State of the Union Address

[Lt. Staplic]

I know practically that raising the minimum wage can and probably will have some negative effects overall, but for right now, it'll make it easier to pay rent, which is the main reason I was interested at first glance. It helps that I know that if it comes to layoffs I won't be the one out of a job (most likely).

[Mikey]

I know practically that raising the minimum wage can and probably will have some negative effects overall, but for right now, it'll make it easier to pay rent, which is the main reason I was interested at first glance. It helps that I know that if it comes to layoffs I won't be the one out of a job (most likely).

It might make it easier for one man to pay the rent; but for the two or three other guys, who were making $7/hr. but are now out of jobs because the CoS just went up it's an awful lot harder. Don't assume that you're the safe one in layoffs - they are layoffs, not firings, and have nothing to do with merit or anything else.

[Tyyr]

And that's what the President should be worried about, the effect on the overall economy. However this really isn't about the good of anyone, he's smart enough to know what effect this will have, namely screw a lot of people who can least afford to be screwed. However he also knows that those people's pay check will get a bit bigger, be happy about it, and buoy his approval ratings up.

[Atekimogus]

Well it is a fact that the disparity of income increased dramatically in the last 40 or so years in the US, with all the negative effects this has on an economy.

So.....how would you counter that without raising minimum wages? (Assuming one is opposed to the rich getting richer.)

[Lt. Staplic]

salary caps come to mind.

[Mikey]

salary caps come to mind.

Isn't that sort of contrary to the whole idea of capitalism? I should say, regulated salary caps are, which is patently what you meant; instead, we have de facto salary caps which capitalism imposes on itself. Any business entity reads such expenses, as with all others, as to how they fit in the P&L statement; if a salary is seen to be more than the employee in question is worth - in terms of how much revenue he engenders or helps to realize - then the company will change that fact.

[Lt. Staplic]

yes it is, but then again so are government bail outs and minimum wage.

I was thinking of a form of rule along the lines of no senior members salary can be more than N times the average yearly income of their lowest pay rungs (with N to be determined by someone who has a much better concept of the differences that should be paid simply based on job differences without being the huge million dollar gaps we have today). Obviously, there would also have to be a form of regulation to prevent mass layoffs preceding a large pay-raise to everyone.

This would IMHO promote companies to increase their own minimum pay rates as the money allows (and allow themselves to give themselves higher salaries). Maybe it's my 20-year-old naivety, but I could see this as being a way to eliminate economically hard hikes in the minimum wage by the government and replace them with increases by the companies, which would create a method to prevent all the cash from winding up at the top, keep minimum wage going up with the cost of living (hopefully) all without the potential for stunting economic growth with hiring freezes as companies try and pay the same amount in labor at a higher wage rate.

[Tsukiyumi]

I saw a figure the other day (don't now how accurate it was) that if minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and overall income growth from 1968, it would be $21 an hour now.

Attach the minimum wage to inflation, and cost of living increases, and go from there.

Provide huge tax incentives for companies to keep over 80% of their workforces in America, penalize those who don't with much higher tax and tariff rates. Just like a number of foreign companies now manufacture stuff here, because it's cheaper overall than to ship it in from overseas.

Hit 'em in the bottom line, and watch the jobs come back.

[Mikey]

yes it is, but then again so are government bail outs and minimum wage.

Indeed, because we live in a modified capitalism rather than a true laissez-faire one. But it still abrogates even the very principles and ideals of our economic system to put a cap on what someone can get if someone else is willing to pay it, much more so than a minimum wage. The bail-outs are a different kettle of fish altogether, because the rationale behind them wasn't to help the financial institutions per se - it was to in a de facto way help all the people whose situation was inextricably linked to the fates of those institutions. I'm not going to argue what a CF that was here, because my computer will kill itself before I'm done.

I was thinking of a form of rule along the lines of no senior members salary can be more than N times the average yearly income of their lowest pay rungs (with N to be determined by someone who has a much better concept of the differences that should be paid simply based on job differences without being the huge million dollar gaps we have today).

