The Shallowest Generation
ritholtz.com
ritholtz.com
"Past U.S. generations invented the airplane; invented the automobile; discovered penicillin; and built the Interstate highway system. The Baby Boom generation has invented credit default swaps; mortgage backed securities; the fast food drive thru window; discovered the cure for erectile dysfunction; and built bridges to nowhere. No wonder we’re in so much trouble.
This completely ignores developments like the personal computer revolution, the Internet, modern telecommunications, satellite technology, space exploration, advances in biotechnology, dramatic reductions in global poverty, etc, etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but you get the idea.
The author would have done well to acknowledge that the reality of the situation is more nuanced than the picture he attempts to paint.
His chart doesn't help either:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/debt...
Yes, if you cut the Y-axis in arbitrary places, you can make small changes seem important. Too bad they aren't.
Here is a chart comparing my apples to oranges:
1000.0001 - ******
- ******
- ******
- ******
1000.0000 - ****** ******
~ ****** ******
+---------------------
Apples Oranges
Check out the movement in the graph starting around 7:40. A huge portion of East Asia and South Asia (where a large part of the world's population lives) experienced a large gain. (We might not consider a move from $1/day to $10/day significant, but it is)
As another commenter pointed out, this isn't something we can attribute to some "U.S. generation", but there it is.
Now, here this: millions of people are starving to death every year. Starving from lack off food, water, ideas and hope. And Obama isn't gonna change it one bit.
And it's true that millions of people are starving every year, dying of preventable diseases, etc. But those things correlate strongly with extreme poverty, and the number of people in extreme poverty has dropped dramatically over the last 25 years and continues to drop.
Anyway, I'm going to chip in on the issue of CEO pay. Many, including the author, are outraged that they're paid 500 times the wage of the average worker. But the CEO job is generally given to somebody who
a) has proven himself (5mm <= net worth < 15mm)
b) is willing to work 80 hours per week
c) is willing to pick work over family/friends, no matter the circumstances
The CEO must:
a) focus on quarterlies at the expense of long term vision (maximize shareholder returns per quarter)
b) focus on quarterlies at the expense of employees and the company itself
Aside from perhaps the prestige and power that comes with the job, it's not going to be a lot of fun. So why would somebody who's already rich be willing to do this? Money. And lots of it. Does that make them sellouts? I guess. But if working for 2 more years means the CEO can retire and sustain his current lifestyle for the rest of his life it's probably pretty tempting.
You shouldn't ask yourself - does the guy deserve 500 times the average worker's salary? Ask instead - why did it take 500 times the average worker's salary to convince him to take the job?
I think that the CEO should focus on generating true value, both in the short and long term. And I don't think that's possible when you're only held accountable for short term results. Only CEOs like Steve Jobs can work on their vision, short term results be damned. His annual salary is $1. Why? Probably just to prove his independence.
Everything boils down to incentives. Whether it's CEO pay, greed on wall street or credit cards (ab)use. People do what's in their best interest. Fix the incentives, and the rest should fix itself.
When I first look at it, my brain says, "millimeters."
I know it is one thousand thousand in roman numerals, but being an engineer I find it hard to recognize mm as such. If anything, you should use capital M for million because that is the accepted prefix.
Also, CEOs that focus on quarterly numbers do so only to enrich themselves (via stock options) to the detriment of the company. At my own company (a large test and measurement company), our leadership constantly makes big changes based on the stock price. Since my company pays no dividends, there is no "shareholder return" to maximize. My company will never do an additional offering so steering by the stock price doesn't make sense for the company in the long term. We are constantly delaying capital purchases to make the numbers look good. In reality, these delays cost our project's schedules to suffer. That hurts the company.
By focusing on quarterly numbers, who benefits? It may help somebody make a buck that quarter, but why should the company want to help traders? True investors think long term. It is the management team that is benefiting. Shareholder value is a myth. The only shareholders that matter are the management team.
I usually don't get too worked up about CEO compensation. The only things that don't make sense are massive golden parachutes like the former CEO of Home Depot had and paying executives in stock if they meet quarterly numbers. A company's vision should be long term. Making executives excessively interested in the stock price is dangerous.
What is your reasoning behind that statement?
It is nice to have a high stock price as a source of future cash, but companies rarely have additional offerings. Most companies take on debt. Having a high stock price also discourages hostile take overs, but the shareholders themselves don't matter.
I want to know why you think they do. Many people say that shareholders matter and use them as an excuse for their actions. I think it is just that: an excuse.
a) has proven himself (5mm <= net worth < 15mm)
b) is willing to work 80 hours per week
c) is willing to pick work over family/friends, no matter the circumstances
I'm not convinced that B and C are good things. Sometimes, it's necessary to work 80 hours per week, but doing that for years on end is unhealthy and counterproductive. Most of the long hours in upper-tier corporate result not from any benefit to those extra hours worked, but rather from oneupmanship.
