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Swiss Referendum Backs Executive Pay Curbs
gollum123 writes in with news that Switzerland may soon have the world's strictest corporate rules. "Swiss voters have overwhelmingly backed proposals to impose some of the world's strictest controls on executive pay, final referendum results show. Nearly 68% of the voters supported plans to give shareholders a veto on compensation and ban big payouts for new and departing managers. The new measures will give Switzerland some of the world's strictest corporate rules. Shareholders will have a veto over salaries, golden handshakes will be forbidden, and managers of companies who flout the rules could face prison.The 'fat cat initiative', as it has been called, will be written into the Swiss constitution and apply to all Swiss companies listed on Switzerland's stock exchange. Support for the plans — brain child of Swiss businessman turned politician Thomas Minder — has been fueled by a series of perceived disasters for major Swiss companies, coupled with salaries and bonuses staying high."
The job doesn't justify the salary. They claim it offsets the high risks, but then they walk away with millions when it all goes wrong.
I do a good job as a matter of personal pride and professionalism, even though I'm not earning a massive salary and annual bonus.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Before people scream socialism, this rule is to make shareholders vote on the executive pay of the company they own shares in, not government bureaucrats. This is to protect shareholders from greedy upper management.
It provides a mechanism by which shareholders can set a pay limit for executives, and veto large pay packages which they don't think are in their interests. Since shareholders nominally "own" the company, I'm not sure why that would be particularly controversial, except that companies have been to some extent captured by their management.
There is nothing here that prevents high corporate pay if the owners of the company feel it's justified.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Shareholders vote on their board all the time here. And depending on what you've done, if you knowingly break the law, the corporate veil of liability doesn't protect you.
I guess we're more progressive than Switzerland.
I'm thinking back to a recent news story about executives leaving France en masse because of tax hikes on the wealthy there. It certainly would not surprise me to see something similar happening if this passes.
Moron.
You also come to mind. McDonald's is overpaying you. Hint: Gates left MS many years ago.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This would never fly in America, boards of directors seem too convinced it's their right to take huge pay while the company is losing money ... and they give themselves millions more when they're being ousted.
Most C level/board level pay packages look like theft from shareholders, and it's the board that votes themselves these levels of compensation.
Republicans must be already talking about regime change -- can't have someone not looking out for executive bonuses. That idea could catch on.
Please remember to wear your bullet-proof/bomb-proof vest during delivery, as many of our executives will be wailing and gnashing their teeth...
BBC gone bonkers? "Support for the plans - brain child of Swiss businessman turned politician Thomas Minder - has been fuelled by a series of perceived disasters for major Swiss companies, coupled with salaries and bonuses staying high"
Disasters, or only perceived disasters?
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Hey, hey, cut the guy some slack!
OP probably wanted to call out Balmer, and would have, if not for the fact he's still nursing a head wound from the last round of flying chairs.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The majority of people think no one else should make more money than them. Film at 11.
Not making yourselves beholden to the capitalists is neither anti-freedom nor socialist.
Allowing CEOs and other board members to give themselves huge salaries and payouts is.
It's only America who irrationally believes "profit at any cost" is a good diea.
Fuck you.
...not just for corporations but also for the folks in Congress. While the former may theoretically happen, I do not see any Congressman voting for any measure that would limit his pay.
We could get laws like that int he U.S...
The shareholders exhibit very little power over the board because the board has manipulated the rules. Hope this gives the shareholders more direct control over people who are proving themselves incompetent.
He's just being an unsuccessful karma troll.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They didn't enact salary caps. This is just allowing shareholders to veto the BoD from giving itself pay raises and bonuses. Couldn't even be bothered to read the summary before writing a spittle-filled rant?
No. No it wouldn't have.
CEOs are scarce because you need to have experience being a CEO in order to get hired as a CEO. This means working your way up through another department usually, or VP/COO jobs or some such at the very least. Usually this means the person is really good at ass kissing, and probably good at picking someone else to do his work for him. Alternately you're just related to someone that is or used to be really important. Hell that one can take you all the way to the oval office.
Unfortunately this system has progressed right down to middle management in most corporations and the majority of the CEO stock that didn't build a company from the ground up on their own are pretty much completely fucking useless. That particular pool of people is internationally extremely thin.
Making it less desirable to bullshit your way through a corporation may see some of the folks that have a brain becoming entrepreneurs themselves in order to earn that massive payout by building their own company. There is a lot of talent going to waste in middle management and lower positions in the form of people smarter than their bosses that won't get promoted purely because of that.
I can only see this as a good thing to promote competition and to promote more decentralized businesses and less "too-big-to-fail" corporations/banks.
This isn't even terrible socialist. A true socialist country would just enact a tax on the bonus that takes 75%+ of every dollar above x amount then throw it into public works projects etc....
Oh wait, that sounds familiar... where did that happen again?
Oh, right. In one of the biggest and best economic turnarounds in history right after the great depression, in the United States of America.
I have yet to see a true capitalist ideal in progress, but the point of this is to really take the "bonuses" away from the top officers and to get them to give that money to the working employees by investing back into the company. The middle and lower class need the funds more than those milking the company dry do.
The biggest issue I see though is that wouldn't the board and other officers have the majority of stock? This is like Congress voting on wither or not to increase their salary. They shouldn't have control in a more fair system. The issue comparing companies to governments is that governments are representative of the people (their customers) and companies should be representative of those that own them. The same controls wouldn't work. Companies are free to kill themselves off, while governments are not allowed to do that.
