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."

Comments

Good

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Good

[gandhi_2]

If you don't like the government controlling every aspect of your life, don't cheer when a government controls yet another aspect of someone's life.

Leftism boils democracy down to "two wolves and one lamb" voting on dinner.

Stop cheering for communism. It sounds fun at first... with all the "big X" and "fat cat" talk, maybe a few Che posters and an occupy rally.... but eventually you end up in a gulag.

Re:Good

[Mitreya]

They claim it offsets the high risks, but then they walk away with millions when it all goes wrong.

Don't underestimate the risk of having to walk away with a $5M golden parachute and look for another job while your peers are making $10M-$20M at the same time.

Maybe the law should state that you get absolutely nothing if the company tanks. Then we'll know that high salaries are given for performance.

Re:Good

[blahplusplus]

"The job doesn't justify the salary."

Most people don't understand it's a matter of customer base (population size) and where you are in history, such salaries would be impossible in smaller societies. These exorbitant sums of money are artifacts of scale and historically large customer bases by which executives can exploit given their privileged position in society and history.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't the government controlling anything. It gives legal backing to the shareholders.You know, the ones that OWN THE COMPANY. Essentially this is giving more power via property rights and prohibiting the fleecing of wealth by deadweight managers.

If you do not understand why this is good both for society and the individual by reducing the damage done by incompetents, guess what camp you are rallying for.

Re:Good

[Man On Pink Corner]

Gee, if only there were a way shareholders could take executive compensation into account when they buy and sell shares.

Re:Good

[RazzleFrog]

You should probably look up the difference between Communism and Socialism before you post. Not to mention this isn't really Socialism. That would be equal sharing - not just reigning in the disparity between the top 1% and the other 99%.

You should watch http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2/

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reason that the board of directors or shareholders of any company on the planet couldn't already do this. They just don't. Read about a CEO leaving a burning company with a huge golden parachute and you have a company with a BoD that's doing a lousy job.

Re:Good

[gandhi_2]

Two parties have a deal.

That deal is THEIR property.

A government deciding it has the right to control the deal is a government deciding that there IS no property. Using that metric, all property belongs to the community.

Pro sports players make too much money. Most people agree on that. But the athletes have a boss who makes payroll... and it is up to the boss and the athlete to negotiate a deal, no one else's business. If the team can make 10 million and 1 dollars per year from the athlete, the team can afford (figuratively) to pay the athlete up to 10 million, pocket the left-over dollar and still come out ahead. It's not up to whiney leftists to declare what "fair" pay is or isn't. It's not up to politicians, pandering to the whiney leftists for votes, to declare what "fair" is.

It's funny to hear people say "equal" with respect to socialism. Ideas so good, they have to be mandatory and enforced by people with guns.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So... almost every American company then? Sure doesn't look good for us Americans. I fully support Switzerland's decision, and listlessly await the day us Americans stop worshipping our own oppressors.

Re:Good

[RazzleFrog]

A) The government is not controlling anything in this case. it is just saying that shareholders be allowed to veto big raises and golden parachutes for outgoing failed executives.

B) The government in the US has lots of rules that may not "control" a deal but that do make sure things are handled in a way that is fair to the shareholders and to the public. For example, if all the makers of widgets got together and said - hey let's raise all of our prices by 100% - then that would be price collusion/fixing and illegal.

C) Just because the government has rules for deals doesn't mean it invalidates property and creates communism. I am not even sure how you made that creative leap.

D) Pro sports players aren't even in the ballpark (excuse the pun) of the folks we are talking about. They are high profile and get a lot of attention but the "1%" is worth 1000 times most athletes.

E) Socialism enforced by people with guns? First. There is no completely socialist country in the world. There are many that come close. Some, like Canada, are more socialistic than the US and I don't see them using guns up there to enforce it.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

More the other way around - a very few wolves influencing most of the sheep to think that, yes maybe they can also eat lamb too, if only they work real hard.

Re:Good

[ph1ll]

If you can give me a decent selection of companies that curb executive compensation, I'll invest. Unfortunately, they're all doing it.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You blithering dolt, this has nothing to do with left or right, this is more a matter that our economy cannot sustain this model and that the mal-distribution of this wealth can, does, and is having a very real impact on our economy and society in general. You idiotic babble just shows how much you don't understand.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Two parties have a deal. One party is the executive, another party is the company. Company is owned by the shareholders. Now the government has decided that the shareholders can veto the managers giving each other extremely good deals. Where exactly does the government control the deal? The government actually gave the leash to exactly the right party.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada doesn't have armed police to enforce their laws. Well hot damn, I know where I'm going next weekend.

Re:Good

[dkleinsc]

If you can give me a decent selection of companies that curb executive compensation, I'll invest. Unfortunately, they're all doing it.

I believe you have that backwards: The problem is that nobody is curbing executive pay, not that they all are.

Re:Good

[mwvdlee]

This isn't so much about salary but bonusses.
IMHO the problem with executive bonusses isn't so much the amount or that they get bonusses at all, it's the fact that they can fail horribly and still recieve a bonus. A bonus can only ever be morally justifiable if the executive produces results significantly above expectations and certain due to the executive's actions.
How about only allowing bonusses when business results exceed official statements to shareholders. Now either the executive has really outperformed expectations or they have knowingly lied to shareholders, for which those responsible can be jailed.

Re:Good

[DMiax]

When you are done with the knee-jerk reaction, you may consider that the bill is just putting the power to veto the bonuses in the hands of the people that actually pay for those bonuses.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't underestimate the risk of having to walk away with a $5M golden parachute and look for another job while your peers are making $10M-$20M at the same time."

Oh, what a terrible position to be in! Not.

If an executive has to make do with "only" a few million while they are accustomed to compensation on the order of tens of millions, well, then they need to do what everybody else does when their job isn't secure: don't spend it all, and have enough to cover when you are between jobs.

As far as I'm concerned, they shouldn't get any more severance pay than the regular workers in the company when they are laid off.

Re:Good

[AmiMoJo]

Fuck that "take it or leave it" attitude. Owning something means having some control over it.

Re:Good

[AmiMoJo]

A large company with vast resources wants to do a deal with me, a puny individual with limited funds to spend on getting a lawyer to check it out and monitoring compliance. I want my government, on my behalf, to regulate the deal so that I don't get ripped off and don't have to be an expert on every single thing I want to deal in.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Two parties have a deal.

That deal is THEIR property.

A government deciding it has the right to control the deal is a government deciding that there IS no property. Using that metric, all property belongs to the community.

The world is not black and white like that. Drugs and nuclear weapons come to mind. Or is regulating those things communist? Someone better tell the right.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. But in this case the law is only saying that companies listed on the stockmarket (optional) doing business/incorporated in Switzerland (optional) have to permit their shareholders (i.e. the real company's bosses) have an influence on executive pay. This isn't some whacko bunch of "whiney leftists" interfering with the deal. It's a government saying "Yes, company, you DO have to abide by your shareholders decisions on executive pay." It's setting the terms for doing business in a public company (i.e. one with shareholders) within their jurisdiction. Those shareholders are straight-up capitalists in the literal sense of the word, investing their capital in the business and hoping to profit from it.

