Sergeant Grumbles: BMFPitt: Sergeant Grumbles: I'm firmly in the "You didn't build that." camp. No one makes that much without help.

So.....Company X would make $100 million more with some guy doing a job than it would with anyone else doing that job, but he should only make some arbitrary multiple of what the janitor makes because roads or something?

Because if the first guy had to clean his own office, he wouldn't get as much work done.

The problem here is we are arguing with someone whose views on the subject are ultimately tautological and reflexive.  On top of that he deliberately changes wordings to move goalposts, as we saw earlier with his inability to understand what someone meant when they said the pay of CEOs should be brought to some reasonable level of what the little guys in a society make. 

The level of CEO pay is correct in his opinion because capitalism/free market/invisible hand/whatever is correct, which in turn is correct because he believes it to be correct by its very nature. Therefore, of course, the CEOs are being paid accordingly.  He says it right here, in this thread, quite clearly.

I can think of a few people who bring in way more than $50 million per year.  That seems to be a pretty basic metric of what an employee should be able to get in compensation

He can think of people who DO get paid that, therefore they MUST be being paid appropriately.

I'm not a socialist or a communist or anything, but the faith people place on capitalism to set the best price for everything is very similar to religious beliefs.  And, like most of the religious, they get the very system they adore wrong much of the time anyways.

This is, with respect to CEO salaries, quite easily proven.  Different countries have different acceptable levels of just how much they will pay their CEOs. These cultures all believe the price is being set properly by the invisible hand, but either the leaders of Japanese and German companies are breaking the proper capitalistic process with their massively lower salaries than the American ones, or it is the other way around. To add to that, we see that the heads of many companies sit on the boards of other companies to decide the salary of those companies' heads who in turn decide the first persons salary by being on the board of that one.  There is so much interconnected backscratching that the actual process of a company taking an accurate look when hiring a CEO and determining how much they have to pay to get what quality CEO is out the window, and even that rests on the assumption that every human being involved is acting rationally, with appropriate interests in mind, and with all of the knowledge they need to make their decision.

FWIW, I think that most CEOs are very hard workers, very skilled workers, and experts at what they do.  This does not mean that they are irreplaceable to the extent they and their worshipers would have us believe, and it certainly never suggests that an increasingly small number of individuals should quite literally own the resources of the world.

Sergeant Grumbles: BMFPitt: Though you don't seem to understand the difference between cutting things to stay afloat and tying all pay to profits.

Yaye. Another ad hominem/strawman. Stay classy!

Don't you see? If you don't agree with his fundamental beliefs, it means you must be saying something you didn't.

For Pittypie, I'll explain this slow-like:

BMFPitt: Why should he get a pay cut if earnings take a hit based on things that are completely outside of his control?

See, BMF, not one single bit of this question mentioned a single thing about someone getting a pay cut out of his control in a way that specified it would be due to profits and not other cuts. Not one.

Maybe your problem is that you are simply terrible at both reading and writing. You read things people don't say, then you type a response that only marginally implies what you mean to say, and then you pat yourself on the back for being so much more smrter than the rest of us. Must be tough maintaining that delusion. I'll give you credit for that at least.

BMFPitt: Smackledorfer: See, BMF, not one single bit of this question mentioned a single thing about someone getting a pay cut out of his control in a way that specified it would be due to profits and not other cuts. Not one.

So how to you think this statement can be interpreted that wouldn't imply that a janitor who was getting artificially high pay at a company that happened to be doing well would not get a pay cut if they started to struggle?

Seems like [pay for low level employees] should be based on just how profitable the company is, wouldn't it?

Introducing a distraction strawman to deflect from your initial one? Interesting tactic.

Is the word "and" or "not" the part that is confusing you?

From the top then:

You: 'how much more should a janitor make at a profitable company, and why should he take a corresponding pay cut if earnings take a hit for something out of janitorial control'

Sgt Grumbles, 'How much more would depend on the relative profits between the companies, and low-level employees already take cuts when profits go down'

A response that clearly implies that whether they should or not, they already do in the current system, so you are a horse's ass to pretend otherwise and present it as a negative of the profit-sharing system. Maybe you didn't realize that?

Here is a similar conversation I could envision us having.
Me, "I think we should run to the store instead of walk, we will get there faster"
You, "but why should we have to go outside to get to the store"
Me, "uhh, we already have to go outside to get to the store"
You, "duhh, you don't know the difference between walking and running"
Me, "dude, nobody ever suggested that running instead of walking would prevent us from going outside"
You, "so how to you think this statement can be interpreted that wouldn't imply that us running to the store would not involve us going outside?  Seems like it should get us to the store faster if we run, wouldn't it?"

Your response are borderline insane. You are just spewing diarrhea from your mouth.

You should stop smoking crack.