> The highest paid S&P 500 CEO last year was Rick Smith of Taser maker Axon Enterprise, who raked in $164.5mn mostly from stock awards after meeting targets over several years, according to data provided by MyLogIQ.
> Brian Niccol, chief executive of Starbucks, was second with $95.8mn in total last year, mostly from stock awards.
These articles are outrage bait. The reason for CEO comp to keep growing is because they’re largely compensated in equity (performance-based compensation), which keeps growing. This tracks with how the S&P 500 has performed over the past few years, partially due to inflation
diggan · 1h ago
> The reason for CEO comp to keep growing is because they’re largely compensated in equity (performance-based compensation), which keeps growing.
Does it really matter why or how the inequality keeps growing? Shouldn't the focus be on that it is increasing, and potential ways of decreasing it instead?
> Niccol’s pay package as an example of the widest pay gap between the top executive and median employee of one of the biggest US companies. Niccol’s annual pay was more than 6,666 times greater than the total pay for the median employee, a part-time barista, who earns about $15,000 a year, according to company filings.
Niccol could be paid in cars, legos or flowers for all I care, it doesn't change the fact that the difference of compensation is 6,666 times.
jameslk · 1h ago
It matters where you direct your attention. Performance-based comp is a red herring. If you want to direct your rage at wealth inequality in the working class, perhaps start with the things that have eroded the supply-demand balance of labor, such as globalization and technology.
diggan · 11m ago
> If you want to direct your rage at wealth inequality in the working class, perhaps start with the things that have eroded the supply-demand balance of labor, such as globalization and technology
Not that I'm feeling any rage, I left that unproductive phase a long time ago.
But even so, why cannot we talk about multiple unfair things at the same thing? Not sure how globalization and technology is even relevant when the explicit topic of this submission is about CEO/executive pay at US companies. Why try to take the discussion away from that?
throwawayqqq11 · 50m ago
Dont forget the monetary/banking system in opposition to labor value.
Money is cheap for the rich, which is also a big factor of why stock markets (and compensations) behave like they do. All signs point down, public infrastructure and cost of living struggles under budget pressure while stocks are at an all time high.
Simply saying, its earned compensation doesnt even tell half the story. I consider it deception.
ryandvm · 6m ago
Those poor CEOs. If only they could figure out some way to not take so much equity while their workers suffer wage stagnation...
miltonlost · 1h ago
So its ragebait because... they are rewarded with equity and not via cash? I guess I'm not sure where the outrage bait is when wealth is wealth compared to their workers who get comparatively nothing.
the_snooze · 8m ago
If anything, getting rewarded in equity is better for CEOs because they can buy-borrow-die their way out of paying taxes altogether.
fehudakjf · 1h ago
Or one, such as myself, could read the rage of the article as being about the consolidation of compensation of equity to the c-suite.
All equity given to any ceo could, and should, instead be divided amongst the entire org's staff.
6stringmerc · 1h ago
Okay, you've identified the factual component of the Why of the correlation, now Why is the S&P 500 completely detached from fundamentals like P/E and quarterly reporting?
I mean you're technically correct but then again it's like saying "the skin on your thigh is extremely distended and painful but that's because of the infected boil on it" as if the context is reasonable. Unfortunately it is not.
Disclosure: have financial positions based on collapse of US economy (see my Medium article for more)
simianwords · 49m ago
Looking at CEO pay as the primary reason for inadequate living standards is an egregious mistake and a big pet peeve of mine.
CEO's and companies _create_ wealth. It can be true that by taxing and redistributing you can increase living standards of poor people but it is not at all the case that they are the primary reason other people don't have money.
There are two forces that are somewhat equally important: creating wealth that never existed before and distributing it if necessary to maintain some equitability. The redistribution part is only possible because the wealth was created to be redistributed later.
Creating wealth (which is done by companies and CEO's are a big part of it) is strictly a positive increase - creating wealth doesn't mean you take it from others which is a very common misconception I keep noticing in many places. CEO's paid a lot of money is not money that is taken away from others - it is new money that didn't exist.
