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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.
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.
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
I just think they are not stupid. Sure, Google is a great company with fat profits and lots of growth potential. However their market cap is $130 billion, which is about half the size of Microsoft, and more importantly their price to earnings ratio is around 100! That is crazy talk .com era type valuations, which regardless of the company, are in a word... stupid. Just because the investing public is irrationally exuberant about the companies future, does not mean that the CEO's have to drink the Kool-Aid also. They still have plenty of skin in the game, but at these outright ridiculous valuations, they probably feel that over the next 1-5 years they can get better returns on their money elsewhere.
Lets use a pets.com type company as an example. I run pets.com. I got money from a VC to start a company and sell pet products on the web. A few years in, I go public and grow my business to a $10 million dollar a year business, 2 million of which is profit. I still hold 35% of the company, and I think that the prospects to grow my business and expand into others is looking bright, and I expect to double or even triple my revenue and profits over the next few years. However, the stock has my company valued at $1 billion dollars. I know damn well that even the rosiest outlook will not allow my company to really be worth that much for at least another 15-20 years. So I sell 10% of my stake, and pocket a $100 million. I still think my company is a great company. I still have plenty riding on that fact. I also still think that my investors are fools and have a far greater chance of getting a better return on their investment anywhere else (though I would never ever ever announce that fact to anyone, not even my dog).
Selling your company's stock and believing that your company has a good future ahead of it are not mutually exclusive.
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