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Lenovo CEO Shares $3 Million Bonus With Workers
hackingbear writes "Yang Yuanqing, founder and CEO of Chinese PC maker Lenovo, will share $3.25 million from his bonus with some 10,000 staff in China and 19 other countries. 'Most are hourly manufacturing workers,' Lenovo spokeswoman Angela Lee said. 'As you can imagine, an extra $300 in a manufacturing environment in China does make an impact, especially to employees supporting families.' In its annual review last year, Lenovo raised Yang's base pay to $1.2 million and awarded him a $4.2 million discretionary bonus and a $8.9 million long-term incentive award. Yang owns 7.12% of Lenovo's shares, equivalent to about $720 million in stock."
I believe that he did this last year as well.
Good on him, especially considering that Lenovo has been quite successful recently in a contracting PC market
would be pretty awesome
It's easy to be a philanthropist when you're rich. Just sayin'
Its also easy to not share your wealth with your workers.
True. True.
Thanks for the info. I will make it a point to buy / recommend Leveno products. I want to reward this behavior.
Given your use of a computer and access to the internet, I'm willing to bet a sizable part of the world population considers you rich. Just sayin'.
Nobody works unless they're paid money.*
*Experience is as good as money, my interns benefit from my decades of experience in the industry, by making me coffee and archiving old files.
The workers feel appreciated and will be diligent.
You don't happen upon good employee morale and company stewardship.
It has to be grown. Quality and waste will decrease. When employees feel zero empathy for the company or it's future, a fall is sure to follow.
IBM would have insisted that "Costs Must Be Cut" (TM); laid off 20% of the workforce, furloughed the remaining employees for a week, and announced record earnings per share.
I'm betting that if he had sent the company into a tail spin and taken a $3billion parachute you'd be on here commenting about what a dick the guy was. Can he do anything to please you, or are you a serial whiner?
In before 1000 Libertarians explaining that nobody works unless they're paid money, because nothing is important except accumulation of material tat.
Libertarian here. His stock is worth $720M, and he only gave away 0.5% of that. If his generosity boosts morale enough to generate just 1% more profit, then he has doubled the money. He is publicizing this gift, so the workers are aware of the source, rather than giving anonymously, so he is at least partly motivated by greed. This looks like a smart investment.
$3,250,000 / 10,000 = $325 per employee.
Keep that math in your brain for the next "Overpaid CEO" argument.
If this is all about return on investment, why don't all CEs of multinationals do this?
Are they all that dumb? Are you saying they should all be sacked?
You are totally right.
This is a rare occasion though. An a business decision thats good for the company/shareholders, good for the employees and doesn't affect the consumers negatively.
Libertarian eh? Didn't you used to work as a stooge for the federal government? You wouldn't happen to still be sucking that tax payer titty would you? Whenever somebody goes around proudly proclaiming what a big bad libertarian they are you can be guaranteed there is government titty sucking in their history...
The 23rd curse of the Libertarian is to reduce everything to some meaningless effiiciency calculation which ignores any inconvenient factors. It's the kind of thing you do as a dorky 15 year old (or college freshman if you're remedial), but mostttttt people grow out of by college.
Your lactophilia is getting in the way of your point. Or two points, in your case. Please rephrase.
Actually all the empirical evidence seems to point to it being harder.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
And is this CEO a Confucianist?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Not rare at all. Most outcomes in a free market fit this description.
No, he's a JEW! He just gambled away the company on housing derivatives and needs a bailout! Yeeehaw!
Clicked on comments to come and see all the folks who'd make negative comments about him for this. You, among others, didn't disappoint.
There is no indication he's motivated by greed whatsoever, and it's either ignorant or wilfully destructive to cast such aspersions without some concrete evidence.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Exactly. Hey, look how generous I am while I continue make an exuberant amount of money on off your backs!
Not as easy as you think. First you have to get over yourself. That's HUGE when you're rich because you tend to think you're better than those below you and your status and ability to rise to your level convinces you of it. So, no it's not as easy as you think. In reality, it's easy to imagine being generous when you don't have much to give.
