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ppauper
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minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 8:19 am

UK Labour Leader Slammed For "Totally Idiotic" Salary Cap Plan

question: why is a minimum wage now considered "normal" but a maximum wage ridiculed?
both distort the market and both interfere with the contract between employer and employee

I believe (from distant memory, maybe rehnquist's book?) that in the US, a federal minimum wage only came about during fdr's reign, after he threatened to stack the Court.
Previously, the Court had held that the government had no right to interfere with the contract between employer and employee
 
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ISayMoo
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 3:12 pm

"question: why is a minimum wage now considered "normal" but a maximum wage ridiculed?"

Because media bosses are affected by the latter but not by the first.
 
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Paul
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 3:22 pm

"question: why is a minimum wage now considered "normal" but a maximum wage ridiculed?"

Because media bosses are affected by the latter but not by the first.
Very good!
I like the idea. 
 
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Traden4Alpha
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 4:02 pm

The lower bound on wages is set by what an individual must take from society to survive.

The upper bound on wages is set by what an individual can give to society to thrive.
 
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ppauper
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 5:33 pm

The lower bound on wages is set by what an individual must take from society to survive.

The upper bound on wages is set by what an individual can give to society to thrive.
that might be true in a socialist utopia, but elsewhere, people tend to work for an employer rather than "society"
 
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Traden4Alpha
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 5:57 pm

The lower bound on wages is set by what an individual must take from society to survive.

The upper bound on wages is set by what an individual can give to society to thrive.
that might be true in a socialist utopia, but elsewhere, people tend to work for an employer rather than "society"
The mechanism by which someone gives value to society (and can reasonably be expected some proportional compensation) is irrelevant. Yes, most people work for employers but the employers work for their customers who are other members of society. To the extent someone helps someone else provide value to a third person and that third person pays the second person, the first person might expect some proportion of that pay as a function of the first person's role in the effort. And in such a system of proportional pay for delivered goods and services, is there an upper bound?

(Technically, there is an upper limit based on the finite number of people, finite spending of each person but it's a very high number)
 
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Paul
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 6:39 pm

Senior employees are chosen by other senior employees, who also give each other seats on the boards of other companies. Is this in the best interests of the shareholders? I suspect not!

Put CEO etc. positions out to tender.
 
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Traden4Alpha
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 6:59 pm

Senior employees are chosen by other senior employees, who also give each other seats on the boards of other companies. Is this in the best interests of the shareholders? I suspect not!

Put CEO etc. positions out to tender.
Yet a cap on wages would have no effect on this dynamic. Even the most socialist society has ways for individuals to create differential outcomes for differential actions. The better comrades get the better dachas.

In modern low-friction equity markets, shareholders are remarkably free to prefer or eschew shares in well-run or corrupt organizations. And in modern retail markets for goods and services, most consumers are remarkably free to prefer or eschew the offerings of different companies.

One might argue that the current capitalist system already creates upper bounds on executive compensation in that companies that over-compensate their executives would have trouble attracting customers, lower-level employees, and investors.
 
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Paul
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 8:21 pm

Not sure how relevant all that is.

A cap would result in an immediate Posh-Boy Drain. The question is whether we'd notice any difference to performance. At the moment shareholders don't really have any stats on how important high pay is.
 
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Cuchulainn
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 9:00 pm

One might argue that the current capitalist system already creates upper bounds on executive compensation in that companies that over-compensate their executives would have trouble attracting customers, lower-level employees, and investors.

Not it doesn't. 
And when executives screw up they move + golden handshake and the taxpayer foots the bill as happened recently in Ireland. Profit is capitalised, debt is socialised.
 
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Traden4Alpha
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 10:51 pm

Not sure how relevant all that is.

A cap would result in an immediate Posh-Boy Drain. The question is whether we'd notice any difference to performance. At the moment shareholders don't really have any stats on how important high pay is.
What does company X offer to executive A to get him/her to leave company Y if executive A is already at max salary? Fewer hours? More hidden perqs?

The key element of the statistical distribution of salary isn't the level of the maxima, but the existence of differentials. Given any two people with different skills, experiences, accomplishments, personalities, etc. what is the difference in their salaries? Under what conditions should person A earn just 10% more than person B? What's the reasonable differential for a year of experience, a college degree, people skills, a college degree from a good school, or a PhD? And what if a person shows quantitative differences in productivity relative to their peers? If one extraordinary person can produce as much as two ordinary people, wouldn't the extraordinary person expect more pay?