As for C, consider this. In a corporate environment, where one is working to enrich other people, putting work ahead of family and friends is, generally, a very bad decision. After all, the probability of becoming CEO is very small, and a person who laid up 70 hours per week only plateau at the VP level is just a loser who made bad choices and wasted his life. The only difference between the CEO and that moron is that the CEO won the lottery while the also-ran lost.
Following the lottery analogy, you wouldn't take financial advice from a crackhead who bought twenty Powerball tickets every night, and happened to win $200 million. So, do you really think it's a good thing for large companies to be governed by those who wasted their lives in a relatively pointless quest for power?
So why would somebody who's already rich be willing to do this? Money.
Status. The status, in this case, comes from the money.
Ask instead - why did it take 500 times the average worker's salary to convince him to take the job?
It doesn't. People would gladly take the job for 10x. If you haven't figured it out, corporate compensation is the result of a fellatio daisy chain. The board is staffed by executives of other companies, who allow the CEO to raise his pay, because he is on their boards and will vote in their favor if they do so for him.
If I could up-vote you more I would.
Then they raised it slightly (14x?) to get someone, who turned out to be a bad CEO, and had to fire him and raise it more (30x?) to get someone decent.
The fact of the matter is that CEO's are paid for the value they bring to the company. The reason they are so well paid is market forces, much the same reason why you are paid the wage you are paid.
Frankly, I'm tired of people crying about CEO pay. Yes, there are examples of ridiculous compensation and severance packages (former Home Depot CEO got a $210M severance when leaving, for example). But I think it also boils down to demand and human capital.
A good CEO can do things the average person in the labor force cannot. No two ways about it. And, as economies/industries grow over time, the is greater demand for these people.
Robots and offshore workers in Ukraine cannot lead publicly-traded US companies.
Third, according to the links below, median CEO pay is $8.2M for Fortune 1000 companies and $2M for a larger sampling.
http://tinyurl.com/5rmlwx http://tinyurl.com/556enm
I'm all for companies being responsible in regards to CEO pay–I just think that portion of the original article is misleading and unqualified.
"Engineers Rule: At American auto companies, finance guys and marketers rise to the top. Not at Honda."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=366709
From the article:
"Honda doesn't disclose executive pay in detail, but the sum of salaries and bonuses that Fukui shares with 36 board members, $13 million, is just about enough for the boss at a big American company."
also:
"Honda has never had an unprofitable year. It has never had to lay off employees."
I think it's safe to say that Ford/GM's lack of profitability has little to do with executive pay and much more to do with labor costs, efficiency, and product demand.
CEOs’ average pay, production workers’ average pay, the S&P 500 Index, corporate profits, and the Federal minimum wage, 1990-2005 (adjusted for inflation)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/ceo-...
Somehow I don't think our past experience with trying to get roads, power, plumbing, and the Internet into rural areas agrees with statement.
"trying" is the important word. And, the federal govt didn't have much involvement in most of those things.
And, even if it did, do you really think that they explain or justify 30+% of GDP?
I'm going to do this every time one of these absurd stories is posted.
My father's pretty similar to me in worldview, ethics, and politics. When he was growing up, he couldn't have even imagined working at a hedge fund; the concept of working for money was considered crass, if not repulsive. (He was actually quite incensed when I first said I was interested in trying out trading.) In 2007, it was perfectly normal for a liberal, idealistic young person to go and work for an investment bank or hedge fund, because that was seen as the best way to establish oneself and go far later (e.g. Jeff Bezos worked at Shaw before founding Amazon).
I would note that the problem with the Baby Boom generation isn't that they're "selfish". My parents aren't bad people. Nor were most of my teachers; they were great. On the whole, the Boomers aren't worse than the rest of us. The difference between them and us is that the better half of them almost entirely eschewed the career paths that led to power-- finance and corporate leadership-- leaving the shameless and greedy bastards to take control.
Contrasting them with the "Greatest Generation," whose lives were basically dictated to them when WW2 started, and supported the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Can we call them the "Pleasantville Generation?" instead.
How'd that work out?
> Contrasting them with the "Greatest Generation," whose lives were basically dictated to them when WW2 started, and supported the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.
And the Soviets later revealed that there were Communists in the US govt and that they were trying to "influence" Hollywood.
> Can we call them the "Pleasantville Generation?" instead.
Whenever it comes down to "squares" vs "cool", you can be pretty sure that the "cool" will screw things up more.
In other news, truth is not beauty and you have to be pretty stoned to think otherwise.
How can you be so sure? They've never really had the chance.
Also, long hair and drugs doesn't make you "cool". (If it did, meth heads would be cool.)
Almost as good as 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way'