Just sayin'
Say or say not. There is no just.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
This guy is the CEO. He could just as well have Lenovo give this bonus directly to its employees, which it will probably (have to) do anyway. Instead he's trying to make himself look good. Might be worth the trouble; the (apparently) kinder the CEO, the more loyal the employees. But this is not an act of charity; it's just a normal bonus with a well thought-out psychological plan behind it.
0x or or snor perron?!
Well, it only works if your employees are living in impoverished places to begin with. Like they said, it's only about $300 each. To a factory worker in China, that's a big deal. If Steve Ballmer did the same thing, it probably wouldn't be such a big deal, as they are a software company (mostly) and the majority of their workers probably don't see $300 as such a big deal. I mean, as a developer I would like an extra $300 at the end of the year, but it's not really going to change my life that much, especially after you subtract taxes.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Maybe they just pay their employees more, instead of paying them less and "giving" them a portion of the CEO's bonus at the end of the fiscal year?
He's giving part of his bonus to be distributed to his workers? That's the path to socialism!
Perhaps they will...
Basically, the CEO could have arranged things to be organized such that 'the company' allocated 3.25 million dollars directly as bonus (as is typical). However, it was arranged such that the bonus was granted in a way to make the CEO's role more explicit and personal.
Common practice assumes that the value of the bonus can be purely derived from the monetary amount of the bonus. However, this scheme may inspire more than just the nominal value. It clearly has had some effect. It is exceedingly routine for companies to allocate far greater values than 3.25 million dollars for typical bonuses, yet that routine doesn't grab headlines or goodwill. In the media, they have eaten up the bonus amount, despite not being that out of line for companies because of the logistics of granting the CEO explicit authority to give or keep the money.
Are they all that dumb? Are you saying they should all be sacked?
Works for me!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Actually, I don't know about microsoft, but I know a lot of companies that routinely spend *way* more than 3.25 million in bonuses for non-executive employees. In fact, this may be the case for Lenovo as well, and the 3.25 million is just a portion of it.
The fact it comes via the CEO could be some genuine act of generosity, but it could equally be just a contrivance to provide more value to the dollar amount through the appearance of generosity (e.g. they might have budgeted the 3.25 million to be part of bonus pay for non-executives anyway, but decided to play a game where it is nominally 'CEO' bonus budget with full knowledge that it goes to the employees in order to get goodwill in the market and among their employees.
I'm a Libertarian who thinks corporations should be outlawed in current societies and denied any form of special privileges like limited liability or any form of personhood in a utopian free society. What were you saying again about grossly overpaid CEOs? I agree that they are grossly overpaid. I suspect that most of them could be replaced with someone who makes less than 100k per year no problem.
Even if the company made a little bit less money it would be good for the morale of everyone else if one person were not so ridiculously overpaid.
I think you have to be blind to not see that a corporation represents an unhealthy concentration of power in the hands of a few. Power corrupts. Also the behavior of a corporation is indistinguishable from that of an individual sociopath. The last thing we need is more sociopaths in our or any society. We certainly should not be encouraging them as we do now.
Companies, as in groups of individuals working toward a common goal, which should not be to make a pile of money in any way they can, but to produce a product or service they can be proud of, while hopefully at the same time earning enough to live comfortably, are themselves necessary evils because when they grow large they grow powerful even without limited liability or legal personhood, but there is simply no alternative that actually works. Human beings have to work together in groups to produce useful things. Government owned corporations are no better than privately owned ones. In fact they are usually worse.
You know what else is a necessary evil? Governments. That's why we Libertarians like to keep them as small as possible. In general I'd also like to keep companies as small as possible, but large companies also have advantages in terms of more affordable goods and services for poor people. Human beings simply don't behave as well in groups, especially in large groups, but I don't think artificially limiting their size makes sense in the way it does for governments. The economic advantages for the poorest members of society are simply too great. Nevertheless I think it would have great non-monetary benefits on society as a whole if all companies or organized groups of any kind were limited to no more than 100 people.