It seems entirely reasonable to me to say that *if* you are a company with stockholders, that you have to listen to them, including for executive pay. Don't like those terms? That's fine. Do business as a private company without shareholders, or don't incorporate in Switzerland, or don't have your company listed on the stock market there. There are plenty of options if you don't like this reasonable rule, but it's there so the shareholders aren't ripped off by executives deciding to line their nest with gold instead of paying capitalist shareholders the profits they are due.

I don't even see how your "athlete on professional sports team" example applies to this situation, because the athlete is an employee, not the boss.

Re:Good

[RazzleFrog]

I didn't say that anymore. I said they didn't use guns to enforced their socializes policies.

Re:Good

[Shotgun]

IMHO the problem with executive bonusses isn't so much the amount or that they get bonusses at all, it's the fact that they can fail horribly and still recieve a bonus.

I can think of only one counter-example to prove this rule with....Alcatel-Lucent. Old time telephony is simply going away as an obsolete technology. Really, there is simply no way to make a twisted pair carry the data that can be pumped over coax, while obeying the the laws of physics. What happens to a company who's central product is no longer needed? Can a good CEO do a better job of milking the market for the few remaining dollars than a bad CEO? Is it worth paying an extra million, if the good CEO could milk out another billion?

 

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

D) Pro sports players aren't even in the ballpark (excuse the pun) of the folks we are talking about. They are high profile and get a lot of attention but the "1%" is worth 1000 times most athletes.

As Chris Rock said: "What's the difference between rich and wealthy? Shaq is rich. The white man that signs his check is wealthy."

Re:Good

[roman_mir]

Some, like Canada, are more socialistic than the US and I don't see them using guns up there to enforce it.

- ever tried NOT paying income taxes?

Re:Good

[umghhh]

Besides being slightly OT you are also wrong. Or to put it other way - your statement is based on very static (as in statism) assumption that a company cannot change its ways this being either ways of working or ways of doing business including area in which they do business. In fact this ability to survive the change is possibly more important than quarterly profits - good companies do survive bad companies do not. The difference between these two types can be partially luck, partially good management and partially hard working skilled labour force unless of course you replace them with something less reliable.

Re:Good

[Razgorov Prikazka]

It *really* doesn't matter whether the job justifies the salary or not.
If I would get 35 grand an hour for the same job I do now I wouldn't complain and say:"The job doesn't justify the salary".
If I would get 35 grand an hour for the same job I do now, but I had to move to another country... I would!
If you want to get rid of the top brass management; this is the way to go. These men will just go somewhere where they will get more, whether you think it is good/justifiable or not. So Swiss is left with the 'meh-not-really-that-good'-managers for your companies.
Look at Zimbabwe where the top 5% of farmers (all whites) were kicked out... Yes Switzerland, you are doing the same here... Well done!

Re:Good

[mabhatter654]

They will just move across "town" to Luxembourg open a new "world headquarters" in an apartment and get paid from there. The Swiss operation will hold all the money but be managed elsewhere. Like how many US companies run from Bermuda now.

With the US pushing so hard against Terrorism and Drugs, even Switzerland is losing its ability to play all sides against each other... They are simply not big enough to defend themselves in size or amount of gold hoarded versus the Swiss plebs.

Re:Good

[yurtinus]

OK, I know you're getting a lot of comments heaped on, but you still seem to be missing the point of this legislation.

Two parties have a deal. These two parties are the executive and the board of directors. This deal is paid for by a third party, however: the shareholders.

This isn't about class warfare or socialism or communism. This doesn't allow the government to place salary limits on anybody. This simply allows the third party (the one that *pays* for these salaries) to have some control over those salaries. How often in the last recession have you heard of an executive of a failing company bailing out with their golden parachute to land a job at another company and repeat the process? Why on God's green earth would that next company allow them to come on and repeat the cycle? Because the company rules state that these salaries are determined by the board of directors - and that board is made up of executives from other companies who may in fact be be in the very same position next week. The only businessmen this will hurt are those who are in the business of collecting other peoples money without providing any value of their own.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

There are countries where the police are not (normally) armed. Britain, for instance, and New Zealand. On the whole, their crime rates are not that different from everyone else's.

Canadian police, however, are armed. But to call that "enforcing socialism with guns" is the argument of a moron, one who has never once in their life spent five consecutive minutes thinking about the nature of either "oppression" or "freedom".

Re:Good

[yurtinus]

No, a good CEO would see the changes in the market and position his company to take advantage of that. Automobile going to obsolete your buggy whips? Shift some of your leather workers over to manufacturing driving goggles. Spending your companies reserves milking a doomed market up to its (and your) collapse should not earn you anything.

Re:Good

[yurtinus]

I don't think you're reading TFS right... The law is to make executive bonuses subject to *shareholder* approval.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You should watch http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2/

Look at what? all I see is a 404.

Re:Good

[shutdown -p now]

Oh noes! Laws are communism!
Let's stop government intervention once and for all. Why should it trample all over the free market by monopolizing protection of property? Let the property owners enforce their property rights against trespassing by themselves. Want to vote your stock or get dividends? You'd better be packing. Then we'll quickly find out just how much 100 million dollars in stock is actually worth.

Re:Good

[xero314]

It's funny to hear people say "equal" with respect to socialism. Ideas so good, they have to be mandatory and enforced by people with guns.

Sadly Neo-Libertarians and other supporters of capitalism often forget that without the threat of violence there is not right to property. In a society without the threat of violence collectivism becomes the norm. It's a very simple experiment, just imagine a world where all people agree to take no violent action against another (that is no violence by one person against another person). What you find out is that once there is no threat of violence there is no stopping someone from using anything not currently in use by another person. I need not any violence to walk onto property not currently occupied. I need no violence to operate a vehicle not currently occupied. I need no violence to enjoy produce not currently being consumed. On the flip side, violence, or the threat there of, is needed to stop me from those things.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone will fill void.
Better DOES NOT mean more expensive. Someone who is willing to take on job will come.
I don't think share holders will caer if it's talented guy from India or Poland or somewhere else. Fact it, business will be better without golden mattresses on the ground. Share holders will be better.

No one said to kick anybody out BTW. those who want to work - are free to do so.
The only thing I don't get - why share holders can't just force this sort of stuff on CEO THEY HIRE?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing price and value here. Being paid more does not mean being better. Let them go elsewhere, the next layer in the corporate ladder will go up a step and then we have the new top layer. Good for young people, and soon the demand will ease.

Re:Good

[drsmithy]

A government deciding it has the right to control the deal is a government deciding that there IS no property.

So fraud doesn't exist in your worldview ? Curious.

Using that metric, all property belongs to the community.

This is what's called a non-sequitur.

It's funny to hear people say "equal" with respect to socialism. Ideas so good, they have to be mandatory and enforced by people with guns.