Now to be fair this article doesn't say it out loud but I think the vibes are there and many people do believe this.
miltonlost · 13m ago
Atlas Shrugged was not an economic textbook. CEOs create nothing. They make no widgets, they code no infrastructure, they build nothing real.
ryandvm · 4m ago
And let's be real, as far as actual work output is concerned, I think there are few jobs in this economy that are better suited to replacement by an AI. If only they made an AI that could schmooze at the country club.
simianwords · 5m ago
Why are they paid so high by the board then? Surely they would have realised what you realised and hired a random person and paid them minimal wages and kept the remaining to themselves.
pupppet · 1h ago
How much of this are the CEOs being rewarded for trimming down the workforce and replacing them with AI. Maybe their service/product will turn to shit but that’s the next CEO’s problem.
diggan · 1h ago
> How much of this are the CEOs being rewarded
Of the examples is the CEO of Starbucks, unless they started having robots as baristas, I feel like there are parts of the workforce they cannot just "replace with AI", compared to many technology companies.
Baristas are fine as you said but yes starbucks is firing 1 in 10 office workers this year.
The LLMs trained on our work are replacing us while the ppl up top get higher pay, all is right with the world.
bix6 · 2h ago
How much longer will people tolerate this? Veggies spiked 30% last month. At some point this has to fall apart as regular people just straight up cannot afford anything?
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> How much longer will people tolerate this?
Tolerate? We’re cheering it on. We just voted in a unified government to hose the poor to give the rich a tax cut.
I think that the way to win in American politics is to tell whatever group who you want to vote for you that you intend to screw them as hard as physically possible.
Americans politics in 2025 can be best summed up with one word: Schadenfreude
bigstrat2003 · 6m ago
You aren't trying very hard to understand what's going on if you just blithely write it off as "people vote for whomever screws them". A much more plausible explanation is that there's a contingent of Latinos who take pride in being legal citizens, resent people who are here illegally, and Trump's gains were with said contingent. That's just a theory on my part which may not be true - but it is at least plausible, unlike the idea that people are actively trying to hurt themselves.
JumpCrisscross · 36m ago
> Trump told Americas latinos that he was going to deport them en mass and that got him +20 points shift in latino voting patterns in 4 years
American politics is racially depolarising. Democrats absolutely missed this. Pretending a gay business owner and Catholic construction worker will vote the same because they share a skin color and language is not informative.
toomuchtodo · 2h ago
When they are willing to take action to improve the governance outcome. If you don't like your representation, do something about it.
pessimizer · 1h ago
The suggestion that misgoverned people should decide not to be misgoverned, and accomplish this by doing "something" is certainly a suggestion.
The problem is that the mainstream American conception of liberty has come to mean liberty for corpos, inverting the thrust of the individualist/revolutionary spirit to effectively undermine individual liberty. And we're actually well into using those boxes - effectively at the jury box stage but with the president doing the legal nullification rather than juries. And the useful idiots are still clamoring to move on to the ammo box. The worse it gets, the harder they demand their self-defeating quack cures.
GuinansEyebrows · 1h ago
look, i agree with not blaming each other, but at some point we are going to have to develop a sense of class solidarity like the ownership class has, and to wield it in order to effect material changes.
happytoexplain · 1h ago
Why would this comment be directed at the parent, rather than at the GP?
GuinansEyebrows · 7m ago
i read "certainly a suggestion" as sarcasm. maybe i assumed incorrectly :)
megaman821 · 1h ago
Connect the dots here. What on earth does CEO pay have to do with vegtable prices? Perhaps look at tarrifs and trade barriers, transportation and storage fees, weather patterns and probably a dozen more things more relevant than CEO pay.
happytoexplain · 1h ago
You think the suffering peasant dragging the wealthy into the streets gives a shit about how many layers of indirection lie between his suffering and their wealth?
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> the suffering peasant dragging the wealthy into the streets
Even in the French Revolution, when money and people were much less mobile than they are today, the aristocracy as a whole consolidated their wealth.
To the extent anyone wants a revolution in America who isn’t an idiot, it’s the rich.
jeffbee · 1h ago
The executive class supports the tariffs guy. That's the connection.
megaman821 · 1h ago
If you believe that the "Eat the Rich" and Luigi messaging is going to get the tariffs guy and his ilk out of office, good luck. Trying to punish the rich is not going to work when most Americans aspire to be rich themselves, even if it is unlikely.
jeffbee · 1h ago
You appear to have commented on the wrong thread when you intended to reply to your strawman.
megaman821 · 1h ago
Well feel free to expound on how marginally hurting a few dozen CEOs furthers your aim. Or just continue to be a dick.
aosospoaskns · 1h ago
As long as the majority of people in America view politics through a left / right lens we’re not gonna get anywhere. Elites introducing fragmentation in society is a tried and true tactic to allow them to continue to abuse the populace. You think billionaires actually care about political parties? Look how fast Bill Ackman etc switched after October 7th.