There is already no shortage of foreign CEOs in Swiss companies. The proportion of foreigners working in the country in high-paid jobs is really high.
As for perceived disasters, I don't know where they got that idea as the Swiss economy is thriving compared to the rest of the western world right now. The last catastrophe was the bankruptcy of Swissair and that was back in 2002. Plus the company was immediately reborn as a new airline (Swiss) with very little disruption of operations. Banks have had a hard time but I don't think that this is registered in the mind of people as being a problem coming from board members. If anything ticked the balance towards a yes to this initiative, that was Daniel Vasela, ex-CEO of Novartis, receiving a 72M CHF (about 76M USD) severance package as he left the company a mere two weeks before the vote (he later declined it).
How is it even remotely socialist? It gives the shareholders more power in deciding how much is paid to the people running the company they own.
The Swiss, leading the world one referendum at a time.
Hehehe - you fell for it, just trolling for a change and it's snowing outside - whether forecast is 100 % off for a change.
But seriously, how many people need to work to pay a $alpha_male_manipulator | $psychopath
You can give all visa you want but it is an old boys club in which you can only become a CEO if you screwed up another company.
It would be an interesting experiment is to secretly replace CEO of the large company that gets multimillion dollar compensation with a random employee of that company with a promise to keep him as a CEO if he is going to do a good job and see if there is any statistically significant change in the company performance.
I am pretty sure that there is going to be no difference whatsoever. In fact, a lot of the employees would deliver much better results.
The difference between you and me is that you're anonymous and I am not.
signature is pants
Who are you to say that another person's salary is unjustified
A voice representing the majority who are not rewarded (to excess) for failure.
I'm guessing you make a lot more than that, as do most slashdotters. But the difference between you and me isn't money. The difference is that I have accepted my place in life, as well as the fact that certain others will have orders of magnitude more than I have.
I am compensated by my employer based on my performance and contributions to my company. Should I be compensated by my employer if I take away from my company?
The difference is that I can see right through the smokescreen of moral superiority.
Your moral compass is out of calibration.
What a bunch of bullshit. Perhaps if you knew anything about the wealth distribution in america you'd know otherwise.
The top bar is the ACTUAL distribution of wealth in america. Notice the next 40 getting a tiny bit and the bottom 40% getting next to nothing, so small is what they are paid they don't even register. This is real time slavery via the wage system.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/images/wealth/Actual_estimated_ideal_wealth_distribution.gif
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Yeah, that 46-bit version is unstable.
The difference is that I have accepted my place in life,
and ye shall forever be downtrodden as a result.
Gates also FOUNDED the company. There's a world of difference between him and someone brought in after it's already built.
Do you have ESP?
This has been discussed in the US, but, as in Switzerland, as a "veto" by shareholders. Shareholders should determine CEO compensation. The US SEC tracks the total compensation of the top 5 employees of publicly held companies, and those should be the ones the shareholders set salaries for.
The highest paid person in the company should have a total compensation set by a shareholder vote. Each shareholder puts in a number, and the share-weighted median is the CEO salary. The CEO can suggest a number, but it's not the default.
Who gets to vote the shares? The party that pays the taxes on them. Funds that are now tax pass-throughs would have to pass through voting rights to avoid being taxed. No taxation without representation.
For funds with a big portfolio, the shareholders can pick a compensation number for the whole fund, and the fund managers can set the compensation for each CEO. But the total can't exceed the shareholder-chosen value.
Now that's shareholder empowerment.
The vast majority of high-priced C-level hiring seems to be an exercise in some sort of magical thinking. Corporations see a success, and make a superficial attempt to imitate it. Throwing millions of dollars at one (or a handful) of executives is much easier than trying to understand their own internal dynamics.
"Steve Jobs turned Apple around, so what we need to do to make billions is find and hire the next Steve Jobs!" All while completely ignoring what Jobs actually did, leading to a situation where they'll pay millions for whichever executive wore more black turtlenecks over the last five years.
It's Cargo Cultism. Nice to see that the Swiss are taking a step away from it.
The people are not customers of the government. The People own the government, because the People are the government.
I support this move by Switzerland and vow to buy only Swiss cheese from here on out.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
So what you are saying is that you are an un-motivated slacker?
Because you have a little tag next to your name? I don't see your home address and phone? Sorry having a tag next to your name makes yo no more well known on the internet than having anonymous next to his. I'll change my stance once I see your verifiable full name, home address and phone number, otherwise in my book, your just as anonymous as the guy before you.
Uhm... I'm pretty sure that taxing the crap out of the rich, spending money on public works that went on to provide decades of benefit, busting up monopolies, and enacting financial regs(glass-steagell) was what pulled us out of the great depression. So quit whining about "socialism".
If the swiss economy is doing well, it's probably BECAUSE of decent regulations like this. We have a financial corruption and theft problem. A lot of things would be better if we hadn't deregulated in the US.
Try searching for that little tag.
signature is pants
I have no problems with founding entrepreneurs like Jobs and Zuckerberg making billions (Gates, a bit different because a lot of his wealth was directly tied to the way he flouted the antitrust laws in the '90s). And I'm not especially jealous of rich old men hanging around yacht clubs dousing themselves with single malt. But 8-digit compensation for CEOs of Fortune 500 companies is now routine, and I think this affects the way those companies are run. Exhibit A: the housing bubble and financial meltdown 2002-2008. Notice that it occurred during a Republican administration, after the POTUS cut tax rates for the wealthy and weakened oversight of antitrust and capital markets. Exhibit B: the obsession on quarterly earnings by companies and their boards, that causes companies to sacrifice innovation and responsibility to their workforce and the environment in the name of the shareholders.