Some ideas - property rights, for example - have to be mandatory and enforced by people with guns because of the handful of psychopathic arseholes who ruin it for the rest of us.

Re:Good

[TheTurtlesMoves]

If they were so good at what they do, this change would never have been proposed in the first place. It was people with stupid high pay+payouts even after they sunk the ship that caused this. We won't miss them.

Note that the salary cap is 15M. That is still quite a bit of walking around money.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to get rid of the top brass management; this is the way to go. These men will just go somewhere where they will get more, whether you think it is good/justifiable or not. So Swiss is left with the 'meh-not-really-that-good'-managers for your companies.

Why do you think that what a manager is paid is related to their skills more than anything else? There will be no shortage of people that will fill the spots of the few that will leave.
Oh, and just a small anecdote. All of the CEOs I've worked for so far didn't go through an interview or hiring process or ... they all became CEO with high paid salaries because they appointed themselves as CEO with their large amount of stock/shares.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Usually people as impaired as yourself are not able to type. Your post is a humorous testament to dim philosophy.

Someone steals property from another. What recourse that can allow for a generally peaceful society does one have to address the theft?

That's right, you can call the cops. This also requires rulemaking to determine what is theft, administration to apply those rules, and taxes to pay for those activities.

Cops, courts, jails, tax collectors and legislators do not emanate from God's ass. They are the product of a philosophy you are apparently unable to navigate.

Re:Good

[Xest]

Believe it or not, civilised countries (i.e. not America) they don't send a god damned SWAT team to kick your door down just because you didn't pay income taxes. In fact, in most civilised nations they'll do little more than send you letters to start with, only sending the police round (non-armed here in the UK) if you don't adhere to court rulings against you if made in absentia because you also didn't bother to turn up to court of your own accord.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Two parties have a deal.

Both those parties also signed another deal - it was called Governemnt by Consent.

If you don't like the way it's going then tough shit - either do something about it (and face the wrath of the populace if it's not in their favour) or get the fuck out.

Your only other choice is to shut-up and realise that business is there to serve the people, not the other way around.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Distinction without a difference.

The entire principle behind government is violence, nothing else. If violence wasn't required to achieve whatever the goals of government are, government wouldn't be.

The guns are the only true backing that any government has. I wouldn't pay 1/100 of 1/100 of 1 cent of income taxes if the government didn't have all these guns that they could employ against me at some point in the process (and the process would start with the letters but would end with the guns).

Re:Good

[drsmithy]

If the reason you don't take and use other people's stuff is because you're afraid of being hurt, you've got a pretty fucked up moral compass.

Re:Good

[drsmithy]

Don't underestimate the risk of having to walk away with a $5M golden parachute and look for another job while your peers are making $10M-$20M at the same time.
$5M would let you live a quite comfortable life for 40 years ($125k/yr) - and that's assuming all you did with it was draw down the capital.

It's actually kind of hard to underestimate that risk. It's basically nonexistant.

Maybe the law should state that you get absolutely nothing if the company tanks. Then we'll know that high salaries are given for performance.

I'd rather see a law that said the highest-remunerated employee in the company could not be given more than 10x that of the lowest-remunerated employee in the company. That way the people who deserve the windfall of a successful and profitable business are the ones receiving it.

Re:Good

[crunchygranola]

Libertarians constantly prattle on about all this oppression of government by its monopoly on force. Yet the only legitimate role they declare for government is to have guns - police and a military to enforce their property rights (which only exist under a system of laws).

Re:Good

[Razgorov Prikazka]

>> Being paid more does not mean being better.

That is true, but being better does however mean getting paid more.

Your comment is a good example of what I hear a lot these day's. I heard it from the occupy movement and protesters and many others. It is an oversimplification of a wrong argument.
First there is a 'problem'. In this case a depression. Whenever there is something wrong, a cause for this problem is sought. This can be witches when the crops fail, it can be Jews, gingers, immigrants or any other minority that can be made into scapegoats, preferably a minority that is easily distinguished by their appearance. In this case it's the bankers/managers/CEO's or to be short; 'suits'. Once a scapegoat is found it is euphemistically called 'the reason', or 'cause of the problem'. After the 'cause' is defined it needs to be dressed up as 'reality' so any descendant voice can be stifled. Here is where the AC's kind of reasoning comes in. The only thing left to do is curtail the influence of the scapegoats and there you go... problem solved!

So no, getting paid more does not automagically mean better, but the other way around however is true. If you are good at your job, you get paid more. This is true for waitresses as well as actors and anyone else. And it is not a problem to get paid a lot if you are good in what you do. It is called 'free market' and it got us a lot of good things.

Why do we blame others all the time?
Why aren't we honest about this? Why dont we blame ourselves for taking mortgages that we shouldn't. Why are credit-card companies to blame for YOUR overspending? Why did you buy that extra car on a loan? Why didn't you save up more? Couldn't you wait buying that extra plasma screen for the sleeping room until you actually had the money? Or, as my grand father told me, you first need to drink before you can pee.
Oh, and for that matter, is McDonalds responsible for you chewing down all that calories and getting fat? Is S&W responsible for a homicide? Is the electricity company responsible for you sticking a needle in a socket and get buzzed? Or is the needle company to blame?

Stop blaming others and take a look at yourselves first. Remember, if you point your finger to someone, the other three fingers are pointing at you...

Re:Good

[xero314]

I won't comment on your moral compass since you a merely a victim of a society that teaches that property ownership is right and moral. That being said, there is nothing natural about property. Without the threat of violence people would be able to use whatever it is they can find as long as it requires no violence to use. There is no harm done to others if I use something no one else is, regardless of who thinks they have a right to control that resource.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

- ever tried NOT paying income taxes?

Lots of people don't. 47% of the US for example don't pay income taxes. I bet a Canada has an equivalent to that.

Then there are the corporations who avoid income taxes with loopholes.

Both groups are not threatened with government guns. If anything, the government lavishes the 47% with welfare, and kiss the ass of corporations who provide funding and "gifts" to politicians.

Re:Good

[whitroth]

Yup.

A number of years ago, Robert Reich had a great comment: the president of a company, or whoever passes for the CEO's right-hand person, gets *maybe* paid a tenth of what the CEO does...what does the CEO *do* that's worth ten times that?

Then there's the *fact* that, after inflation, unless you're just ramping up, our salaries have been mostly static, while theirs have gotten insane. See , and argue with that.

But I *really* don't understand, if you're posting on slashdot, meaning you're not a millionaire slumming, why anyone here is arguing against capping those - don't you *want* more money? As long as they can keep raising their own, you'll NEVER get more.

Oddly enough, the 90% of us in the US had the highest purchasing power in the seventies, when the top tax bracket had been "lowered" to 70%... so there was an incentive to put money back into the company, instead of taking it out to make a few people so rich they could buy the US gov't....

            mark

Re:Good

[whitroth]

Whoops, forgot slashdot's auto-editing. The article I was pointing to when I said "see" was http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/corporate-profits-are-eating-the-economy/273687/

Re:Good

[OwMyBrain]

I'd rather see a law that said the highest-remunerated employee in the company could not be given more than 10x that of the lowest-remunerated employee in the company. That way the people who deserve the windfall of a successful and profitable business are the ones receiving it.

