Would the world really be any different if executives were paid $4 million instead of $4 billion?
It’s a drop in the bucket.
It’s like blaming climate change on people who drive Lamborghinis. Yea, it’s a part of the problem, but is it really the problem we should be focused on fixing?
How would the world be a better place if we stripped executives of their wealth?
> Would the world really be any different if executives were paid $4 million instead of $4 billion?
Definitely! You're asking if worsening wealth inequality hurts anything. This greed and unfair compensation is the entire reason why vasts of people suffer through life while ridiculously few get to have control over theirs. I mean that on one hand you have people who can't afford housing and food, and the other can't meaningfully spend whatever they are bestowed with.
> How would the world be a better place if we stripped executives of their wealth?
Would a redistribution of that wealth imply better living standards for everyone?
>Would a redistribution of that wealth imply better living standards for everyone?
Basically no. This is the misconception about wealth inequality in general.
Living standards are more about goods and services produced, not numbers in a bank account. The wealthy consume more, but not proportional to their wealth. most of their wealth isn't used for consumption at all.
Elon Musk must doesn't eat 100 cattle a day, have 1,000 personal doctors, or live in 1 million different houses.
If you took all of Elon's wealth, sold it off and redistributed it (assuming this is even possible), you would just see more expensive burgers, more expensive doctors, and higher cost of rent.
This is because Elon isn't using up all the resources. He just has a higher number in a computer somewhere.
No.
> I mean on one hand you have people who can't afford housing and food, and the other can't meaningfully spend whatever they are bestowed with.
The fabulously wealthy aren't spending their billions on consumption.
You're mistaking wealth and captial for money.
> No.
Why not?
> The fabulously wealthy aren't spending their billions on consumption.
Naturally not, that would be impractical. However, their immense wealth affords them immense power in society and that is of concern.
> You're mistaking wealth and captial for money.
I see this repeated very often by people defending the ultra rich and never understood why they think it was a good reply. Especially in this case, as their point was some people barely scrape by while others have so much money it’s more than they can reasonably spend. Nothing they said indicated they were confused about the difference between money and wealth.
True. They don't have to. They can and they would if it came to it.
> You're mistaking wealth and capital for money.
Neither. I'm saying they hold an insane amount of power over society. Also, nobody has to own so much money. There will be lenders begging you take their money if you're powerful enough.
The coast wouldn't be dotted with grotesque clown house mansions. YMMV
That said, I'd genuinely love to hear any legitimate arguments as to why that payout is in the shareholders best interest.
The shareholders agreed to give their employer a certain number of shares as compensation, before the shares were worth $400M.
Notice that you do not read articles about executives who receive lower compensation because the share price didn’t do much.
Someone making 100x more than the average worker in their industry simply doesn't have the capability to see those workers (nor the consumer) as anything but ants.
I somewhat agree that C-levels aren't the root of this problem. What's needed is to rein in hedge funds (who corrupt almost all industries) by closing things like the "carried interest" tax loophole.
So what?
Do you see? They're like black holes. The laws of physics are speculative at the Billionaire Event Horizon. It seems reasonable that they play by different rules.
No one is going to answer your questions, they're neither sincere, nor interesting, nor the gotchas that you think they are.
It's been tried in places like Cambodia and the Soviet Union. The result is a lot of dead people, and the rest were worse off.
Almost sounds like something you’d read on one of those Cold War era red scare posters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
There are many countries, and lots of history. Maybe you could point to an example of getting rid of wealthy people and the lot of everyone else improved?
I would argue that you are not talking about getting rid of wealthy people in the same context as those you replied to. This is not about 'class warfare' or 'revolution'. No one is going to the 'killing fields'. This is about changing policy via democratic process that changes incentives and structures that allow this to happen in the first place, not by chopping off the heads of rich people.
However, I would argue against 'getting rid of billionaires'. The billionaires aren't the problem -- the inequality is the problem. If we put in place a system that had a 'bottom rung' which was high enough from poverty then it wouldn't matter.
What do you propose get changed? A cap on how much you can make? A cap on where you can invest? A cap on how you can spend?
As far as examples go, there are countless instances of revolutions - esp. those targeting monarchies - that brought clear, long-term (relative) prosperity to the average citizen.
In the French Revolution, the poor people got rid of the king and the wealthy people. I invite you to look at the result. Spoiler: lots and lots and lots of dead ordinary folkses.
Elon Musk isn't the king of anything. He can't order you to kiss his ring.
At least it is an example. What would be a positive example?
Elizabeth Warren wants to confiscate 6% of billionaires' net worth every year.
https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/ultra-millionaire-tax
No country has ever prospered by getting rid of rich people.
Things go off the rails when devolving into debating the meaning what common and well understood words like prosperity.
You and I both know what it means.
As for Spain, they didn't prosper much from colonialism. The reason is they stripped the New World of gold and silver, shipping it to Spain. The result was not prosperity, but inflation.
> prospers at the expense of
That's not how markets work. That's how theft, looting and confiscation work. Ironically, confiscation is what is proposed here.
> The result was not prosperity
Apparently we don't since we don't agree on the example I cited?
Look, I am sure you strongly believe you are correct, but by stating things as true and then refusing to actually discuss them on more than a superficial level you are not going to convince anyone of anything but your confidence in your belief. Using simplistic examples and then claiming that everyone else is wrong foundationally when they try and figure out how your claims apply to other examples is frustrating and unproductive.
> That's not how markets work.
Well, since you are saying in another thread that inflation is as simple as %inflation = $GDPpresent / $GDPlast * 100, then you might forgive me if I take your understanding of markets as a tad naive.
~$60k annual pay as of 2023 [2]
Funny math ends up at $1.3T for healthcare workers. Looks like half an order magnitude higher than your estimate - even if we assume they were paid much less 2 years ago.
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/who-are-our-h...
[2] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/posting/health-care-w...