BF2S Forums Illegal Immigration / Immigrants

whittsend wrote:

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

First off, I don't agree with overpayed athlethes getting what they get.

Then I suggest you shouldn't pay them that much.  If you don't, then good for you.  Someone else will get them, pay them millions, and profit from the investment.  Thus, making the investment worthwhile.  (Why is this so difficult to see?  Do you thing that Pro sports clubs are charities that exist to give money away?)

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Also, your "they deserve it" agreement with compensation packages doesn't fly.  Most of the boards of large companies that vote on pay and benefits packages are themselves executives of other companies.

And stockholders of the company in question, with a vested interest in seeing that company perform well.  If the investment pays off, the company saves hundreds of millions, and yes, again, the investment is worth it.  Such a simple measure...one would think.

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Do you not see a self benefitting,

Absolutely.  That is what makes the system work.  Nobody does anything if they don't benefit from it.

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

"Fox guarding the henhouse" problem with this scenario?

Bad analogy.  For it to work, you would have to explain why the foxes live in the henhouse, and why you, who aren't even a chicken, even cares.

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Here is an example of exactly what I'm talking about.  This article is a couple of years old, but that doesn't change the situation any...and this problem isn't just with the airlines, this is just one example.

The only information I take away from that article (the source of which you really should share if you feel the need to post it here), is that some corporations have bad business practices.  Stop the presses

What does that mean to me?  Nothing unless my tax dollars go to prop up the companies when they fail.  While I understand that is entirely possible, I have already made it clear that I am as opposed to corporate welfare as I am to any other type.  As far as I can see, companies can do whatever they want internally as long as, a) it isn't illegal, and; b) They don't take my money to do it.  Even if they do manage to get govenrment money, it isn't their 'fault' as such.  It is the fault of the idiots we put into office, and the idiots who elect them.  Once again, it comes back to the consumer.

whittsend wrote:

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

The problem is that execs don't always save or earn the company more money, yet they still get these executive packages.  Also, executives alone do not make a business successful.  Their workers are by far the largest reason an honest business will live or die, yet they are not compensated in a manner such as the executives.

If the exec doesn't save or earn the company what they expect, then the company has made a poor investment.  It happens - expectations do not guarantee results, in any field, or for any employee.  That's just the nature of the beast; it's hardly an argument for saying one shouldn't pay what is necessary to obtain a desired employee.  As far as who makes/saves the most money for a company, that is your opinion.  Obviously others do not agree.

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Again, you don't seem to understand the problem with boards loaded with executives determining salary packages.  Since you despise welfare programs so much, let me use this example.  It covers why it doesn't work, and why this is the fox guarding the henhouse.  Having a board that is filled with executives determining executive pay is like having a liftime welfare recipient in charge of welfare services.

I understand it completely, and told you already why your analogies fail.  Board members are usually stockholders in the company.  It is in their interest for the company to succeed, as it profits them personally.

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

I would also say I'm not the only one that sees a problem with executives and their excessive pay and compensation packages.

You see a moral issue, they see a business issue.  Big difference.  I  am inclined to agree that, if the return isn't forthcomiing, it is a poor business decision.

As the stock market slides and U.S. workers face the biggest wave of job cuts in a decade, top executives continue to enjoy exorbitant pay hikes, according to a new report, “Executive Excess 2001:  Layoffs, Tax Rebates and the Gender Gap.”  The report is the eighth annual study on the CEO-worker pay gap by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.   

Key findings from the study include:

The 1990s:  A Decade of Greed

    *

      Executive pay jumped 571 percent between 1990 and 2000. CEO pay rose even in 2000, a year in which the S&P 500 suffered a 10 percent loss.  The explosion in CEO pay over the decade dwarfed the 37 percent growth in worker pay.
    *

      If the average annual pay for production workers had grown at the same rate since 1990 as it has for CEOs, their 2000 annual earnings would have been $120,491 instead of $24,668.  Likewise, if the minimum wage, which stood at $3.80 an hour in 1990, had grown at the same rate as CEO pay over the decade, it would now be $25.50 an hour, rather than the current $5.15 an hour.

Layoff Leaders

    *

      CEOs of firms that announced layoffs of 1,000 or more workers this year earned about 80 percent more, on average, than executives at 365 top firms surveyed by Business Week.  The layoff leaders earned an average of $23.7 million in total compensation in 2000, compared with a $13.1 million average for executives as a whole.
    *

      The top job-cutters received an increase in salary and bonus of nearly 20 percent in 2000, compared to average raises in that year for U.S. wage workers of about 3 percent and for salaried employees of 4 percent.

Tax Rebates

    *

      Between 1996 and 1998, 41 large, profitable corporations used special tax breaks and credits to reduce their corporate tax bill to less than zero. Instead of paying taxes, they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury. As a group, the CEOs of these tax rebate firms averaged pay hikes of 69 percent, far above the typical CEO raise of 38 percent. Those pay hikes, made possible in part by tax rebates, totaled $194 million. In six cases, the CEO¹s raise entirely consumed his company¹s tax rebate for the year.
    *

      CEOs at the tax rebate companies earned 12 percent more on average than executives in the Business Week surveys for the years 1996-98. Executive pay at the tax rebate companies totaled $495 million during those years, equivalent to 15 percent of the $3.2 billion in total tax refunds paid to those companies over the period.

Gender Gap

    *

      Heather Killen, a senior vice president of Yahoo, was the highest-paid woman in America in 2000, with a total compensation package of $32.7 million, a mere 11 percent of the highest-paid male (John Reed of Citigroup:  $293 million).
    *

      The 30 highest-paid women in the corporate world earned average total compensation of $8.7 million, as compared with $112.9 million for the 30 highest-paid men, a ratio of 1 to 13.

The report concludes with a survey of efforts by grassroots organizations, activist shareholders, and legislators to challenge the growing divide.

The Institute for Policy Studies is an independent center for progressive research and education in Washington, DC.  United for a Fair Economy is a national organization based in Boston that provides educational resources and supports grassroots and legislative action to reduce economic inequality.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Maybe you guys should create a new topic about corporations/economics, because for the last page and a half you guys are just arguing about something not related to immigrants/illegal immigration

atlvolunteer wrote:

whittsend doesn't want the debate to end...

whittsend wrote:

"Everyone is worth what someone will pay them."

B.Schuss wrote:

The sad thing is, our precious economies would be much better off if all the people living in third world countries had the money to buy what our economies produce.

{A.K.A}LordBeefman wrote:

send them all back to where they came from