This sounds good in theory, but I think it has the potential for unintended consequences, such as companies exchanging all low-paygrade employees for external contractors.

Re:Good

[drsmithy]

This sounds good in theory, but I think it has the potential for unintended consequences, such as companies exchanging all low-paygrade employees for external contractors.

I'm sure there would be unintended consequences, there always are.

That one, however, is so obvious it shouldn't be hard to build something into any legislation to defeat it. "FTE equivalence", for example.

Re:Good

[drsmithy]

I won't comment on your moral compass since you a merely a victim of a society that teaches that property ownership is right and moral. That being said, there is nothing natural about property.

That's drawing a rather long bow. Even "dumb" animals like dogs have a concept of property.

Without the threat of violence people would be able to use whatever it is they can find as long as it requires no violence to use. There is no harm done to others if I use something no one else is, regardless of who thinks they have a right to control that resource.

The problem is - unless you've developed some psychic powers - you never know when someone might want to use their stuff. Just because they don't want to use it now, doesn't mean they won't want to five minutes from now.

Re:Good

[xero314]

Even "dumb" animals like dogs have a concept of property.

No, "dumb" animals have an instinct to control that which they can through the threat of violence. There is no proof that there is any sense of ownership, simply that they guard certain resources through violence and aggression. If you want to follow in the foot steps on animals then what's mine is anything I can take, and if I have to kill you to get it, then so be it. I don't think you want to live in a world that has animal instinct based concepts on property, unless you believe you are the most powerful person on the planet.

The problem is - unless you've developed some psychic powers - you never know when someone might want to use their stuff. Just because they don't want to use it now, doesn't mean they won't want to five minutes from now.

There is no need to know when someone might want to use it, all that matters is that they are not currently using it. Because by nature, it's not "their stuff", it's just stuff their for them to use, or theirs to restrict others use through threat of violence.

Take away the threat of violence and property has no meaning beyond current use.

Re:Good

[Stuarticus]

What a lot of fucking bullshit, it's the job of the lender to ensure that the customer can repay, that's called responsible banking. Remember it?

Beyond that if bankers were being rewarded for doing a good job that may well be acceptable, with reasonable bounds, in fact they are making a fortune while making a complete arse of their jobs.

Also your comparison to Jews and gingers is farcical.

Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[HornWumpus]

Shareholders already vote for the boards which set 3 letter jobs pay scales.

I'm guessing that 'preferred stock' gets a vote now.

In any case watch out for unintended consequences.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has screamed socialism.
 
  A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself -Isaac Asimov

Re:Before people scream socialism

[sycodon]

If anything, they should be screaming, Direct Democracy.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[fustakrakich]

In any case watch out for unintended consequences.

You mean, like a robust economy that's not dependent on these people?

Re:Before people scream socialism

[HornWumpus]

Those are clearly the 'intended' consequences. Doubt that will happen.

More likely. Companies de-listing or moving their headquarters to avoid this step.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. I always thought Switzerland was the model that at least some Libertarians dream of.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Joce640k]

Yeah, what's the "referendum" thing, and how did they ever get one on corporate wages/bonuses? Do Swiss pigs fly?

Re:Before people scream socialism

[HornWumpus]

Those would be Hong Kong and Singapore.

Switzerland has fucking hygene inspectors that have to OK your moving out of any apartment or house for fucks sake. Sink not clean enough to use as an operating room? You must stay and clean.

We kind of like their gun control policy, not perfect but the best Europe has to offer by far.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye bye parasites!

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, hence "Before anyone screams socialism" (emphasis mine)

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye bye, high paying professional jobs only provided in corporate headquarters!
And bye bye, income tax paid by all these professionals!

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Switzerland has fucking hygene inspectors that have to OK your moving out of any apartment or house for fucks sake. Sink not clean enough to use as an operating room? You must stay and clean.

Bullshit. When you move out, your landlord checks that the apartment or house is clean, that's all. If not, they will retain a certain amount on your 3 month deposit.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely.

More likely nothing will change. The angry business haters that are so happy about this don't actually own many shares directly. The shares are owned by mutual funds, insurance companies, pension systems, university endowments and other institutions. These shareholders aren't going to punish the people that manage the businesses they're invested in.

These shareholders will have a bit more leverage over managers. Management will still get their bonuses most of the time. The angry little business haters will go right on being angry never understanding *why* things are the way they are.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendum#Switzerland

Basically, somebody gets support for some legislative change by collecting signatures. If sufficient signatures are collected, there will be a popular vote on it. Pretty neat, eh?

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Archangel Michael]

Which is why the Boards of Directors and all the three letter jobs should be held accountable when a company defrauds the shareholders and public.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[GameboyRMH]

Would that be the same Singapore that has caning punishments, no freedom of assembly and draconian anti-littering laws? Aren't libertarians supposed to be socially liberal?

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye bye, high paying professional jobs only provided in corporate headquarters!
And bye bye, income tax paid by all these professionals!

Yes, because that's the only place high paying professional jobs exist; in the corporate headquarters of publicly traded companies, and nowhere else.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[RazzleFrog]

If the company commits fraud then the "C" level people most assuredly can be held accountable and go to jail. It's what happened with Enron.

Not so much the Board, though, since they typically wouldn't be involved with the day to day operations of a company.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Khashishi]

They're all rotten. The management is looking for the most acceptable way to embezzle the shit out of the company. The shareholders just want to just put their money somewhere where it will automatically increase without any work on their part, and so they are at odds with the management. It doesn't really matter who wins, since it's messed up either way.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and all of those high paid assholes pay so much of their income in taxes instead of hiding it all in tax shelters and loopholes.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[HornWumpus]

Funny, that's exactly what I think about sequestration. 2% cut in government employment? It's a start. A small start.

Bye bye parasites!

Re:Before people scream socialism

[HornWumpus]

It's still a big old pain in the ass to vote on every executive compensation issue. Especially if they don't allow the usual proxies to hold force and mess with preferred stock's non-voting status. Depends on how low they define 'executive'. That definition will of course also allow gaming the system.

If the shysters get it down to a routine, boilerplate annual shareholder vote it will just add to the lawyer tax and, as you say, not change anything. If, however, every shareholder has to actually vote it will fuck things up real good.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[ceoyoyo]

That would be an interesting one to sell to the shareholders.

Board/Execs: "We need to move the company to another country!"

Shareholders: "Why?"

Board/Execs: "So we can pay ourselves more without your permission!"

Shareholders: "Hm... maybe we need a new board instead."

Also, Switzerland doesn't have the same trade obligations that the EU nations do. They DO have free trade agreements, but they may not preclude taking action against companies that move to avoid Swiss laws.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what we Swiss call democracy, something that the USA seems to be missing lately...

