Wages vs Corporate Profits

The cluster centers on debates about whether rising corporate profits suppress worker wages, pitting employees against shareholders and executives in the distribution of economic gains.

📉 Falling 0.3x Politics & Society
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#3049
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Keywords

IT AI US www.ft HR THAT FT CEO BossMan workers wages profits employees money profit pay companies foxconn company

Sample Comments

jeffreyrogers Aug 12, 2021 View on HN

> Money is conservedI agree with this. You should run the numbers and look at how much companies could improve workers wages by. I did this a few years ago with Walmart, I was surprised by how small the amount was. I think these companies are more constrained than you think, and the huge difference in earnings (which I'm not defending) between the executives and the average worker is more due to their scale and the fact that they can skim a bit off every worker than due to pure exploi

tivert Nov 1, 2023 View on HN

This is wonderful. Workers have it too easy.Think of the poor shareholders. They need money too!

newaccount74 Feb 9, 2022 View on HN

It means that employees are paid less so more profits go to the shareholders.It's not men vs women, but workers vs owners.

wagecuck Jan 2, 2018 View on HN

Increasing profits is fine. Having workers that are not owners is despicable.

metaphorm Apr 25, 2017 View on HN

what mystery? pay raises haven't kept up with productivity increases. there's also kinds of macro-econ handwaiving that will attempt to drill down into this issue but at a fundamental level worker pay is at the discretion of their managers. the problem is the management culture that distributes profits with extreme preference to shareholders and almost no regard at all for the workers.

DiscourseFan Oct 1, 2024 View on HN

no, the workers will start to wonder why a small group of people who do barely any work are sucking up all the profit.

timthelion Jun 29, 2017 View on HN

Why is it bad for the employer to get 8x as much out of some workers?

Jensson Dec 21, 2022 View on HN

That is wealth, he is talking about the derivative of wealth or income. Most companies pays out way more in salaries than they pay out in profits, so more money goes to workers than to owners. Giving all profits to workers would increase their income by maybe 10-20% in most cases, modern capitalism don't exploit workers that hard.Average workers are worse off today since more and more money is going to relatively small (in terms of employment) high value companies like hospitals, tech co

Retric Feb 6, 2018 View on HN

Except not everyone gets a salary. Higher worker pay means investors for example get a lower share of economic gains.

mylons Aug 9, 2023 View on HN

why would you be willing to when companies can easily allocate the record profits they have to wages?