Why should that be up to anyone but the company in question? Further, you're saying that the factor determining the relation between the lowest and highest salaries should be based on the differences between the corresponding jobs - but in the same sentence, you're also saying that the difference in salaries shouldn't be as wide as the market has already determined they should be. :scratches head:

Obviously, there would also have to be a form of regulation to prevent mass layoffs preceding a large pay-raise to everyone.

OK, this part is good - let's regulate how companies can pay people, in contravention of how the market has actually determined organic CoE reactions... but at the same time, we won't allow companies to use one of the natural mechanisms that they use to defend against the effects of that regulation. That's like telling pedestrians in crime-ridden areas that they have to wear all their money on their shirts, but aren't allowed to defend themselves from, or escape from, muggers.

This would IMHO promote companies to increase their own minimum pay rates as the money allows (and allow themselves to give themselves higher salaries). Maybe it's my 20-year-old naivety, but I could see this as being a way to eliminate economically hard hikes in the minimum wage by the government and replace them with increases by the companies, which would create a method to prevent all the cash from winding up at the top, keep minimum wage going up with the cost of living (hopefully) all without the potential for stunting economic growth with hiring freezes as companies try and pay the same amount in labor at a higher wage rate.

I see where you're coming from, but it seems that at best this would allow a status quo - as labor force salaries increase, so would prices and/or availability. I don't believe for one second that the compensation plans of the big muckety-mucks - to which you are obviously referring - will ever be written either completely as salaries, or figured directly as CoS in the same way as the manufacturing/service-providing work force. In other words: for a manufacturing concern (for example,) the salary of the factory workers is directly and immediately part of the CoS - the compensation plan of the company CFO isn't, and changing them in relation to each other won't balance out the impact to CoS.

Attach the minimum wage to inflation, and cost of living increases, and go from there.

#1 - Inflation and cost-of-living increases are the same. Cost-of-living increases because of, and in direct relation to, inflation.
#2 - It's impossible to attach minimum wage to inflation - as the minimum wage increases, it forces inflation higher; this would, in your scheme, force up the minimum wage, which would... see where I'm going?

Provide huge tax incentives for companies to keep over 80% of their workforces in America, penalize those who don't with much higher tax and tariff rates. Just like a number of foreign companies now manufacture stuff here, because it's cheaper overall than to ship it in from overseas.

There are elements of this idea that have merit, but I have to say this:

Big tax breaks for big corporations! That's what you've been saying all along, right Pres? Personally, I'd rather keep the tariffs but forget about the breaks - consider the lack of tariff to be the break, and give those breaks to the income that's staying home instead. Same break, plus stimulated spending.

Hit 'em in the bottom line, and watch the jobs come back.

Or, in the real world: hit 'em in the bottom line, and watch the jobs disappear.

[Tyyr]

Here's the problem with your idea, it gives a major competative advantage to minimizing the size of your company. Why? Because the more rungs you add between the top and the bottom the higher you have to raise the guy on bottom's pay to have any real differentiation between the top and bottom.

Say the bottom rung on your payscale is something like Janitor. You pay him $10 an hour. Your N is set at 10 so the highest paid guy in the company can only make $100/hr. Well if I've got a small company I can afford to have something like four or five pay levels that are distinct and offer sizable increases in salary. However the bigger your company gets the more you have to pare those levels down. Instead of 5 levels you might have to have 50 or more and you're always constrained by the guy on top never getting more than $100/hr. What you wind up with is going to be large companies hemoraging workers who go to smaller companies where getting a raise can mean another $5 or $10 an hour instead of $2 or less.

Maybe it's my 20-year-old naivety,

Mostly. Here's the thing, this obsession with CEO salaries is idiotic. There are a statistical blip. In the grand scheme of the economy and even companies what you pay that one guy doesn't amount to shit. Do some of them get paid ridiculous salaries? Yes. Does it matter? No. If anything that's something for individual companies to sort out and correct themselves, federally mandated CEO salaries will certainly sound good but it's pointless pandering.

