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Lenovo CEO Gives His $3M Bonus To 10k Workers
ndogg writes "Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing has decided to give his $3,000,000USD bonus to his workers instead of keeping it. Those 10,000 employees include receptionists, production line workers, and assistants. That works out to about 2,000 yuan or $300 per employee, which is about a month's worth of salary."
As I recall, there's a lot of American CEOs with a $1/yr salary. I think Lee Iacocca may have started that trend when he went to work for Chrysler (or at least he popularized it). Granted, these guys are already filthy rich and can live off their assets/investments alone but it's still a nice show of generosity.
That is right. There is a reason why news stories often refer to a CEO's compensation package. There are things more valuable then money, especially when you have plenty of liquid assets already.
I agree that context is important when considering the impact. However, I have to say that if my manager or my CEO distributed their bonus out to all the people underneath them, my respect for them would go up tremendously - even if it would amount to only an extra beer at pub night for me. The important part is that they were willing to forego something that their contract said they were entitled to, and instead chose it to say thank you to their employees in a very direct manner.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm not sure of the temperature in Hell that day, but I believe it was pretty mild in the OC when the eMachines CEO did the same thing in 2004 with his $72 million. http://www.johnhui.com/newsocregister.html
Interesting, though, that the CEO, John Hui, was also Chinese
They have a $1 salary because salary is taxed at the higher rate reserved for the lower class. The CEO's get all their compensation in the form of stock options, and that is taxed at the lower rate reserved for the gentry and with a good enough accountant and a multinational organization capable of shifting money about, it may not be taxed at all.
I would suggest you compare the CEO wages in the U.S. with CEO wages in the east, Japan especially.
IIRC, the average is that CEO wage is 24x the wage of your lower worker. In the U.S. it is in the hundreds of times.
The difference in the east and the U.S.: the CEO is considered important but not necessarily above the other workers. In the U.S. they are in an ivory tower. That's a problem and that's what so much of us have a problem with.
You omitted Medicaid (2.9%, uncapped) and SS ( 10.4% up to 110k). So, if the extra 11.44k makes up for the phasing in of the highest rate (not willing to do the math), the highest rate is actulally 47.2%. Which makes GP closer.
Also factor in unemployment/disability, and possible city taxes.
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I see a lot of comments here about how this is all a dodge to get around income taxes with capital gains taxes.
1. This is a Chinese CEO in Hong Kong, not the U.S.
2. Carter _decreased_ capital gains tax rates, Reagan _increased_ them and Clinton _decreased them (to be fair, Bush Jr. decreased them even more).
3. Capital gains are taxed at a higher rate based on your income (again to be fair, people with a lower income can't take advantage the same way).
Capital gains taxes have a place, the idea is to encourage investment, which is why long term capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes rates but short term capital gains taxes pretty much mirror income tax rates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax#United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maximum_Federal_Tax_Rate_on_Long_Term_Capital_Gains_(1972_-_2012).jpg