Re:Before people scream socialism

[CodeReign]

Where do Swedish people hide their money?

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Switzerland has fucking hygene inspectors that have to OK your moving out of any apartment or house for fucks sake. Sink not clean enough to use as an operating room? You must stay and clean.

God damn, those euros over there really have things figured out.
They can afford hygene [sic] inspectors for everyone's apartment/house, but our infrastructure is literally crumbling and we can't even figure out a basic fucking healthcare package. Shit, in the race to prosperity, our USA seems to heading in the wrong fucking direction.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Archangel Michael]

The board's job is oversight so that the C's don't run the company down. It is their sole job in fact. So, if they are not doing the job they are being paid for (by shareholders) then they should be tossed in jail for complicity.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[DerekLyons]

That sounds impressive. But rarely is even the largest of outrageous executive bonuses more than say, .000001 or .000002% of the companies value. So, how exactly is 'saving' the shareholder a fraction of a penny per share 'protecting' them?

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

In lots of places.... the richest swede lives abroad to avoid the taxes ...

Re:Before people scream socialism

[HornWumpus]

Maybe Switzerland (which isn't Sweden).

But in general the tax rate on 1%ers in Europe is 0%. They live in Monaco. A lesson the USA has forgotten and Europe never got.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[shutdown -p now]

We kind of like their gun control policy, not perfect but the best Europe has to offer by far.

That shows how much you actually know about it. You know they only allow 5.56 ammo to be sold at ranges and used at those ranges? And have you looked at their current carry laws?

If you want a European country with sane gun policies, that's Czech Republic.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Yes, because that's the only place high paying professional jobs exist; in the corporate headquarters of publicly traded companies, and nowhere else.

They tend to reside where the headquarters are located. A company I worked for had CCIE's and datacenter architects who regularly traveled around the world to work on projects, but their "home of record" where they pay their income taxes is near that corporate hedquarters. If not in the same state then at least in the same country.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Further to that the government here actually has set up associations that help the renters ensure that the landlords are not overly zealous on the cleaning / repainting.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Further to that the government here actually has set up associations that help the renters ensure that the landlords are not overly zealous on the cleaning / repainting.

Bullshit again. The government hasn't set up anything like this, these associations are private.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

Those would be Hong Kong and Singapore.

Singapore is a libertarian paradise?! Singapore - the country where you will fined and jailed for spitting your gum or dropping a cig end on the street? The country where the schools can do random drug tests at their own discretion and require any kind of sample (blood, fluids, hair etc.) at the drop of a hat? That's what you rejects call liberty?! You can damn well keep it if that's the case - i'll take the French model over that any day.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

For my company, you are about five orders of magnitude low in your estimate. According to our latest 10k filing, my company has revenue right around $800m. We lost $40m last year. Our CEO's total compensation was $2.7m. Therefore, about 1/3 of a percent off all money taken in went to the CEO. If we fired him (and didn't have to pay his golden parachute) then our total loss would be reduced by 6.7% per year. As a shareholder, I think his salary is way to high for a company in such a poor financial position.

Re:Before people scream socialism

[deadweight]

Wow -that is................exactly like the USA (well maybe one month instead of three here)

it's not even really a curb

[Trepidity]

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.

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Anonymous Coward]

and will the shareholders feel the high pay is justified?

Of course! Otherwise they would have sold their shares a long time ago and invested in a more profitable company. This is why this initiative won't change anything. Because shareholders always had ultimate power since they are the giving credit to the company. If they didn't use this strongest possible weapon, what good is it to give them the much weaker weapon of a veto?

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes having a variety of "weapon strengths" can encourage a result closer to the middle of a dispute, rather than at one extreme or the other. It helps to have weapons that aren't nuclear.

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Antipater]

Are you sure about that?

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Trailer Trash]

Technically, the shareholders *should* be able to do this already through the Board. I think the problem in the US is that few people invest in companies directly nowadays - instead they invest in mutual funds which in turn own companies.

I always suggest that people who work in publicly traded companies own stock and show up at annual meetings when possible. The problem is that for the normal worker they can't buy stock at the same pace that it's being given to the executives. My wife's former company was terrible about that - execs and even divisional managers were being given thousands of shares each year, either outright or as options that allowed them to buy the stock at a low price and sell it immediately at a much higher price, with the risk totally eliminated by the fact that they had no requirement to buy in the first place.

We really need to get back to free market principles here, instead of this crazy system where executives rape companies and get huge bonuses or parting gifts.

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Anonymous Coward]

well, of course in the real world this vote might actually deny the payment plans, my point was actually that this is inconsistent with the people giving their money to the company in the first place. So what they're saying is that basically they trust the board of directors on all decisions (including hiring the CEO) but consider them incompetent to make payment decisions? That's inconsistent, which of course does not stop it from happening in the real world.
Again why would they risk keeping their money in a company they think is run by greedy corrupt and incompetent people?

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the fact that company stock is used as compensation and C level positions usually have a large portion of the voting block locked up with their own stock ownership.

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Trepidity]

It'd also help if the boards were comprised of more independent people. The current status-quo is that executives are all on each other's boards, which gives an obvious disincentive to play hardball on things like compensation. Does the Board think that executives should be paid a lot, because they provide immense value? Why of course, this board made up of other executives thinks the proposition to be beyond question!

For example, here are the members of the board of directors of JPMorgan Chase:

• The retired Executive VP of Boeing
• The Chairman of Springs Industries
• The CEO of NBCUniversal
• The Chairman and CEO of Honeywell
• The President of Henry Crown and Company
• The CEO of Chase itself
• The former CEO of KPMG
• The President of the American Museum of Natural History
• The Chairman and CEO of Clear Creek Properties
• The former CEO of ExxonMobil
• The Chairman of Johnson & Johnson

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Shotgun]

Technically, the shareholders *should* be able to do this already through the Board.

Except that CEO of company A sits on the board of company B, and the CEO of company B sits on the board of company A. CEO A votes to raise B's salary, and vice-versa. When someone raises a conflict of interest issue, you just substitute a close family member to sit on the board of the other company. It's not like it isn't a close knit community.

Re:it's not even really a curb

[TsuruchiBrian]

It shouldn't be controversial, but I also don;t see the point. Shareholder already have authority over executive salaries. The shareholders are the real bosses (in aggregate). They are the ones paying the salaries (i.e. it is essentially deducted from their profits). If shareholders can't be bothered to ensure that they are paying their employees reasonable salaries, then it means this company is mismanaged by it's owners (the shareholders) who deserve to lose their shirts. If you are a small time investor, whose vote doesn't matter, then you can still vote by doing research and dumping stock in companies that is mismanaged.

To me this is like making a legal mechanism for girlfriends to dump their boyfriends if they've been cheated on. This mechanism already exists and should work better without government intervention. The fact that a legal alternative may help girls is not relevant. It is a waste of tax payer resources to fund something that should be taken care of by the private sector.