No, the problem with executive compensation is one of incentives. If executives gets lots of money even when the company does poorly, they have no incentive to ensure the company does well, resulting in a lot of the poor leadership we see in big companies.
How dare they, the Swiss, they are all communists.
So when is the US going to liberate them ?
Not bad, but I got far more results by searching "Anonymous Coward".
There's nothing like $HOME
Mind you: control by shareholders is better than no control at all, but a company driven by just "shareholder value" must evolve to one of those soulless monsters we all know and love, right?
I don't really know how, but there must be some balance. Shareholders can't be all.
It makes me laugh how the indoctrinated Corporatists think that Free Market Capitalism means that corporations and corporate executives answer to no one, not even the shareholders who actually own the corporation.
So what you're saying is that you're perfectly fine with the vast, vast, vast majority of society earning barely enough to live on, or quite often less than that, while a select few at the top make more than a thousand of us combined will ever see as gross income in our entire lives?
Why yes, that does seem reasonable.
After all, Switzerland is the home of the Cuckoo Glock.
Completely agreed. If you are a CEO and need a new mansion in Monaco, privatize your company and assume responsibility for your own actions. Public companies have no business being held hostage by sociopaths.
As a shareholder of a given company, I have, or should have, the right to squeeze you by the balls as I take the money BACK out of your pocket and return it to the us, the owners of the company.
And I could give a rat's ass about moral superiority. You go do whatever your little heart desires, but keep your hands off of my money.
Yes.
I think this story is a dumb move by the Slashdot editors.
Because it's blatantly political, and absolutely guaranteed to bring out the birchbagger right-wing extremists and immature Ayn Rand fans, and they're going to clash head-on with the liberals.
I expect a mountain of right-wing trolls mouthing snarl words like 'leftist' 'communist' 'socialist' 'climate change' 'chemtrails' 'gold standard' etc, and then for everyone to start flaming away while the trolls ride off into the sunset laughing.
What an utter waste of time and energy.
Really, dude? TMI. Seriously. I was half expecting to see naughty pictures of the wife. But then again, cool that you've got the balls to do that. I don't.
Curse the expiring mod points!!
Ultimately, it is the shareholders taking the risk, that assumption of risk should enable some say-so in the compensation of the management of the company.
If I choose to assign my risk by proxy to the board then I want them to make the decision for me and I get what I deserve. Or sue them for not doing their job.
I can hear the Audi, MB and Porsche engines revving already as the executives flee Switzerland. Who, pray tell, will manage these companies going forward?
Organization? You must be joking..
NOT
Also, since my last comment, I've converted to Islam.
After all, your solution is coercion.
No, our solution is give the right of determining the salary to the people that actually pay said salary.
I have accepted my place in life
Now that you've identified the problem, maybe you can fix it.
You're exactly the kind of sheep that the undeservedly rich love. Sheeple will vote for the laws that allow these criminals to keep their ill-gotten gains. At least in the United States, having a vast fortune is seen as a good thing so long as the wealth is earned somewhat honestly (for the purposes of the ensuing example, homegrown monopolies are somewhat honest.) It is not a matter of envy. People like Howard Schultz, Arthur Levinson, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, etc. earned their wealth. People like Stanley O'Neal, Ken Lewis, Angelo Mozilo, Franklin Raines, Robert Rubin, etc. did not earn their wealth and should be in prison. If you don't recognize those names, look them up, especially Angelo Mozilo.
The problem with many of the fortunes amassed over the past three decades is that they have been gotten by gaming the system either through cheating or taking advantage of a flaw in compensation. Cheating was rampant in the lead-up to the 2008 global crash. Trillions of dollars of fraudulent mortgages and fraudulent paper written against those fraudulent mortgages and not one major executive has gone to prison and very few have even been indicted. An appropriate analogy for these crooks is that they opened a position, saw an intermediate run-up in asset price (which was manipulated), got paid a massive bonus on that fictitious profit, and then walked away. What should have happened is that bonuses should have only been paid out after the position is closed and the profit is real. That's the fraud aspect of things.
The second nonsensical practice is that of guaranteeing massive payouts to executives even if they are utterly incompetent and severely harm a company. This is all in the name of "competitiveness" or these people will take their "talents" elsewhere. If you know how to evaluate executive talent for properly running a business, you'll find out that fewer than 5% of major executives are what would be considered excellent management; the rest are garbage and are only really skilled in the job of *becoming* an executive. So you end up with situations like HP where executives get fired for incredibly bone-headed business decisions and walk away with $30 million severance packages. Put a different way, the shareholders paid these people eight-figure sums to destroy shareholder value.
If these executives really were as great as they claim, they would be willing to work for a relatively large salary (say, $1mln per year) and a bonus that is tied heavily to the long-term performance of the company. For example, they get at-the-money call options with an underlying asset price of 100% of salary and these are European-style options that mature in 5 years. If the executive screws up the company, the options expire worthless and he only gets his salary (and potentially the boot.)
I won't even bother going into how LBOs usually do nothing to improve a company. They are primarily strip-mining operations that transfer all the valuable assets of a company to the firm doing the LBO while loading up the company with debt, which is usually flogged on to retail investors or institutional investors managing money on behalf of retail investors.
