The Man In Black wrote:
Thats a fiction, MAas. Voters, at least lower-class voters in southern california, vote on the basis of WHAT POLITICIAN WILL BENEFIT THEIR SPECIFIC JOB THE MOST.
There is a REASON Grey Davis got most of the RN votes. Why? He promised them a pay raise. A soccor mom I know told me her thoughts: "I hate him, but he's gonna give me a pay raise so I'll vote for him."
Imagine this applied to EVERY job. EVERYWHERE.
Now, on to your, though well-thought out, misinformed post.
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Anyway, to approach your point: A) You're right, a person at the top, making difficult decisions, DOES deserve more money. Why? Because they're making difficult decisions. But do they deserve the millions they DO get? Some do, I suppose. If the decisions they make net the company 10 million extra more dollars, but let me go ahead and bring up some statistics:
Most CEOs do not make tens of millions. A couple hundred thousand to be sure, but 10s of millions? No.
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I have a friend working for Disney doing costume design. Because the tourist industry is straining, the companies understandably isn't doing that well. She gets paid barely above minimum wage, even though she has a MASTERS, and that's barely enough to live off of. To make matters worse, the company has been forced to cut the hours of all their workers, since they can't afford to pay them full-time wages. But guess what, the CEO of Disney decided he deserved a $5 million dollar bonus. A $5 million dollar bonus. And yet the company is losing money. Make sense to you?
A company with such waste in general goes down the drain, as Disney appears to be starting to do.
In addition, what with the Enron scandals, there is now the beginnings of a power shift from the CEO to a body that was normally his yes-men and rubber-stampers. Ahh, I forget the name thats been given to the body, but in many companies they are getting more power. When one person has the power to do that then obviously corruption and abuse of this power is going to happen. However, belatedly the people are adjusting to this and trying to shift power around, make CEOs more accountable. Obviously this hasn't taken place in Disney yet.
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You want another example, okay - Baskin Robbins, a company I've had WAY too much familiarity with. The stores are franchises, each one owned by an individual, licensed out by the corporation. The owner is responsible for paying wages, buying ice cream from corporate, keeping their store in order, buying equipment, etc. Corporate, in exchange, handles advertising, actually producing the ice cream, keeping organization between the stores, developing innovations, and generally everything involved in keep a chain such as that together.
Actually, MARKETING makes the decision. I'd wager some people are either taking a nasty pay cut or out of a job in Baskin Robin's marketing department. Holding the CEO accountable for marketing now? That seems to be the implication, clear me up if I'm not.
Also, if you'll recall, as terms of the contract the owner agrees to to fork out for certain required promotional stunts that the company will require them to do. The person AGREED to do this from the start- if he was under illusions, then he's a fool. Not holding someone accountable for what they agreed to do from day 1 is, imo, silly. That was the deal. The company could be a lot more restrictive in their contracts and it wouldn't be unheard of.
The point is not that its 'unfair' in your opinion, but that the person knew it was going to be this way from the first day. So nobody goes in under any illusions, its not unfair etc.
Okay, it was this point that made we want to answer this in quote form. Look, I KNOW CEO's don't handle marketing, but I was making a general sweep at big businesses in general. I stick to my stance that I could do a better job than they are. And I also know that the individual responsible has been handling it for years, yet nothings been done to her. The owner of a local franchise keeps telling me over and over that no one at corporate is accountable for advertising failures, and I'm prone to believe her, since she isn't a liar.
As for paying for free scoop night - It's not the unfairness that's the issue with me. It's the wastefulness. Again, the owner of the franchise I talked to told me that while she's required to do it by corporate, it doesn't drum up new business, doesn't bring in new regulars. But corporate insists on it, and there's no problem that it isn't really doing anything, because they don't have to pay for it.
Like I said, no accountability, no responsibility. Seriously, a corporation the size of Baskin Robbins could be run by a monkey, and it wouldn't sink. It's too big, too unstoppable.
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So do I believe that most CEO's these days aren't doing a good job, that the company is keeping itself in business simply because (if it's anything like McDonalds) it's a juggernaut that can't be stopped, and that I, with my lowly Bachelor's in English Literature, could do a better job than most of the morons there, who have been stuck in their Ivory Tower so long that they wouldn't know reality if it dropped a rock on them?
