I think you are defining 'get away with' as 'whatever they chose to pay based on competition and wanting to retain the person'.

So if the company pays an exec $200k a year and then awards his a $200k bonus at year end and stock options, you say 'well they had to do that or he might have left. Thus they are paying him the minimum'.

No, sorry that is not the case and how language works.

No company needs to give any discretionary bonuses or stock options. Many do. is your assumption 100% of the people would have quit if they had not got it or it was even $1 less?

The board decides the ceo pay. They have to pay him well enough to keep him as there's a market of ceo's like everything else. It's not uncommon for a ceo of a big company to leave it for another big company.

Yes but if you are arguing that those Boards are paying the CEO's the least amount because you say competition demands it, and saying that is the same as a Meat Packing plant paying undocumented workers the least amount possible and its all the same, then those words become pretty useless.

Hold on.

My view is that, as a general rule, labor is paid as little as possible in a capitalist system (maybe in every system...but we're in the US).

You can't disprove that by saying some employees with negotiating power make more.

Board members have all the benefits going into salary negotiations while the average worker (the 99%) have little to none.

This is exactly why compensation is higher when the union membership is higher. Negotiating a fair cut of the profits requires power.

If employers weren't paying as little as possible that wouldn't be the case.

Let's be clear RF as my position has always been the compromise one and i believe on balance Labor has almost no power and does get abused but i take issue when you and others (as below) argue that all labor has no power and ALWAYS gets paid the minimum the company can get away with.

That is just wrong.

Cuepee, fair enough. I agree with your view.

These are the categories of labor that may have some negotiatimg power:

1. Maybe the top 10% / superstars in STEM with graduate degrees have some negotiating power.

2. Labor unions

3. All individuals who are famous or execs.

Everyone else is getting screwed/exploited. This includes all non college degrees, college degrees, even advanced degrees but not in tech/law/medicine. The profits generated from the labor of all these people go into the pockets of (stock)owners. This is just another of many factors that widens the wealth gap.

Ya, its a completely different discussion if we are just debating the 'degree' as opposed to the 'absolute' position.

It's wrong to say smoking gives you cancer too, as it merely increases your odds of getting it exponentially.

You're certainly allowed your pet peeves but I'm not really getting your point on this one.

I clarified and said general right away. If that doesn't fix it I'm not sure what else I can do.

That’s horse$hit..,
The “market” of CEO salaries as been disconnect from the real economy for decades ...

All they do is comparing themselves between each other like at an auction without even taking Into consideration if the company make money or not ffs.
That is the point of why salaries for the middle class been degrading non stop .
The ratio salary of CEO compare to its employees went from 20 in 1950/60 to over 300 in mid 2010 back down today to around 275 ...

The worst thing they did was turning CEO's into a celebrity class as if all are super starts. Some, indeed are, but most are not. Not saying they are not competent but just not 300:1 more competent.

+1

There's no central command saying which ceo deeserves what pay. The company's interests are defended by the big shareholders that want more profit and growth so they have to get the most competent people managing the company. These type of people are scarce relative to demand (ofc every company wants to have very good ceo's) so the prices goe up.

Supply and demand MontrealCorp for CEOs.

That's the price now.

Do some NBA players like Rudy Gobert "deserve" 40M a year? That's the price you have to pay.

The nba players are actually the product and the profits of the company .
The CEO are not and in the nba they exactly have some kind of ratio to respect with a cap salary .
That is exactly my point .
the worst players gets drags up in salary because there is a cap to pay the best and the players do have a share of the profits, so unlike 40-50 years ago , it isn’t just the CEO of those NBA teams that makes the money , the players too have her share .

CEO of today were there 30 / 40 years ago btw in some companies , you think today they deserve more there salary of around 300 times a worker then they were 35 years ago at 80 times ??
Why , it’s the same person ?
They got magically better by 400% ?
Aren’t the workers there for decades as well didn’t get better or deserve anything ?

the worst is , some CEOs gains more and more money without any regards to the companies profits .
As a shareholders , meaning I am the owners of the company btw , I am piss .
I saw too many time a CEO made a destruction of a company just to switch to another with even a bigger salary .

The problem is the real owner , shareholders have almost 0 saying in the remuneration of them !
And normal workers in a company do not scale their salary from the profits of the company either ( like professional athletes) .
That’s the 2 main problems...

You cant isolate a “market” from society and say it’s normal ...

Btw nba players and other leagues are unionized, just to show you another reason why the wealth gap in the US is so high and unfair for the majority of the workers .

I recall reading that the majority of new businesses fail within the first five years.

If true, then for MOST new businesses, ONLY the workers are making money.

In the early 1970's, MOST MLB teams were losing money. And player salaries were at a (then) all-time high.

In the modern era, some form of profit sharing among the owners is an absolute necessity to keep the small market teams from going bankrupt.