It's your neo liberal view that's simplistic and naive, unfortunately there is so many poor people who have Stockolm Syndrom and praise the people who exploit them. Workers produce the goods and the services, value come from them
What's bad about privatization, depoliticization, and free trade?
You're wrong about what workers do, at least in Western countries. Here, we operate the machines that produce the goods, and support the services that the company as a whole organizes and sells.
a good CEO can eventually manage to rise the productivity but they are not creating any value by themselves. There is no proof that any CEO ever rise the productivity to the point such salaries and advantages would be justified.
That's not what I said. I said a CEO attracts investors thanks to their track record of making good decisions. This, in turn, can create more job opportunities if the company expands and production has to be increased. I never said anything about a CEO making their employees more productive.
CEOs are the captain of a ship. They don't own the ship, they're just in charge of setting the course and heading. If anything, they can have a large impact on the company's culture with the priorities they set. For instance, the new CEO of the company I work for made a big thing about inclusivity and dictated that all locations should have gender-neutral bathrooms.
In the case of a publicly traded company, the investors own the company. They decide how much they'll pay a CEO, which is also a consequence of the free market. Would you want to run a company valued at 3,000,000,000 dollars for a wage of $2,000/month? Realistically, could you? Or can you consider that a CEO has a very specific skill set and experience that not many people have, making them more expensive from a supply & demand perspective?
For that matter, when you gain experience in a job and get more responsibilities, shouldn't that be reflected in your pay as well?
what part of the rise in profit come from them being a good manager and what part come from the economic context?
Navigating this is the CEO's job. Other C-levels will have their own opinions and suggestions, but it's up to the CEO to decide what to do. Maybe the increase in sales was due to some special event (e.g. the Olympics), or perhaps there was a cultural shift that made the company's product more liked or disliked. A CEO who makes the wrong decisions here could impact the lives of thousands of people, endangering their livelihood. For instance, when their products become more disliked, a decision has to be made about switching advertising strategies or investing in the research of products that fit with the current zeitgeist.
And even bad managers who ruin their company go out this a massive golden parachute, how can that be considered ethical? Anyway, it's impossible that a CEO work 30 time as hard as a worker, even less 250 time, they don't deserve that much money.
Yet, the CEO's decisions have a much larger impact than those of a single worker. As a factory worker, my responsibilities are very limited. Nothing I can do can tank the company, even if I utterly fail at doing my job. My mistakes only impact my own employment. And, after I get home, I get to spend time with all of you lovely people, instead of being on-call 24/7 and having to put my job first.
This
golden parachute is part of the negotiations between a prospective CEO and the board/shareholders. From the point of view of the CEO, it makes sense, they're taking a risk as well. They're legally required to act in the shareholder's best interest, and their interests could contradict the long-term health of the company, and by an extent, the CEO's reputation and future opportunities.
Giving all the power to the shareholders is extremely dangerous.
Yes, it is. It doesn't help that shareholders have those specific legal protections I mentioned earlier. This is why the focus of a publicly traded company switches from their actual product to making more money/profits. And you'll never hear me say that this doesn't have negative consequences for the employees.
Giving all the power to the shareholders is extremely dangerous. Those are just greedy and lazy parasites who are paid to do nothing useful. They only think about maximizing short term profit, they are in a logic of looting, not actually help companies to grow and prosper. Today economy ideology is so irrational that some companies take loans to pay more to the shareholders or spend all their profit reimbursing the debt someone got... by buying the company using money they don't even have: many healthy companies died because of such sharks. Also, it's been decades that such politics are applied, we have obvious proof that they only benefit the richest 1% (the economy is stagnant, we have economic crisis after economic crisis, but inequalities are on the rise almost everywhere, rich have never been so rich, when poor people salaries stagnate or fall) and don't have any good effect on the real world economy.
Honestly, I don't appreciate being called a greedy and lazy parasite when I invested my hard-earned money in stocks with the hope of seeing profits. Sure, there are large investment firms who are guilty of these things, but you have to realize that millions of individuals are investing in stocks as well. Every single one of my colleagues has invested in some kind of fund or stocks.
Speaking for Western countries, the rest of what you say just isn't how things work. Of course we can loan money to do things we can't afford with our savings. To buy my house, I had to take out a loan. Even countries borrow from other countries. Why wouldn't companies be allowed to do the same?
I do agree that the wealth-gap is becoming an issue, but I see this as a problem of politics, not corporations/companies in themselves. These companies are playing by the rules that policies allow. Additionally, inflation drives the increase in cost of everything. But, then consider things like the
Big Mac Index, and wonder why the same product costs 4x the amount in Switzerland than it does in South Africa. A large part of this difference is caused by the cost of wages in relation to each area's cost of living, and taxes.
Another issue that's pushing wages down is the abundance of low-skill/low-educated people. Everyone is capable of doing the job I do, not everyone is capable of managing a company's datacenter. It's normal for a company to try and attract skilled employees by paying them more wages. After all, a company has to attract these people because it's in their interest to have the best people in all positions.
The claim that the rich have no good effect on the real-world economy, I think is ridiculous. While I doubt that the
trickle-down economy theory is entirely correct, some aspects of it make sense. The more money you have, the more risk you can take. The rich don't just sit on their money, they use it to invest in startups, fund research, or buy luxury products. All of this creates employment and drives innovation. If you have a great idea or an exceptional skill, you could find investors who'd want to fund you. Sure, they'd want to see some kind of return on that investment, but you'd be running your own business, potentially hiring a bunch of people to work with you. Would these employees deserve a share in the company that's based on your idea and skill?
Hell, just look at Patreon/SS/OnlyFans and how people with disposable income fund creators. This is an economic impact, and most of these subscribers aren't even what you'd call rich. Or take Starlink as an example of the other extreme. Without SpaceX, Musk would've never been able to build it. Yet it's being deployed all around the world, giving people who never had access to the internet an affordable way to access it. They can now look at the wealth of information (and porn, mostly porn) that's available, to better themselves and their communities.