Who makes $1-2 billion per year as a salary on a regular basis?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
When the top manager leaves the bankrupt company with a few millions of bonus, that is just plain wrong! (swissair, look it up) And this is what it all started in Switzerland.
A shareholder.
Ask the voters. I remember a few years back the Swiss had a referendum on whether the petrol price should go up, based on ... this, this and this. Referendum took place - answer was 'yes'.
Treat people like grown-ups and that's how they'll respond.
Here in NZ we had a private referendum to get the government to repeal a law. Vote was yes. Government ignored it, and the law is still in place. Any flights from Auckland to Zurich?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
46 is divisible by 8 five and three quarters times. This is close enough for binary work. My linux boxen could run with only 46 bits in the registers.
You should never be able to get a bonus, as an executive, when you're company is losing money. Bankers seems to get bonuses no matter what. That defeats the point of a bonus.
Just to answer the question: David Tepper made $4,000,000,000.
Top 50 hedge fund managers make hundreds of millions of dollars. Each. Pay 15% in taxes.
I actually don't believe there should be a limit on salaries but I don't believe people in higher tax brackets should pay less percent in taxes than people in the lower tax bracket.
tl;dr
And any chance of me trying to wade through it stopped when you used the word "Sheeple"
The difference is that I have accepted my place in life,
and ye shall forever be downtrodden as a result.
While I understand what you're trying to say to the parent and even, to an extent, agree with you the other side of the argument is that if you don't learn to accept where you are in life then you can never be content. I would imagine the parent is probably referring to having found a place in life that they are happy with. That's kind of an important bit of wisdom since for many people being at the "top" doesn't lead to happiness.
For an example I'm at the top of my game, but not at the top of earnings. Still, I make plenty of money, have no problem paying bills, buy anything I want, and do whatever I want (within reason). I don't let people walk over me but I don't need to walk over them, either. I find most people would be a lot happier if they'd take a few moments to realize that they don't actually want to be at "the top," it's just our media machine that blasts you with that.
Of course I could be wrong, I don't know for certain, none of us do. Maybe the parent's just a slacker.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
"Jealousy" eh? The mating call of libertarians whenever the subject of who's getting paid to do what comes up.
From hard won experience, I know that attempting to debate this directly with a lib is as productive as arguing with my cat about it pissing on a wall. So, strictly for others who may be listening:
The pay of top executives is usually determined by a supervisory board. Getting on a board doesn't require much work, in exchange for which members enjoy a number of benefits determined by executives. Getting onto and staying on boards in the first place requires staying in the good graces of company executives. Thus, a positive feedback loop occurs, resulting in executive pay and departure packages determined not by metrics that benefit the owners, but by friends doing each other favors.
It's usually very difficult for the diffuse class of owners to organize themselves to bring company executives to heel. What the Swiss have done is to make life a little bit easier for shareholders to exercise their rights.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Not that capitalist private property requires the backing of guns
Who else is not worth the money being paid.. M$ BG comes to mind...
PS.:
Something's definitely off in the perception of many, on either side of the spectrum...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM
To quote Plutarch (46 - 120 AD),
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Bravo.. ...
This is why swiss is a has been nation....
Singapore will rule the world in about 10 years... The bank accounts are secret there... no matter what... companies don't need a lot of useless paper work
Well, it shows that some people know how to negotiate, network and learn how to work the systems out there better than others, so sure...why not let them succeed where others cannot.
It isn't a fair world, and you can't legislate 'equity' for those that are not as gifted, driven or even lucky as other people, and you shouldn't try really.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Always wanted to be an Astronaut, but I realized with my advanced age and the fact that I weigh 250+ lbs, it is not economic to launch my fat... um I mean densely muscled self into orbit. So indeed, I have accepted my place in life here on Earth.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The difference is that I have accepted my place in life,
and ye shall forever be downtrodden as a result.
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. -- John Steinbeck
Trying to improve one's lot isn't a bad thing, and often should be encouraged. But sometimes it is just wishful thinking.
The trick is knowing when one is being ambitious and when one is being an idiot. Hard to tell at times.
Better Islam than some New Zealand, hiding in the arms of every other country, nit.
Except the law isn't about keeping people from succeeding where others can not. The law is to allow shareholders in a company to establish limits on executive salaries. You build a private company from the ground up - by all means reap your profits. You take charge of an public company built by other people - those other people deserve to have a say in how much you get paid. Honestly it baffles me that bonuses for executives can go through without shareholder approval.
+1 Disagree
If this change on the constitution applies to those companies listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange, then we may simply see more and more companies buy back stock and go private once more, making the rules null and void, as there will no longer be public stock holders.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Happyness and contentment is overrated and evolutionarily harmful. There's a reason we have jealousy and envy. That we're driven to change and better our lives.
Quite rightly, sir.
Anyone who has the hubris to use the word "sheeple" is is effect saying "I alone understand the complexities of the world, my view is the correct one, and anyone who thinks differently than me does not deserve my attention."
And what about certain Russian and Ukrainian oil companies that are incorporated in Switzerland but were created to siphon off money from some poorly constructed contracts that were signed just after the Soviet Union was dissolved?
