[pytester]

>This is what the job is worth, if you want someone competent and responsible for thousands of employees and billions in revenue. Nobody is doing that for $1m/year when one wrong decision could end up costing 1000x more than their salary

I'll do it.

It's not like that one wrong decision ends up affecting them. Even if they get fired (which they often don't), they can exercise golden parachutes that will pay out many multiples of how much an average earner gets in a lifetime.

It's a job that gets paid a lot of money because the people who do it come from a fairly tight knit community that looks out for each other, not because of merit (CEO pay actually correlates slightly negatively with performance). Being an alumnus of McKinsey is actually one of the ways to enter that community.

[VvR-Ox]

I'll do it for half $1m/year! ;-P

You are totally right about the "golden parachute".

The nice thing about being in upper management is that none of your decisions has any negative consequences for yourself and in the end you will just have more money and some more enemies who will probably not even attack you.

It is always about "vitamin b" because that is how certain networks like (financial) elites work.

I always wonder how average people try to defend the rich and argue that it is totally justified that they earn something like one year of salary in a month or even more.

Think about all the big issues we have and how we could tackle them with all the money that now is inherited and shoved around to make more money out of nothing just to be even wealthier.

It is just absurd to me and that people are actually kind of ok with this takes away most of the hope I have for our global future because if these people prevail it might as well look like the "hunger games" here some day.

[logicchains]

>I always wonder how average people try to defend the rich and argue that it is totally justified that they earn something like one year of salary in a month or even more.

I'm one of those "average" people. CEOs are paid that much because they found some other people willing to pay them that much, and I'm not arrogant enough to presume my preferences for how the people paying them should spend their money are superior to their own preferences.

Look at it as empathy. Would I like it if somebody came and started telling me how to spend my money? Hell no! Then why should I wish that upon whomever's paying CEOs?

[asveikau]

> Would I like it if somebody came and started telling me how to spend my money? Hell no!

You and a bunch of others are going to think I am totally crazy for saying it, but I think you might be too possessive of "your" money.

Maybe you think you got it because you are totally that awesome and really deserve it more than somebody else. But surely you were supported throughout your lifetime to end up making that money. It's a collaborative effort.

Sometimes I get approached by homeless types on the sidewalk and I give them a $20 or something. Occasionally it's been larger than that, often it's been smaller. One might call that being generous. I am surely in a position of privilege being able to do that without it hurting much. But really all I am doing is giving them a piece of paper. Particles of the universe just like any other matter. I don't feel it's mine any more than it's theirs. So it moves from my wallet to their hand. No big deal.

I will admit that this attitude has its limits. You can go broke doing it too much. But there is room for it in our lives.

[isoskeles]

> But really all I am doing is giving them a piece of paper. Particles of the universe just like any other matter.

That is an odd point to make when you are fully aware of how much $20 could mean to a homeless person.

[asveikau]

I think it's both things. Very meaningful for the value that we all put in it, and at the same time, it's nothing at all.

In an ideal world maybe everyone would be provided for and we wouldn't obsess over paper. But the system is a sort of lesser approximation of fairness. "Worst one except for all the others", as the saying goes.

[logicchains]

>Maybe you think you got it because you are totally that awesome and really deserve it more than somebody else. But surely you were supported throughout your lifetime to end up making that money. It's a collaborative effort.

My response would be that everybody who supported me was paid to do so, so they already got their fair share. Except for my parents, but personally I don't think children owe their parents because the parents are the ones who make the decision to have a child, so they should bear responsibility for the children's existence, not the child (i.e. they're obligated to provide for the child they created).

>Sometimes I get approached by homeless types on the sidewalk and I give them a $20 or something. Occasionally it's been larger than that, often it's been smaller. One might call that being generous.

There's a big difference (or at least there is in my eyes) between voluntarily giving someone something, and being forced by somebody else to do so. People who oppose punitive taxation doesn't necessarily oppose it because they oppose charitable giving, they oppose it because they don't think people have a right to decide how other people spend their money. For the record, it seems that in the US conservatives give more to charity than liberals: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-de... .

[asveikau]

> My response would be that everybody who supported me was paid to do so,

That strikes me as a cynical read on the situation. Could it be that some of those people liked you, believed in you, wanted you to thrive for selfless reasons that were not economic?

> People who oppose punitive taxation ... oppose it because they don't think people have a right to decide how other people spend their money.

That's the thing, the "their money" part is sort of a fiction. Additionally it is totally fungible, not earmarked or put conditions upon, it doesn't go into a little pile marked "asveikau's taxes" for only the parts of government I approve of. We pool it, and it's all or nothing, take the good with the bad. We have elections for any disagreements that may arise from there.

[logicchains]

>That strikes me as a cynical read on the situation. Could it be that some of those people liked you, believed in you, wanted you to thrive for selfless reasons that were not economic?

Maybe that did, but it doesn't change that they did whatever they did without asking for anything in return. At least to me the idea of a system in which you owe somebody more for something they did (either something they did out of generosity or because you paid for it) than what you explicitly agreed upon is quite unpleasant. Like if somebody came to my house, asked "could I mow your lawn", and I was like "uh okay sure, I suppose so", then afterwards they were like "ah-hah, now you have to pay me $200!" or "ah-hah, now you have to clean my kitchen!", I wouldn't consider that very fair. Ideally an agreement/contract is only valid when both parties understand and agree to it.

