I would add bonus pay for performance. Company does well, you get x% bonus. Company doesn't do well, you get squat.
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Target Canada CEO gets $61M in severance - almost the same as 17,000 employees total
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I would add bonus pay for performance. Company does well, you get x% bonus. Company doesn't do well, you get squat.
I'll tell ya what... you go start the next Wal-Mart, and then volunteer to give away most of your salary to the workers once you reach those kinds of revenue levels.
It's a "nice thought" but its ********. By the time you get there, you worked hard and earned the money. You gonna give it away? Highly unlikely. When money is earned, it's much harder to give away.
Dirty Frank
Well-known member
Our man greg just isn't gonna walk away with a check for 61 mil his payment method will have been well thought out by a top team of tax professionals that will have determined the way to get his funds through with the absolute lowest tax burden possible.The workers don't have this luxury.
I agree with this statement but have nothing meaningful to add to it. Can I buy you a quarter pounder?
Its called goals and achievements sailor moon
Yer dreamimg
Here we get into the interesting stuff.
So just how worthless is the work of all the folks that make Wallyworld run? Sure you've got some schmoes who'll never do better than minimum wage, but now we're getting into the question: How much is an hour of the schmoe's time worth and how much an hour of the CEO's time worth? Using the 400x multiplier, is the CEO's brilliance worth $4400 an hour? Some people say no, others say yes. Or, hey, let's say he pulls a lot of overtime because he's a workaholic, so maybe by that measure the company gets the comparative bargain of $2200 an hour. Does that sound better?
And another interesting question. This is a free market, or so it's claimed, so do you think you could replace the guy making $4400 (or $2200) an hour with a guy making, oh let's say $550 an hour, and get equally good results?
So just how worthless is the work of all the folks that make Wallyworld run? Sure you've got some schmoes who'll never do better than minimum wage, but now we're getting into the question: How much is an hour of the schmoe's time worth and how much an hour of the CEO's time worth? Using the 400x multiplier, is the CEO's brilliance worth $4400 an hour? Some people say no, others say yes. Or, hey, let's say he pulls a lot of overtime because he's a workaholic, so maybe by that measure the company gets the comparative bargain of $2200 an hour. Does that sound better?
And another interesting question. This is a free market, or so it's claimed, so do you think you could replace the guy making $4400 (or $2200) an hour with a guy making, oh let's say $550 an hour, and get equally good results?
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You get a less qualified guy. There's competition out there for these high level jobs- if you're paying 1/4 of what your competitors are paying, you're gonna get less for your money.
Whether he's worth it or not, that's up to the board and shareholders to decide. Obviously this shmuck wasn't worth a single penny, since Target failed miserably in Canada.
You mean marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket? Yes, that is the highest for the highest earners, but that is also not the overall rate when the whole income is considered and rate for individual brackets considered. So the OP could have meant that the average tax rate when normalized across all tax income brackets is lower for the top 10% of income earners opposed to the 90% bottom earners. And that would be correct.
I have no issue with it (because you are sending a lot more $ to the government in than the 100K guy), just saying ... what's more troublesome is that guys who under perform still are handed contracts with bonuses and that the overall wealth is being accumulated into the hands of less and less people. At some point, this privileged bubble will burst and disobedience will follow. It's not if, but rather when ...
Historically the kind of disobedience you are referring to is civil war... I don't see that happening any time soon.
Here's a question: So Target is going to give up in Canada. Forking over $50 mil ish to CEO guy, $50 mil ish in final wages to employees... from a quick perusal of headlines on Google it sounds like losses could be $2 billion in total. Okay. Did that $2 billion all come out of the US Target Corp.'s coffers? Seems to me that there would be ways of spreading that risk around
Here's a question: So Target is going to give up in Canada. Forking over $50 mil ish to CEO guy, $50 mil ish in final wages to employees... from a quick perusal of headlines on Google it sounds like losses could be $2 billion in total. Okay. Did that $2 billion all come out of the US Target Corp.'s coffers? Seems to me that there would be ways of spreading that risk around
how do you figure? Here are just the federal income tax rates
- 15% on the first $44,701 of taxable income, +
- 22% on the next $44,700 of taxable income (on the portion of taxable income over $44,701 up to $89,401), +
- 26% on the next $49,185 of taxable income (on the portion of taxable income over $89,401 up to $138,586), +
- 29% of taxable income over $138,586.
