CA Minimum Wage is Bad for Workers? Inconceivable!!

[PartyOf5]

I have a nice pile of bananas, but every so often, a gang of smaller monkeys takes some of them and slaps me in the face. And I'm not allowed to plant my own banana tree, or do anything about the squad of leech-monkeys. Big monkey is getting pissed.

That's racist.

[PartyOf5]

I was surprised someone brought up the ridiculous pay of an athlete. Usually all you hear about when someone argues against pay imbalances is corporate fat cats. Why aren't any of those raising pitchforks at CEOs doing the same to athletes and entertainers?

[Ex-California]

Do you suppose that an executive/CEO is 300x more effective in any way than his employees?

Some are worth it, yes. Bear with me, let me play devil's advocate for a minute:

You have no idea what these fortune 500 CEOs do, they wake up at like 4 a.m. and start multitasking like cyborg freaks. You basically have to be an uber-committed psychopath to even perform these jobs - neither of us could do it, no one here could do it (maybe Martin when he was younger, due in part to his Mormon training, shit makes you a cyborg overachiever somehow, hopefully he'll chime in on this theory).

These people are the leaders of massive enterprises. The enterprises -- many of which rival the power of freakin' countries -- place a tremendous value on their leaders, as they should. There is much competition between enterprises to hire away the best leaders from competition -- what is more important to an enterprises' future than the "best" leader? What would Apple be without Jobs, etc? Of course there is a bidding war for the "top talent".

Now, I find the pay shocking and absurd too, but my career has led me to meet various people who run large successful enterprises in NYC, and I have come to recognize that we are talking about a unique (read: low supply, high demand, i.e. high price) type of individual. I have come to suspect that my personal subjective feelings about value are not more accurate than the actual market price paid to these individuals.

That being said, you can just point to Marissa Mayer at yahoo to show my post is only part of the truth.

Must be who you've met. Every single one I've met is a retard like the CEO that was hired on Silicon Valley. On top of that, every other high level exec I've seen and met needs a minion to help them turn on their computer, use their phone, wipe their ass, etc. Delegation to the point of helplessness is not something to be admired.

Beyond all of that, and I admit there is something to be said about the "leader of men" quality, these people are all interchangeable across industry. Steve Jobs would have been a successful banker or banana farmer as well. Maybe that's admirable and useful, but when it comes to the real world economy what's important is the widgets they produce, not the style they're managed in, or the profit they create for their stockholders. This is held in the intellectual property that's held in the lower level workers who actually enable the widgets to be produced.

For example, Roger Goddell is nothing and meaningless if there are no football players. Tim Cook is pointless if there are no engineers to design and build Macs and iOS devices

[SuburbanFarmer]

GCF you posted your take-home pay once, you are rich, compared to the rest of the world and compared to historical wealth held by proles like us.

You really are doing great, no chance of starvation, 6' 2'' and well-built, no chance of dying in a field defending the king from barbarians, etc.

You and I are two of the luckiest people to ever live -- what would you estimate? Top 1% most lucky?

(What is PM convo? Is that the real estate Q?)

Yeah, the real estate thing. I can't upgrade our house without taking on massive debt, and I can't buy the fixer without massive wealth on-hand. It's extremely frustrating.

Keep stacking that cash.

Wouldn't be a problem, except for that pesky expiration date that we all carry. This shit's on a time limit.

[Ex-California]

I was surprised someone brought up the ridiculous pay of an athlete. Usually all you hear about when someone argues against pay imbalances is corporate fat cats. Why aren't any of those raising pitchforks at CEOs doing the same to athletes and entertainers?

Because the same imbalances between workers (athletes and entertainers) and management (studio execs, owners, etc) exist on that plane. The scale is just greater.

Besides, someone like Odell Beckham produces a product that's meaningful to me. Jamie Dimon takes my money

[SuburbanFarmer]

I was surprised someone brought up the ridiculous pay of an athlete. Usually all you hear about when someone argues against pay imbalances is corporate fat cats. Why aren't any of those raising pitchforks at CEOs doing the same to athletes and entertainers?

