this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Memes

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[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Ford has 186,000 employees. His entire salary, divided amongst every employee, would be $112.90.

He's certainly overpaid - like pretty much all CEOs - but this is a bad example.

[–] Grayox@lemmy.ml 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Its called juxtaposition my guy, Ford also spent almost half billion on stock buybacks last year which could have been used to give every Ford Employee a $2500 bonus to share their profits, but instead they used it to buy back stocks...

[–] dirtbiker509@lemm.ee 47 points 1 year ago

And buying back the stock has the effect of making the stock price go up. And guess who gets the most stock? The CEO and C suite. They give themselves huge raises by doing this and it's perfectly legal :(

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well see that's a good example. Ford is a profitable business, and should be paying their employees. All I'm pointing out is that the CEO's salary - in the specific example of this business - does not represent a significant proportion of what is being taken from the average employee. That's most likely going to the shareholders.

The CEO's are partially to blame, but more blame lies with the shareholders, and also the legal system that mandates the CEO's act in the interest of the hypothetical worst, most profit-hungry shareholder.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The dividend is only 15 cent a share. It is almost 10%. It should be around 5%.

Personally I think there should be a law you can’t borrow to pay dividends. They must come from cash

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally I think there should be a law you can’t borrow to pay dividends. They must come from cash

Fucking absolutely. But that's a drop in the bucket of financial fuckery that goes on, which is a very big elephant in the room.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s a larger part than you think. It’s another part of manipulating the stock.

Companies should be regulated better. They should get tax relief when employees are paid well with good benefits. I don’t care if a company pays taxes as long as the employees are making money. They’ll translate to taxes being collected other ways.

What I can’t stand is all the bullshit waste and games.

I think layoffs should be severely punished by either taxes or forced severance.

I don’t care a ceo makes 20 million but there should be regulations to make sure they’re earning it and not just manipulating things

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean I personally think income should be tax free up to a relatively high amount. Like 6 figures, minimum. You're giving up your time, in service of a business which itself is in service of society, you shouldn't have to subtract from your reward for that to give more. The business' taxes should be covering that.

We should be heavily taxing investments, the times when people don't actually do anything themselves but pay for things to be done, with the plan of getting money back and giving as little to those that actually did the work as possible. The business owner gives the minimum to their employees and takes all the excess for themselves.

What's needed is a sliding tax scale where employers benefit from giving out higher mean salaries, not median, such that employees and employers both together benefit from the success of the business. If you pay your employees better, up to or maybe a little above the average income, your business gets taxed less. That's the sort of government incentive we should be having.

[–] Reverendender@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

This…is not a bad take. 🍻

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Investments should be taxed little or zero till a certain income is produced from dividends. That’s how retired people live. That’s why certain stocks were called pensioner stocks.

Out whole tax system needs an overhaul. If a company was producing an economic advantage to the community and employees. I have no issue with them not paying taxes. We are getting it through the value they create.

The current model rewards taking from the community.

[–] Jsprad@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

A 15 cent quarterly dividend on a $15 stock is 1%, not 10%. Ford's annual dividend is about 4% per year.

[–] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

You’re correct. Different sites show it differently.

https://www.tipranks.com/stocks/f/dividends

They showed the 10% but yes its about 5

[–] nyctre@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure, but Ford made a profit of 10 billion last year according to google. That means that they can give every single one of those 186k people a 6000$ raise and still be left with almost 9 billion in profit.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes, that's a good example. All I'm saying is the CEO's salary is not the root problem here. It's more of a symptom.

[–] nyctre@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't the CEO one of the main people that decide salaries? When you're ok with you having a multimillion salary and you say that others should be happy with 60k a year... that sounds like a problem to me

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

The CEO decides salaries, but the CEO is also legally obliged to pursue profits for shareholders first and foremost. The issue isn't specifically the CEO, but the infrastructure that ensures the CEO behaves maliciously towards employees and customers.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did the post day to divide his salary to everyone or did it laugh at the thought of a living wage bankrupting his company?

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No the post compared his salary to the employees earning $66,000 or above. I'm not sure what the median income is at Ford, but I'd guess it's less than that - so really the post is only in support of less than half of the company's workforce.

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, the post did just that...

...while laughing at the thought that raising the lower paid people's salary will bankrupt his company.

Your attempt to spin the memes meaning around is an amount of reaching that I'd recommend stretching for next time

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Your attempt to spin my comment into a scarecrow you can argue against is the real stretch here.

I'm not saying it isn't ridiculous that giving a raise to employees of a profitable business would bankrupt the company. I'm saying it's a bad example for the meme to bring up the CEO's salary, rather than the profit of the company. The CEO's salary is peanuts divided amongst every employee, meanwhile the company profits and shareholder dividends represent much more of the wealth that the employees have generated without being compensated for.

[–] Thordros@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago

The CEO's salary is peanuts divided amongst every employee, meanwhile the company profits and shareholder dividends represent much more of the wealth that the employees have generated without being compensated for.

True. The big shareholders are definitely a problem. I wonder who Ford's largest individual shareholders are.

James D. Farley, Jr. owns a total of 1,103,833 Ford shares.

surprised-pika

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)