You're ignoring both net revenue and the staggering debt, why?

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Seems like he got present value of 2 years earnings as compensation. Not as good as a high school superintendent in Cook County. A little better than the typical option buyout of a MLB All Star (say Jon Lester who gets $10M next off season).

Is it fair to equate Fortune 100 CEOs to MLB, NFL, and NBA free agents? Probably, and for every Jon Lester, there is a Carl Crawford or Vernon Wells who just stole money and promptly sucked ass.

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Part of the reason for the parachutes is for these guys (mostly) to have time to get another gig. You don't just throw up a profile on Indeed and get the biggest corner office. I am not justifying this particular guy but top executive pay has been this model forever or since Gordon Gecko.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

I just dont think its productive to dwell on people who make more money than you. Fact is if you are exceptional enough to have this role you either dont have it because you chose not to or because you dont want to put the work in. And if you aren't exceptional enough for it, like most of us are, then what's the point?

I'm happy for the guy. He's set his family up forever, he got to do great things and made the most out of his life in a way that was fulfilling. I used to have all this piss and vinegar and angst for these types of people, but I've found letting go of that certainly made me happier.

AT&T has 275,000 employees. So this really comes at the expense of $1 a month for each of them, and even if it was more who cares? Americans have plenty of money. Money is not the thing separating the majority of unhappy people from happiness.

Bonilla at least agreed to forgo years of then current salary and got a really foolish deal from just the kind of guy who was getting financial advice from Madoff and similar scumbags. Who certainly simply a guy willing to justify golden parachutes to people similarly situated to his and the Doubleday families.

I'll even offer this up, he can take the payola if we can restore the tax code to Nixonian levels.

When we still had a strong middle class.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

My cousin has tended bar at the 300 level of the United Center for about ten years as a second job. Bulls, Hawks, some concerts. He's not angry that Brent Seabrook is making stupid money, or that this guy got money to go away. He's just angry that Pritzker is going to fuck his job over for a full year.

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

As noted above and in other threads, leeches like this guy don't ever retire, they just lach onto friendly corporate boards getting nice payoffs to grease the wheels for other wealthy friends and the Wall Street corner office types.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

And Tony Romo goes and works for CBS.

Look, I know you want him to suffer. But really, why should he, besides the fact that you disagree with him politically?

And you know I like you enough that I'm not trying to be an asshole. I'm just trying to understand why you hate successful people. Do you feel this way about Michael Jordan? All he does is sell overpriced shoes and ruin a basketball team in Charlotte.

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

I think the valid argument is about the capitalist system in which the winner takes all society we are in causes great inequity to the rest of the working population. We put certain risk takers on a pedestal but if you look at someone with 100 million dollars in the bank vs. 100k in the bank.. The 100 millionaire can afford to take more risks and fail 9 out 10 times to succeed and still be fine. The person with 100k cannot take the risk of losing his/her nest egg.

Also the growth and increase of wages on the top end of the working scale causes great inequality in society as fewer people will be able afford a middle class lifestyle. Wages on bottom and middle have not grown much in the past 30 years. And if you look at the bottom 20% there buying power and incomes have decreased with inflation over the past 30 years. This creates a society of just RICH and POOR (no middle class) like those in despotic lead countries around the world.

_________________
"You know 'that look' women get when they want sex? Me neither" ~Steve Martin

Boards specifically like you mention are a problem.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

This is all alarmist nonsense. Just because you cant have everything you want doesn't mean you aren't living a middle class lifestyle. The average American spends about $3000 a year on fast food or fast casual dining. Yeah, no shit. People buy a new $1000 cell phone yearly, sometimes twice yearly. People buy cars they cant afford and get bent over by dealerships who load them with fees and terrible loans.

The middle class lifestyle is absolutely attainable still, but it has to be done within means. You can have money left over if you're just smart and not mega impulsive.

I don't know nor think about guys like him or his family. Until stories like this come out and are imo this obscene. And that's with my making assumptions about his recent compensation for the mediocre job he's done at a major public corporations that just got massive tax breaks and seem to be good at poor products, tepid performance and massive layoffs to appease their "investors".

And again note that in my first post I distinguished between public and private companies. If you own it, make all you want. But if you are a major player in the ponzi scheme on Wall street, it's another.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

You know who's paying that money right?

You! Or at least the plural you.

On average an American upgrades their phone every eighteen months. This is truly insane, I have a flip phone that I bought on Amazon for $40 that I use abroad and an American/NZ SIM Pixel I've had since 2016(I swap SIMs depending where I am). I dont plan on abandoning either for many years, the Pixel is about due for a battery replacement though. That's $80 for a new battery vs. $900 for a new model of the same phone and its a near certainty that I'll be still on my original Pixel by the time most people are replacing their $900 Pixel 4.