I saw a figure the other day (don't now how accurate it was) that if minimum wage had kept pace with inflation and overall income growth from 1968, it would be $21 an hour now.

And here's my question, what jobs paid minimum wage back in the day? The workforce has changed greatly. 30 years ago you could wind up a manager in a company without a college degree, today? Not so much, not a major one at least. Even basic jobs require higher skill levels and more education. The thing to do would be to look at individual jobs, look at how they have evolved over the last 50 years, and what has their pay trended like? Minimum wage jobs of 40 years ago are not the same as today.

Provide huge tax incentives for companies to keep over 80% of their workforces in America, penalize those who don't with much higher tax and tariff rates. Just like a number of foreign companies now manufacture stuff here, because it's cheaper overall than to ship it in from overseas.

That's a free trade issue. The main problem there is we play fair, and no one else does. China is a prime example of this, we play by the rules, they wipe their ass with them in full view of us, don't even pretend to abide by them, and we still back off anytime they threaten to mess with trade with us. One thing you need to realize though is that if we do start to impose tarriffs and such it's not going to instantly make things better. It'll actually instantly make things worse as the economy is upset. Would it be worth it to show that if someone isn't willing to practice free trade we WILL take steps to remove their cheating advantages? Probably. Just be aware that it will hurt in the short term.

Also, manufacturing is gone. It just is and it's not coming back. I know people like to stare at the flag waiving in the wind, put their hands over their hearts and wax philosophical about that glorious time when 'MURICA made things and had hardworking people making things. Then you offer them one of those hard working jobs, they say "Fuck that," and go back to their white collar office. You cannot make t-shirts and squeaky toys and toilet bowl brushes at the price we pay for them and pay the people making them a living wage for the US. You can't compete with places that pay people less a week than we'd pay them in an hour. Not unless you want to pay $30 for a white t-shirt, $15 for a dog toy, and $100 each for a pot, and we don't. Even if we did, even if we sucked it up, banned imports period (because you'll need some ridiculous tariffs to make manufacturing in the US look like a good idea), and dealt with the CoL going through the fucking roof. Wages will start to catch up but... well they probably won't actually wind up making more than we do now, they'll just catch up to the new, much higher, CoL. We also won't be able to export any of that stuff because of just how much it costs us to make it, which will trickle down into the things we can export like planes, cars, tech, and other things as the people who make those things wage's increase to keep pace with what they now have to pay for t-shirts, and dog toys, and toilet brushes.

In other words, move on. Focus on the stuff we can do better than everyone else and can export. Technology, things like planes, and cars, and electronics, and entertainment. Instead of longing for the days when you could just drop out of high school and go right to work in a factory sticking a nose on a stuffed dog for eight hours a day for the next fifteen years shoot for the kind of economy where you get an eduction and go run the factory or design the next iThing or whatever. Trying to bring back squeaky toy manufacturing to the US is pointless.

[Mikey]

Also, manufacturing is gone. It just is and it's not coming back. I know people like to stare at the flag waiving in the wind, put their hands over their hearts and wax philosophical about that glorious time when 'MURICA made things and had hardworking people making things. Then you offer them one of those hard working jobs, they say "Fuck that," and go back to their white collar office. You cannot make t-shirts and squeaky toys and toilet bowl brushes at the price we pay for them and pay the people making them a living wage for the US. You can't compete with places that pay people less a week than we'd pay them in an hour. Not unless you want to pay $30 for a white t-shirt, $15 for a dog toy, and $100 each for a pot, and we don't. Even if we did, even if we sucked it up, banned imports period (because you'll need some ridiculous tariffs to make manufacturing in the US look like a good idea), and dealt with the CoL going through the fucking roof. Wages will start to catch up but... well they probably won't actually wind up making more than we do now, they'll just catch up to the new, much higher, CoL. We also won't be able to export any of that stuff because of just how much it costs us to make it, which will trickle down into the things we can export like planes, cars, tech, and other things as the people who make those things wage's increase to keep pace with what they now have to pay for t-shirts, and dog toys, and toilet brushes.