I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, a publicly held company is, ultimately, the property of its shareholders. On the other hand, I question whether or not it is good to establish such a potentially adversarial situation between the shareholders and the CEO and some of the incentives this sets up might pose problems down the line. I would suggest people on both sides of this debate wait and see how this law plays out before suggesting such a law be enacted stateside.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Any goat-herder in Zimbabwe makes more than that...
There's a reason we have jealousy and envy. That we're driven to change and better our lives.
Or as in the case of the story, worsen the lives of other people.
"A voice representing the majority who are not rewarded (to excess) for failure."
A majority that often picks up the tab for those failures.
Who makes $1-2 billion per year as a salary on a regular basis?
Just to answer the question: David Tepper made $4,000,000,000.
Just to correct your misstatement: no, he did *not* make a $4e9 salary. Don't conflate compensation/earnings with salary/wages. They aren't the same.
Top 50 hedge fund managers make hundreds of millions of dollars. Each. Pay 15% in taxes.
I actually don't believe there should be a limit on salaries but I don't believe people in higher tax brackets should pay less percent in taxes than people in the lower tax bracket.
Then perhaps your real complaint is that capital gains are taxed at a privileged rate. They would have been paying in the highest tax bracket (35% + 1.45% in federal tax *alone*) if their compensation was salary, which would represent a much higher tax rate than people in the lower brackets.
FWIW, I can find no reason why capital gains should be taxed differently than income. I think the Buffett Rule is needlessly complex: just tax capital gains as income and be done with it.
Except this isn't about jealous at all. There's no cap on executive salaries in this law, no change the minimum wage. What it does is give shareholders(ie the people who own the company) some control over the salaries of the people who run said company on their behalf.
At the present time, these things are determined exclusively by the board with very limited accountability(here in Oz if the shareholders vote against executive salaries two years in a row it causes a spill of the board, but shareholders still have no actual say). This wouldn't be a problem in theory, but all the people on corporate boards are executives of other companies and the executives of the companies they are on the board for are on the board for the company they are executives of. That is to say all the people voting on these things have a vested interest in keeping executive salaries high and golden handshakes particularly golden. Shareholder votes aren't actually generally all that much better of course since the institutional shareholders(retirement funds) are the same sort of people, but at least this is theoretically better.
He and for that matter Balmer also own enough of Microsoft to override the rest of the shareholders anyway. The same is true of Zuckerberg, and I'd presume Larry as well.
And Corporations are legal entities created by government law. If CEOs don't like rules being applied to Coporations, fsck off and runs as partnerships.
Repub/Libtard mindfsck is action:
Corporations are good
Government is evil
Corporations are created by Government
Corporations control the Government
The people are not customers of the government. The People own the government, because the People are the government.
Bahahah!!!! Oh very good, yes good laugh that.
How do you define bettering your life if not in achieving happiness and/or contentment?
Wow! Striving to be content? Are you serious?
In order for an aware human to be content there would have to be a just and peaceful world without calamity. That assumes certain characteristics of the individual of course. It also is referring to an overall contentedness.
A person may not have basic values supported by reason. Or we could refer to a petite contentedness that does not consider all things affecting your consciousness. In these cases there is no requirement of "accepting my place in life" in order to be content.
The very notion of being content is a bizarre one when considering human nature. We can have a feeling at times that we can call feeling content. We may achieve a goal and call ourselves content in some specific aspect. But some overall "being content" is contrary to life itself. I am refering to life as the pyisical phenomenon, not the way we refer to our experience as life. Living organisms require a constant ionic input. Without this input an organism dies. There is no such all encompassing "being content" in life in the real world
The silly notion that one should strive to be content is mainly an echo emanating from hollow minds that have been subjected to bad literature.
There's a reason we have jealousy and envy. That we're driven to change and better our lives.
What for? If you're never satisfied, you cannot make anything "better".
Yes, I do make more than that (modestly). I have accepted my place in life, and am quite happy about it.
What I do not accept is that there are people who work their asses off with 80+ hours a week to barely survive, and people who probably don't do even that in a month, and make over 100x what I make. I recently saw a CV of someone who had 3-4 CEO/BOD positions at a time, making between 350K and 750K each. Never less than $1M/year. That's absurd, and not horribly uncommon. Such people cannot be putting 40hrs/week in a job. They are certainly not working more than the rest compared to their salary. In a lot of cases, they were in the right place at the right time. Yes, the positioned themselves so that it was more likely, but there's still an element of luck.
If I wanted to, I could make $150k/year without much difficulty, but honestly, half of that would be absurdly comfortable IMO. I'd rather have other benefits.
What bothers me is that there are people who can work hard more than full time and starve (but not to death) because they need to work and it's better than starving to death, while someone else can work less than full time and make enough money to feed and shelter 7+ people.
Me, I'm in the middle. I work hard, but have a somewhat (I admit) cushy job and help people in the processes. I tend to work outside of business hours, but overall the pace is still relaxed, I put in my full work week, and I get paid enough to live quite comfortably on, and have some nice hobbies. I don't care about making $1M/year or even $100k/year - I just think that the people who struggle and make less than $25k/year or so shouldn't have to suffer so these people can make these ridiculous amounts.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I don't know about your salary, but a large part of mine went into taxes, of which a substantial amount was used to avert the downfall of banks and other institutions. I paid for the failures some of these executives didn't even pay for themselves. None bar a few offered to return their bonuses, none bar a few considered lowering their salaries whilst demanding pay cuts and terminations all around.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
If anything ticked the balance towards a yes to this initiative, that was Daniel Vasela, ex-CEO of Novartis, receiving a 72M CHF (about 76M USD) severance package
It was not exactly a severance package, but a salary/compensation for not working for competitors. At 1 million CHF per month during 6 years...
