Food for thought :eyebrow:

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

A CEO making 500 times the average salary of his workers, not the lowest paid worker, is probably in a position to take less money for himself, let's say 10 times the average, and use the remaining 490x to either increase all his employee's wages or perhaps to create more jobs.

This idea survives because it's appealing, but when you look at it:

McDonald's payroll is $4800000000 and the CEO is paid $7300000 (over 600% of average worker salary) So he could only increase McD payroll to $4807300000 by forgoing his own compensation.

If the CEO of McDonalds did his job entirely pro-bono and personally wrote a check to every McDonald's employee at the end of the year, dividing his expected salary evenly to each and every one of them, that check would be for five dollars.

However. If that CEO did an outstanding job? Raises for everybody, a hundred thousand new jobs a year. If that CEO did a shitty job? Cuts, losses, pain.

So. Can another $million get the board somebody who understands the industry, finance, marketing, accounting, who can anticipate major trends, make the best decisions? Absolutely worth it, if your goal was more money and better jobs for all. You would make that tradeoff and spend that money every single time if you were deciding how management compensation should operate.