US CEOs enjoy 40% pay rise

[Traitorfish]

Feudal lords were a de facto government with their own army that coerced taxes out of their peasants. CEO's of corporations in free markets cannot make a profit without satisfying the needs and wants of people.

Feudal lords were also the legal owners of the property which they taxed. This means that you're introducing a separation between legal ownership of property and moral entitlement to the proceeds of property, which would seem to complicate your conception of "earning". How do you go about reconciling this with your claim of executive incomes as legitimately "earned"?

There are many ways in which making a profit is legitimate. Producing goods and services is one way. Another way is to make capita, that you own available for rent. Another way is investing it with the expectation of return on your investment. I was using the first way as an example of legitimate profits, to which you replied 'but what about renting out property! There is no product there!' to which I pointed out that it is a service by making capital available to other for use, which was not available to them.

But, again, what does this have to do with the creation of wealth? How are you defining "wealth", and by what means do you understand it as being created?

 

[JollyRoger]

Why do you want to create jobs for the sake of creating jobs?

The whole point of the economy is not to create work, but to eliminate work. Automatic dishwashers eliminate the need to wash dishes manually, spreadsheet programs eliminate the need for an army of accountants, so and so forth.

Work is a means, not an end in and of itself.

If you eliminate work, you eliminate demand for your product and services because not enough people have the means to purchase your product and services.

Those that take the biggest risks are rewarded the most. They are the ones who took the risk. If you don't take risks, don't expect any rewards. Taking risks involves a lot more than just luck.

Being a top executive is not risk taking. Their contracts give them a nice payout if they fail enough to justify getting fired. The "risk taking" they do is with other people's money and even then, the bigger the failure, the more likely the tax payers will be picking up the downside of the risk

 

[Lone Wolf]

Feudal lords were also the legal owners of the property which they taxed.

To be fair, feudal lords usually also forbade the peasants to leave their land and punished the peasants for using property other then the one belonging to the lord - something a libertarian surely would object to.

 

[Traitorfish]

To be fair, feudal lords usually also forbade the peasants to leave their land and punished the peasants for using property other then the one belonging to the lord - something a libertarian surely would object to.

To what extent does that have a bearing on whether or not they "earned" their proceeds? You could argue that it unfairly tipped the balance in their favour, and os that it rendered a part of their proceeds illegitimate, but if you're going to defend rentierism as such, then you can't condemn them entirely.

Besides, that brings up a broader question of the role of the state in defending property, which is hardly inapplicable to a discussion of contemporary society. I just assumed that we didn't want to get into that.

 

[Ajidica]

Besides, that brings up a broader question of the role of the state in defending property, which is hardly inapplicable to a discussion of contemporary society. I just assumed that we didn't want to get into that.

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required . . . Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?

As a commie I thought you would be the first to mention Proudhon.

 

[Traitorfish]

As a commie I thought you would be the first to mention Proudhon.

I'm familiar (I actually wrote a Proudhonist critique of Plato's Crito a couple of months ago ), but, as I said, I assumed that we wouldn't want to get into that.

 

[Lone Wolf]

You could argue that it unfairly tipped the balance in their favour, and os that it rendered a part of their proceeds illegitimate, but if you're going to defend rentierism as such, then you can't condemn them entirely.

True, Tenochtitlan definitely can't condemn a rich landholder who demands a large share of peasant-produced goods for his himself, as long as the landholder doesn't coerce the peasants into staying on his land by force. But I thought that's what he was saying all along?

 

[Traitorfish]

True, Tenochtitlan definitely can't condemn a rich landholder who demands a large share of peasant-produced goods for his himself, as long as the landholder doesn't coerce the peasants into staying on his land by force. But I thought that's what he was saying all along?

His claim was more than that, that the land-owner could be said to have "earned" such proceeds, which is not self-evident. It's a moral claim that requires moral substantiation, not just an observation that it was all conducted within the legal and ethical norms of the day.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Feudal lords were a de facto government with their own army that coerced taxes out of their peasants. CEO's of corporations in free markets cannot make a profit without satisfying the needs and wants of people.

This is ideological fantasy. CEOs get paid, and often get gigantic bonuses too, when their companies make losses.

"Feudal" lords, originally at least, got some wealth almost all of which they had to redistriubute to their followers, while constantly taking on real and high risks of death and injury in their duty to defend their peasants. As Auda abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia put it:

The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because *I* am a river to my people!

Of course, later they just sat around hording wealth while peasants did the actual fighting (though many CEOs are still just viziers to heriditary blue-blooded property and stock caliphs, even if most are becoming caliphs themselves!). But that was not in the "feudal era", and was made possible by gunpowder, and the resultant larger states and more centralized courts. And there we find the real parallel. The system starts off meritocratic (or at least semi-meritocratic), but is captured by those in charge and basically capitalism is transformed from a means of protecting and enriching the poor, to enriching the "well bred" and the "best" at the expense of ordinary people, with a system of property ownership and privilege concentrated in fewer and fewer hands through globalization, conspiracy, heritability, and dumb legal systems.

