- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Their skills are very rare, the positions are limited and the responsibilities great.

Posted by: Ludwig von Mises ( USA ) on May 07, 1999 at 10:31:21:

In Reply to: Same damn thing. posted by Red Deathy on May 06, 1999 at 14:14:00:

:: Guess who supplies him with those things. Did you guess that it was those evil people from up the ladder? Maybe even the President or CEO of the company? You were correct.

: Nope, you weren't, it was salaried (i.e. waged) middle management who work out all the details, which teh board of directors OK's, or the CEO for that matter.

What about when the CEO or board comes up with something that makes the plan even better? Without anyone going over what middle management did, things would be done with less eficiency.
BTW, communism/socialism punish everyone but the factory workers, including middle management.

: Look at it this way- if CEO's were paid according to their genuine markjet rate (i.e. excluding share options and bonuses for performance, etc.) their take home earnings would be a hell of a lot less...

: For example:

: "The highest paid CEO last year received a whopping $575,592,000.

Whoa, what company is this?

: pay of the eight who followed amounted to $489,525,000. And the
: final seven of the top 20 CEOs garnered a mere $304,316,000.
: There were also 10 substantial pay recipients who do not hold
: CEO positions whose take totaled $407,358,000. All told these 30
: company officials raked in close to $2.5 billion.

: "The numbers are staggering," BUSINESS WEEK magazine noted in
: its April 19 issue. "But," it added, "so is the performance of
: American business." And the accompanying lengthy article clearly
: credited the CEOs with being chiefly responsible for the
: "staggering...performance" of the companies they headed. The
: "top executives" were not only credited with having created
: "enormous value" for themselves but also for millions of "middle
: managers," "lower level workers" and, of course, "shareholders."
: The primary medium through which these CEOs allegedly created
: this wealth and spread it around is, of course, the booming
: stock market. Nothing in the article said anything about the
: fact that before there can be any wealth to spread around
: workers have to create it.

: According to BUSINESS WEEK, the average pay last year for a
: "head honcho" (its term) at a large company was $10.6 million.
: also an incredible 442 percent increase over the $2 million
: yearly average in 1990. Of course, we are repeatedly being told
: these days that workers' wages, too, have been going up. For
: example, the hourly rate for nonsupervisory workers was up 3.6
: percent in March compared to a year ago. The average blue-collar
: worker's wage was up 2.7 percent, while the wages of white-
: collar workers were up 3.9 percent according to the Bureau of
: Labor Statistics. Those nominal increases don't come very close
: to the "head honcho's" 36 percent increase. But, then, workers'
: wages never do rise at the same rate as the incomes of the "head
: honchos." In comparison, BUSINESS WEEK noted, "The AFL-CIO
: calculates that a worker making $25,000 in 1994 would now make
: $138,350 this year if his pay grew at the same speed as the
: average CEO."

: BUSINESS WEEK concedes that the CEOs have been helped in their
: alleged accomplishments by a number of factors. "CEOs," it
: noted, "have been toiling [sic] in a prime business environment.
: Interest rates have fallen over a 15-year period, flicking up
: only recently. Deregulation has overcome barriers within the
: economy, and trade barriers have fallen overseas. A high-tech
: revolution is making it easier to increase productivity. The
: exceptionally good for executives to strut their stuff...."
: Again not a word about any contribution by workers in the
: ongoing production of the nation's immense wealth from which the
: CEOs and the rest of the capitalist class expropriate the major
: portion.

: Incidentally, not all CEOs increased their take last year by 36
: percent over their 1997 income. For example, last year's income
: of the chairman and CEO at Merrill Lynch & Co., David H.
: Komansky, was over 10 percent less than his 1997 income. In
: 1997, Komansky's total income was $11.1 million. Last year, it
: was a mere $9.9 million.

: Herbert M. Allison Jr., Merrill Lynch's chief operating officer,
: suffered a similar fate. In 1997, his total compensation
: amounted to $8.82 million. Last year it dropped to $7.87
: million.

: The reason for the cuts? Apparently Merrill Lynch's operating
: profit last year was only $1.6 billion, a 20 percent drop from
: 1997."

OK, so they aren't good at giving credit to those that the article is not about. I'm sure that everyone realizes that we need factory workers, and that they do deserve some credit.

: Also, you neglect the share holders, who rake in a hell of a lot more money than the workers, by virtue of doing nothing except having a big pile of cash to invest.
:
: :WIthout having the line thoiught up, without having the people hired, without having the correct tools and instructions, among other things, many factory workers wouldn't be able to perform their job.Perhaps this explains why it is fair for people up the ladder to make more money, even though they aren't physically making the product.

: No, they make more money because there are fewer of such posts available, and their skills are comparably rarer on the jobs market, a CEO could still, just from market value alone, rake in £40K, most of the rest comes from sharing out the unearned spoils from profits.


You are correct! Their skills are very rare, the positions are limited and the responsibilities great. HOw many people on the factory floor could do this job? I'm guessing not many, unless they are quite young. Again, as I've said many other times, profit goes back into the business, in one way or another.

: The middle management are workers, they do all the real organising, and we could do without those CEO's.

See my earlier response.


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