Are you sure you weren't thinking of a Republican. Some of you pro-government types get us confused so easily but we actually have very little in common. Some very minor common ground in economic theory with a small minority of them, probably the ones who call themselves tea partiers, and that's all.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
It's an act of generosity which he didn't have to do, for a company that puts out a laptop where Linux runs great. Lenovo was already probably going to get my next purchase based on how well Linux is running on this laptop (T61 purchased used FWIW), and this only makes it easier.
No good deed should go unpunished.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
And good journalism would analyze total bonus amount and base compensation and compare against other companies. From a rational standpoint, the amount is what matters, not the story behind it.
A Lenovo competitor giving 5% more base pay than Lenovo and allocating 32 million instead of 3.2 million would get less credit than this single act by failing to perform the same theatrics, in no small part due to the media lapping up this sort of stunt. It may be more generous than competitors, but without some actual investigative effort, we are left with this hollow data point.
No its not, you dont get rich by sharing to begin with.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
In reality, it's easy to imagine being generous when you don't have much to give.
Bingo. Being rich insulates you from understanding hardship, the most generous people are generally the ones who can least afford it because they experience some level of poverty on a daily basis.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The reason folks are making negative comments is at least partly that it's an accounting trick. If the company had directly given the workers $300 bonuses, it would have been the same as if the CEO had been given millions of dollars and he then divided it up among the employees as $300 bonuses. But it wouldn't have made the news.
If I had mod points you'd get one. It isn't hard for us in the middle class to be philanthropists, either. I wonder how much the OP has contributed to ease people's suffering?
Free Martian Whores!
Can he do anything to please you
Bring back the trackpoint and PCMCIA-port.
In before 1000 Libertarians explaining that nobody works unless they're paid money, because nothing is important except accumulation of material tat.
Those aren't libertarians, they're money worshipers. And look at comments above mine to see how "Libertarians" worship money.
Free Martian Whores!
No. He is a CEO, not the single owner of Lenovo.
His personal money and Lenovo money is not the same.
First things first, he didn't assign himself this bonus, the board of directors awarded I it to him.
It's his money, and he choose to give it away to his employees. This is a vast improvement over 99.999% of CEOs.
He did this last year and we didn't hear about it. This is not a PR stunt. There are plenty of cheaper ways to get some good PR, almost all of which the company would pay for and he could keep his bonus.
Yes, it's a small fraction of his net worth, but we don't know his future plans. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would not make as much impact if Bill decided to give away all his money when he only had $5 million.
If he had raised salaries 10%, the board would likely have found a new CEO.
This is good news, not bad. He's a good person in this respect, not an evil scheming bastard.
It's easy to be a philanthropist when you're rich. Just sayin'
Have you ever heard of a poor philanthropist? I haven't.
And is this CEO a Confucianist?
maybe not... Perhaps he's... confused
There are a few really good reasons not to do business with me, but I've always had as many clients as I can handle. Most of my money (over a million dollars) has come from people who choose to do business with me BECAUSE of what kind of person I am.
When they see me being generous with my time and money, they know I'm the type of person they want to do a deal with.
Secondly, without a generous and grateful spirit, you can have $200 million and not be nearly as rich as someone with a spirit of gratitude and generosity who earns 1/10th as much.
Sure, it's POSSIBLE to get a lot of money by being obsessed with money. Some people do that. It's EASIER to get rich by being of service, solving people's problems. Who would you rather buy from, someone who is obsessed with getting your money, or the other guy who is trying to help you solve your problem? If you were really good at what you do, which of those people would you choose to work for?
You don't get rich spending money FOOLISHLY. Every rich person I know is generous, applying the same wisdom to their giving that they apply to their business. (Disclaimer - generous people are over represented in the list of people I know because I don't hang out with, or do business with, scumbags.)
I got me an interesting fortune cookie which I kept here over my notebook, 'cause it says something interesting -- quite opposite to what is the common sense you just wrote (namely, "you don't get rich by sharing to begin with").
It goes like (translated): "Inner wealth: the more people come to share it, the bigger it becomes."
