I don't get it, is the implication that it's too high? Too low?
>If you're paying a significant chunk of your yearly earnings to be covered by UNH, you expect the money you paid to go towards providing you with service. Instead, tens of millions of it goes towards a handful of individuals
UNH took in 371.6 billion in revenue and made 23.14 billion in profit last year. "tens of millions" is a rounding error.
If these companies paid less grossly-imbalanced compensation packages to their C-suite vs. the average employee salary, and they operated like an actual company vs. a rich person's piggy bank, I'd be sure willing to bet that profit margin would be a heck of a lot higher. They'd probably be more efficient and provide better service, too.
Instead of posting random conjectures with zero backing evidence, you could you know, actually do the research, because "burden of proof" and all. Anyways someone made a similar claim a few days ago, but about HP, and I debunked it with a 30 second search[1]. Unless there's reason to think that HP or united health are outliers in terms of corporate governance, I doubt the ratio between them will vary significantly.
Really, I think dividends should be illegal; so it's too high. They distort the true market performance of a company by guaranteeing returns when the company might not actually be making those returns in a sustainable manner.
> UNH took in 371.6 billion in revenue and made 23.14 billion in profit last year. "tens of millions" is a rounding error.
"Tens of millions" is in reference to the cost of their higher-ups' compensation.
Funny, because I often see people say have similar objections for buybacks. It seems like nobody is happy with corporate profits returning to shareholders. I don't think either the anti-buybacks or the anti-dividend side has a point though. Anyone doing a modicum of finance analysis would be able subtract the value of the dividends paid from the share price, or factor it into the price of the company. Indeed, you see that share prices in companies dip after the dividend ex date, which suggests the market takes this information into account.
Nobody is happy with corporate profits returning to shareholders at the expense of workers and customers, at least not as transparently as it is done now.
Wages have remained flat in the US for several decades now. It’s starting to have a real impact on the economic and social conditions of the country. “But what about the shareholders?” isn’t going to be a valid excuse to someone who pays for coverage against medical costs.
There is no economic system, or business model within said system, in which there is unlimited value to be transferred. Humans will assert their rights at some point or another.
How can you return anything to shareholders that's not "at the expense of workers and customers"? Each dollar paid to shareholders is going to be one less dollar that can be paid to workers/customers, so almost by definition paying anything to shareholders is going to be at the expense of workers/customers. Is this supposed to be a thinly veiled attempt at stating marxist ideology?
>There is no economic system, or business model within said system, in which there is unlimited value to be transferred. Humans will assert their rights at some point or another.
The current share paid to shareholders is nowhere near "unlimited". In the US labor's share of GDP stands at just below 60%.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b2774f97-en/1/2/6/2/inde...
Hardly. The Friedman doctrine didn't exist prior to 1970; does that make every business venture prior to that a statist-collectivist enterprise? Are privately-owned companies the expressed goal of Marxism? Of course not.
The whole "if you don't have a bunch of free riders participating in an equities market, it's Marxism" bit is an intentionally obtuse argument.
> The current share paid to shareholders is nowhere near "unlimited".
Current schools of thought essentially dictate that management and investors treat that share as if it can be unlimited. Anything that could possibly limit returns (taxes, regulations, labor movements, consumer rights, etc.) is an externality or to be eliminated. Otherwise, it gets in the way of profit, and since most economist types have a limited ability to understand anything beyond the absolute simplest of abstractions, profit has to be the ultimate measure of social good. Therefore, those things stand in the way of social good.
> In the US labor's share of GDP stands at just below 60%.
We should make it higher.
>The whole "if you don't have a bunch of free riders participating in an equities market, it's Marxism" bit is an intentionally obtuse argument.
To be fair, Marxism can roughly be summarized as "workers should own the means of production, capitalists are exploiting workers by leeching off what they produce", and what you've said so far about shareholders being "free riders" and that "corporate profits returning to shareholders at the expense of workers and customers" isn't too far off from that. The fact that you refuse to directly answer my question of whether shareholders should get any money doesn't help your case either. In light of all of this, I feel like asking whether you're arguing for Marxism was totally justified.
>Current schools of thought essentially dictate that management and investors treat that share as if it can be unlimited. Anything that could possibly limit returns (taxes, regulations, labor movements, consumer rights, etc.) is an externality or to be eliminated. Otherwise, it gets in the way of profit, and since most economist types have a limited ability to understand anything beyond the absolute simplest of abstractions, profit has to be the ultimate measure of social good. Therefore, those things stand in the way of social good.
Capital and labor are both trying to get as much share as possible. I don't see how either side is any different. If anything, labor has actually been more successful, because their share is currently above 50%, and actually got their share to 100% in a few places (ie. communism). Meanwhile I'm not aware of any instances where capital's share is 100%, except maybe some edge cases where capital and labor is the same person (ie. self employment).
>We should make it higher.
Why? More to the point, what do you think is an equitable split?