I am not even one of these anarchist type people that wants to abolish the government. I am totally in favor of the government being in charge of programs that make sense (like single payer healthcare). This just seems like an overreach. There are plenty of more worthy things that governments could be spending it's limited resources on.

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Fallingcow]

Because if it's possible to do something one way, adding a different way to accomplish the same thing will never affect outcomes. If people want something and there's any way whatsoever to achieve it they will always achieve it at the same rate regardless of what that way might be.

Oh, wait, that's not true at all.

Re:it's not even really a curb

[Anonymous Coward]

The only power the shareholders have is the nuclear option of sacking the board, which, in the short term, is likely to cost the shareholders money. The shareholders are mostly investment funds whose managers' bonuses are based on short term results, so they don't want to see a fall in the share price even if it will lead to greater profits in the future. Thus the company directors get away with paying themselves ever larger bonuses.

The Swiss proposal fixes this one consequence of the general failure in corporate governance. Which is good. Sadly, it doesn't address the other consequences, such as the disincentive to invest for the future.

Meh...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Meh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes indeed, except for the countless examples where this explicitly doesn't happen and criminal activities are rewarded with multi-million dollar rewards as exemplified by nearly every major corporate failure in recent memory. Americans REALLY DO have goldfish memory.

Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[sxpert]

"this" has already passed. according to swiss constitution, a text that was validated in such a referendum MUST be written into law. guess the swiss will be able to get rid of those parasites...

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaving Switzerland because of this law is like running away from your parents because they only bought you a V6 Mustang instead of a V8.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[nbauman]

Then there's the part in Atlas Shrugged where all the creators leave the moochers behind and go off to Gault Gulch and live off their perpetual motion machines.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[VAXcat]

Then you are saying this would be entirely justified then, because friends don't let friends drive Fords.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a problem. Those are not jobs that require any particular talent. If somebody leaves because they think 1 million is not enough and they should make 10 millions, a replacement will easily be found who is more than happy to take _only_ one million.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[HornWumpus]

Though I agree with you, the GP's hypothetical was between two fucked old rotten dogs. No good choices. Which one can I sell for more?

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Registered Coward v2]

"this" has already passed. according to swiss constitution, a text that was validated in such a referendum MUST be written into law. guess the swiss will be able to get rid of those parasites...

No, some companies will restructure to move executive operations out of Switzerland; even if the executives physically remain in Switzerland. Large companies, by their very nature, have a global reach and will move operations to the most favorable climates. It may cause some hand wringing in Switzerland if Swiss companies, at least on paper, cease to be "Swiss;" then again given the interlocking nature of the senior levels of Switzerland's government, companies and Army officer corps no doubt some understanding will be reached. The Swiss can be described many ways, but "stupid businessmen that can't make things work behind teh scenes despite public positioning" is generally not one that comes to mind.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Anonymous Coward]

And the snobs come out...

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Sique]

The problem is that the shareholders of said companies have to agree to a restructuring in another country. And then they will vote on the executive's pay in the same session.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Anonymous Coward]

and the replacement wouldn't be able to make 1 buck...

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Registered Coward v2]

The problem is that the shareholders of said companies have to agree to a restructuring in another country. And then they will vote on the executive's pay in the same session.

I am not sure why you claim this. unless Swiss corporate law is very different from most, they could do it without a shareholder vote.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[shutdown -p now]

That's the plan! What we moochers want is for these suckers to put that perpetual motion machine in production, at which point we'll track them down, confiscate it, and ship them over to gulags.

Indeed, that's the thinking behind steady socialist advances in all developed countries to date. I kinda wish these guys would hurry with the machine, though. We've been raising taxes for a century now and they still haven't come up with it. Ridiculous!

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Tom]

France isn't far from here. I don't see it falling apart. And Switzerland won't suffer, either.

The "everyone will leave, omg! Sky falling!" Is pure propaganda, nothing else. Doesn't happen. At most, some of the parasites will leave because they're not welcome anymore. If you have something useful to offer to the world, money is not your only motivation.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[Xest]

That's why Steve Jobs was such a dismal failure at turning a profit, because of his $1 salary and refusal to take stock options and bonus.

Oh wait, never mind, he was arguably the most successful businessman in the last decade.

If you think wage defines talent, you're as stupid as they come.

Re:Next week's headline: Swiss mass exodous

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

I like the solution in Hitchikers guide to the Galaxy better: send the moochers and inproductives off on a mission to colonize new planets and then don't follow them.

Just guess

[no-body]

Who else is not worth the money being paid.. M$ BG comes to mind...

Re:Just guess

[HornWumpus]

Moron.

You also come to mind. McDonald's is overpaying you. Hint: Gates left MS many years ago.

Re:Just guess

[Anonymous Coward]

For sure. M$ is for faggots. I only use, run, own, and recommend linux on all my pc boxen. I give linux to my 1 month old, and she installs it no problem. She even wrote a program that says "hello world". I gave windows 7 46 bit to my nephew and he's 2 months old. It blew up in his face and severed his penis.

linux up! M$ down!

Re:Just guess

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:Just guess

[HornWumpus]

He's just being an unsuccessful karma troll.

Re:Just guess

[no-body]

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

Re:Just guess

[colinrichardday]

Yeah, that 46-bit version is unstable.

Re:Just guess

[Trailer Trash]

Gates also FOUNDED the company. There's a world of difference between him and someone brought in after it's already built.

Re:Just guess

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just guess

[no-body]

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

Re:Just guess

[Eskarel]

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.

You'd never do this in America ...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You'd never do this in America ...

[gfxguy]

I disagree - it depends on how the case is made. For years the boards of these companies claimed they did what they did "for the shareholders." Layoff people to make the bottom line look better, despite being in the black and growing? It was for the shareholders, who might sue us if we don't make them enough money. Move production to China? It was for the shareholders, who might sue us if we don't make them enough money. Cut pension plans? It was for the shareholders!

So it could fly, it just need to be presented the right way. Of course, I feel that about a lot of legislation.

Bring that over to the U.S.A.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remember to wear your bullet-proof/bomb-proof vest during delivery, as many of our executives will be wailing and gnashing their teeth...

Bonkers "perceived disasters"

[sugarmotor]

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?

Re:Bonkers "perceived disasters"

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a big fat bank bailout, (especially for UBS, who got something to the tune of 60bn and wouldn't have made it otherwise), but they have bought a good deal of the toxic shares back and are claiming that the public (=state) isn't in the red anymore with regards to this matter. Lots of number wrangling went on, so it's hard to tell, but some people say they have screwed us over, while others claim that all debts are paid and we have a still working economy because of the bailout. Nevertheless, nearly all of the involved top managers got off with golden parachutes, so depending on your view point, it's been a disaster.

Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[0xdeadbeef]

There are better ways to deal with CEO scarcity than to enact salary caps. They could have made special visas to allow foreign CEOs to work in the country, and the resulting competition would have had the same effect without going all socialist and stuff.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Desler]

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?

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Ironhandx]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[golden age villain]

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).

