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from the because-when-they-mess-up-they-only-have-a-golden-parachute...wait-a-minute dept.
Why are CEOs of U.S. firms paid 320 times as much as their workers?:
Last August, Jamelle Brown, a technician at Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, contracted Covid-19 while on the job sanitizing and sterilizing rooms in the facility's emergency department. Luckily, his case wasn't severe, and after having quarantined, he was back at work.
Upon his return, Brown was named Employee of the Month in his unit and given a gift voucher for use in the hospital cafeteria. The amount: $6.
"That stung me to the bone," said Brown, who makes $13.77 an hour and has worked for almost four years at the hospital, owned by the corporate giant HCA Healthcare. "It made me sit back and say, 'This place doesn't care for me.'"
Research Medical's owner, HCA Healthcare Inc., is a profitable, publicly traded network of 185 hospitals and 121 freestanding surgery centers in 20 states and England. Even in the year of Covid-19, 2020, the company generated $51.5 billion in revenue and increased its pretax earnings by 3.6 percent. Its shares are up by 14 percent this year, versus 10 percent on the Standard & Poor's 500 index.
That performance helped boost the total compensation HCA's chief executive, Samuel N. Hazen, received last year to $30.4 million, a 13 percent rise from 2019, documents show. Although Hazen's salary was 5.8 percent lower in 2020, the total worth of his compensation package equaled 556 times the compensation received by the median employee at HCA — $54,651.
The figures highlight the growing CEO pay gap, a problem among many public companies according to some investors and workers and even a few CEOs. In 2019, for example, the average pay ratio among 350 large American companies was 320-to-1, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In 1989, the average was 61-to-1.
(Score: 5, Touché) by turgid on Monday April 12 2021, @01:47PM (6 children)
In the Great Game of Monopoly in which we are all forced to participate, this is just a symptom that the game is in its late stages where too few people own all the hotels, all the stations and all the utilities.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:01PM (5 children)
Yet every time those of us on the center left talk about restricting immigration to tighten the labor market and deflate the property bubble, we get called "racist" and "nazi"...
(Score: 1) by Taxi Dudinous on Monday April 12 2021, @02:12PM
Of course!
Given today's climate, any centrist will be attacked from both sides. Don't tell me you actually miss having a civil conversation with someone? Seems the moment there is even a particular difference of opinion, civility goes out the window. Debate is a diminished skill these days, I miss a good healthy argument. I miss being able to maintain a friendship with someone, regardless of our differences.
Polarization is for sunglasses, not people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @03:00PM (1 child)
They've just tried that experiment in the UK. Property prices have never been higher and are still going up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @03:19PM
Now wait for the interest rate rises.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @04:35AM
We need those folks coming into the country or we'll wind up like Japan where there's not enough workers to do the work that has to be done to keep things running.
The real solution to this would work regardless of immigration policy. Tax the rich at a high enough rate to keep them from stealing all the gains. Put rules into place to prevent CEOs from sitting on each other's boards and rubber stamping pay raises. Provide free healthcare and education to all as well as ensure that the minimum wage bares some resemblance to a living wage. That would do a ton to help fix the problem. We won't do it, because politicians are bought and paid for.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 13 2021, @11:28AM
So why are you talking about "restricting immigration" rather "restricting immigration more"? There are few countries without immigration restrictions after all. The box is already checked.
Keep in mind that the real reason labor markets are loose is because your country likely punishes employers with all sorts of nasty regulations and taxes, and property bubbles exist because home owners have restricted the supply of housing. Less immigration isn't going to fix either one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @02:20PM (5 children)
I remember a study years ago that found NO correlation between CEO pay and company performance.
"Horrible job, Frank! Where giving you a 50% raise and a bigger golden parachute!"
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 12 2021, @02:41PM (1 child)
Got any information as to how to find that study? A link or a title or an author would help. It sounds quiet believable, but before I believe, I'd like some evidence.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @03:41PM
Debunked: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2016/08/17/ceo-pay-for-performance/ [harvard.edu]
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Monday April 12 2021, @05:16PM (2 children)
CEO pay is almost exclusively tied in at least some percentage to performance so this is clearly untrue. That said, everything is relative.
A CEO of a company worth 1.5m with 20 employees might pay their CEO $200k and see a 5% increase in revenue every year.
While company B might be worth 4 billion with 480k employees might pay a CEO $940K and see a 3% increase in revenue every year.
You might say that their is no correlation between pay and performance, but you would just be interpreting the data the way you wanted to interpret it. You might as well say that teh CEO of Apple makes more than the CEO of the laundromat down the street proving that CEO pay correlated to company success.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @06:49PM (1 child)
"Almost exclusively ... at least some percentage"
Hmmm
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Monday April 12 2021, @08:36PM
most ceos have some of their pay tied to performance.
I am not sure what that percentage is.
I am also sure the statistics are confused with how to define the term. If a single person business run by a owner/operator has a CEO then the majority of CEOs are paid whatever they decide not to invest back into the company.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @04:32PM
The need to add the qualifier "greedy" before the noun "Jews" is because not all Jews are greedy.
The Jews set a bad example that the other greedy sociopaths are all too happy to follow. Monkey see, monkey do.
Where do I get my insight? From growing up in a Jewish family.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @09:45PM
I say *greedy* Jews because there are Jews who are *NOT* greedy and we prefer to be separated from those whom *ARE*.
If this comment is pushed down again, it's bercause I'm right - and they can't call me a liar, so they call me an anti-Semite.
But *REAL* Semites use Abjad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad), and I'm afraid that includes the entire Arabic peninsula and all of Persia, morons.
The fact that these greedy Jews cannot let my comment exist, but, instead, have to sabotage it, and conceal it, like a cat covering up her shit, is just more evidence of their mental illness and general unfitness to lead.
Prove me wrong.