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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

> The reason for CEO comp to keep growing is because they’re largely compensated in equity (performance-based compensation), which keeps growing.

Does it really matter why or how the inequality keeps growing? Shouldn't the focus be on that it is increasing, and potential ways of decreasing it instead?

> Niccol’s pay package as an example of the widest pay gap between the top executive and median employee of one of the biggest US companies. Niccol’s annual pay was more than 6,666 times greater than the total pay for the median employee, a part-time barista, who earns about $15,000 a year, according to company filings.

Niccol could be paid in cars, legos or flowers for all I care, it doesn't change the fact that the difference of compensation is 6,666 times.

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It matters where you direct your attention. Performance-based comp is a red herring. If you want to direct your rage at wealth inequality in the working class, perhaps start with the things that have eroded the supply-demand balance of labor, such as globalization and technology.

Dont forget the monetary/banking system in opposition to labor value.

Money is cheap for the rich, which is also a big factor of why stock markets (and compensations) behave like they do. All signs point down, public infrastructure and cost of living struggles under budget pressure while stocks are at an all time high.

Simply saying, its earned compensation doesnt even tell half the story. I consider it deception.

Yes, this is an underrated point and potentially a larger factor. It would be interesting to see data on it

> If you want to direct your rage at wealth inequality in the working class, perhaps start with the things that have eroded the supply-demand balance of labor, such as globalization and technology

Not that I'm feeling any rage, I left that unproductive phase a long time ago.

But even so, why cannot we talk about multiple unfair things at the same thing? Not sure how globalization and technology is even relevant when the explicit topic of this submission is about CEO/executive pay at US companies. Why try to take the discussion away from that?

> Not that I'm feeling any rage, I left that unproductive phase a long time ago.

I wasn’t referring directly to you, but in general. “You” in the royal sense. Anyway

> But even so, why cannot we talk about multiple unfair things at the same thing?

Because one of them is a red herring. If you plot median CEO comp of S&P 500 companies to the S&P 500 itself over time, you will find they follow almost the same trend, implying their comp package stays roughly the same each year but the value of their equity keeps growing. Where as the median worker pay has grown much less.

In other words, when comparing median CEO comp to worker comp and noticing a divergence, what you’re witnessing is more so stagnant worker wage growth. To fix the gap, workers need to be paid more, but their wages are being weighed down

You mean the globalization and technology implemented by CEOs to raise their salary, sorry I mean their stock based compensation?

But you are right. Changing CEO compensation to be based on short term stock gains SHURELY will result in them perusing long term health policies for companies like re-investing profits into the company and not pursue short term stock manipulation policies like ordering the use company funds to repurchase stock (in effect ordering company funds be used to increase the CEOs comp value).

Totally a healthy, sustainable way to run our economy.

I think your point is roughly "[publicly traded company] CEOs are manipulating the value of their stock for their own personal gain instead of creating real value inside the companies they run" -- if so, perhaps, but you should let the shareholders know so they can park their capital elsewhere

My point is your circular logic here:

"It matters where you direct your attention. Performance-based comp is a red herring. If you want to direct your rage at wealth inequality in the working class, perhaps start with the things that have eroded the supply-demand balance of labor, such as globalization and technology."

Who is using AI as an excuse to fire people? The same CEOs people are complaining about. And why are the CEOs doing it even though it's not proven tech? For short term stock gains, in order in enrich themselves via their stock compensation.

There is no circular logic there, but it does seem you are leaning on this fallacy:

> For short term stock gains, in order in enrich themselves via their stock compensation.

https://www.equilar.com/reports/34-executive-stock-ownership...

So you are saying CEOs can only own stock via one mechanism?

Why don’t regular workers get to benefit from the improved performance? Give everyone a $5k bonus or something. The company doesn’t run without them but the C suite gets all the bonus.

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