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Desler]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[blahplusplus]

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

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Worthless_Comments]

The people are not customers of the government. The People own the government, because the People are the government.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Holy shitballs, I have never seen as much misinformation presented authoritatively anyhwere else in my life. Read a history book. You're believing what you think, as opposed to what actually happened.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Anti-capitalist is anti-freedom

[Pascal Sartoretti]

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...

Shocking

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority of people think no one else should make more money than them. Film at 11.

Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you boil this down, what you are left with is the disgusting stench of jealousy. Who are you to say that another person's salary is unjustified, if that person's salary was achieved through voluntary association? After all, your solution is coercion. And you dare asset that YOU are the morally superior one? You've got it backwards.

I am 38 years old, make less than $40,000 a year, and in all probability won't make any more than that for the remainder of my life. 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. The difference is that I can see right through the smokescreen of moral superiority.

Re:Jealousy

[master5o1]

The difference between you and me is that you're anonymous and I am not.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Khashishi]

The difference is that I have accepted my place in life,

and ye shall forever be downtrodden as a result.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is that you are an un-motivated slacker?

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[master5o1]

Try searching for that little tag.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

master501, I apologize for being a simpering tool of the Republican Party, here in America, in the Deep South. Truly, there is no difference between you, master501, and myself, Anonymous Coward due to that tag though. That tag does not let you maintain a consistent and check-able post history by which your reputation is established over time. Why anyone could have posted as you! My idiotic self though, is clearly the superior.

Derpa derpa derp.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Schmorgluck]

Not bad, but I got far more results by searching "Anonymous Coward".

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[macbeth66]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[macbeth66]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[jrmcc]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, since my last comment, I've converted to Islam.

Re:Jealousy

[DMiax]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

I have accepted my place in life

Now that you've identified the problem, maybe you can fix it.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Quirkz]

Who makes $1-2 billion per year as a salary on a regular basis?

Re:Jealousy

[ceoyoyo]

Who are you to say that another person's salary is unjustified

A shareholder.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr

And any chance of me trying to wade through it stopped when you used the word "Sheeple"

Re:Jealousy

[FrozenFOXX]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[catchblue22]

To quote Plutarch (46 - 120 AD),

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ...

Re:Jealousy

[cayenne8]

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?

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Sarius64]

Better Islam than some New Zealand, hiding in the arms of every other country, nit.

Re:Jealousy

[yurtinus]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[dcollins117]

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."

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

Any goat-herder in Zimbabwe makes more than that...

Re:Jealousy

[khallow]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[sa1lnr]

"A voice representing the majority who are not rewarded (to excess) for failure."

A majority that often picks up the tab for those failures.

Re:Jealousy

[stoploss]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Eskarel]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Your.Master]

How do you define bettering your life if not in achieving happiness and/or contentment?

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[ElusiveJoe]

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".

Re:Jealousy

[ByOhTek]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Gonoff]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Gonoff]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[nukenerd]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[crunchygranola]

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.)

Re:Jealousy

[crunchygranola]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[godefroi]

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?

Re:Jealousy

[cayenne8]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[yurtinus]

I barely skimmed TFS, surely you can't expect me to read your entire post before ranting at you!

Re:Jealousy

[stoploss]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Jealousy

[cyberchondriac]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[stoploss]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[cayenne8]

I barely skimmed TFS, surely you can't expect me to read your entire post before ranting at you!

Of course not....it is the Slashdot Way.

:)

Re:Jealousy

[khallow]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:Jealousy

[khallow]

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?

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[khallow]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[catchblue22]

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.

Re:Jealousy

[FreekyGeek]

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.

The US desperately needs this...

[rs1n]

...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.

Re:The US desperately needs this...

[dkleinsc]

I do not see any Congressman voting for any measure that would limit his pay.

Congress cannot make any decisions about the pay of the current Congress, thanks to the 27th Amendment. That includes giving themselves a pay cut. The way the public punishes Congress for giving themselves a raise is to vote them out of office.

Re:The US desperately needs this...

[fustakrakich]

Congressman, no. On the other hand... there appears to be one person to keep around for a while.

Re:The US desperately needs this...

[rs1n]

The 27th amendment only DELAYS the effects of any laws which affect salaries. It DOES NOT PREVENT salary changes. It works just like contracts in that if you are employed for a contracted period of time, you expect your pay to stay fixed according to your contract during said period of time. The 27th amendment says:

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

It is quite possible that voters can vote to keep an incumbent, but limit his salary for his next term. Moreover, removing someone from office does not fix the problem of congressmen being overpaid if that is indeed the case.

If only....

[Anonymous Coward]

We could get laws like that int he U.S...

If it's the same as in the US.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

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.

Re:If it's the same as in the US.

[VAXcat]

I forget who said this quote, but it's pretty apropos - "In a company, those who manage the money usually manage to hang on to most of it".

Follow the swiss

[Anonymous Coward]

The Swiss, leading the world one referendum at a time.

The US needs this too. It should work like this.

[Animats]

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.

Obsession with CEOs is cargo-cultism

[runeghost]

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.

Re:Obsession with CEOs is cargo-cultism

[Tom]

Parent deserves more than +5. I've worked with the highest levels of management and there is so much magical thinking at these levels, it puts any witch coven to shame.

Just one example: In many sectors, there is the unquestioned belief that only X amounts of companies can survive in the market. So the CEOs main job is to make sure his company is in the top X. If he's at X+1 or X+2, he risks being canned. No matter if the company is successful, profitable, whatever - doesn't matter because higher ups believe in that mantra.

As a voter from the US

[sl4shd0rk]

I support this move by Switzerland and vow to buy only Swiss cheese from here on out.

Re:As a voter from the US

[Anonymous Coward]

There are holes in your plan.

Re:As a voter from the US

[lloydchristmas759]

Bad idea! So called "Swiss cheese" here in the US has nothing Swiss but its name and is usually a disgusting, tasteless byproduct of milk. Try Swiss made cheeses, like Gruyère or Emmental, which are pretty good.

Re:As a voter from the US

[Anonymous Coward]

How can cheese be tasteless and at the same time disgusting? Are you saying the texture is bad?

Re:As a voter from the US

[Anonymous Coward]

well, if you eat cheese, it always should be a Swiss one ;)

a proud swiss voter....

PS: it's nice to be directly able to intervene the politics. Would like to see this semi-direct democracy model in other countries...

Re:As a voter from the US

[Eric S. Smith]

it's nice to be directly able to intervene the politics.

I don't doubt it, but it's worth noting that the quality of the decisions made by the electorate isn't uniformly high -- there was that embarrassing business with the minarets...

Re:As a voter from the US

[ZorroXXX]

The holes! The holes are tasteless. It's kind of obvious when you think about it.

Re:As a voter from the US

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as Swiss cheese in Switzerland. We ship the shitty Emmental cheese out and it gets renamed Swiss cheese. Buy Gruyere if you want to taste some good stuff. Functionally, it's the cheddar cheese of Switzerland (but way tastier).