Nations have solved the “parasitic elite” problem in the past, but those nations are painted as evil nowadays.
JumpCrisscross · 23m ago
> you think billionaires actually care about political parties? Look how fast Bill Ackman etc switched after October 7th
Isn't this evidence of billionaires, like other humans, having pet issues they'll pivot over? There are tens of millions of Obama-Trump and Biden-Trump voters.
righthand · 2h ago
Good question. I guess until they go hungry in the middle class. I was just told in another thread that I can afford eggs even though they’ve spiked 200%. So I guess a 30% for produce is no big deal.
pessimizer · 2h ago
They can just take out payday loans.
edit: have they ever considered prison?
bilbo0s · 1h ago
Are there no workhouses?
Are there no prisons?
/s
Hat tip to Dickens.
Something about our economic system needs to change. I hope it's not prisons and workhouses in the future, but the declining quality of people being voted into our steward class is concerning. Something tells me for some of our elected officials, prisons and workhouses are viable options.
JohnMakin · 1h ago
Let them fund doordash deliveries with microloans /s
throwmeaway222 · 1h ago
The system is working as expected however. I get that a lot of people see wealth concentration as a bad thing, but it's just part of the system. If those wealthy people are willing to spend - then it goes back into the economy and prices rise, but people are getting paid for things.
If they hold onto it, then prices stabilize, the value of the dollar temporarily goes up. At some point these rich people spend all of it somehow.
And if you, as a person that demands more pay, then just ask. If you get a no, quit. It's as simple as that. No one should be forced to do anything different. I wouldn't ask you to give up half your salary?
PenguinCoder · 1h ago
> And if you, as a person that demands more pay, then just ask. If you get a no, quit. It's as simple as that.
You speak from a position of privilege. It is not as simple as that. It is expensive to exist in this current day, and quitting a job when you don't have another source of income lined up, is not smart; or doable for the majority of the working class. Bills and debt collectors don't care about your moral high ground.
throwawayqqq11 · 32m ago
If social mobility was equally distributed, in both directions, up and down, you would be able to observe a decrease in wealth concentration.
Yet, what you clearly observe is ...?
And this tells you what about the system and its intent? Can you see mow, why so many are concerned?
lm28469 · 1h ago
Hm yeah buddy that's not really how it goes historically though. You can't just tell people to pound sand indefinitely, something has to give
bongodongobob · 1h ago
Absolutely not. 100 million people will spend $100 million a million times faster than a billionaire will.
pessimizer · 2h ago
Why wouldn't it? Prices and profit margins are both up!
belter · 1h ago
Do you have a headline, "employee compensation at top US companies accelerates at fastest pace in 4 years" to match your comment? :-)
at-fates-hands · 1h ago
Did you read the article?
Total pay for the broader American workforce increased 3.6 per cent in the 12 months that ended December 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
JKCalhoun · 1h ago
I read the article and I guess we're supposed to be okay that CEO's averaged 7.7% since employees saw a 3.6% increase. (Never mind what inflation did to that 3.6% increase.)
Total pay for the broader American workforce increased 3.6 per cent in the 12 months that ended December 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And the highest paid S&P 500 CEO? A guy who runs a Taser company who's SAAS software segment has taken off:
The highest paid S&P 500 CEO last year was Rick Smith of Taser maker Axon Enterprise, who raked in $164.5mn
And why was he paid so much?
mostly from stock awards after meeting targets over several years, according to data provided by MyLogIQ.
So he was smart with this stock options and oh yeah, just happened to hit the company's revenue targets several years in a row. I'm supposed to be angry because the CEO actually did his job, hit his goals and returned a great profit to the shareholders?
Axon's stock a year ago was at $354/share. This year at the same time? Its now $760/share. Over a five year period, the stock went from $83/share to where it is now at $760.
bumby · 1h ago
>Axon's stock a year ago was at $354/share. This year at the same time? Its now $760/share.
This is a somewhat incomplete picture. PE ratio was also inflated by 50% in the last year. So the increase in stock price isn’t tracking real earnings.