And lets not even get the voracious appetite people have for data despite the fact that most apps you dont even need (and actually have a massively detrimental effect on your mental health) and the ones you do use, like Spotify or Maps, have offline features. If you use more than 500MB's of data a month you're either in a place with no free Wifi (aka not America) or you've got bad habits.

So yeah, the indiscipline of the American consumer is why this guy is taking home a $3m a year pension. If the people of the USA weren't such inbred, retarded, gullible simps this wouldn't happen.

People with pensions and 401K plans are active and willing participants in that Ponzi scheme.

_________________

Or anyone who is addicted to debt (which is basically everyone).

Obviously. But they're more likely to be the people watching and believing what guys like him b.s. about on CNBC and then get harmed by the hysteria they help create. Then take some more on their way out.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

As much as people would like you to believe that this is a winner take all system, let me remind everyone that 4% of the world’s population produces over 20% of the world’s GDP. In the developed world we have the highest per capita income of any of the major large countries ahead of all those beloved European Social Democracies (Norway excepted thanks to oil wealth). The average person in the U.S. does well.

Where we fail, and fail badly, is that we have a large and distinct level of generational poverty given our lower social safety nets/poor primary education and a wide dispersion of wealth (gini coefficient).

We have argued this point many times on these boards. Do we want a large pie or a more even pie. What is the right balance? Sit back and decide which country you would rather be than ours. Trade everything- our system of government, economics, tax regime, healthcare, schools, job market, etc.

Look, we pay our movie stars, athletes, CEO’s, tech entrepreneurs, musicians way too much money. But how often are you watching the European basketball league or Australian rules football or a movie produced in Germany or music from South Korea? We have the best of just about everything because our system pays for it.

It’s not perfect. But it’s pretty damn good.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

Anyone who has lived ion or spent significant time in Australia knows that Aussie is basically all the good parts of the USA with almost none of the bad. They dont have as nice of climate or national parks, but they are basically way better for everything else.

But overall your point is correct. Americans are very prosperous, few other countries even come close and those that do (that aren't just oil rentier states) like Australia and Canada are just doing an imitation of the American system.

My biggest problem with Australia when I was there is that the restaurants didn’t offer free iced tea or soda refills.

But all kidding aside, they have a major housing crisis as the people are clustered around the ocean areas and tight land use policies. They have major water issues. Their economy has been rock solid as they rode their commodity output alongside the China boom. They do not have anywhere near the overall quality of life as the U.S. it is honestly a very backwards place. I appreciated the look this way markers on the Sydney streets.

It’s fine. It’s like a decent minor league team next to the Yankees.

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

Ok if we're going to start nitpicking like this lets bring up the crisis-level issue of obesity and general unhealthiness in America. Or the rampant entitlement "Karen" mentality. Or the fact that twenty million people (roughly the population of Australia) live in this country as illegal immigrants and one of the two main political parties supports it. Or how basically the entire southwest faces a long term water crisis way worse than Australia's. And you wanna talk about a debt/housing bubble?

Melbourne would be the best city in the USA. Sydney and Perth would be top five. Adelaide is probably nicer than all of them to live in.

The normalization of this exact behavior is the problem...

I don't dispute the overwhelming majority of what you wrote. But it's the excesses that are going to pull the country down, not people working on honest payrolls. And just like with MLB and the players, the look in both places are foolish.

On both ends of the extreme. And Kirkwood is right about this as well.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Give every American another $20k a year and they'll blow it on fast casual food and pickup trucks.

Give an executive an extra $20M and he'll blow it literally on blow.

Our bottom decile needs to be much better than corresponding EU deciles.
All of our deciles need to be better than their corresponding EU deciles.
Our top 1% should be better than the top 1% in the EU.

Any policy other than "every part of this country needs to improve every year" is, IMHO, wrong.

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

No, he'll probably pump it into the market as capital that gets reinvested into the economy.

The unending growth model eventually needs to be abandoned because we are suffocating and destroying the planet. I dont think we can really handle many more people.

Good drone.

And yet the airline industry got just that in a foolish tax cut and here they are with aging fleets and being choked out. Which only benefited their biggest shareholders.

Again.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

its just reality. All the data you need to know about Americans and their spending habits is fully available, the market research done in these analytic driven times is so thorough nothing is ambiguous.

Americans already have more money than anyone else in the world of their same social strata. They are all fat, miserable, ignorant slobs. You think giving them even more money will reform them? No way.

Honestly the policy of the billionaires holding all the wealth and playing keep away from the government so the ignorant, entitled masses cant vote themselves endless money to an extent works in practice. As long as the military can maintain its hegemony to preserve the Great Peace.