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Comment by overgard | Hacker News Reader

This is why I'm so sick of all the "we're in this together" stuff coming from celebrities/rich people/brands. We are very clearly NOT in this together, socioeconomic factors are huge in your potential survival of this and executive teams are giving themselves bonuses while laying off workers or asking for permanent pay cuts. This faux positivity helps nobody.

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My favorite American joke: what do you call someone who you think doesn't deserve healthcare, doesn't deserve happiness, and should die so that you can maintain your standard of living?

A hero!

Don't worry, Time Magazine will declare "The Essential Worker" as Person of the Year 2020, and that will make up for all the minimum wage and unsafe working conditions.

If the US had a decent social healthcare in place, it would be. You pool together resources so everyone has a chance. Instead you are either lucky or rich.

Not really. In the event of an untreatable disease, no amount of free healthcare would make me feel better about being obligated to work in a factory if I'm vulnerable to the disease; even if factory work were the best damn job in the world.

That's communism though!

Can you point us to an executive team giving themselves bonuses?

I can point you to multiple giving themselves paycuts.

Disney is the easiest one to find, I’m sure there are many many more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/22/disney-heir-cri...

I can't find any after a few minutes, though, I expect searching for it is a bit challenging.

Goldman: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5e76b864c5b63c3b6491cbd8

Denver Health Medical Center: https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-denver-he...

Salesforce: https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-top-executives-ca...

Oxy: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=9&ved=2ahUKEwj...

Liberty mutual: https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2020/03/02/liberty-m...

That’s what I got in 3 minutes. I still would bet there are a ton more.

The articles written about CEO pay cuts are PR puff pieces intended to placate us into not taking back what the oligarchs have stolen from us.

Thanks! Most of those (Goldman, SFDC, Liberty Mutual) don't seem to be laying people off, though, so I'm not sure why this is a problem.

I won't bother getting into a discussion about "what the oligarchs have stolen from us."

Getting mad because someone was paid this year for the salary they earned last year is a bit of a stretch. I am a lowly coder at a bank and I got my bonus and profit share last month for the work I accomplished in 2019. What will suffer is my bonus and profit share for 2020, which I will be paid in April of 2021, if there's anything to get.

Executive compensation tends to be tied to bonuses and stock, not base salary. Taking a pay cut is much more minor than it may seem.

Yeah but cutting stock compensation doesn't really do much for you anyway since it's not real in the sense that it's not an operating expense; it's not cash. The equity is conjured up and pre-allocated meaning the cost to business is in the dilution at grant time.

You could make an argument that either:

A) The company should issue more equity to pay for furloughed/laid off workers

B) The company should reallocate equity from executives to the furloughed workers. This may not be possible for a host of legal reasons, tbh, so I'm not sure it's actually possible.

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