All this is beautiful, and I thought it brought some more light into my life -- actually, maybe that bakery owner is not in the business of making cookies after all... but then, there's also the open source phenomenon, which is an amazing way of generating wealth.
This guy might be smarter than most, and by giving a slice of what he has, he might as well attract more wealth to his country and to his own company. I, for one, am getting a progressively better image of Lenovo -- and they already were doing fairly good in the current desktop/notebook sales crisis.
Its also easy to not share your wealth with your workers.
It depends of company structure. For instance Huawei is owned by its employees. Here the CEO cannot choose to give back some wealth created by employees, he just have to.
It's the kind of thing you do as a dorky 15 year old (or college freshman if you're remedial)...
...or as a successful CEO. Sorry, I know you didn't want that pointed out but it needed to be said.
Clicked on comments to come and see all the folks who'd make negative comments about him for this.
Pointing out that something is mutually beneficial is not "negative". Life is not zero sum.
You sure about that? Huawei's status as an employee-owned company that it calls a "collective" is dubious; in theory it is owned by its employees, but its management structure is opaque and it is only rather recently that they even admitted who their board of directors were -- and its totally unclear how much real ability the employees have to accomplish anything.
The CEO of Huawei, the guy who founded it, is hugely secretive and has strong ties to the Communist Party. As do most of the other known bosses. Its politically useful (especially at the time it was founded) for the Party and the Chinese to think of Huawei as a collective, even though there's no real evidence its anything but. Doing so has allowed the state to support Huawei in circumstances it normally wouldn't be inclined to do politically.
Now, I don't buy into the Huawei conspiracy theories, but c'mon.... you're reading too much into "employee-owned".
"so he is at least partly motivated by greed" is a negative aspersion against him. I refered to this statement quite specifically. That the ultimate effect may be at least neutral has no bearing on the impropriety of your statement. Unless you have evidence that he's partially motivated by greed, then you can't build a case around that presumption. At best, you might say "he MAY be at least partially motivated by greed", but even then the rest of your statements about possible advantages for the company are at best supporting that hypothesis, rather than a being a defendable position of certainty.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Actually forget if it's Simpsons or Futurama but "It's the amount of money our scientists have calculated that poor people think is a lot of money!"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You and I have very different ideas of what "protestantism" means. Sorry the "protestants" in your personal experience are all such jerks.
I don't get it. A CEO shares wealth with his workers without them demanding it. But so many people here feel he should do more. Why exactly? Just because he earns more? He has already done what few here are ever going to do in their entire lives.
The fellow is working hard. He has led his firm to being the top PC maker today. He has not only kept the jobs of most people in his organisation secure, but they are almost certainly getting good raises. His brand's market share is increasing and shareholders are getting a good dividend in a climate where established PC makers are crumbling.
And there are some who want to know what exactly he does that is more important than a good foreman. Only someone who has never owned or run a business will say this. Workers are far more insulated from a business's performance than a CEO. A few bad quarters mean that the CEO's job is already at risk. The CEO does not have absolute authority over everything. He constantly has to convince the board of directors for every new move he makes, or every not-so-successful strategy he has to persist with. He doesn't just get to take home a fat salary and enjoy life. All the perks you see just make the fellow's life a little easier. The reason leaders get paid more is because of what they are. Leaders.
You're not a libertarian. You're a bitter socialist who has hijacked the label "libertarian", because your previous label has a deserved reputation of being a complete failure.
I tend to agree that we want small companies and small government to avoid the problem of having one entity that overpowers the rest.
The thing is, many endeavours require global supervision, global management. And I am not sure how to achieve that. Nuclear powerplants are ridiculously expensive. Phone infrastructure is ridiculously expensive. The LHC is ridiculously expensive. Very few people will argue we should not have build them. But with low power governments and companies with limited budget, I am not sure how to reach that. Also many things to be made cheap require a significant scale. I am not sure how that fits in.
>> If I had mod points you'd get one. It isn't hard for us in the middle class to be philanthropists, either.
Oh sure, like your lousy mod points count as philanthropy.
