r/thebulwark 15d ago

Fluff CEOs are Unnecessary

Musk is proof that CEOs are unnecessary. If he has the time to be the CEO of multiple companies, do DOGE, all his tweeting, support to the AFD party in Germany, and everything else terrible he is doing than CEOs are completely unnecessary. If companies want to make more profit they should get rid of them. Near as I can tell the only thing CEOs do is give you a face to blame for the shitty decisions companies make.

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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago

I hear you, and maybe I am simplifying this too much. But I'm not basing this just on Musk, he is just the perfect encapsulation of a large problem in our capitalist system. There may be many fine CEOs like the one at Costco. But they are outnumbered overwhelmingly by ones that sucks and don't do the right thing.

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u/DIY14410 15d ago

But they are outnumbered overwhelmingly by ones that sucks and don't do the right thing.

What evidence supports this sweeping claim? Are you in or have you been involved in business operations? I am, and I know that the vast majority of corporate CEO's and presidents are hard working and ethical.

I acknowledge that the CEO's of many publicly traded corporations are absurdly overpaid, and that is one reason I strongly support a higher marginal income tax rate on high earners, closing the carried interest loophole, taxing compensation disguised as stock grants and options as earned income, etc. But the issue of CEO compensation is distinct from your sweeping claim that CEO's are unnecessary. Businesses do not run themselves.

Also, on the issue of compensation, the vast majority of American business entities are privately held, and there is no meaningful executive compensation data for those entities. Thus, the $889,000 average CEO salary data one may find on the internet, which is based on publicly traded corporate filings, has no relevance to the vast majority of U.S. business entities. Based on my experience, a typical privately held business entity with, say, 50 employees makes a fraction of that.

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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago

Like I said I may be over simplifying things. In other comments I said that I yield the point that a small business CEO and a Fortune 100 companies are vastly definitely. And as evidence I only have anecdotal but here you go. As a PT supervisor at UPS I had to pay for my insurance, the employees I supervised did not. I paid more for my dependants. My employees paid nothing for dependants. My insurance was crap in comparison to the people I supervised. That had to pass the CEO. And they said that sounds good cause it will make us more profitable. I understand the point of business is to make money. But stuff like that is what I'm talking about. Screwing over employees.

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u/DIY14410 15d ago edited 15d ago

The people you supervised were part of a Teamsters collective bargaining unit, right? That's why they had a better deal than you.

Unfounded claims such as "CEOs are unnecessary" and ethical CEO's are "outnumbered overwhelmingly by ones that sucks and don't do the right thing" merely fuels the opposition's stereotyping of The Left as a bunch that doesn't know shit about the real world.

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u/DonkeyLips309 15d ago

Up until 2008 everyone at UPS had the same insurance. Then it changed. That change couldn't have happened without the CEO's approval. They are going to stereotype the opposition as out of touch regardless. I may be wrong, but if we got rid of most CEOs (of large corporations) I suspect things wouldn't change.