The larger point is that there may be a misalignment between what is good for a company/CEO and what is good for broader society. To that point, your example is a company that has effectively dodged duty/responsibility when their product kills somebody and pushed that responsibility onto peace officers.
bongodongobob · 1h ago
Depends on the compensation of the other employees that actually do the work. 4000 employees making 61k to 250k/yr. I don't know if they get stock or not, but people are pretty tired of this massive imbalance. Give him 10 million and give everyone else an extra 35k. He is still filthy rich and 4000 people get a potentially life changing raise.
fehudakjf · 1h ago
> If you actually read the article, you'll find:
If you actually form a cogent opinion of your own rather than shilling for monied interests you'll find:
All equity given to any ceo could, and should, instead be divided amongst the entire org's staff.
80% of all USD in circulation was printed between 2020 and 2022, poor bond performance ==> "there is no alternative", unhealthy amounts of gambling, central banks executing unhealthy amounts of QE.
All of this causes money to run to the stock market, equity valuations to go crazy high, and also concentrate at the top. This is seen to be true today as the equal-weighted s&p lost to the cap-weighted s&p by the largest margin on record in 23-24, more than 10%. During relatively healthier times, it usually outperforms by 1%ish. Check the expanding gulf between returns of the S&P top 10 and S&P next 490.
Execs get paid in equity more than employees, and so their TC accelerates faster.
Gambling (whitewashed terms: speculation/trading) is always the original sin :) Has been since the bronze age. Most of what most participants in the stock market do today is just meaningless zero-value drivel. Due to the tragedy-of-the-commons effect, it is almost impossible to do disciplined, "charlie munger"-style investing in the market today.
Historically, these conditions have always mean-reverted. But it has never been pretty :)
throwawayqqq11 · 26m ago
Id call interest / base rate the original sin, since its at the very top.
jchw · 1h ago
I foresee a future with many more Luigi's.
markus_zhang · 1h ago
I doubt. Whether what he did was right or not, it needed a lot of careful planning — not something everyone could do. The CEOs are safe.
jchw · 55m ago
There are around 350 million U.S. citizens, that are increasingly mentally unwell, feel disenfranchised, and every year, have a little bit less to lose.
Flight tracking data is public.
What's shocking isn't that the Luigi case happened; what's shocking is that it doesn't happen more frequently.
mothballed · 1h ago
True, but if the Luigis are more like a mass of Haitian slaves or angry French without enough cake, then the calculus might change...
throwawayqqq11 · 24m ago
Then the anger will discharge on proxies, like we already saw plenty of.
creddit · 1h ago
> Whether what he did was right or not, it needed a lot of careful planning — not something everyone could do.
I think just about literally anyone can go up to someone on the street, shoot them while they're defenseless and then get caught within 5 days.
Also, I can help you on your moral waffling: what he did was fundamentally wrong.
lm28469 · 1h ago
> Also, I can help you on your moral waffling: what he did was fundamentally wrong.
It depends on how you read the situation, if it's a slow brewing revolution it'll be deemed morally right after the facts
markus_zhang · 1h ago
That was a specific target though. I guess someone can figure that out given enough time, but that needs some planning.
creddit · 1h ago
It is incredibly easy to know specific times and places that a public enough figure like a CEO will be.
Public figures don't have personal security because it's _hard_ to find them. They have personal security because it's _easy_ to find them.
bongodongobob · 1h ago
Absolutely. Denying health care to millions of people is an atrocity.
No comments yet
codybontecou · 1h ago
You might be surprised. The CEO of Blackstone was just killed a few weeks ago.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> The CEO of Blackstone was just killed a few weeks ago
I would be surprised because it didn’t happen [1].
"LePatner, who served as CEO of the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT), was killed in a shooting Monday at the company’s headquarters, Blackstone said in a statement."
> who served as CEO of the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT)
Right. Same as the Luigi guy. She was "CEO" of a department. Not the CEO of Blackstone. Relative to the actually rich she's upper middle class.
JKCalhoun · 20m ago
I'm not disagreeing. Perhaps you could have responded to the original comment with that: that it was a CEO of a department that was shot.
jchw · 51m ago
That's not quite what happened. They did, however, attempt to kill some executives, and apparently due to a health issue, so it definitely has some echoes of the Luigi case.
creddit · 1h ago
You should get off TikTok and try reading the legacy news. Despite its failings, you would know a lot more about the failed attack on the NFL.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> a future with many more Luigi's
This is about actual CEOs, not mid-level executives who are CEOs of departments.
lm28469 · 1h ago
We get told they get paid so much because they take all the responsibilities and risks, that's simply a new risk
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> that's simply a new risk
But it’s not. The folks getting shot are mid-level executives.