This. ^

Even with no movement on minimum wage and a complete maintenance of the current status quo in the American pay scale, does anyone (besides Tyyr) have any idea how much your $5 pack of AA batteries would be if we somehow forced by tax or legislation those batteries to be solely made in 'Murica? How much your can of pineapple would be if we used Hawai'ian pineapples instead of Thai pineapples? Hell, even in Hawai'i local pineapples are only used for tourists and export - they're too expensive for the locals to use, even considering the alternative is ignoring the ones grown next door and using ones imported from Thailand. That's an extreme example, but it is perfectly illustrative of the reasons why so much is imported or outsourced. Guys, the reasons for those things happening was never because anyone hates America, it's because that's what market pressures demanded.

[Tsukiyumi]

#1 - Inflation and cost-of-living increases are the same. Cost-of-living increases because of, and in direct relation to, inflation.
#2 - It's impossible to attach minimum wage to inflation - as the minimum wage increases, it forces inflation higher; this would, in your scheme, force up the minimum wage, which would... see where I'm going?

I thought inflation was influenced by a few other factors than just minimum wage increases. Huh.

Big tax breaks for big corporations! That's what you've been saying all along, right Pres?

I'm just playing along with a discussion about capitalism. When you're playing Monopoly, you don't use Chinese Checkers rules. I think the whole game is rigged, and should be burnt to the ground.

Or, in the real world: hit 'em in the bottom line, and watch the jobs disappear.

I'm sure not all companies are as greedy and stupid as Hostess; if they are, then we have a much larger problem.

And here's my question, what jobs paid minimum wage back in the day? The workforce has changed greatly. 30 years ago you could wind up a manager in a company without a college degree, today? Not so much, not a major one at least. Even basic jobs require higher skill levels and more education. The thing to do would be to look at individual jobs, look at how they have evolved over the last 50 years, and what has their pay trended like? Minimum wage jobs of 40 years ago are not the same as today.

Yeah, they require you to work harder, for longer hours at more complex tasks, for less equivalent pay, all while CEOs delegate everything in return for multi-million dollar salaries and investors basically do nothing but put in money and collect a check. Awesome! I love living off of the scraps that someone decides to toss me! Thank goodness they're allowing me to be their indentured servant!

While we're on the subject of job requirements, I keep hearing "jobs today and the jobs of tomorrow will require more education". While this is almost certainly true, there are at least two glaring problems with this scenario.

1) requiring people to go into massive debt to land a decent job is completely unreasonable. We need way more government funding and restructuring for education, both k-12 and college grants (not loans) if this is the trend of the future.

2) people have not become any smarter in the last 40 years. In fact, I'd say the evidence shows the average American has become quite a bit dumber in that time period. What are these (vast throngs of poor stupid) people supposed to do? Fuck off and die seems to be the current thinking, because there are not enough waitstaff/farmworker type jobs around for these people to fill, and they can't survive on the wages provided anyways. I believe human augmentation is the obvious answer, but then that will probably increase the requirements even further, and people, while more intelligent, will still be stuck in low-wage jobs that can't pay the electric bill and food, let alone rent.

That's a free trade issue. The main problem there is we play fair, and no one else does. China is a prime example of this, we play by the rules, they wipe their ass with them in full view of us, don't even pretend to abide by them, and we still back off anytime they threaten to mess with trade with us. One thing you need to realize though is that if we do start to impose tarriffs and such it's not going to instantly make things better. It'll actually instantly make things worse as the economy is upset. Would it be worth it to show that if someone isn't willing to practice free trade we WILL take steps to remove their cheating advantages? Probably. Just be aware that it will hurt in the short term.

