Bill James: This Is Not Capitalism. It Is Organized Theft.

The best boy?

 

What is so crazy about it?

A company with most of its workers making $10 an hour full-time would be making roughly $20K a year. Do the 100X ratio, and the CEO would be making $2 million a year. Hardly an unmotivating pittance, especially when you consider the average CEO made about 40 times in the average worker up until around 1980.

 

Tom Cruise would be an independent contractor, not an employee of 20th Century Fox or Sony Pictures, etc., so his salary for a picture would have no bearing no the salaries of employees of whatever production company is producing the film.

 

There's plenty of incentive to be the best. They just have to reward those who are allowing them to make it the best.

 

LOL.

There are still producers paying the bills.

If this is the exemption, it's big enough to drive a bus through. Isn't the grip in the same situation? Shouldn't his pay still be in proportion to Tom's?

 

And the dead weight too!

 

But if Tom Cruise makes $20M for one picture (and for the sake of math let's say that's all he makes in a given year), then Tom Cruise has to pay any full-time employees of his own -- nannies, personal trainers, personal assistants, etc. -- at least $200K.
And if the CEO of 20th Century Fox, Paramount, or whatever studio makes his movie is making $20M per year, then the grip, and every other grip the studio employs, still has to make at least $200K.

Of course, as with any law, there will be exceptions and loopholes. Part-time employees. Independent contractors. Businesses with less than X number of employees. Companies that pay based on sales or commission. Exemptions for stock options or stakes in the company.
Before long, the whole point of the law is subverted anyway. The rich, powerful, smart and sneaky will need about 10 minutes to find the loopholes and exploit them, and once again the people it's supposed to help are likely the ones who get screwed.

 

If they're dead weight, then they can get fired. And then there would actually be increased motivation to make more money for your boss, if your own salary number is tied into it.

 

I've got a really radical proposal. Why don't we tell person C that what person A pays person B is none of C's goddamn business.

 

It becomes C's business when A and B tell him he has to take a paycut because they say profits are down, and then A and B take off on a four-day weekend aboard their yachts.

 

Your comparisions are the gift that keeps on giving.

 

Nope. Not C's business at all.