JKCalhoun · 1h ago
Not likely. Human nature just isn't that way. We'll put up with a lot of bullshit ... until people begin to starve.
OgsyedIE · 1h ago
Wry comments about injustice aside, the events are just the market correcting prolonged underinvestment in private security, surely?
leptons · 2h ago
I guess this explains why I haven't had a raise in 4 years.
Insanity · 1h ago
But it also suggest an easy fix. Become CEO :)
ITB · 1h ago
I’m always surprised by how many people on HN have a distaste of free markets. I’ve always associated tech with capitalism-positive vibes.
lm28469 · 1h ago
> free markets
Where is this free market you're talking about ? Is it the ones with all the lobbies spending billions to get ahead ? Or the one where the government friends get the juicy contracts ?
ultrarunner · 1h ago
Agreed, but I suspect that this is an intuitive reaction to the fact that the markets are largely rigged in favor of the well connected. Of course, to the well-connected, this situation can be described as a "free market", but it isn't free in the same way it should be for the vast majority of people.
Even in popular tech-- the internet-- we're seeing a wave of regulation and surveillance that will certainly stifle future growth for the small guy. You still see a lot of positive sentiment with regard to the "old internet".
losteric · 1h ago
“Free markets” are a conceptual tool. People don’t like how the tool is being used in America (and tbh globally).
I’ve always associated HN with a more humane side of the tech industry, relatively more concerned about the wellbeing of society at large.
Big tech is long past having a positive impact, and well into crony capitalism/oligopolies/regulatory capture/maximizing exploitation and rent seeking.
arthurjordao · 1h ago
Science give us tech, not capitalism.
miltonlost · 1h ago
Tech? The one built on open source? Where people give away their code and time for free? That's the one that's capitalism-positive in your head? Maybe today once tech has become big money, but I wouldn't say traditionally.
simianwords · 1h ago
CEO pay is not zero sum. Employee wages can increase with (and even because of) CEO wage increase.
That's the whole problem, nobody would care if they could afford the same standard of living as their parents.
mothballed · 51m ago
How crazy would it be if the final departure from the gold standard in 1971 meant that the average person with little financial or other education just totally lost their most meaningful 1 dimension metric of how much their wage goes up so it became way easier to pull the wool over their eyes.
Not that it was totally accurate before, but the ability to use USD value alone as a measure of your Y/Y wage changes really went off the rails about 50 years ago.
It's not the only factor, of course. But remember the average level of intelligence and knowledge and realize half know less than that, then realize their only easy metric got completely obliterated.
simianwords · 1h ago
> nobody would care if they could afford the same standard of living as their parents
This is untrue - the consumption patterns (after accounting for inflation) of the bottom 20% in 2025 are way higher than in 1970s. Almost 60-70% higher. Almost everyone is better off today than before. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59510 has some clues.
I encourage you to do your own research on it. Try to answer this question: are we as a society materially better off today than 50 years ago?
Surprisingly your image while it doesn't show the full picture, still shows that the living standards haven't reduced.
lm28469 · 1h ago
"b-bu-but people can buy more slop and chinese gadgets, why aren't they happy?"
That's how you sound... they're unhappy because they can't afford a house or kids, because jobs are increasing precarious and unstable, &c. not because toilet paper and avocados are now 5% cheaper than in 1949
My (unskilled, uneducated) grandpa worked in the same place his whole life, afforded 4 kids and a flat on one income. I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids.
simianwords · 1h ago
They can't afford kids because of a totally different reason. The poorest countries have the highest fertility rates. The richest ones the lowest.
Crucially the cost of everything else has come down dramatically to balance for rise in home prices.
> I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids.
This is true but this is not because CEO wages are rising but despite it. IMO this is happening because people moved to the cities and enough houses were not built in time (you try to answer the question as to why). Your grandfather probably lived in a rural part of the country and could afford a big house where there was no demand - something you can still do now.
There is another reason housing prices have also gone up which is not talked about often - while prices of other things reduced people had more to spend on other things. They chose to put remaining on housing because.. well where else would you put it?
