And we can pretty much double the numbers by what it actually costs to employ someone vs. what they are paid.
Want nice things like healthcare and other benefits, worker’s comp, unemployment insurance and the like?
Worked at a small payroll firm for 5-years. I was the IT manager, so not like I’m an expert, but I had a lot of questions and worked closely with payroll and accounting. Very eye opening.
If you get paid $15/hr., you probably cost the company $26-29/hr. And we had small clients like churches, restaurants, convenience stores, thrift shops, places paying shit wages and shit benefits. I make ~$80K with stunning benefits, so I figure my company’s actual cost to keep my ass in the seat is maybe $200K?
That’s actually rather easy if you work for a publicly traded corp, at least to ballpark it.
Company profits / total workers. (<-this seems facile, what am I missing?)
OTOH, beware comparisons of pay scales.
“CEOs make too much!”
Do the math. CEO pay is typically 1/100th of a penny earned, sometimes 1/1000th, not a drop in the bucket. Don’t matter. When I was a kid, sports star pay was the thing to rage about. LOL, haven’t seen a single lemming comment about that. Whatever.
“I don’t make enough!”
And that’s very likely true, but you cost far more than you think. Good rule of thumb? Double your pay, that’s what you actually cost. You make $15/hr.? Company probably pays $30, or a bit more. Company has to pay worker’s comp insurance, taxes, benefits, unemployment insurance, payroll processing fees, all that and more.
SOURCE: Worked IT for a payroll company, got the inside scoop.
I was the IT manager for a small payroll company, but I was really tight with the payroll processors and got all the scoop on how things work.
These kind of stories always stun me. We had 250 small clients, of various levels of weaselly, and none of them would fuck around with the rules. And the majority of them were places you would expect fuckery from; Churches, restaurants and the like.
Underage workers? Hell no. You’re not setting foot onsite without a verified ID.
Unpaid overtime? LOL no.
Worker’s comp? You bet it was covered.
How exactly were they getting away with this? One person making one call to the state labor board would/should ignite a shitstorm.
When one human has the power to kick another one’s ass at will, they often do. It’s Psych 101.
When we don’t have that option, we figure out how to navigate the situation. LOL, a couple of months at my first tech support gig taught me to dial the haters down in a hurry! Hell, I talked a psycho down from literally torturing me one time. 3rd closest time I’ve come to meeting the scythe wielding skeleton.
What’s the answer? Fuck I know. Cops have to have power, or they’re toothless, and therefore useless. Maybe training that involves them being on the other end?
“You have no weapons, no authority, and I’m going to kick the living shit out of you unless you calm me down!” 🤷🏻♂️
Or, and this is madness, we could find a way to pull the teeth out of their unions? I’m all for worker’s unions, but cops are, by necessity, a different category of citizen.
OR, if they want to be badass military dudes, maybe the actual military could come in and school them on rules of engagement? (I’m liking this the more I think about it.)
It was either Dr. Who, or more likely Star Trek, where the protagonist said, “Police officers. I’d recognize them in any century.”
He’s my rep, so I have a close eye on this dirtbag.
He’s young and already loaded with baggage. You can have one or the other, not both. He kept his mouth shut while his court case was in the air, since that fell off the radar for lack of evidence/testimony, and he gave it some time to blow over, he thinks he can get mouthy again. He cannot.
He makes headlines and has an R in front of his name. Fair enough for the good people of NW Florida. Not good enough for the GOP leadership.
Leadership has to be thinking, “If this young asshole would have piped the fuck down, we might have done something with him in a decade or so.”
Like Boebert and Greene, he thinks anything goes after the GOP anarchy of the last few years. Nope. I’d wager he gets his ass handed to him, like that one young pup from NY.
All agreed except the localities bit. These smaller cities councilmen are too cheap to bribe. A $1,000 check will have them hanging on your every word. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Probably best bumped up to state level.
But yes, we should ban corporations at some well-defined point. I mean, what if I incorporate myself? Now I can’t buy another house?
I disagree with much here, but maybe you’re onto something with the stock option thing. It would have to be legislated, and the devil’s details are legion, but what if?
What if we said, “Your company profits/grosses >$X, then you can’t offer executive stock options.” Again, devilish details, and it’s not realistically passable legislation. But what if major CEOs were thereby forced to look past the next quarter?
I work for a software dev, only 130 of us. Our CEO reports to a board of directors and will tell them quick, “We expect to lose money next year because we’re investing in personnel and dialing in tech debt.” And it works and the board loves it. (I know this because he shares such things in front of the whole company, every month. And shows us the numbers.)
Crazy thing? Because of his forward thinking, we keep making more money, even when we expect to lose. Nuts how that works out. :)
Give up. These conversations are dominated by teenagers who are bringing their vast experience working a shit job for an hourly wage.
They think they’re making some moral/social outcry against a symptom of capitalism, thinking that if we could just cure the symptom, the disease will improve. (Same people say nothing about athlete’s pay, but here we are. LOL, that one used to be a source of public outcry.)
CEOs get these salaries and benefits because the market is willing to pay it, thinks it’s a fair deal. There’s nothing more to it.
If you have a billion-dollar company, and you want the best leadership, you pay for that. Want some dude who says, “Sure, I can handle it. Only need $250,000/yr. I got this.”? Of course not. You want someone with a track record of handling… whatever it is you’re hiring for.
Sure, sometimes they fuck up, just like any employer. But do these people think they’re smarter than the Alpha board of directors?! Yes they do.
And spare me the, “They don’t work 1,000% harder!”. Yeah. We know because it’s obvious to any simpleton. That’s not a point worth making.
And spare me, “The workers should get that money!” Dude was bitching on reddit about American Airlines, their CEO and pay. I did the math. If you stripped him of every penny and spread it around, worked out to $.02/hr. more for each employee.
CEO pay ain’t the fucking problem. It’s only a symptom of unfettered capitalism.
And one last addition to my rant. :)
Listen: People pay you for what you can do for them. That’s how you make money. Hard work barely figures in.
Don’t get me started on making social connections. Somehow these people forget we’re apes and that sort of thing is important.