for 0 sum spoils and power).

No issue with the pay. But the US sucks at taxing rich people.

Not that it seems to matter. Congress will spend way more than they receive in taxes, regardless of the tax rate on rich people.

I agree that that is a problem. But it is a separate problem. If two problems depend on each other, should we fix neither because that fix won't matter in isolation?

Is it a result of perverse incentive? I think it would help to better understand why executive pay is so high in the first place.

Because it can be. The boards that set it are made up of executives, and it's good for all that the bar for average pay gets ratcheted up.

While a good CEO may be worth a multiple of any line worker, the notion that a CEO will leave for some other pursuit only holds water if the other pursuits hold higher multiples and are readily attained. They would all work for one-quarter the comp if that is all they were offered. As it is, they'll happily work for double also.

CEO's have a lot of influence on the value of firms they manage, as we're surely all aware of. CEO compensation is generally about aligning interests between the CEO and the firm itself.

All comp is about aligning interests. Nothing special about CEO comp unless it's to overcome pathologies in the CEO's makeup.

Because just like congress, they can vote to give themselves raise and the amount. Can you as a typical employee guarantee yourself a wage increase, and the amount?

Not hard to see your pay increase as much as you want it to, when you're actually in control of setting it and not just accepting what is given.

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