No comments yet
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
This is a different argument from real wages having not increased for 50 years, which is false.
diggan · 1h ago
> Employee wages can increase with (and even because of) CEO wage increase
Did they? Usually executive pay is increasing faster than typical employee's pay, is the article saying that they're increasing equally?
simianwords · 1h ago
They are increasing but not equally, nor did the article suggest it. I'm trying to suggest that CEO pay increasing is not necessarily a bad thing (which the article may have tried to imply).
miltonlost · 1h ago
Okay, I want to hear how CEOs wage goes up leads to employee wages going up without something like trickle-down coming out. That causal mechanism is completely unobvious in my mind.
simianwords · 1h ago
CEO wages increasing are due to competition amongst a few candidates who have the experience and competency required to run a big organisation and this drives up the wages.
If you have a company you want the best person to run it and if the best person costs a lot you might still want to hire them. Why do you think they are being paid that much? Its because the company gets back way more than they spent on the CEO wages.
Profits increasing for the company is a good thing - you can use it to further improve your company by hiring more people or hiring better people by paying them more. Profits increasing is also good for the country - more taxes collected.
glitchc · 2h ago
It's time to bring in legislation that limits what percentage of total compensation can be comprised of equities. It will cap the TC package and somewhat disincentivize short-term stock price thinking that currently dominates the boards of large corporations.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> It's time to bring in legislation that limits what percentage of total compensation can be comprised of equities. It will cap the TC package
Why? You’d just pay more cash. Or incentive bonds or whatnot.
Just add a marginal tax tier at $10mm or whatever.
glitchc · 1h ago
More cash automatically means more taxes. It gets reported as salary. Payment in equities is essentially a tax dodge as the only time they're taxed is when they get sold (capital gains).
JumpCrisscross · 35m ago
> More cash automatically means more taxes. It gets reported as salary.
Pay more to cover the taxes. Or, as I suggested, pay in assets that aren't equity. Bonds, for instance. Or, like, buy the executive's side business once a year.
Regulating compensation is a silly way to get around raising taxes on the rich.
baq · 1h ago
capping CEO TC in any way whatsoever is impossible, they'll always find a loophole, not to mention it's a feature, not a bug, for the current administration (and probably for any administration).
better incentivize companies to give CEOs more money if their employees get more money and also disincentivize short term stock price manipulation.
> Brian Niccol, chief executive of Starbucks, was second with $95.8mn in total last year, mostly from stock awards.
These articles are outrage bait. The reason for CEO comp to keep growing is because they’re largely compensated in equity (performance-based compensation), which keeps growing. This tracks with how the S&P 500 has performed over the past few years, partially due to inflation
Does it really matter why or how the inequality keeps growing? Shouldn't the focus be on that it is increasing, and potential ways of decreasing it instead?
> Niccol’s pay package as an example of the widest pay gap between the top executive and median employee of one of the biggest US companies. Niccol’s annual pay was more than 6,666 times greater than the total pay for the median employee, a part-time barista, who earns about $15,000 a year, according to company filings.
Niccol could be paid in cars, legos or flowers for all I care, it doesn't change the fact that the difference of compensation is 6,666 times.
Not that I'm feeling any rage, I left that unproductive phase a long time ago.
But even so, why cannot we talk about multiple unfair things at the same thing? Not sure how globalization and technology is even relevant when the explicit topic of this submission is about CEO/executive pay at US companies. Why try to take the discussion away from that?
Money is cheap for the rich, which is also a big factor of why stock markets (and compensations) behave like they do. All signs point down, public infrastructure and cost of living struggles under budget pressure while stocks are at an all time high.
Simply saying, its earned compensation doesnt even tell half the story. I consider it deception.
All equity given to any ceo could, and should, instead be divided amongst the entire org's staff.
I mean you're technically correct but then again it's like saying "the skin on your thigh is extremely distended and painful but that's because of the infected boil on it" as if the context is reasonable. Unfortunately it is not.
Disclosure: have financial positions based on collapse of US economy (see my Medium article for more)
CEO's and companies _create_ wealth. It can be true that by taxing and redistributing you can increase living standards of poor people but it is not at all the case that they are the primary reason other people don't have money.
There are two forces that are somewhat equally important: creating wealth that never existed before and distributing it if necessary to maintain some equitability. The redistribution part is only possible because the wealth was created to be redistributed later.
Creating wealth (which is done by companies and CEO's are a big part of it) is strictly a positive increase - creating wealth doesn't mean you take it from others which is a very common misconception I keep noticing in many places. CEO's paid a lot of money is not money that is taken away from others - it is new money that didn't exist.
