sliderider wrote:Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:EA and Bethesda also have execs who depend on their jobs to support their SUVs. Should the consumers be forced to pay more so th […]
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sliderider wrote:
EA and Bethesda have thousands of employees who depend on their jobs to support their families. Should they be forced to take less pay so you can buy their employers games cheaper?
EA and Bethesda also have execs who depend on their jobs to support their SUVs. Should the consumers be forced to pay more so the game company CEO and execs can get higher bonus and golden parachutes?
Really, I never understand some people's obsession to worship the Atlas instead of becoming a rational egoist themselves; people who treat corporations like sports teams, people who relentlessly defend their favorite corporation(s) using any debating tactics possible, including false assumption fallacy.
I'm a consumer, and more over, I'm a rational egoist consumer. When spending my hard-earned money, I seek to maximize my own interest, not the interests of Bethesda, EA, or Microsoft execs. I have no interest to put my hard-earned money on the holy altar of corporatism so the Atlas can have more expensive three-martini lunches. Granted, the job loss of game company employees is most unfortunate, but it is simply the height of naivete (or hypocrisy) to falsely assume that overpriced products is a necessity to support thousands of employees.
And those execs earn every cent of what they get paid. Have you ever tried running a global corporation? Those people have to get paid what they do or else nobody would apply for the job.
Please, not all CEOs are Steve Jobs. In fact, there are execs and CEOs who conveniently gave themselves very nice golden parachute after driving the company to the ground. Do you really think it's about their performance? Nope, they were able to give themselves such nice amount of money because they had the power to do so.
Have you ever really been in a global corporation? Do you really, honestly believe one's compensation fully reflects one's performance, while totally ignoring factors like office politics and corporate power structure? Did AIG execs truly earn every cent of what they paid? How about AMD execs?
And yes, there are concerns about CEOs being overpaid. And before anyone accuses the article of being from a socialist website, I'd like to inform anyone that is is actually a management website.
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ZD Net's Total Compensation Vs. Total Return To Shareholders chart (no longer online), shows that total return to shareholders was higher for many companies whose CEO compensation was under $500,000 than for companies who paid their CEOs multi-million dollar compensation.
Workers Unite
The AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch site gives people a lot of information about what they consider "the excessive salaries, bonuses and perks of the CEOs of major corporations". The site features a calculator that shows how your salary increase over the past five years compares to that of a CEO. They also give you tools to "take action to stop runaway CEO pay."
Is It Justified?
John Mariotti, president and founder of The Enterprise Group, asks "CEO Pay: How Much is Too Much?" and answers the question himself. Citing Derek Bok, he points out that as business becomes more complex, the demand for top executives increases and thus they command greater and greater pay. He also noted that such huge awards do little to motivate these outstanding performers, who are generally more motivated by challenge.
Mike Hughlett, Staff Writer for PioneerPlanet, thinks the reason why CEO pay soars so high is that CEO's pay generally is set by the compensation committee, usually comprised of other chief executives.
Graef Crystal, writing for the San Francisco Business Times, Uses Steven Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer to prove his point on CEO compensation: the composition of a CEO's pay package has nothing to do with his future performance and the CEO may not make all that much of a difference in whether the company is a success or a failure.
In her article "Lowering the Bar", WSJ writer Joann S. Lublin notes "Pay for performance? Forget it. These days, CEOs are assured of getting rich -- however the company does."
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As you may note, I may be a pinko leftist. However, I am not the one who said the line above; it is Joan S Lublin, the management news editor in Wallstreet Journal.
sliderider wrote:"What makes sliderider assume that the money raked by EA or Bethesda automatically translate to their common employee's benefit? "
What makes me assume that is simple economics. Workers who don't think they are getting paid enough go to work for the competition. If the employee is one that is not easily replaced, then it is in the interest of the company to retain that employee by paying them a little bit more rather than having to train someone new. That worker also has knowledge about projects that they are involved in that may be irreplaceable regardless of how much training the company does and can leave the company scrambling to meet deadlines if they leave.
Are you trying to contradict yourself here? If it is easy for common employees to jump to another ship, then why did you rant about them being forced to take less pay if the company lower the prices? Supposed your assumption is true, that employees will be forced to take less pay if the company lower the price. But you also assume that they can easily jump ship. So why could they ever been forced to take less pay if they can easily jump ship as you assumed? Would you like to have your cake, or would you rather eat it? Kindly choose.