I'm guessing that you are a Republican. Am I right? You clearly do not have the first clue about what Libertarianism actually is. First you have to learn to think in terms of principles. Then learn what 'voluntarism' means. Then note that Libertarianism is not about class warfare. Corporations behave like sociopaths. That sort of behavior is not good for society. The government helps and encourages them in this with the special privileges it grants them. The thing I hate most about Republicans is their anti-intellectualism and their militant pragmatism. Ideas are important. This country was founded on them.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I tend to agree that we want small companies and small government to avoid the problem of having one entity that overpowers the rest.
My point was not about one group overpowering others. It was a more basic one about human psychology. The larger the group the more people seem to drop their own moral compass and substitute that of the group. The larger the group the worse the individuals in it tend to behave. At least that is what I have observed.
As far as society needing large companies for certain things I do agree. My point is that it would be nice if we could figure out a way to avoid such concentrations of (economic) power. I don't think there is truly a practical way to do so however. The best we can hope for is to at least not grant such organizations any special privileges or special status. It is a group of individuals nothing more. It should be treated as such.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"so he is at least partly motivated by greed" is a negative aspersion against him.
No it isn't. I already identified myself as a Libertarian, and we believe that greed is a force for good. So I was praising him, not criticizing him. If his workers benefit, and their lives are improved, then why is it "negative" if his company also profits? If someone does a good deed out of self interest, that is better than if they do it as pure altruism, because self interest is more sustainable and scalable. It is foolish to believe that if some wins, then someone else must lose.
Haha, you are the %1. Libertarian ideals are funded primarily and promoted by the wealthy, that tells you you've been a willing dupe help push along capitalist ideology under principles that appealed to your psyche without being able to see through the BS.
The reality is the institution of money itself is a corrupting force in human affairs. Big government, small government, you'd just be exchanging labels for institutions, virtual (illegal) corporations would fill the power vaccuum left by big government if small government was ever achieved because governments rely on money from groups of people that have power. Those controlling groups would still be there. You can't enforce laws without resources and money. So the smaller your government, the more paper tiger your laws are (i.e. unenforceable).
More importantly, entrenched interests and entrenched populations with their ignorance and reliance on war economy is the problem and that is part and parcel of free market ideology. Any sizable markets beyond the size of a small town require states because they are expansionistic and because human beings are stupid and freely have kids as much as they want to without thinking about the consequences, hence our current world.
As markets expand, states naturally expand with them because the market is necessarily a state entity and must expand (because of money and proletarianization and specialization of the masses).
War is permanent under our current economic and psychological paradigm, no doubt tech and biotech will have to remake human nature and get it away from the old monkey code.
That is so communist! we should boot Lenovo from the US! Oh, wait, they are already in Communist China!
If the workers feel positive and more motivated about it then he's being a good CEO and leader. They know him from his track record whether it's just for show or that's just the guy he is.
A bean counter could pass the same amount of money to the workers without motivating them a bit. A bad boss could pass the same amount of money to the workers and make them feel cheated and negative about it.
You could use the almost the same words in a speech but with the wrong pauses, emphasis etc and produce far worse results than a good leader making a similar speech (when measured by content alone).
Anyway for a real generous guy check this out: http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2012/09/18/chuck-feeney-the-billionaire-who-is-trying-to-go-broke/
Governance is one thing, profit distribution is another topic. If the employees are the shareholders, they get the profits.
Of course, there is still a weakness with opaque governance, since the head of the company can decide to give huge wage to the CEO, or to reinvest everything so that there is no profit left for employees. I do not know how Huawei does in that area, I just picked it as an example of a big employee-owned company.
Oddly such an abuse would be the exact opposite of what we usually see in western megacorporations: no money for wages and investement, everything for the shareholders.
Get back to us when you learn what socialism is.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Oddly such an abuse would be the exact opposite of what we usually see in western megacorporations: no money for wages and investement, everything for the shareholders.
Yeah but in the end it's all the same. The people that break their backs for the company don't get anything but the shaft.
Yes, they are all that "dumb", although really it's an emotional rather than intellectual flaw that prevents them from considering this course of action.