Hooray for globalization! Really smart plan, there. Yet another reason I'm anti free-trade capitalism. It's like we're all supposed to be playing the same game, but the rules are different for everyone.

Also, manufacturing is gone. It just is and it's not coming back.

Yeah, tough shit for everyone not smart enough or wealthy enough to get an education and a white-collar job. I'm in college right now, and I can say with certainty that 80-90% of my classmates (of the ones right out of high school) are barely smart enough to spell their own names. To a degree, you are correct, in that the old-school dummy presses a button for 12 hours manufacturing jobs are gone. Until people in the third world get to this same level, at least. Then who's going to build all the widgets for a dollar an hour with no safety guidelines in poor conditions for 16 hours a day?

America is actually seeing the beginning of a new manufacturing revolution, using more high-tech methods like plasma routing, and 3d printing machines. I saw another article recently that said a number of companies are gearing up to be able to make anything from cars to airplanes to bottle openers and bowls with 3d printing factories here in the US within the next 10-20 years. These won't be the traditional Joe six-pack blue-collar factory jobs, but they will be trade school jobs, not PhD level ones.

In other words, move on. Focus on the stuff we can do better than everyone else and can export. Technology, things like planes, and cars, and electronics, and entertainment. Instead of longing for the days when you could just drop out of high school and go right to work in a factory sticking a nose on a stuffed dog for eight hours a day for the next fifteen years shoot for the kind of economy where you get an eduction and go run the factory or design the next iThing or whatever. Trying to bring back squeaky toy manufacturing to the US is pointless.

Wait, you mean the planes that employ a few thousand people to make, the cars that GM builds in Mexico, and the electronics that are all made in third-world countries by children? Like I said, not everyone is smart enough to go get an education and run the factory. How many factories are there that millions of people can go run one just to make a middle-class salary?

Again, if education is a requirement, then we need to make it completely free. Period. The age of Thad Moneyworth the Third getting a free ride to college and paid room and board while everyone else has to work two jobs and go to school should be over. We are also going to seriously have to consider what to do with the people who are just not smart enough to complete college, when there are millions too slow to finish high school. I think it's time for a massive paradigm shift in how our society is structured and run; if we keep on this path, the world's house of cards economy will implode at some point.

Guys, the reasons for those things happening was never because anyone hates America, it's because that's what market pressures demanded.

You just reminded me: when you say "the market regulates CEO salaries" you mean, the board of directors that the guys play golf with regulate that, right? The stock market and market pressures are just an arbitrary shell game set up and run by the people with money and power.

[Mikey]

I thought inflation was influenced by a few other factors than just minimum wage increases. Huh.

It is, but your original statement to this end actually referenced the obverse; while inflation is influenced by a number of things, cost-of-living increase is influenced solely by inflation.

I'm sure not all companies are as greedy and stupid as Hostess; if they are, then we have a much larger problem.

Yes, it's very hep and riot to say these issues are all due to corporations being greedy and stupid (a misleading saw, BTW, since corporations have a mechanism in place to limit that rapaciousness while other sorts of companies don't,) but the fact is that companies having to downsize when their bottom lines decrease isn't related to being greedy and stupid; it's related to the fact that companies need to clear a certain margin - well over and above simple profit margin - in order to continue to be a functioning business. Is it "greedy and stupid" to want to keep employing - and paying - your employees?

Yeah, they require you to work harder, for longer hours at more complex tasks, for less equivalent pay,

That can't be ascribed to any employer any more than it can be ascribed to astrology. The change in the nature of employment is due as much to your desire to have a refrigerator instead of a root cellar and a washing machine instead of two rocks and a river.

all while CEOs delegate everything in return for multi-million dollar salaries and investors basically do nothing but put in money and collect a check. Awesome! I love living off of the scraps that someone decides to toss me! Thank goodness they're allowing me to be their indentured servant!

