[WSJ] Elizabeth Warren: Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders

But the point is wages and investment income arent the same. You cant base one on the other.

Yes ultimately wages affect investment income but wages are stagnant because American skill levels are stagnant and countries like Mexico are catching up and countries like China have passed us

 

To increase wages, what you want is an educated (not necessarily learned), skilled and highly mobile work force that will force employers to compete, but politicians would never want that.

Too many policies have killed the development of the workforce, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by employers

 

Show me the statistics. Then compare that to the rest of middle class?

 

It depends on a multitude of factors. For example, we compensate our employees pretty well because we want to keep them not necessarily to increase their productivity. It costs a lot of money to train new employees. We also don't want low end sub $10/hr workers. The initial pay usually allows us to attract higher quality potential employees that we think will be more stable. Their productivity is a function of my partner who actively runs the business (I'm just the investor) and the upper level management that he works with and delegates responsibilities to. Their productivity isn't a function of how much we pay them. A raise is given because we like their work and we want them to stay. A raise isn't given to non-managers with the expectation that they will become more productive. When employees are promoted to managers it's because they are taking on greater responsibilities. We aren't expecting them to create productivity and structure on their own. The owners and upper level management have to create the structure for the workers to be productive. Of course we listen to what is going on but if we were to simply just increase pay and expect more from everyone just because they are getting paid more then that would be a silly way of going about things. Structure dictates productivity far more than pay does (as long as you are paying competitive wages). I guess that is the key that I was already assuming in my mind. You have to pay competitive wages first, but overpaying for positions that don't merit that isn't going to give you any kind of significant productivity gains.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/do-employees-work-harder-for-higher-pay

An interesting short article I saw when I was googling productivity and pay. It would be interesting to see more studies on how human productivity can be increased.

I reread it. I had skimmed it the first time. For some reason I thought she was including a revenue sharing component when I had looked at it the first time. I don't really know why I thought that. I think the only change that needs to be made is this one "Corporate management, directors and officers would not be allowed to sell company shares within five years of receiving them—or within three years of a company stock buyback." Even 3 years is fine instead of 5 years. I don't even know what the time period is now. Clawbacks would be good to have as well. I don't think having workers on the board is something that should be forced by the govt. Controlling the political activities of companies with the 3/4ths majority is ridiculous too.

 

property is controlled by property owners

 

Blah, same tired fascist rhetoric.

 

Dup post

 

Spoken like someone who has no idea how capitalism works.

The “fair playground” rules are what make a free market work. No rules at all and no laws create unfairness... especially for the consumer.

Those rules & parameters for the market are supposed to be agreed on by the consensus of Americans and congress is our representation to pass laws that benefit us. If you don’t like this bill call your senator and tell them to not vote for it. You also need consensus votes to pass consumer laws. (Mitch McConnel removed the filibuster... why aren’t you demeaning him?) That’s how democracy works too.

You know what is NOT capitalism ... picking winners and losers in industry by abusing tarriff practices. That’s not free market capitalism. Setting the rules that are designed with American consumer and worker benefits in mind(basic fairness) and then letting all companies and industries produce to provide the best product at the lowest costs to Americans to win us over through that competition... that’s capitalism.

 

Politicians do want thay. American politicians to dont want jobs leaving the usa.

Its s complicated situation.

 

Paypal, for example, is a ~$100 billion company with 18,000 employees. Each employee would have to invest over $2 million for the workforce to have a 40% say in its governance. If they have $2 million to sink into 1 company, I don't know why they're working for a living.

 

Also - FDR was far more "socialist" in his policies than Warren, and many of the other leading Democrats.

It's obvious that the term "Socialist" is meant to demean & scare the American electorate with fear that Socialism = communism = Stalin. Please don't fall for this ploy to spread fear & spread right wing propaganda. Use DEMOCRATIC policy positions & compare & contrast to FDR. If the Democrat is going further than FDR, you can start to have the argument about how "Socialist" this representative is, and whether its too far.

 

The next generation is gonna take care of that problem.

 

Most shareholders dont have a say by those standards

 

That's right. Of all the people who participate in stock ownership, probably 99%+ do not vote their shares or their stakes are so tiny that their votes are ineffectual. It is very rare, and always makes the news, when a governance issue for a big corporation is so tight and controversial that rank-and-file shareholders are actually paying attention to the vote. There are also companies that have different classes of shares so that they can separate the rights to the cash flows from the rights of governance. If so many people can be content to just take cash flows without governance rights because they know the people who do have governance have aligned interests, then what's the harm with sharing governance in a different way?

 

That’s good... hopefully you understand the difference between socialism and communism. The US is a mix of capitalist and socialists.

 

I do not agree. Worker productivity has steadily improved for decades, but since circa 1980 investors have taken most of the benefit and not shared with labor. Mexico and China do not begin to compete with the US on worker productivity (link), they're just cheap. The issue is not American competitiveness, it's about the distribution of wealth.

 

Ill look at these statistics a little later but i think Chinese workers are definitely more educated. I don't think its debatable

They used to make computers here. Now they make cell phones and flat screens in China and Korea. That isnt just about money

Hispanic wprkers in blue collar industries come to this country with real skills. Im sure there are much more still there

 

Eh, don't sell us too short. I know China kicks our kids' butt in math, but there's more to education than math. Besides which, I understand China has an even starker difference than we do in the relative scholastic performance of urban elite kids and poorer rural kids.

 

Im definitely referring to the lower end of our education performance spectrum. That being said our lower end is getting larger

 

Exactly

I own my water supply and my sunshine / heat index on my property.

Since corporations have contaminated it and are slowly making it unusable, I now own a stake in that company. Since, this right is inherent to the general public, we will act as one, titled "the public"