Comment by _DeadFred_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _DeadFred_ | Hacker News Reader

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It's no longer a company it's an empire. Got it. But the executive layer didn’t shrink. You don’t just have one CEO now you have the CEO, presidents of divisions, business-unit heads, all pulling down compensation packages that in the 1970s would’ve looked like outliers even for the very top.

Is revenue per employee the best metric? Productivity gains don’t automatically justify higher executive pay. Most of those gains come from technology the CEO didn't invent or personally implement, supply-chain leverage, and cost-cutting at the bottom, not from some surge of genius at the top. Yet the financial rewards are heavily skewed upward, while median wages flatlined. Plus you know the rule about what you measure being what you get more of. All that would happens under your metric is CEOs push to move to 'contractors' to reduce the measured headcount to justify an even higher salary.

Changing the metric just masks things. Society is broken for those at the bottom, and if their numbers grow too large, it will become broken for everyone.

> Changing the metric just masks things.

Using only one metric is THE classic way to misunderstand a system.

> Society is broken for those at the bottom, and if their numbers grow too large, it will become broken for everyone.

It's difficult to capture my intention and perspective in a short comment. In my personal belief, if the future is going to be better than the present, we need to share resources more fairly.

However, money is an imperfect representation of resources. For instance, the extremely wealthy may eat more food or more quality food, but not anywhere near a proportionate excess. They may have a bit more housing, but generally not proportionate to their excess income. Etc etc etc for most things.

This is not excuse, or justification.

What I am saying is that focusing on the excess wealth can become a distraction.

I believe that the majority of harm relating to income inequality does not come from the inequality itself, or even excess resource (food, housing, etc) consumption.

I believe that the majority of harm comes from actions taken while attaining and defending wealth.

It's regulations bent and broken while growing a business.

It's not the housing per se, but the housing must retain value.

It's not the stock portfolio per se, it's the tax loopholes exploited.

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Excess wealth is a correlation to harm. Beyond that, I feel that care must be taken.

Beware of easy narratives and blame.

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