 

[Traitorfish]

You a Marxist now, Pangur?

 

[Pangur Bán]

You a Marxist now, Pangur?

Don't even know what the term means.

 

[Tenochtitlan]

If you eliminate work, you eliminate demand for your product and services because not enough people have the means to purchase your product and services.

Advances in technology increase productivity. Think of CAD with architects, and excel with accountants. Now, as an architect, you can avoid hiring many draftsmen because now one draftsman can do the work of many manual drafters. The same with accountants. This means that less people in the economy are needed to work that particular job, ceteris paribus.

These advances in technology mean that one man can produce more per hour than before, he will also be able to earn more. Or he could choose to produce the same by working less, and enjoying more free time.

If he loses his job to a higher tech worker, then he has several choices:

• Get training to become technologically up to date
• Go into another sector of the economy by finding another job
• Become a Luddite!
  
  
  

Being a top executive is not risk taking. Their contracts give them a nice payout if they fail enough to justify getting fired. The "risk taking" they do is with other people's money and even then, the bigger the failure, the more likely the tax payers will be picking up the downside of the risk

How did they get to be top executives in the first place? By coincidence? I don't think so.

 

[JollyRoger]

Advances in technology increase productivity. Think of CAD with architects, and excel with accountants. Now, as an architect, you can avoid hiring many draftsmen because now one draftsman can do the work of many manual drafters. The same with accountants. This means that less people in the economy are needed to work that particular job, ceteris paribus.

These advances in technology mean that one man can produce more per hour than before, he will also be able to earn more. Or he could choose to produce the same by working less, and enjoying more free time.

If he loses his job to a higher tech worker, then he has several choices:

• Get training to become technologically up to date
• Go into another sector of the economy by finding another job
• Become a Luddite!
  
  
  

I am not talking about this from the perspective of the worker, I am talking about it from the perspective of the employer. If globally more people get squeezed out of the workplace, then there are less people that can afford goods and services. Efficiency won't matter because there is no demand.

How did they get to be top executives in the first place? By coincidence? I don't think so.

Some by birth, some by taking a fairly risk-free path of education and hard work (often helped along by pre-existing family ties). A CEO is generally not near as big of a risk taker as one who would go out and found a business.

 

[Traitorfish]

Become a Luddite!

Did we really need that link? I would think that anyone whose going to understand the significance of the comment knows what it means to begin with.

And no reply to question about "wealth-creation"?

 

[BasketCase]

If they have profits, then they can still use half that profit to create jobs and still be profitable.

Wrong. They can't. "Profitable" is not a black or white deal. "Profitable" is a matter of degree. The more profitable, the less risk of going broke. Companies that reduce their profit margin (whether for charitable causes or whatever else) raise their odds of going broke. And a broke company produces no charity at all.

Companies will not resume hiring--ever--until the risk level goes down. Either the profit margin goes up, or the cost-to-hire goes down, or the bailouts come back. Nothing else will cut the mustard.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Did we really need that link? I would think that anyone whose going to understand the significance of the comment knows what it means to begin with.

And no reply to question about "wealth-creation"?

Wealth Creation apparently involves things like Pirates, who make capital goods (sea lanes) available that were not available before.

 

[Zelig]

I'm not a CEO, but I still got a 40% pay raise this year.

 

[Hygro]

Just because many companies sucked at picking the top talent doesn't mean the economic principle that has created that competition is in play.

 

[Tenochtitlan]

I am not talking about this from the perspective of the worker, I am talking about it from the perspective of the employer. If globally more people get squeezed out of the workplace, then there are less people that can afford goods and services. Efficiency won't matter because there is no demand.

An economy is not a static system. It's dynamic and advances with time. People laid off will be unemployed temporarily. They should find jobs in other sectors of the economy. For example, with advances in technology, you get a larger proportion of the labor force working white collar jobs, as opposed to blue collar jobs.

Are you implying we should guarantee jobs to workers at certain industries and maintain a static proportion for the division of labor?

Some by birth, some by taking a fairly risk-free path of education and hard work (often helped along by pre-existing family ties). A CEO is generally not near as big of a risk taker as one who would go out and found a business.

I don't accept your premise that becoming a CEO is risk free, but even if it was, I don't see any problem with it. By the way, many CEO's are the ones who founded the business in the first place.

 

[Hygro]

I don't accept your premise that becoming a CEO is risk free, but even if it was, I don't see any problem with it. By the way, many CEO's are the ones who founded the business in the first place.

And tend not to be the CEOs measured in these studies.