Low Quality Facts
CEO: We need to cut costs.
Accountant: Okay. We paid you $50 million last year. We spent $10 million on your private jet flights and luxury hotel accommodations. For some reason you are being paid $1 million for this 45 minute meeting.
CEO: I see. Who's that in the hallway?
Accountant: That's Greg. He is the only thing keeping this company from falling apart. We pay him in nickels and Grubhub gift cards.
CEO: Fire Greg.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
CEO of amazon makes 1.3 million a year thats on the low end, Apple is about 50 million. So lets go with apple, they employ 165,000 people but counting contractors and factory workers they actually employ 1.5 million people.
So if you fired the CEO of apple, one of the most highly paid CEO in history, you wouldnt even make back enough money to give every contractor and employee they hire a single penny more per year, not even a penny.
Sorry buddy but the "CEO are greedy and not worth their pay" narrative is getting old and tripe.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts
I'm not going to state my position on the overall issue here, but I think your employee and contractor total is questionable and your arithmetic is incorrect. Apple's count of employees and contractors, in full-time equivalents, is 161,000. Tim Cook's $63,209,845/year divided amongst 161,000 people would be an additional $387/year each.
1/
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
What, the 161 figure are full time employees **only** who told you that included contractors, it doesnt. In fact anywhere that figure shows up they are clear to mention it excludes contractors.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
No its from the public records of Apple. Obviously the employees of some other company they buy from would not be included. This is the contractor count of their supply chain. I can find the source for you when ig et home if you want.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts
I don't know how you got 1.5M people, but if it is by counting the employees and contractors of Apple's suppliers, that would be non-sensical. The suppliers are responsible for managing their own CEO pay and their own payroll, out of their own revenue.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Alright, since i dont have the source at hand lets go with those numbers...
So 164K full time employment + 73K full time contractor, and then some portion of part-time workers.. lets just fudge it and say ~10K.
so 247K total workers. Thats only 200$ a year per employee not enough to make any real difference AND the company now looses an extremely successful and important CEO. Basically a 9 cents per hour raise.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts Sorry, you're correct. They have about 72,800 full-time contractors and 3300 part time. I'll update my numbers.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts
The more interesting question about Apple isn't whether T.C. is overpaid, but whether low-level employees and contractors are underpaid.
I was a full-time software contractor at Apple in 1989-1990, and my hourly pay rate was about 1/2 of prevailing rate for mid-level software developers at the time, because I didn't have a good understanding of the industry pay scale at the time, and negotiated poorly.
But even that is not what I'm talking about.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts
The non-technical or less-technical contractors, including facilities and food service contractors, were paid EXTREMELY low wages, given the cost of living in Cupertino and the surrounding area. There was no inexpensive housing available within fifty miles of the Apple campus. That was 35 years ago, and the situation has only gotten worse since.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Ok... what does that have to do with the topic. There is no doubt unskilled workers need to be trained so they can become skilled workers with better pay and lower the supply of unskilled workers increasing their pay as well. That has less to do with CEOs and what they are paid and everything to do with training opportunities for the lower class.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts Even counting all the part-time as full time, it's $266/year. For most of their employees that's a pittance, but for some people it's not trivial. Anyhow, it's a lot more than a penny (four orders of magnitude off), and as I said, I'm not arguing either way over whether the CEO is overpaid, only the numbers.
Does T.C. do a better job than a hypothetical CEO they could pay half as much? I honestly have no idea.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts
The complaints about CEO pay are often levelled not so much at wildly successful companies, as at companies with terrible financials that cut employee pay and have layoffs and furloughs while giving executive staff large bonuses. In my opinion, a much better case can be made there.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts I didn't say it had anything to do with CEO pay. I said it was a more interesting issue.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Ahh my mistake. Then yes, I agree, an unrelated and more interesting issue for sure. One that actually needs solving.
The important part here is the blame is still not on the company, its on society for not giving those people the oppertunity to be worth more on the market.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Even in cases where a company may to be blame for acting in a way that caused this result. They still arent to blame because that means the law was in error to allow it in the first place. Inless a company acted specifically against the law, in which case I'd say they are to blame.
