They are still paid a tiny fraction of the value they generate while a handful of people receive most of the value generated.

I don't think anyone here is advocating for cutting Pichai's pay to $500k or something, but nearly a quarter billion dollars? JFC

I don’t see any reason to suggest that the CEO’s pay here is some failing of the market. Google’s owners felt it was appropriate to pay the CEO that amount, and it doesn’t really affect the pay or well being of Google’s other employees, who are/were some of the highest paid already.

From a class perspective, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, they are all equally guilty of exploitation. Board of directors agree pay their CEOs excessive salary, and the CEO in turns keeps this money away from the workers and away from the customers. Stock prices remain high, bank accounts in Panama fill up, workers gets fired, bosses get rich.

For me “Market rate” is just something the owning class tells us to gaslight us into accepting our exploitation. They created this market, they control this market, and exploiters go on exploiting.

Well under your definition the whole capitalist system is just masked exploitation. If that’s the case then I don’t think this is any more egregious an instance of exploitation than the every day income disparities already happening.

What benefit does a board of directors have over helping out the CEO (an employee as well) vs customers and employees?

You are not wrong. Books have been written about how the whole capitalist system is just masked exploitation—including a very famous one by one Karl Marx in 1867. But you must see the scale at play here. When bosses are getting millions upon millions of dollars, hundreds of millions even, and shareholders are in the billions, this is capitalism turned to eleven (and don’t get me wrong capitalism turned to 1 is still bad for workers).

> What benefit does a board of directors have over helping out the CEO (an employee as well) vs customers and employees?

Note I say workers. Even though a CEO is technically “employed” by the company, they are still very much a boss, a part of the owning class, and part of the problem. When the pitchforks come up, they will very much be directed at CEOs. This is why CEOs help out their fellow bosses and shareholders. Class solidarity is very much a reality for the owning and ruling classes.

Hello, the 19th Century is calling and they want their economics back.

They "generate" the value by putting software on multi-billion dollar server farms, while sitting in buildings on top of billions worth of real estate. Did they pay for those and keep them running?

This is why this country sucks, no one wants people to be paid adequately if it's more than they make. Talk about crab bucket mentality.

You can have a standard for maximum fair wage without it being some kind of personal irrational gripe.

Those wages are what middle class is due to inflation.

Stop wanting everyone to be as poor as you god damn. I want employees to make as much as they can, not all the wealth concentrate in a capital class. WTF is wrong with people?

If an employee makes enough money they aren't middle class. And if a CEO is getting paid normally then they're an employee too.

Also I was thinking in terms of math applied to percentiles and other statistics, which don't change with inflation.

Are you really going to say it's crab bucket if I say a number like "a million dollars" and say it should apply to both income and capital gains? Maybe even a lower number for capital gains, if I'm being feisty?

I actually like to use worker class and owning class. Bosses (including CEOs) are apart of the owning class. CEOs being employers is just semantics, they are still bosses, and is the reason I use the word workers to make it clear.

Well paid google workers are still workers and deserve our solidarity. Making a distinction among workers between lower classes, and middle and upper class only serves to divide us, destroy our solidarity, and for our bosses to keep exploiting us.

How many workers get more than a million dollars, keeping the same example threshold? It barely affects solidarity.

And why shouldn't I have some solidarity with an owner of a business that has 30k more assets than debts and personally makes 40k a year?

I think income and wealth are better distinguishers than the role you have.

Google runs coffeeshops with low paid workers.