That's because the athletes and actors don't write their own paychecks. Plenty of people are sick of the NFL's bullshit, but powerless to stop it.

[apeman]

Must be who you've met. Every single one I've met is a retard like the CEO that was hired on Silicon Valley. On top of that, every other high level exec I've seen and met needs a minion to help them turn on their computer, use their phone, wipe their ass, etc. Delegation to the point of helplessness is not something to be admired.

Beyond all of that, and I admit there is something to be said about the "leader of men" quality, these people are all interchangeable across industry.

It is charming that you are able to denigrate these people as retards and interchangeable with such confidence.

All these board members and investors are retards, I bet, but you know the truth. A sort of Cassandra. Quite a burden to bear.

Go read a profile of a CEO of a fortune 500 company. It does not fit your perception. And with bajaillions of dollars at stake, what board would hire an interchangeable retard?* Are the board members retarded too?

Is everyone retarded except for the virtuous, exploited employees at the bottom of the pyramid. Because I could swear I've heard that narrative before...

* yahoo, that's who.

I miss DBTrek at times like this.

[Ex-California]

Must be who you've met. Every single one I've met is a retard like the CEO that was hired on Silicon Valley. On top of that, every other high level exec I've seen and met needs a minion to help them turn on their computer, use their phone, wipe their ass, etc. Delegation to the point of helplessness is not something to be admired.

Beyond all of that, and I admit there is something to be said about the "leader of men" quality, these people are all interchangeable across industry.

It is charming that you are able to denigrate these people as retards and interchangeable with such confidence.

All these board members and investors are retards, I bet, but you know the truth. A sort of Cassandra. Quite a burden to bear.

Go read a profile of a CEO of a fortune 500 company. It does not fit your perception. And with bajaillions of dollars at stake, what board would hire an interchangeable retard?* Are the board members retarded too?

Is everyone retarded except for the virtuous, exploited employees at the bottom of the pyramid. Because I could swear I've heard that narrative before...

* yahoo, that's who.

I miss DBTrek at times like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Dimon

Silver spoon nepotism, so what?

[apeman]

What is your contention? (disclosure I fucking hate Dimon).

Make an assertion -- state that Dimon is overpaid by his firm, and explain why.

...
Edit: I was pissed to learn the dean of my law school was making 350K, until I later learned that he was an exceptional fund raiser bringing in ungodly sums of loot.

So I was probably wrong all those years, the school was probably right to value him so highly.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Must be who you've met. Every single one I've met is a retard like the CEO that was hired on Silicon Valley. On top of that, every other high level exec I've seen and met needs a minion to help them turn on their computer, use their phone, wipe their ass, etc. Delegation to the point of helplessness is not something to be admired.

Beyond all of that, and I admit there is something to be said about the "leader of men" quality, these people are all interchangeable across industry.

It is charming that you are able to denigrate these people as retards and interchangeable with such confidence.

All these board members and investors are retards, I bet, but you know the truth. A sort of Cassandra. Quite a burden to bear.

Go read a profile of a CEO of a fortune 500 company. It does not fit your perception. And with bajaillions of dollars at stake, what board would hire an interchangeable retard?* Are the board members retarded too?

Is everyone retarded except for the virtuous, exploited employees at the bottom of the pyramid. Because I could swear I've heard that narrative before...

* yahoo, that's who.

I miss DBTrek at times like this.

Well, let's analyze this a bit. Average worker in a corporation had to work hard as hell to get there. They went to college, studied, learned, applied, built experience, relevant job skills, etc, etc. Average board member is a million/billionaire that either inherited wealth, or got lucky as shit. They may possess some solid knowledge of the stock market, or business investing, but do not require any set of particular real-world skills.

Knowing what you do of rich people - who make up stockholder boards, do you imagine that they're doing hard research into a candidate's personality, interviewing them intensely, evaluating their skills? Do those stockholders possess intimate knowledge of the workings and minutae of the business to measure the candidate by? Or do they look for a) someone they know, or b) someone that looks ambitious in the company?