It doesn't take many reasonable 10% pairwise differences across a working population of millions or billions of people to create a 1,000,000:1 ratio between the least-paid and most-paid person. It's the chaining of these reasonable differentials that drives the extrema.
 
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Paul
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 12th, 2017, 11:04 pm

I think there are virtually no extraordinary people running large companies. I expect the pool of relevantly talented people is at least ten times the size of the pool from which CEOs are drawn.

The extraordinary people are the ones starting their own businesses and risking everything. And there is almost zero correlation between these people and typical CEOs.

If people can run countries with no relevant skills and a relatively tiny salary but the assistance of some managers then I am pretty certain that people can run large companies on an equally small salary!
 
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ISayMoo
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

January 13th, 2017, 12:14 am

Not sure how relevant all that is.

A cap would result in an immediate Posh-Boy Drain. The question is whether we'd notice any difference to performance. At the moment shareholders don't really have any stats on how important high pay is.
Actually, it's pretty much established there is no positive correlation between executive pay and company performance:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/ ... 4aacc3293a
http://chiefexecutive.net/higher-ceo-pa ... rformance/
Paying CEOs with equity doesn't help, because they just do buybacks to put company money in their own pockets. Taxed at  lower, capital gains rate. Because it's "risky profit".
 
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DominicConnor
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

March 14th, 2017, 9:58 pm

I'm old enough to remmeber when  there were maximum salaries, so is Jeremy Corbyn, which means he has no excuse.

Up until the mid 1980s very few CEO or big noises in firms got anything like the pay we see.
They however got:
Chauffeur Driven Cars
A really large % of the workforce got company cars, most substantial firms had a team whose job it was to buy/maintain/insure the bloody things and of course reimburse for fuel.
"Expenses" were a function of rank and only vaguely related to doing your job.
School fees were paid by employers, including the government if you were senior enough.
Subsidised mortgages, (yes really, no I'm not making it up)
Exotic levels of pension
Far more people flew first class.
"Conferences" and "meetings" in really nice places far away where you can bring a person of a compatible sexuality or even your wife.
Clothing allowances (not just for those who wear uniforms)
Luncheon vouchers (that used to be one of the UK's best known businesses, and you could use them to hire prostituites, no I'm not making it up, look here
Or other fun would be provided at company expense
Bigger offices, very pretty secretaries and of course palaces.

Yes, palaces. Have you ever wondered why senior civl servants are often in buildings that Goldmans would regard as excessive ? Why a civil servant on 100K gets a chauffeur driven car that costs nearly as much as he is paid ? It's because of salary caps. Some of the civil servants I have visited have paintings on their office wall worth more than their house. The wallpaper for one civil servant in one room cost 59,000 quid. He was paid 120K per year.

They'd love to have the cash, rather than the car, paintings et al, but salary caps mean they have to extract value oither ways. The UK prime minister earns less than the average person on this site.
She does however have the choice of two palaces to live in.

The expenses scandal for UK MPs is the same thing, non-UK readers will be surprised to learn that until recently, our elected representatives charged (no I'm not making this up) the cleaning of their personal moats, the construction of a duck house in their garden, porn, charitable donations, comics, jewellery and employed relatives who never even came to the office. Their salaries are effectively capped as well.

So if we cap private sector pay, we will see...
Even more exotic pensions
Cars or supercars or chauffeured cars for far more levels of management
An understanding that for a given rank a certain number of duff relatives or attractive young boys/girls can be employed.
Office decoration will become a seriously good biz to be in as will "prestige offices"
(As an aside, when I first joined Wilmott, I had an office so posh that it's been in >20 films like Love Actually, things with Liam Neeson  in them, the TV news, etc), I'd have taken £1,000 but the choice was not mine. This is because "stuff" is a less efficient and vastly less honest way of paying people than cash.

All this occurs amnyway of course, but the scale can was immense and would explode if this shit wre tried again.
 
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Pat
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Re: minimum wage vs maximum wage

May 30th, 2017, 7:36 pm

CEO salaries are set by a simple mathematical algorithm:
Each company sets its CEO compensation at 50% more than the average CEO compensation of similarly sized companies, since they clearly have and exceptional candidate. How much fairer can you get?