Now to be fair this article doesn't say it out loud but I think the vibes are there and many people do believe this.
Of the examples is the CEO of Starbucks, unless they started having robots as baristas, I feel like there are parts of the workforce they cannot just "replace with AI", compared to many technology companies.
Baristas are fine as you said but yes starbucks is firing 1 in 10 office workers this year.
The LLMs trained on our work are replacing us while the ppl up top get higher pay, all is right with the world.
Tolerate? We’re cheering it on. We just voted in a unified government to hose the poor to give the rich a tax cut.
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-08/61367-Distributiona...
https://www.cbo.gov/about/overview
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/26/trump-harris-latino-voters-...
I think that the way to win in American politics is to tell whatever group who you want to vote for you that you intend to screw them as hard as physically possible.
Americans politics in 2025 can be best summed up with one word: Schadenfreude
American politics is racially depolarising. Democrats absolutely missed this. Pretending a gay business owner and Catholic construction worker will vote the same because they share a skin color and language is not informative.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/951719-power-concedes-nothi...
Even in the French Revolution, when money and people were much less mobile than they are today, the aristocracy as a whole consolidated their wealth.
To the extent anyone wants a revolution in America who isn’t an idiot, it’s the rich.
Nations have solved the “parasitic elite” problem in the past, but those nations are painted as evil nowadays.
Isn't this evidence of billionaires, like other humans, having pet issues they'll pivot over? There are tens of millions of Obama-Trump and Biden-Trump voters.
edit: have they ever considered prison?
Are there no prisons?
/s
Hat tip to Dickens.
Something about our economic system needs to change. I hope it's not prisons and workhouses in the future, but the declining quality of people being voted into our steward class is concerning. Something tells me for some of our elected officials, prisons and workhouses are viable options.
If they hold onto it, then prices stabilize, the value of the dollar temporarily goes up. At some point these rich people spend all of it somehow.
And if you, as a person that demands more pay, then just ask. If you get a no, quit. It's as simple as that. No one should be forced to do anything different. I wouldn't ask you to give up half your salary?
You speak from a position of privilege. It is not as simple as that. It is expensive to exist in this current day, and quitting a job when you don't have another source of income lined up, is not smart; or doable for the majority of the working class. Bills and debt collectors don't care about your moral high ground.
Yet, what you clearly observe is ...?
And this tells you what about the system and its intent? Can you see mow, why so many are concerned?
Total pay for the broader American workforce increased 3.6 per cent in the 12 months that ended December 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978" - https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2021/
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Employee – CEO pay gap historically wide
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44662542
If you actually read the article, you'll find:
Total pay for the broader American workforce increased 3.6 per cent in the 12 months that ended December 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And the highest paid S&P 500 CEO? A guy who runs a Taser company who's SAAS software segment has taken off:
The highest paid S&P 500 CEO last year was Rick Smith of Taser maker Axon Enterprise, who raked in $164.5mn
And why was he paid so much?
mostly from stock awards after meeting targets over several years, according to data provided by MyLogIQ.
So he was smart with this stock options and oh yeah, just happened to hit the company's revenue targets several years in a row. I'm supposed to be angry because the CEO actually did his job, hit his goals and returned a great profit to the shareholders?
Axon's stock a year ago was at $354/share. This year at the same time? Its now $760/share. Over a five year period, the stock went from $83/share to where it is now at $760.
This is a somewhat incomplete picture. PE ratio was also inflated by 50% in the last year. So the increase in stock price isn’t tracking real earnings.
The larger point is that there may be a misalignment between what is good for a company/CEO and what is good for broader society. To that point, your example is a company that has effectively dodged duty/responsibility when their product kills somebody and pushed that responsibility onto peace officers.
If you actually form a cogent opinion of your own rather than shilling for monied interests you'll find:
All equity given to any ceo could, and should, instead be divided amongst the entire org's staff.
All of this causes money to run to the stock market, equity valuations to go crazy high, and also concentrate at the top. This is seen to be true today as the equal-weighted s&p lost to the cap-weighted s&p by the largest margin on record in 23-24, more than 10%. During relatively healthier times, it usually outperforms by 1%ish. Check the expanding gulf between returns of the S&P top 10 and S&P next 490.
Execs get paid in equity more than employees, and so their TC accelerates faster.