Again, this is all very buzzword-y and it's very cool to use CEO as if it were a four-letter word; but most of that usage comes with a demonstrated lack of understanding. Are some corporate officers crooked, or at least lazy and greedy? Sure. But so are some TV repairmen, some nurses, and some sanitation workers. As Tyyr pointed out, the officers who make the salaries about which you are talking work for companies for whom those huge salaries are barely a blip on the P & L, if they are a blip at all. As to investors: a) that's the whole point of many investors' entire foray into the market, and b) I personally know of plenty - I know of an absolute shitload - of investors who put their input into the direction of the beneficiaries of their investment. Finally on this point, if and when you learn about many of the various types of investment, you will find that there are many kinds that may allow you to choose categories or qualities of the destination of your capital but do not come with the sort of proxy of which you're thinking. SPDR's, index funds, mortgage funds, zero-coupon investments, etc., etc., ad nauseum - all of which are eminently valid choices for individual investors but don't get you invited to the annual shareholders' meeting. As far as throwing you a scrap and the indentured servant comment - who's holding the proverbial gun to your head?

We need way more government funding and restructuring for education, both k-12 and college grants (not loans) if this is the trend of the future.

Again, if education is a requirement, then we need to make it completely free. Period. The age of Thad Moneyworth the Third getting a free ride to college and paid room and board while everyone else has to work two jobs and go to school should be over.

I can't afford to send everyone else to college. That comment isn't as facile as it seems - like everything else there is a substantial cost per capita to run a college or university. If we make it free, then there won't be any colleges or universities. If you mean to say that the government should buy you an education, that's the same as saying that the taxpaying public owes you a college education; and frankly, paying that much more a year because you want to go to college for free can and will be a real hardship on a great number of families.

You just reminded me: when you say "the market regulates CEO salaries" you mean, the board of directors that the guys play golf with regulate that, right? The stock market and market pressures are just an arbitrary shell game set up and run by the people with money and power.

No, in point of fact I meant exactly what I said. Since I know you are neither naive nor stupid, I'm going to attribute the above commentary to the fact that you wish to be incendiary rather than rational. The board of directors to which you refer may administer or execute the nuts and bolts of that CEO's salary, but the fact of that salary being on one order of magnitude or another is based on one thing. In a corporation, it's based on maintaining a P-E ratio... which the investing public-at-large can and does monitor and regulate with the strongest voice available - its decision to invest or divest. In a non-incorporated company, things are even simpler: either the company gets the people it wants (by compensating them right) and keeps them and still turns a profit, or it doesn't - according to one sole arbiter, the owner. The stock market and its adjunct pressures are the sincerest, truest, most honest and nitty-gritty type of oversight these corporations could ever have, and to call it an "arbitrary shell game set up and run by the people with money and power" is both ridiculous and either ignorant or wilfully blind in order to ascend a soapbox more easily.

[Tsukiyumi]

I'm sure not all companies are as greedy and stupid as Hostess; if they are, then we have a much larger problem.

Yes, it's very hep and riot to say these issues are all due to corporations being greedy and stupid (a misleading saw, BTW, since corporations have a mechanism in place to limit that rapaciousness while other sorts of companies don't,) but the fact is that companies having to downsize when their bottom lines decrease isn't related to being greedy and stupid; it's related to the fact that companies need to clear a certain margin - well over and above simple profit margin - in order to continue to be a functioning business. Is it "greedy and stupid" to want to keep employing - and paying - your employees?

At the company in question, they closed up shop because the higher-ups wanted the employees to take yet another pay/benefit cut right after the upper management had just received millions in bonuses and increased their own salaries. If you don't think that's flat-out greed, you and I have a very different definition of the word. The upper management doesn't give a shit that the company went down; they'll move on to another multi-million dollar job, and the investors will make a bundle selling off the companies assets and rights.

That can't be ascribed to any employer any more than it can be ascribed to astrology. The change in the nature of employment is due as much to your desire to have a refrigerator instead of a root cellar and a washing machine instead of two rocks and a river.