And on top of that privincial
5.05% on the first $40,922 of taxable income, +
9.15% on the next $40,925, +
11.16% on the next $68,153, +
12.16% on the next $70,000, +
13.16 % on the amount over $220,000
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"'To be clear, Steinhafel’s actual severance package — the money he got just for handing in a letter of resignation — amounted to $15.9 million. But add in his deferred compensation (a kind of tax-saving retirement fund), his stock options and a pension that he got to keep, and Fortune calculates his total “walk-away” package at $61 million. '"
He's paying tax on 15.9 of the 61 million, unless he can shelter more.
deferred income isn't non taxable!! It's all taxable when he gets it and the rate will depend on how much he gets per year.
That seems to assume a direct relation between CEO competence and business success. But that's exactly the premise of the whole "priceless CEO" myth. Fact is, businesses or succeed for many reasons. It's not all up to the CEO.
Though it's unusual for businesses to succeed without great execs, it happens. Zuckerberg/Facebook comes to mind. On the other hand it's very common for them to fail even with great leadership. But that's exactly why they're not worth what they're paid, especially not those obscene severance packages.
In any case, the CEO is empowered by the board of directors to execute a particular business strategy, and it's that strategy that more likely fails or succeeds, not necessarily the execution. This is what happened with Thorsten Heinz at Blackberry. The board of directors wanted to give one, last, good kick at the can at a mass market strategy with the new OS and Thorsten was their chosen point man. It failed because there wasn't enough substance in the product to enable him pull it off. So they changed tack, changed CEO, and now they're going single-mindedly after business users. It seems to be working so far, but that's not all due to Chen by any means.
Really, the ridiculous CEO compensation makes no sense at all. It's more to do with egos and popularity within business circles, just like salaries for athletes and movie stars.
The real issue is with the maddening fetish for "talent" western business (and the western world in general) has developed.
I mean, the vast majority of people are merely mediocre (here I am!), even after you train them and they become experienced. Yeah, this includes a lot of guys with a good education and great resume. Historically, a company has had (I'm grossly simplifying here) two choices for non-manual labour: They can hire five ordinary guys and pay them an ordinary wage, or they can hire one guy who is the equal of those five guys and pay them five times the normal wage. Hell, arguably that does apply to manual labour too.
Right now, there's a deep obsession with getting those high-multiplier dudes who can effectively do the work of many people. Companies talk about it incessantly and it's bled over into everyday public talk. They only want to the top IT guys, the very best execs, all that noise. It's bidding wars all over for guys who may not be worth it, but who're loving the attention. It's like a neighbourhood that's suddenly hot. A lot of the houses really aren't worth the price people are paying but once the fever gets going, it's not about logic, it's about the fear of being left behind. Executive boards suffer from it just as easily as anyone else.
But you know, in all my experience as well as through HR people I've talked to, even the very best people don't seem to offer more than an order of magnitude in improvement - and yet they're all fighting each other like crazy to outbid for top performers.
The conventional response to this would be to build a great organization, using strong structures and good reinforcement. Even in terms of coming up with ideas a GOOD team of average people can develop great ideas if they work together and have genuine teamwork. This also allows the structure to outlive any one member, in case of a death or departure. Sure, you have to hire five guys and now you have to manage them, but you can bid for some of the second and third tier guys with greatly reduced price pressures. Or you can train your own - crazy as it sounds they might even be LOYAL and stick with the company in bad times!