This guy just bought: better morale, free publicity, [some] defense against charges of being heartless/taking advantage of workers a la Foxconn, and probably some warm fuzzy feelings for himself as well. I don't think he'll lose any sleep because Slashdot readers looked at his salary and wondered why he didn't give up the whole thing. Yes, he could have just had the company issue the bonus without any mention of where it came from, or he could have given the bonus but not released a press release about it, but so what? China's economy is slowing down, times are going to get tough, and this guy put a few hundred bucks in a lot of families' wallets; good for him.
These are peanuts for monkeys. It is less than 1% of the 500 millions of profit Lenovo did.
Next time you give some change to the poor, remind me to flame you because it's less than 1% of the hundreds of thousands your family makes (or whatever).
I seem to recall a recent ill-concieved socio-economic political movement asking for laws to be passed to make this sort of thing compulsory. Kudos to Yang for taking the initiative here - maybe others will follow his lead and we'll end up with a Rockefeller/Carnegie philanthropy competition going on. You may think of it as "cheap" PR, but examples like this stand far more of a chance of causing change than Occupy ever did. We've already got a Bill Gates at the top, we need someone like Yang in the "middle" as well.
Lenovo didn't do this because they had to, Yang did it because he wanted to. Kudos!
As his stock is currently supporting the same company of which he just gave that bonus to the workers, it's value is irrelevant in this discussion. What percentage of his actual liquid wealth did he just give away? That's the really important figure.
You know that thing about lies and damn lies? *points up the thread*
It's far more arguable that his actions are circumventing the Lenovo rules on worker compensation by direct redistribution. That could be seen as anti-corporate or socialist, considering it a form of greed by reverse osmosis is... stretching reality*.
*or bullsh*t, if you prefer.
Indeed. I'm a libertarian and believe in the abolition of, or at the very least very strict control over, any entity which provides limited liability to those who control it. Corporations are not people. They exist at the whim of the jurisdiction in which they are incorporated, and should be subject to whatever controls are deemed necessary to keep them in line.
Note to Americans: this is a textbook example of socialism (workers own the means of production), not what you think socialism is.
Good for lenovo, and it's workers.
Still not buying a laptop from them though:
- I dont want a touchscreen on my laptop (on the plus side, they still offer win7)
- Im not buying a 2000 euro X1 with a resolution of only 1200x900....
Why do phones have higher resolutions then laptops these days???
The big difference between corporations and government is accountability.
Corporations nowadays are semi-directly accountable to a comparatively small group of stakeholders, and they are basically designed to be sociopaths. All I can do is vote-with-my-wallet, the feasibility/effectiveness of which is highly dependent on circumstances and usually just an after-the-fact measure.
Governments in a democratic society are designed to be fully accountable to the public, e.g. you and me. There is absolutely no problem in letting such an entity become really big, as long as it can do nothing else but represent and serve the people. Corruption is always a problem, so anti-corruption efforts should be a major goal.
Now in the particular case of the USA: I don't think you can honestly claim that this government democratically represents the interests of the population of the USA. Fix that, don't just treat the symptoms by aiming for a smaller yet still corrupt government, while at the same time (inevitably by the efforts of current libertarians) giving more power to corporations who are guaranteed to behave like sociopaths.
Limiting organisations to 100 members is interesting, but they would form coalitions of 100 members (each a 100-member organisation) and meta-coalitions and so forth (even if it's just inofficial). Not far from divisions and subsidiaries today.
Instead, I think accountability is more worthwhile (e.g. employee-owned corps)... or its little cousin, transparency (e.g. all board meetings should be broadcasted to each employee or even the public).
I wonder if he did it on his own, or if there was government pressure. Still, I sure won't say it was the wrong thing to do.
I do bonuses when the company can afford it for just that reason. Employees want a stable, guaranteed pay check. If they didn't, they'd be entrepreneurs. It would be cruel to give them a raise and have to take it be back six months later. Most would much rather have stable pay that won't be cut plus a bonus once a year than have their pay go up and down every month depending on company financials.