Eh no. Hate to burst your bubble, but those salaries are paid by customers, not shareholders. Shareholders invest in a company to allow for growth.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
So you want to make laws to stop people from earning too much money as compared to the average salary, say max 1000 times the average.
Why are you all so materialistic and obsessed with how much money other people make ? ...
1. it's not your business
2. large shareholders can make MUCH more via dividends or share price increases then CEO's. Why stop with CEO's, are you going to limit what all people can earn too ?
3. there are much more important things that divide people, like :
- some people are good in almost any sport, others are so unhandy they can't walk straight
- some people are almost never sick, and die of a hearth attack at the age of 100 after having spent a full life; others are born with life threatening diseases and die at the age of 10 after having spent their short lives in pain
- some people are so handsome they have 100's of the most beautiful sex partners in their life; others are so ugly they can't even pay for sex if they wanted to
- some guys have a 12 inch cock; others have a 2 inch pick
- some girls have a perfect looking body and keep it until they are way past their thirties, others are so ugly you wouldn't want to touch them
- some people are so intelligent they can easily become expert in any domain in the fraction of the time most slashdotters would; others are so stupid they can't even count to 10
- some people are 7 feet tall others 3 feet
- some people have perfect vision others are completely blind their whole life
-
The difference in income between people is completely irrelevant as compared to all other differences in life. Any old rich guy (even a healthy one !) would immediately change his life with a poor but healthy young man if he could.
So why are you complaining on that money issue, while in any other relevant part of life you get by-passed by others on a much larger scale ?
Simple : jealousy and materialism.
This is populist and childish legislation, and you know it.
Why not just admit you want to steal what other people have, just because you democratically can ?
This kind of mob-mentality can kill democracy.
First you come after the rich because they are too rich (and because it's easy, everyone hates/envies them anyway). Then you come after the intelligent (not so difficult either, they are practically hated by everyone too). Then you come after the skillful, the artists, anyone with a different opinion.
And every time the motivation will be the same : "they were too different from the average".
So some people are a 1000 times better then you are in a specific part of life; so what ? Can't you handle that ?
It scares me this is possible in Switzerland, of all places.
The difference is that I have accepted my place in life,
and ye shall forever be downtrodden as a result.
Just remember, the Sermon on the mount does not say
"Blessed are the doormats, for they shal be walked upon."
It says "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth."
The person who said that is known to loose his cool at financial misbehaviour. Perhaps we should too.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Don't conflate compensation/earnings with salary/wages. They aren't the same.
Salary/wages is a particular type of compensation. Do not make false dichotomies.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
If you boil this down, what you are left with is the disgusting stench of jealousy.
I'm going to ask my boss to increase my salary ten-fold (>> what he earns) and put that point to him.
Who are you to say that another person's salary is unjustified ... ?
As the salaries that we are talking about are exceptional (ie in the top ~0.5 percentile) it is those salaries that need to be justified, not their critics.
They try to justify these salaries either on a percentage of what they handle or by claiming "we need to get the best people". Both are bollocks. I am a senior engineer in the nuclear power industry. I make decisions that cost, or save, tens of millions of $$. Some are been decisions which, if wrong, could have lead to nuclear accidents that would be world headlines. I do get advice from specialists in particular areas such as metallurgy, nuclear physics etc, but so would a senior banker making his financial decisions. If I got 0.5% of the money I see passing through I'd be a multi-millionaire by now. But I regard it as all in a day's work and earn a flat-rate of somewhat under $100,000.
But at another level, consider a car mechanic maintaining brakes. He is maybe saving several lives (worth $1 million each?) every time he spots a leaking seal or worn-down pad. Should he get say 0.5% of that million every time, or is it again all in a day's work? Where does it stop?
As for "valuable" people, over and over again at work I have seen guys retire whom everyone thought were indispensable. Like Engineering Managers at power stations who were there when the places were being built and who knew every nut and bolt. Yet the week after they had gone it was as if they had never been there, like a hole in the water. No-one is indispensable. And many of those bankers were not even doing a good job.
Leftism boils democracy down to "two wolves and one lamb" voting on dinner.
That's democracy. What is leftism to do with it?
To the Plutocrats it is essential to gin up such artificial dichotomies. How else to justify the privileges they write for themselves? (CEO compensation is naked example of self-dealing, and the special low "rich man's taxes" were written in to law by well oiled legislators.)
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Wow! You aren't just moving goal posts, you are rewriting the rules of the game!
The shareholders own the company. Of course they pay the salaries. Any CEO compensation comes directly out of their pocket.
By your (il)logic no boss anywhere pays salaries. HR departments will be thrilled.
Some people on the right are utterly determined to defend the most gross abuses of the commercial world.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
You freely choose to invest without any power to affect the executive pay, and then after the fact, you bitch and moan about it. Have I misinterpreted something here?
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
I agree with you with regard to the law and the article...however, I was responding to someone that was ranting about essentially there should be no such thing as haves and have nots..and I was arguing that some people are just smarter and better at business, etc than others, we're not all created physically and mentally equal, and therefore some excel to a large extent over others and that is perfectly ok.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I barely skimmed TFS, surely you can't expect me to read your entire post before ranting at you!