Odd that people have had refrigerators and washing machines for about a century without needing employment that required a degree. If you mean that our society has become needlessly overcompicated and over reliant on technology, I agree. Stop putting computers in everything from fridges to forks, and maybe the CoL wouldn't be so high.

all while CEOs delegate everything in return for multi-million dollar salaries and investors basically do nothing but put in money and collect a check. Awesome! I love living off of the scraps that someone decides to toss me! Thank goodness they're allowing me to be their indentured servant!

Again, this is all very buzzword-y and it's very cool to use CEO as if it were a four-letter word; but most of that usage comes with a demonstrated lack of understanding. Are some corporate officers crooked, or at least lazy and greedy? Sure. But so are some TV repairmen, some nurses, and some sanitation workers. As Tyyr pointed out, the officers who make the salaries about which you are talking work for companies for whom those huge salaries are barely a blip on the P & L, if they are a blip at all.

If those huge salaries are barely a blip, then it should be a non-issue to pay their low-level employees better.

As far as throwing you a scrap and the indentured servant comment - who's holding the proverbial gun to your head?

Society. Take it or leave it isn't an option; you can't just go live off the land somewhere; it's all owned by someone. The options are take what they give you (and like it) or fuck off and die.

I can't afford to send everyone else to college. That comment isn't as facile as it seems - like everything else there is a substantial cost per capita to run a college or university. If we make it free, then there won't be any colleges or universities. If you mean to say that the government should buy you an education, that's the same as saying that the taxpaying public owes you a college education; and frankly, paying that much more a year because you want to go to college for free can and will be a real hardship on a great number of families.

Well, there it is. They've made this a requirement, but are unwilling to pay for it. It's not about people "wanting" to go to college; we've already said, you have to, if you expect to live better than a slum tenant (even the slums are thousands a month in rent and bills). Force the hardship and burden downward onto the poorest, rather than expecting the upper crust to pay more to give everyone else the same chances they received by virtue of birth (either through family wealth, or being born in an era when you could just work hard and move ahead, and weren't required to get an associate's degree to flip burgers). The same public that allowed this situation to evolve owes the poorest the chance to play the game by it's new rules.

No, in point of fact I meant exactly what I said. Since I know you are neither naive nor stupid, I'm going to attribute the above commentary to the fact that you wish to be incendiary rather than rational. The board of directors to which you refer may administer or execute the nuts and bolts of that CEO's salary, but the fact of that salary being on one order of magnitude or another is based on one thing. In a corporation, it's based on maintaining a P-E ratio... which the investing public-at-large can and does monitor and regulate with the strongest voice available - its decision to invest or divest. In a non-incorporated company, things are even simpler: either the company gets the people it wants (by compensating them right) and keeps them and still turns a profit, or it doesn't - according to one sole arbiter, the owner. The stock market and its adjunct pressures are the sincerest, truest, most honest and nitty-gritty type of oversight these corporations could ever have, and to call it an "arbitrary shell game set up and run by the people with money and power" is both ridiculous and either ignorant or wilfully blind in order to ascend a soapbox more easily.

When speculation can run the market up or down based on what certain people say or don't say, that is nothing but a corrupt shell game. The people in power want to stay where they are, and if you don't believe that the markets are manipulated, then I believe that is either ignorant or willfully blind. Corruption is far more rampant than the media and those in power would like everyone to believe. IIRC, we had some small issue about that very thing back in '07-'08, but I may be mistaken. I seem to recall a whole lot of hedge fund managers, and huge investment corporations manipulating the system for their own enrichment, and not receiving a day in jail; in fact, they received huge bonuses, and retirement packages. Or maybe I just imagined that whole thing.

[Tsukiyumi]

Also, still no answer on the question of what are the tens of millions of less intelligent people supposed to do if every decent job requires an above average intellect and education?

Why should every middle-income job be so complex that it requires a degree? Where does that stop?

Like I said, in the long run (or possibly much sooner), our current system is going to burn out and implode. My sig elucidates my feelings on that subject.