The rich very often didn't start off that way. They know what hardship is like, and are often willing to help.
Lots of clever people also do irrelevant (and sometimes outright dumb) things.
He did the same thing last year.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Well, it only works if your employees are living in impoverished places to begin with. Like they said, it's only about $300 each. To a factory worker in China, that's a big deal. If Steve Ballmer did the same thing, it probably wouldn't be such a big deal, as they are a software company (mostly) and the majority of their workers probably don't see $300 as such a big deal. I mean, as a developer I would like an extra $300 at the end of the year, but it's not really going to change my life that much, especially after you subtract taxes.
Same with my tech company but we haven't had bonuses (or raises) for a couple years. I'd definitely take the free lunch money no matter the amount!
The problem is, it doesn't even work out to lunch money. Amortize that $300 over the year, and you're left with $11.50 every pay check (assuming paid every 2 weeks). Assume 10 days per 2 week period, and, that's an extra $1.15 a day. But don't forget, this counts as income, so you have to subtract taxes. So, even assuming a ridiculously low tax rate of 25%, you're left with 86 cents a day, or 8.63 on each paycheck. Hardly worth complaining about. I find people tend to get just as angry over such a small raise as they would over no raise.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
So he gave $4 million to charity, but still had $8 million for himself.
That is still $8 million for seven human beings (him, his wife and five kids), which frankly is still quite indecent compared to the $10K-$20K of regular Joes who also have a family to support.
I'm not saying he's a bad person, I'm saying the distribution of wealth got screwed up somewhere along the way.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
i wouldnt say dumb per se.
its the same short term goal, long term blindness/ignorance type of thinking that dominates business.
bonuses are an expenditure.
expenditures are bad and must be minimized.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
thats nice that you barely notice 300$ extra dollars.
I'm happy that you are so successful.
but $300 is a pretty big bonus for most people.
300$ is a couple months of credit card payments.
a car payment.
a couple months of gas in the car.
or something nice for the wife.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The point is, these aren't even remotely irrelvant or even dumb things; they're brilliant (and sociopathic).
dont ignore the time difference.
the time difference is significant, as is the perception difference between lump sum and spread out.
an extra 8$ a week isnt much, your right. most people wouldnt notice it unless they already are financially smart enough to toss any extras like that into their savings (on top of their existing saving contributions). but most dont. and waiting a year for that extra to add up to something (300) decreases its worth substantially.
but if you give it to em lump sum instead of spread out, all sudden it has real immediate worth.
compare paying an extra 300$ on credit now, to paying an extra 300$ in a year. the credit interest alone after a year is probably (way) more than $300.
the time factor matters.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Mitt Romney gave $4 million to charity in one year - 1/3rd of his income.
Giving money to your own social clubs like the mormon church and its affiliates like Brigham Young University, or the George W Bush Library, or the private school where 5 of his kids attended isn't charity, it's tax-deductible self-interest. Naked quid pro quo.
Before I posted I went and read up on his tax returns, just to make sure that my assumption of self-interest was true. That he hadn't made a liar out of me and my cynicism by really giving the bulk of his donations to organizations that would not benefit himself in one way or another. In the process I found out some interesting "character" related points:
1) His 2010 tax return showed only 11% of his income went to non-profit deductions. The mormon church directly gets 10% straight off the bat as tithing, leaving 1% for everything else. In fact, his own 20-year summary shows he averaged less than 12.6% until the 30% spike in 2011 brought the average up to just under 13.5%. Why such an outlier in 2011 when he had roughly half the income that he did in 2010? Seems to me that once he won the party primary his donations went up.
2) In 2011 he did not claim the maximum allowed tax deductions for his donations. He only claimed a deduction for $2.25 of the $4 million that was eligible. Why would he do that? Well, the guy who runs Romney's family trust said it helped to keep his campaign promise of paying at least 13% in income tax every year. Here's my question, now that he lost the election, did he go back and file an amended return to claim the entire $4M? We will probably never know, maybe a real man of character would not. A real republican would be happy to over-pay his taxes without a complaint, right?