+1 Disagree
Salary/wages is a particular type of compensation. Do not make false dichotomies.
Merely alleging salary/wages is a synecdoche for earnings/compensation does not make it so, not least because the US tax law is written this way.
Unless, of course, you believe that all dividends are "salary", in which case I suppose I earned a "salary" from Whole Foods and Union Pacific last year, despite never having been employed by them. If you count capital gains, then this year I earned a "salary" from Netflix, despite never having seen their corporate campus.
Having a distinction between monetary compensation (salary/wages) and total compensation in employment is important and necessary, unless you really believe employer-paid health insurance, employee stock ownership programs, and 'free bagel Fridays' should be lumped with cash compensation and referred to as "salary". However, most people would be upset if they took a job offering a high "salary" only to discover their "salary" was a $1 paycheck and the rest as restricted stock options that couldn't be exercised for 5 years.
My friend once received a job offer from a startup that tried that stunt: they attempted to count the projected, eventual value of the offered stock options as part of the dollar compensation to try to disguise the fact that the salary was so low it would be hard to pay the rent ("...but our stock will *definitely* be worth at least 5x what it's worth today once you can exercise the options in five years, so your annual pay really should be considered as 4x the option strike price + salary!"). That kind of semantics is obviously bullshit and very disingenuous.
Note that I do not argue in favor of preferential tax treatment for capital gains, etc; quite the opposite, in fact.
The two tend to go hand in hand.
Unless we have reached post scarcity, grabbing a bigger piece of the pie for yourself inevitably means less for everyone else.
Sure, over time the pie grows (capitalism and all that), but the demand for pie grows even faster. As long as scarcity exists, this will hold true. Post scarcity can only happen when somehow our collective infinite demand can be satisfied in the finite resources (accessible to us) in the universe
That's true, but then that's been pretty much the case for all systems of government, all nations, throughout history, from ancient Egypt to modern North Korea. There's always the rich and the poor.
I consider myself a right-leaning Independent, but in this case, I agree with the Swiss. The obscene excesses with which typical modern CEOs and their ilk shower themselves is not healthy for the economy, nor the nation in which it occurs. Anything in glutinous excess is not good. All things in moderation, wisest words ever. And in this case, those excesses are typically not justifiable, but better yet, it's the shareholders, not the government, who gets oversight of that here, which I think is absolutely fair - it's their money.
I've grappled with the notion of absolute asset limits, and I have two minds about it (which hurts my head): On the one hand, in a free society, (I am certainly not anti-Capitalist by any stretch, though I do believe in checks and balances) who has the right to set limits on anyone's income, if, through legal means and popular demand, they happen to get rich? So what?- they're free to do so. After all, the world adores and showers Hollywood actors and sports figures, many of whom make tens of millions of dollars a year, in some cases more (and often lead fairy tale lives we wouldn't dare dream of), for their trouble. I never hear anyone complain about them.
OTOH, at some point, I wonder, just how much money can a person really use? After you've got 3 huge mansions, one in California with an ocean view, one on the French Riviera, another one in the Hamptons; a huge yacht, and a fleet of Italian sports cars, what more could someone possibly want or need? Why on earth could any human being have a personal need or a use for a half billion dollars, for example? or 10 billion? At some arbitrary point, it become ludicrously extreme. Cartoonish, even. Scrooge McDuck and all that.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The distinction between compensation and wages/salary is not artificial; it is important. As a matter of fact, when companies attempt to conflate "compensation" with "salary" it is often to deceive normal workers into thinking they will be getting more money than they really will.
I discussed a real example of this in my reply to the GP.
Compensation != salary/wages. This distinction is orthogonal to the debate about tax policy.
Of course not....it is the Slashdot Way.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Unless we have reached post scarcity, grabbing a bigger piece of the pie for yourself inevitably means less for everyone else.
Sure, over time the pie grows (capitalism and all that)
As even you admit, it hasn't been true in practice. The world is currently in a vast, positive sum game. It's not as wonderful as "post scarcity", but it's something that actually exists.
Envy, which targets the producers along with parasites, is destructive to many of the good things we've managed to accomplish.
As even you admit, it hasn't been true in practice
I didn't admit that. You need to read the whole sentence
The world is currently in a vast, positive sum game.
The fact the pie grows does not make the world a positive sum game. It only means we haven't discovered how to utilize the whole pie. Growing the pie also takes time and money (i.e R&D). To get those things, you have to compete with everybody else with their own pet projects on the same pie which has yet to be grown.
It's not as wonderful as "post scarcity", but it's something that actually exists.
I didn't say the world is not wonderful. I'm just pointing out it is not so wonderful that the two (improving yourself and hurting others) don't go hand in hand (often)
Envy, which targets the producers along with parasites, is destructive to many of the good things we've managed to accomplish.
The fact envy can be destructive, supports my point that the two (improving one self and hurting others) tend to go hand in hand.
The one who is envious and parasitic is looking out to improving himself, even if it means destruction to others. There's no good solution (are you going to make envy, a base human emotion, a thoughtcrime?) without post scarcity (in a post scarcity world, if you're envious of what others have, you can just get a copy yourself, and it wouldn't harm anyone)
The fact the pie grows does not make the world a positive sum game.
That's pretty much the definition of positive sum game. So I'll continue to disagree.
Growing the pie also takes time and money (i.e R&D). To get those things, you have to compete with everybody else with their own pet projects on the same pie which has yet to be grown.
So what? The resources for R&D are growing as well.