Companies are not, and should not be thought of, as charities responsible for the welfare of their employees., at least not legally or at a societal level. I do think companies should act in consideration of its employees welfare, but only by social pressure, not by law.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts I mostly agree. I think companies bear a little of the blame. And I'm not singling out any specific companies here.
sergeant
@freemo @lowqualityfacts Then perhaps you can explane to us why all CEOs of big companies are so happy to cut back wages of employees?
Your reasoning works both ways, is it?
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
For the same reason sometimes CEOs pay gets cut.. amazon's CEO went from double digit millions to single digits.
The wages are cut back because the market allows it (supply is too high, economy is poor so there is less competition for work). No one is claiming CEO pay or worker pay cant change, it can and does as market pressures allow.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Sorry your right, I meant an additional penny per hour, not per year. My fault.
> Comparing the profits of the company to the wages should paint a better picture.
Why would anyone think a company owes its profits to its employees... employees are paid their market value, not based on the success of the company... Now im all for out of kindness being generous with your employees, I think its good for business. But not that it should be an obligation.
Archiolgy
@freemo @lowqualityfacts
The maths on that doesn't add (or rather divide) up to me. You're saying that 50,000,000 divided by 1,500,000 is less than 0.01?
Firing the CEO would give the workers about 33 dollars a year; still not very much. Comparing the profits of the company to the wages should paint a better picture. With a net profit of $383 billion in 2023, that would be enough to pay the 1.5 million people over $250,000 per year. And the shareholders do even less than the CEO.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Yea there is certainly some portion of the problem that boils down tot he fact that people just dont use their negotiating power.
As someone who has done a lot of hiring lately I've had people come in so low I've literally had to offer them **more** than they ask for. I cant imagine most companies would do that, nor should they have to, typically both parties do and should be negotiating for their interests. Its just most people just find negotiating stressful and would rather not, but sadly thats just a life skill society needs to function.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@freemo @lowqualityfacts If they should do.it by social pressure (which does exist), but don't, that is why I say they have some of the blame. I agree that government and society bear more of it.
:gnu:+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@freemo @brouhaha @lowqualityfacts
> Its just most people just find negotiating stressful and would rather not, but sadly thats just a life skill society needs to function.
can only speak for myself: standing up for what i legitimately want wasn't something my parents or school taught me - in fact they both did quite the opposite.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Thats fair, but its important to recognize that is a failing of you, and not businesses exploiting you or people like you. Its an indication that we should teach our kids those skills,a nd if we dont we fail them.
Archiolgy
@freemo @lowqualityfacts The employees... make the goods and services? they make the stuff and sell the stuff; they do all the work, that's why they should get the profits. Anyway, this ultimately comes down to whether or not you think exploitation of labor is immoral, and obviously you don't, so there's no point in me arguing with you over this.
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
The employees… make the goods and services? they make the stuff and sell the stuff; they do all the work, that’s why they should get the profits.
None of which would produce any profits at all if it werent for the investors, CEO, management, sales, etc. Simply providing one element of 100 needed to make profit doesnt mean you deserve all the profit.
Anyway, this ultimately comes down to whether or not you think exploitation of labor is immoral, and obviously you don’t, so there’s no point in me arguing with you over this
Exploitation of people, labor or otherwise, should be illegal. We dont disagree on that, though if you think not giving 100% of the profits over to labor is exploitation then where we disagree is what is exploitation, not if it is moral to do.
:gnu:+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@freemo @brouhaha @lowqualityfacts we absolutely should teach our kids this, yes. would also help in that businesses which really are exploitative not find people to exploit! :)
🎓 Doc Freemo :jpf: 🇳🇱
Products != profits. But yes, we agree, the entrepreneur obviously plays a vital role in ensuring those products come into existance at all. But even then that isnt the full picture when it comes to profit.
Torparskytt 🏴☠️
@freemo @admin @lowqualityfacts “Products result from the collaboration between labor and the tools and other capital goods that **foresighted planning by the entrepreneur has brought together**.” Ludwig von Mises
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