My source for those two points is this article at The Blaze - I figured I'd go with a conservative news source to give Romney the benefit of the doubt in the reporting.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
no, it's not - Socialism requires a governmental restriction on freedoms of choice in order to function properly. Without those governmental restrictions, the market is free to find competitive advantages that may differ from the will of "the collective". The only way to ensure that Socialism works is to enforce it through legislation to limit competition. There's a reason Marx said that Socialism will eventually lead to Communism. Communism has historically been militaristic and lethally suppressive by nature, and it's really the only way to enforce the complete cooperation between all members of a society. (Single party rule, anyone?)
GP was talking about the text book definition. You aren't. Single party rule cannot be communism by the very definition of communism. Besides, what hasn't been militaristic by nature?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
He didnt refuse to be grossly overpaid - he agreed to be overpaid and then did what he wanted with the pay. Its his money, he an and did give it to who he wanted.
What the fuck this has to do with some weird thing youre trying to say about people not working unless theyre paid is beyond me.
It's like communism, except they shoot and starve fewer people?
At least, that's what they told me in the school in America.
I'm a Libertarian who thinks corporations should be outlawed in current societies and denied any form of special privileges like limited liability or any form of personhood in a utopian free society. What were you saying again about grossly overpaid CEOs? I agree that they are grossly overpaid. I suspect that most of them could be replaced with someone who makes less than 100k per year no problem.
I'd tend to go in the direction of splitting the penalties for genuine people from the penalties for legal fictions (corporations). $1M is reasonable for commercial copyright infringement of a work, but a person copying something once is closer to shoplifting, a $500 crime; the trick is until computers became common the latter wasn't possible. There does look to be a need for some reduction of the corporate veil, but I'm unsure about completely getting rid of it. However, I must distinctly disagree with all CEOs being reduced to making $100K/year. The old standby rule I've heard of is the CEO should make no more than 20x (might have been 25x) the lowest paid employee. This is important if you're living in an urban area where $100K doesn't go nearly as far as it does in rural areas. There is also the trick if this were a technology company, since the lowest salary of any employee might well be $100K!
"And also the way you mean it, in that you expect some kind of return for the investment of your generosity."
That's not what _I_ meant at all. While it does make sense to be friendly with our friends, when I said spending foolishly I meant things like cars.
I can buy a lot of meals for people who need it with the money I could otherwise spend on a flashier car. The flashy car losses it's shine quickly.
On another level, I take my lunch to work, rather than eating out. 270 lunches X $5 = $1,350 every year, multiply by me and my wife, that's $2,700.
Over ten years, $27,000 from lunch. Instead, I could buy someone their first starter car every year and still come out $700 ahead, just by taking
lunch with me.
Really, ANONYMOUS giving does something to me that I don't get any other way. I'd like to do that more anonymous giving.
I can't quite explain it, but I think the effect is has on me likely makes more a more successful person, certainly a happier person.
I mentioned foolish giving. By that I do not meaning giving where I'll get nothing in return. I always get something in return because
it does something to my psyche / spirit / brain that's good. I mean that just as it's foolish to rent furniture from RAC, it's foolish to
"give" by bailing that same person out of jail AGAIN, or bailing them out of whatever situation they habitually put themselves in.
Just as the rented furniture ends up going back to the store, my brother ends up going back to the jail. Much better use that money
on someone whose actions show they intend to never go back to jail again.
Giving very publicly is fun, the recognition strokes the ego. Giving anonymously WITHOUT the ego boost, remaining humble, has longer
lasting benefits. I'm reminded that I'm actually the steward of what I have. It's been trusted to me because I've made wise decisions,
worked hard, etc., so it would be irresponsible of me to hand it out to drunks who will waste it, but ultimately it's not really mine. It was
created by the creator, and when I put it use with that in mind I become closer to what I'm made to be.
* I am no saint. I give far less than I "should", far less than many people do. I'm merely speaking of what happens _when_ I give in different ways.
I'm willing to bet that you make more money than I do. A lot more.
There's nothing wrong with being rich.