Re:As a voter from the US

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you mean real Swiss cheese* and not that funny thing that American used to call "Swiss cheese".

* Emmenthaler, Appenzeller, Gruyere, etc.

Damn dirty communists...

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare they, the Swiss, they are all communists.
So when is the US going to liberate them ?

Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Corporatists Exposed

[iSterculius]

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.

And Glocks?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, Switzerland is the home of the Cuckoo Glock.

Re:And Glocks?

[wideglide]

Clocks, mechanisms that show time. Glocks are several firearms manufactured by Glock in Austria ... The Cuckoo Clock comes from the southwest of Germany (Black forest region), not switzerland.

Re:Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea

[fredrated]

Yes.

first 4oRst!

[Anonymous Coward]

efofort to address

Inflammatory, irresponsible topic

[benjfowler]

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.

Re:Inflammatory, irresponsible topic

[ceoyoyo]

So lots of people are going to look at this page, including the ads displayed on it? Yeah, those Slashdot editors... idiots.

Re:Inflammatory, irresponsible topic

[HornWumpus]

Pageviews you dolt. Besides, it keeps them off the other topics.

The occasional political troll article improves the S/N ratio elsewhere, same function as facebook.

Re:Inflammatory, irresponsible topic

[benjfowler]

Insightful... wish I could spend my mod points voting you up!

Re:Inflammatory, irresponsible topic

[Shotgun]

And yet, you're here.

Vroom..

[h8sg8s]

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?

Re:Vroom..

[Issarlk]

I will gladly manage one of these companies for a much reduced (but still probably obscene) pay!! Where do I sign?

Their bankers will abide by that...

[Squidlips]

NOT

Re:Their bankers will abide by that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was that one of your famous NOT jokes? Colour me impressed

plain wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Either way - the Swiss Govt has the right idea

[Kittenman]

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?

Re:Either way - the Swiss Govt has the right idea

[Issarlk]

treat - educated - people like grown ups and this happens. Not sure about brainwashed, bread-and-circus masses raised in a country where the elites do their darnest to destroy public eductation.

Re:Either way - the Swiss Govt has the right idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It was an initiative launched by a private citizen. I.e. in this case it was not the government asking the people but rather the people asking the government, which in turn asked if this is really what the people want. This shows how much power an ordinary citizen has in Switzerland.

Re:Either way - the Swiss Govt has the right idea

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Ask the voters

Don't thank the government : they didn't choose to ask the voters, they had to, because 100'000 persons signed the proposal.

The government and parliament proposed a watered-down version, but the voters chose the original (and stronger) version.

One law that everyone should implement

[thetoadwarrior]

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.

Re:One law that everyone should implement

[Anonymous Coward]

True, from memory there have also been a few cases where the bonuses awarded were (sometimes individually, sometimes as a whole) larger than the deficit the company made that year.

As such, it means that if those bonuses hadn't been awarded, the company wouldn't have made a loss.

Re:One law that everyone should implement

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't any absolutes. If everyone in a market loses 50% and your company loses 1% due to foreseeing something catastrophic, someone earned a bonus.

Having said that, I'm ok with them 'earning' but not receiving a bonus due to the above technicality.

I'm also fine with taxing the shit out of companies that pay management more than 30x the income of their lowest-paid employees is fine by me. Ditto management. Ditto banning parachutes and deferred compensation. Etc.

Re:One law that everyone should implement

[purpledinoz]

No bonuses when companies have losses, and no golden parachutes when a CEO gets fired. At least the shareholders should be able to claw them back. The bank situation is out of control, how can any bonuses be awarded after the biggest financial crash since the great depression? It makes no sense. The problem is that it is now official policy not to prosecute bank fraud. Just a slap on the wrist fine, which essentially announces that fraud is allowed, and the fine is the cost of doing that business. Let's face it, the elites have figured out how to game the political system, and they are robbing us blind.

Libertarian Baloney

[cmholm]

"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.

Re:Libertarian Baloney

[yurtinus]

See, your attempts at debate are noble but poorly guided. Need to convince your cat not to piss on the wall? Use a squirt gun on it whenever it attempts to! (caveat - I haven't had cats that ever pissed on walls, but it did work to keep them off the table...)

Now, I consider myself a libertarian - primarily on civil grounds - but I also feel that given the same opportunities, people who put more work into improving their situation should get more reward out of it. I don't know when the libertarians became cheerleaders for highly paid executives (how did the Republicans pass that one on?), but I honestly don't know of anybody outside of members of the board who would disagree with you. We have whole classes of top paid executives right now who aren't worth the overpriced socks they walk around in, playing with other peoples money and raking in fortunes regardless of how well they perform. That's no Libertarian ideal - it's a leech club skimming off whatever they can. None of them try to stop it because, after all, it's mostly other people's money and they don't want to lose their own access to it by angering the wrong leech. At risk of making this a "no true Libertarian" debate, somebody who claims you're jealous of buddy-club wealth isn't a libertarian, they're just a wanna be leech.

As much as we love to heap the hatred on them, people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at least built and sold *something* and that's the path to wealth we need to encourage, not the marketplace gambling and executive back scratching.

Re:Libertarian Baloney

[TubeSteak]

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.

Studies have shown that executive compensation boards/consultants lead to higher executive salaries than in companies that decide pay internally.
Mostly because the board of directors doesn't have to shoulder any responsibility for the salary numbers they approve.

Re:Libertarian Baloney

[cmholm]

To be honest, the sort of libertarians that approve of executive pay pathologies - particularly in the US - are "libertarians" shilling for the man... the sort of folks who post on Megan McArdle's blog.

Re:Libertarian Baloney

[crunchygranola]

Exactly. In that phrase from Thatcher so beloved by the right these days, those compensation boards and those CEOs are playing games with "other people's money".

Socialism enforced by people with guns?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that capitalist private property requires the backing of guns

Always wanted to be an Astronaut

[Dareth]

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.

Re:Always wanted to be an Astronaut

[Anonymous Coward]

You're looking at things the wrong way. There has never been a fat person in space. Think of all the fat related science you could do. Does lack of gravity effect your bones the same way as skinny people? Is the fat providing you more insulation from radiation? Can you live longer in open space as your fat could help keep your organs more insulated? Maybe you could try the last one on a fat rat first, but think of the possibilities!

Swiss Stock Exchange

[lionchild]

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.

What about Russian and Ukrainian oil companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Unforeseen consequences

[Monsuco]

I do have one prediction: fewer Swiss companies will go public. I doubt existing publicly owned Swiss companies will go private since that can sometimes be hard to do, not to mention expensive. Yet I certainly imagine there will be a few CEO's who refuse to take their company public. This new law might provide the "perverse incentive" for a company's executive to intentionally try to deter investment.

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.

Mob mentality

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

@ gandhi - Re:Good

[nukenerd]

gandhi wrote :-

Leftism boils democracy down to "two wolves and one lamb" voting on dinner.

That's democracy. What is leftism to do with it?