There's no good solution (are you going to make envy, a base human emotion, a thoughtcrime?) without post scarcity (in a post scarcity world, if you're envious of what others have, you can just get a copy yourself, and it wouldn't harm anyone)
The only solution I'm looking for is not to institutionalize envy. And what makes you think that having what everyone can have is good enough to sate envy?
That's pretty much the definition of positive sum game.
No, because as I explained, we didn't make more pie that wasn't there before. The pie has always been there, the size is fixed, we just figured out how to utilize more of it.
It's a zero sum game with a pie that is just so large, that it LOOKS like positive sum to the casual observer, similar to how the Earth looks flat to individuals standing on it.
So what? The resources for R&D are growing as well.
Again, it's only growing because we are discovering more of a fixed pie. Even if it looks like it, the Earth is not flat.
So I'll continue to disagree.
You're free to disagree. I'm just pointing out you are only disagreeing off of faith, not logic.
The only solution I'm looking for is not to institutionalize envy.
There is no way to prevent that, as envy is a human emotion, and humans are the people who institutionalize things. As long as you let humans do the institutionalizing, and let humans have emotions (which is why I mention thoughtcrime), envy will seep into institutions
And what makes you think that having what everyone can have is good enough to sate envy?
I didn't say it will sate envy. I said it won't cause harm.
Envy cause harm in two ways: stealing from others to get what you want ("I want what he has"), and depriving others of what you lack ("if I can't have it, nobody can"). With post scarcity, you don't need to steal as you can just get a copy yourself (and even if you do, the other guy can get a replacement for free or practically free), and you can't deprive anybody of anything, as post-scarcity will provide whatever you want
Maybe there is some other way envy will cause harm, but that's anyone's guess as none of us live in a post scarcity world to make observations. We can only observe the problems of envy we have today, and I am making the observation that to solve those, we should aim for a post scarcity world.
No, because as I explained, we didn't make more pie that wasn't there before.
When you said earlier "The fact the pie grows", then you are stating explicitly that there is "more pie" in the game theory sense. Whether it is that way, because we're "making more pie" or because of some other reason doesn't matter. It is by definition a positive sum game at that point.
Envy cause harm in two ways: stealing from others to get what you want ("I want what he has"), and depriving others of what you lack ("if I can't have it, nobody can"). With post scarcity, you don't need to steal as you can just get a copy yourself (and even if you do, the other guy can get a replacement for free or practically free), and you can't deprive anybody of anything, as post-scarcity will provide whatever you want
We already see how that model fails via the mechanism of licensing. Scarcity has been introduced into the copying of bits. Further, it isn't that hard to deprive someone of something. If they don't have unfettered access to the post-scarcity infrastructure (say because you enslaved them or the licensing cost is onerous), then you've introduced some degree of deprivation.
When you said earlier "The fact the pie grows", then you are stating explicitly that there is "more pie" in the game theory sense.
I have misspoke, and since then have corrected and clarified myself.
We already see how that model fails via the mechanism of licensing.
No, what we see is that copyright and licensing models are the ones failing, ineffective against piracy, and makes people (consumers) hate your DRM-ridden crap (example).
I'll also note that concept of copyright exists because basically "artists need to eat". However, remember that if we are in a post scarcity world, food is free or practically free. Artists don't need to even do any "work" to be able to feed themselves (or get anything else they want). The need for copyright would go out the window... short of to feed some egos
Even if we keep them, it wouldn't *harm* anybody (again, I said it won't do harm, not that things like ego and envy would be sated and go away). The "cost" of licensing wouldn't matter, as all things would be free or practically free. Even after "paying" you "enormous" amounts in licensing, I'll still be able to get anything and everything I want (if I can't, then I'm not living in a post scarcity world)
Further, it isn't that hard to deprive someone of something. If they don't have unfettered access to the post-scarcity infrastructure (say because you enslaved them or the licensing cost is onerous), then you've introduced some degree of deprivation.
First, if they don't have unfettered access to post-scarcity infrastructure, then they are (unfortunately) not part of the post-scarcity society, and thus beyond the scope of that society. Consider that people in the third world country not have unfettered access to first world infrastructure, and it is unfortunate, but I'm talking about how the people in the first world would enjoy.
Second, if you are living in a post-scarcity society, and you somehow want to enslave others, you would need to convince all the other members of your society, who have the same access to post-scarcity infrastructure as you, to agree/allow you to enslave others. It would only take one other person with access to the infrastructure to undo your slavery - they can provide (for free or practically free) whatever it is your slaves are missing in order to set themselves free of your grasp. To link to analogy above: just because you personally might not help the third world, others in the first world do, and does.
(If your entire society actually agrees to enslave others, I think other problems will arise and lead to an end of your society, post scarcity or not)
Third, it's impossible for "licensing costs" to be onerous in post-scarcity society, because again, by definition of post-scarcity, everything would be free or practically free. People can simply make their own replica or equivalent, or "pay" you without sacrificing any ability to satisfy all their other needs.
There is an ancient Greek saying: "Nothing in excess" ( ). Indeed this was carved into the temple of Phoebus Apollo at Delphi, and was at the heart of Greek life. Those who framed our current civilisation were deeply informed by the ancient Greeks, which is why so much of what the Greeks said and wrote rings so true to us.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Untrue - that doesn't mean you can't make things better, it just means you will either never achieve perfection, or else will move on to something esle that needs bettering. Think it through.