Gambling (whitewashed terms: speculation/trading) is always the original sin :) Has been since the bronze age. Most of what most participants in the stock market do today is just meaningless zero-value drivel. Due to the tragedy-of-the-commons effect, it is almost impossible to do disciplined, "charlie munger"-style investing in the market today.
Historically, these conditions have always mean-reverted. But it has never been pretty :)
Flight tracking data is public.
What's shocking isn't that the Luigi case happened; what's shocking is that it doesn't happen more frequently.
I think just about literally anyone can go up to someone on the street, shoot them while they're defenseless and then get caught within 5 days.
Also, I can help you on your moral waffling: what he did was fundamentally wrong.
It depends on how you read the situation, if it's a slow brewing revolution it'll be deemed morally right after the facts
Public figures don't have personal security because it's _hard_ to find them. They have personal security because it's _easy_ to find them.
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I would be surprised because it didn’t happen [1].
[1] https://www.blackstone.com/people/stephen-a-schwarzman-2/
"LePatner, who served as CEO of the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT), was killed in a shooting Monday at the company’s headquarters, Blackstone said in a statement."
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/07/29/blackston...
Right. Same as the Luigi guy. She was "CEO" of a department. Not the CEO of Blackstone. Relative to the actually rich she's upper middle class.
This is about actual CEOs, not mid-level executives who are CEOs of departments.
But it’s not. The folks getting shot are mid-level executives.
Where is this free market you're talking about ? Is it the ones with all the lobbies spending billions to get ahead ? Or the one where the government friends get the juicy contracts ?
Even in popular tech-- the internet-- we're seeing a wave of regulation and surveillance that will certainly stifle future growth for the small guy. You still see a lot of positive sentiment with regard to the "old internet".
I’ve always associated HN with a more humane side of the tech industry, relatively more concerned about the wellbeing of society at large.
Big tech is long past having a positive impact, and well into crony capitalism/oligopolies/regulatory capture/maximizing exploitation and rent seeking.
That's the whole problem, nobody would care if they could afford the same standard of living as their parents.
Not that it was totally accurate before, but the ability to use USD value alone as a measure of your Y/Y wage changes really went off the rails about 50 years ago.
It's not the only factor, of course. But remember the average level of intelligence and knowledge and realize half know less than that, then realize their only easy metric got completely obliterated.
This is untrue - the consumption patterns (after accounting for inflation) of the bottom 20% in 2025 are way higher than in 1970s. Almost 60-70% higher. Almost everyone is better off today than before. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59510 has some clues.
I encourage you to do your own research on it. Try to answer this question: are we as a society materially better off today than 50 years ago?
Surprisingly your image while it doesn't show the full picture, still shows that the living standards haven't reduced.
That's how you sound... they're unhappy because they can't afford a house or kids, because jobs are increasing precarious and unstable, &c. not because toilet paper and avocados are now 5% cheaper than in 1949
My (unskilled, uneducated) grandpa worked in the same place his whole life, afforded 4 kids and a flat on one income. I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids.
Yes housing is proportionally higher but home ownership is pretty much constant https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
Crucially the cost of everything else has come down dramatically to balance for rise in home prices.
> I'm in the top 10% earners, so is my wife, I can't afford a flat that would be big enough for 2 kids.
This is true but this is not because CEO wages are rising but despite it. IMO this is happening because people moved to the cities and enough houses were not built in time (you try to answer the question as to why). Your grandfather probably lived in a rural part of the country and could afford a big house where there was no demand - something you can still do now.
There is another reason housing prices have also gone up which is not talked about often - while prices of other things reduced people had more to spend on other things. They chose to put remaining on housing because.. well where else would you put it?
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Did they? Usually executive pay is increasing faster than typical employee's pay, is the article saying that they're increasing equally?
If you have a company you want the best person to run it and if the best person costs a lot you might still want to hire them. Why do you think they are being paid that much? Its because the company gets back way more than they spent on the CEO wages.
Profits increasing for the company is a good thing - you can use it to further improve your company by hiring more people or hiring better people by paying them more. Profits increasing is also good for the country - more taxes collected.
Why? You’d just pay more cash. Or incentive bonds or whatnot.
Just add a marginal tax tier at $10mm or whatever.
Pay more to cover the taxes. Or, as I suggested, pay in assets that aren't equity. Bonds, for instance. Or, like, buy the executive's side business once a year.
Regulating compensation is a silly way to get around raising taxes on the rich.
better incentivize companies to give CEOs more money if their employees get more money and also disincentivize short term stock price manipulation.