You may have heard Napoleon's maxim: "first rate men hire first rate men, second rate men hire third-rate men", and it's true. But it's also true that getting involved in bidding wars for mercenaries is usually a surefire way for morons to lose their shirts.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what's led to this rather extreme fetish for "talent". Is it something forced by the short horizons of modern business (especially IT development), which makes building a team from the also-rans much harder since you just don't have the time? The vicious cycle of mercenary CEOs who just want to fluff the stock price long enough to get their bonus/parachute and move on? Are companies just blindly following the romantic stories of famous IPOs led by cagey individuals (see Yahoo's current failure for an example of this)? Are businesses just losing the ability to manage or develop teams well?
And that's not even getting into the question of how well companies are actually evaluating talent. Wealthy guys can afford to pay for great PR and even if they're not, the talent you may be buying isn't management, but self-promotion.
I'm not saying genius isn't important, but you can actually brute-force genius if you need to. That's how almost all scientific and technological progress has been made in human history, out of sheer necessity. By definition, there have never been enough geniuses to go around and there never will be, so why all the hate for plan B right now? There's room for symphonies as much as there is for arias.
I mean, the vast majority of people are merely mediocre (here I am!), even after you train them and they become experienced. Yeah, this includes a lot of guys with a good education and great resume. Historically, a company has had (I'm grossly simplifying here) two choices for non-manual labour: They can hire five ordinary guys and pay them an ordinary wage, or they can hire one guy who is the equal of those five guys and pay them five times the normal wage. Hell, arguably that does apply to manual labour too.
Right now, there's a deep obsession with getting those high-multiplier dudes who can effectively do the work of many people. Companies talk about it incessantly and it's bled over into everyday public talk. They only want to the top IT guys, the very best execs, all that noise. It's bidding wars all over for guys who may not be worth it, but who're loving the attention. It's like a neighbourhood that's suddenly hot. A lot of the houses really aren't worth the price people are paying but once the fever gets going, it's not about logic, it's about the fear of being left behind. Executive boards suffer from it just as easily as anyone else.
But you know, in all my experience as well as through HR people I've talked to, even the very best people don't seem to offer more than an order of magnitude in improvement - and yet they're all fighting each other like crazy to outbid for top performers.
The conventional response to this would be to build a great organization, using strong structures and good reinforcement. Even in terms of coming up with ideas a GOOD team of average people can develop great ideas if they work together and have genuine teamwork. This also allows the structure to outlive any one member, in case of a death or departure. Sure, you have to hire five guys and now you have to manage them, but you can bid for some of the second and third tier guys with greatly reduced price pressures. Or you can train your own - crazy as it sounds they might even be LOYAL and stick with the company in bad times!
You may have heard Napoleon's maxim: "first rate men hire first rate men, second rate men hire third-rate men", and it's true. But it's also true that getting involved in bidding wars for mercenaries is usually a surefire way for morons to lose their shirts.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what's led to this rather extreme fetish for "talent". Is it something forced by the short horizons of modern business (especially IT development), which makes building a team from the also-rans much harder since you just don't have the time? The vicious cycle of mercenary CEOs who just want to fluff the stock price long enough to get their bonus/parachute and move on? Are companies just blindly following the romantic stories of famous IPOs led by cagey individuals (see Yahoo's current failure for an example of this)? Are businesses just losing the ability to manage or develop teams well?
And that's not even getting into the question of how well companies are actually evaluating talent. Wealthy guys can afford to pay for great PR and even if they're not, the talent you may be buying isn't management, but self-promotion.
I'm not saying genius isn't important, but you can actually brute-force genius if you need to. That's how almost all scientific and technological progress has been made in human history, out of sheer necessity. By definition, there have never been enough geniuses to go around and there never will be, so why all the hate for plan B right now? There's room for symphonies as much as there is for arias.
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Consultants, HR departments and cronyism cause all these problems....but mostly dumbass consultants and the dumbass business owners , shareholeers, directors who listen to them
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