The Man In Black wrote:
You're the one stuck in the Ivory Tower, my friend. With two simple examples, one with a person who is a Fraud and a bastard personally (Disney; a friend of mine knew him and quit his job at Disney due to his paranoid politics) and for another you implicate the CEO for a marketing idea, you make a SWEEPING generalization.
In actuality you can't blame a CEO for something marketing comes up with anymore than you could have blamed President Bush for a military failure in Iraq. The idea itself is ludicris- Bush, though commander in cheif and has to approve of the general plan, is no general and is not in charge of military operations.
I believe I just answered that. And I agree my sources are limited. These are the only two major corporations I have information on. But, as I said, these are the only two corporation I have information on. That "only two" is what bothers me. Still, I'm working with what I have.
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Yeah, I do. Because I've seen WAY too many idiot mistakes done by big businesses. Forgive me if I get tired of hearing about CEO's who go to a business, screw it up, and then leave with a 2 million dollar severance package. Really, I believe most of those in the high places must be there because they inherited the positions, not because they earned it. (And here you do see a streak of a my Communist tendency.)
Think of the amount of business scandals you have seen.
Now think about the number of businesses, total.
You're prejudiced, my friend, because you segregate "big business" from all other businesses. Which is a false illusion, a resentful categorization by people who are frankly envious of the success of certain businesses.
Secondly, the CEO is voted in, not appointed.
First off, I admitted to being prejudiced (the remark about the Communist streak). Second, yes, you can separate "big businesses" from all other businesses, because they are different animals. Ask any small or big business owner, and they'll tell you that.
But thank you for the information about the CEO's. I never claimed to be a business student, and I appreciate the information.
The Man In Black wrote:
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And as for your problem of the question of "The value of an hour's worth of work" being placed in human hands, isn't it already? I mean, someone up in the Disney main office has decided that the workers deserve little more than minimum wage. While I agree it's a slippery slope, trying to figure out how much something like making decisions for a company is worth, that's already being decided, but too often by people who under-cut the people below them. There must be SOME way to determine some kind of fairness in all this.
This is how it works, overall (excuse me economics 201 talk if you know it already.)
The more workers who want a single particular job, and the amount of spaces in that job, determine the overall wage for said job. For example, if there are 5 companies who want a skill only 1 person on the job market has, obviously they're going to put his salary very, VERY high.
Suppose there are 5 companies that want a skill 1,000 people have. Its reversed- the 1,000 people have to see who will work for the lowest cost, ne? Each company will set a low wage, and less people will want to work at this lower wage. Eventually its supposed to even out (though it never does, at least not for long, with all those changing variables.)
So even though in the end its up to the person hiring who makes what, at the very least a general range is set by the market system. If i can make 5 more bucks an hour working here than there, I'll apply for work here first then won't I?
I hate to admit it, but I see your point here, mostly about the salary inflation of would be CEO's and other "skilled" jobs.
The Man In Black wrote:
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As for whether or not the government can do it... Well, I do agree. It's a dubious prospect at best. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said. "In it's best form, a government is a necessary evil, in it's worst form an intolerable one." That's one of the big flaws I'm seeing in this (yes, my own theory), that the government would have to be so involved in it, and I'm not a fan of big government. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop digging for a solution.
When you find a solution to government corruption, and a screening process to prevent anybody except those who join up in politics for altruistic reasons, mail it to me. THEN we'll talk.
-MiB
I've always thought that the truly best form of government is an Enlightened Dictatorship, one of Plato's theoretical philosopher kings. The Crown wouldn't be passed down by lineage, but to a chosen heir, chosen by the king. Obviously, for this to work, the king would have to be a moral person to begin with AND be an astute judge of character. I think the closest we got this was Marcus Aurellius in Rome, and we all see how that turned out. (Gladiator was all lies!) So obviously, that's not really an option. So we're left with representational government. Which works well enough to keep us out of anarchy and defend our interests. But the two party-system often seems to limit our options far too much. But I'm still looking for a solution.
Thist was put here more for anyone who thought I was holding Communism as the ultimate form of government. Which it isn't. And if you've been reading this post from the beginning, you know I don't even hold Communism to be a form of government, but an economic system.