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Google Execs Happy With $1 Salaries
DarkClown writes "ZDNet is on the one hand reporting that Google execs will keep their $1 salaries again this year, and on the other hand is reporting that the executives cashed in more than $160 million worth of stock last month." From the stock article: "Since the search giant went public in August 2004, Brin has sold about 6.5 million shares at a market value of $1.68 billion. Page has sold about 5.8 million shares at a market value of $1.4 billion, according to calculations from Thomson Financial. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, who was brought in to run the company before it went public, has sold more than 2.1 million shares, worth more than $502 million." They could be getting a multi-million dollar salary *and* the stock money. Good faith efforts go a long way in my book.
The news here is that the executives are selling their stock -- not normally considered a show of faith in the company. Brin and Page have each dumped over a billion dollars worth, and Schmidt another half-billion.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I believe that Capital Gains Tax is higher than Income Tax
OK. What about Google's payroll tax liability?
Keeping the stock price high has killed more experimental software projects than anything else I know of....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Look at it this way: They've based their compensation entirely on how much the world values Google.
Even if you make the tax-dodge argument, it still only works if their company's stock is worth enough to make such tax dodge worth considering.
Nothing about their salary is locked in. Either they continue to make decisions that keep the stock price high and their pockets full of phat cash, or they don't get paid.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Sure they have some interest, in the same way a millionaire poker player has an interest in a $10,000 hand. They can afford to act imprudently, and if it doesn't pan out they'll never notice the difference. Once your bank account has 10 digits, you're pretty much immune to anything short of complete and utter economic collapse. Legitimate worries of such an individual would be that the dollar become less valuable than the material it's printed on, or that the not-so-small island they just bought is precariously close to collapsing into the sea.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Oh, btw:
There's a lot of Kool-Aid being consumed around here.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
So there, that's where people learn "stuff like [that]"...with basic research on the subject. You know, the way one learns just about anything.
Your attitude towards your mutual funds genuinely confuses me. If you dislike them so much, why do you bother putting any money in? If you don't see any real growth, why do you carry on the investment? On the one hand, you're upset that your money hasn't grown. You "REALLY don't want to have to think about this shit. Someone should do it for [you]." So you're saying that someone should take care of and grow your money for you without you having to put in any effort. On the other hand you declare that you're 'old fashioned' and insist on working for your money, and that people who gain money without working (at something you define as legitimate work) for it are somehow in the wrong. So which is it? The good ol' Protestant Work Ethic, or "Someone should make my money more money for me because doing it myself is hard and I don't get it?"
Not to mention that as a man who works in a technical field, you should understand the equally 'old fashioned' idea of RTFM. I hope you've never complained about an ignorant user, or someone who wanted you to do every simple little computing task for them. Your attitude towards managing your own assets seems to be a lot like theirs towards their computers...only they just want free time and help, you want free money!
Having worked with brokers in the past and spoken with them at length to attempt to get an idea of how they do their job, I can assure you that investing is not "a pool cue to move billiard balls around a table". There's a lot of research, planning, analysis and careful thought put into trying to find the wisest strategies for investing. Is it a guess in the end? Well sure, nobody knows the future. But blasting an entire field simply because you couldn't bother taking the 5 minutes it would take to at least get a vague idea of what it involves? That's not "insulting" so much as it is offensively stupid.
If you want to talk about what of value is created by the market...well that's a tough call. There's a lot of room for discussion on that point, and if you want to take the stance of "no" there's a lot of good arguments you could make. However, think about all the brokers out there putting in 9-12 hour days to try their best to grow the mutual funds that millions of Americans (I'm sure other nations as well, though I'm not as familiar with how their markets work) have their savings and retirement funds invested in. Maybe it's a super-idealistic idea, but if I could go home knowing I'd given a few million people $5 each more towards retirement with my day's work, I think I'd feel like I accomplished something tangible.
Then we go back to a lengthy discussion about the "evils" of these large corporations. So let's do these one by one.
The Sony Mavicam purchase - First you complain about how the manufacturer's warranty is "unacceptable"....yet you obviously accept it because you're buying their product. An angst-ridden teenager working a shitty job (and earning comission, most likely, for each warranty he sells) looks at you funny for not going for it. But in the end, you gave him your money.
DirecTV - You liked your TV rates, but t