>That's the thing, the "their money" part is sort of a fiction. Additionally it is totally fungible, not earmarked or put conditions upon, it doesn't go into a little pile marked "asveikau's taxes" for only the parts of government I approve of.

Well then that's where the disagreement comes from. For people who believe in property rights, money isn't a fiction, it's a proxy for the claim people have over the value of the product of their labour. For many of the American founders, it was a consequence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law . For economically conservative Christians, it was a product of the argument that commandment "Thou shalt not steal" is not waived merely because enough people have voted for you to steal. If someone believes for whatever reason in an inherent moral right to their property, they won't believe it's acceptable for that right to be violated just because other people voted to do so.

[manigandham]

> "how average people try to defend the rich"

It's pretty simple when you realize the majority of the rich started as average people.

Wealth is relative, you're likely better off than 95% of the planet. Should we reduce your salary because of what a rural farmer makes in China?

[ficklepickle]

Nope, they did not. But you speak to a very American delusion. Defend the ultra-rich because you think you will be one some day. You will not.

And yes, we should prioritize everyone having a decent baseline quality of life. Excess wealth doesn't make people happier anyway.

[manigandham]

Majority of the world's richest people are self-made. [1] I know many millionaires and met a few of these billionaire CEOs who have come from nothing and worked their way up.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche...

> "But you speak to a very American delusion."

It's called the American Dream. Freedom and opportunity to achieve your own goals, something people seem to take for granted until they go somewhere that doesn't have it.

> "Defend the ultra-rich because you think you will be one some day. You will not."

You shouldn't assume, but even if I never become a billionaire, I sure don't need to hate them for it. I defend their ability to attain success, not their wealth.

[orestarod]

Creating better conditions for everyone >>>> playing a game with a set success rate of 0.01 % and f*ck the rest. Also, the game is not fair to begin with. It's called a Dream for a reason. Feels like going bankrupt trying to win the lottery.

[VvR-Ox]

I am pretty sure they did not as most wealth is inherited AFAIK.

Here a snippet of an interesting article on this[0]: "Yet the opportunity to live the American dream is much less widely shared today than it was several decades ago. While 90% of the children born in 1940 ended up in higher ranks of the income distribution than their parents, only 40% of those born in 1980 have done so."

This correlates to the fact that wealth concentrates in few and fewer people around the world (the 1% for whom laws, governments, borders etc. do not exist).

It is not about a comparison with the people who are at their worst (and it will probably not be Chinese farmers but that is another topic). It is about fairness and an average level we can ALL agree to.

I want all people to have a meaningful existence and a life that they think is worth living because in my frame of mind this is fairness.

As long as people starve and children cannot afford to got to school and women are being used, sold and shipped like some goods etc. I cannot stand to see people who get so much more than they need just to spend all the money on stupid things (please take a look at some of their instagram profiles and youtube videos if you don't know what I refer to).

The best of behavior I saw is people like Musk who puts his money into businesses which hope to (really) "make the world a better place" - at least if this is true and not some sales pitch (we can discuss about this in a few years when there is more results I think).

Others like to frame themselves as "benevolent" super-humans who are giving away money to charities. This is "green washing" most of the times to improve their PR. The money they give is a joke and these charities do not change the world as you can see.

Why does someone need or even deserve to own 50 cars and 7 houses? No one contributes that much to the world that he would deserve that and especially not while others are dying because they cannot afford to buy food.

This "hard work" that is needed to become rich is using others and ignoring all moral implications in many times. I had two opportunities in my lifetime to become (kind of) rich and both where at least dubious in one way or the other. It is about cheating governments to not pay any or too much taxes and it is about customers who are willing to pay a huge amount of money for someone to "take responsibility" he does not really take in the end. Also you can cheat consumers like "big tobacco", sugar etc. do.

Staying in this position only took them some money to pay scientists, politicians and others to be legally sold or even recommended and advertised.

These systems are built by generations of people without moral (maybe they are raised like that) and inherited to alumni who are at least as numb and asocial.

=> No one deserves to be that rich no matter what they do. => They become rich by using people like you and me without moral implication or hesitation. => They try to uphold the "American Dream" so we stay quiet until we are as poor as the people on the bottom. (look at Warren Buffet who talked about the "War of the Rich against the Poor")

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jun/20/is-the-am...

[chrisweekly]

"vitamin b"?

[kyazawa]

It's a German expression referring to getting a job through connections (Beziehung = relationship.) https://www.dw.com/en/vitamin-b/a-6616528

[VvR-Ox]

Exactly. I like it because it is one quick phrase to describe this way of using your good connections.

[chrisweekly]

Danke! Surprised not to have heard it before.

[manigandham]

What's your track record for handling that kind of position? It's not the money, it's the competence, knowledge and experience that matters. And if you actually have all that then you wouldn't be asking for $1m/year.

It's a tight knit community because there are only a few individuals who get to that level of management and can be selected from to lead (and are even open to a new position in the first place).

The golden parachutes are to offset a bad tenure from hurting their future prospects. There are several CEOs who aren't hired anymore (or anywhere near that level) because of their past performance and they lose their earning potential.