As a footnote to the discussion of pay inequality, consider
the salary inequalities in the United States Army, arguably [I would say] one
of the most efficient and successful large corporate structures in the
world. A Four Star General earns about
$180,000 a year [plus various perks], which is roughly six times the salary of
a Corporal [E4] who has been in rank for several years. Imagine a private corporation in which a
secretary earned $40,000 and the CEO earned $240,000 a year – not $24 million,
but $240,000. Unimaginable! A Master Sergeant with a whole sleeve full of hash marks indicating time in grade can make $70,000 a year. And these are people who risk their lives,
not just their weekends, for advancement.
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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
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7 comments:
The military can afford small salary disparities, because money is less important in the hierarchy and power is not based on earning power, but on responsibility and machismo- I'm not sure it's a good example in any sense
Gosh! I don't believe that the generals get to decide who is on their "compensation committee" and as far as I know, there is no comparative salary "race to the top" among armies in the world.
But, that said, we all know that corporate brass has far more "weighty matters" and "responsibility" on their shoulders than just a bunch of military who have the piddly task of "defending democracy".
In the real world, greed is good, and psychopathy pays! The military is obviously recruiting from the wrong pool. They need more sharks and less minnows! Just look at how effectively corporate giants are at defending "family values". I do believe they successfully got 10 million households in the 2008 crash to "re-orient" their lives on the street once they were dispossessed of their houses. No military has done the equivalent of such a "fine job! good job! very good leadership" as Trump would say. The military needs to recruit more "sharks in suits" as Robert D. Hare has written. But thankfully, American "enterprise" is leading the way in paying CEOs astounding salaries as they busily "deconstruct" the economy creating a future in which there are only two social classes, the 200 or so super-billionaire class, and the 7 billion wannabes!
Who needs a philosophy degree to understand that real power is in the hands of madmen and socipaths. If you believe in country, patriotism, social service, compassion, motherhood, and apple pie... you are so 20th century!!! The future belongs to Republican "family values" and the psychopaths they put into power!
Those generals will almost certainly be handsomeley rewarded on retirement with a paid position with a military contractor or private security company, earning millions I would guess.
A superb example, and I hope not the final one. Even before reading the comments, I knew we'd learn from them about what an exceptional an organization the military is, and therefore why market dynamics do not apply. But I do think that nowadays lots of people risk their lives for advancement.
You try to talk about a Marxist analysis of contemporary society. I always feel you are a bit "out of date". You might find this talk by Richard Florida at the LSE in October 2017 of interest because he attempts to do a Marxist class analysis of modern society. He is talking a language I can understand. I would be interested in any observations you have.
Skip the first 5 minutes of boring introduction. The next 20 minutes are Florida talking about his own education (which I find interesting), but you should skip to 30:00 into the video, so cut and past this as a URL:
https://youtu.be/ZfcTkUP7Qwc?t=1800
The market knows best!
'consider the salary inequalities in the United States Army .. A Four Star General earns about $180,000 a year .. A Master Sergeant .. can make $70,000 a year. And these are people who risk their lives, not just their weekends, for advancement.'
I might be offended by the notion that these are people who risk their lives 'for advancement', but I won't get distracted. There is a point that you are making, here. You notice that top generals max out at $180,000 in base salary. Thus, if we fired every one of the 963 generals and admirals from the armed forces and didn’t replace them or pay their retirement benefits, we could save at most $200 million in direct compensation annually. If we simply demoted them all to colonel or captain—the next-highest ranks—the salary savings would be at most .01 percent of the budget.
I take your point to be that the real cost of generals is low, and that's good that they are not overpaid, like CEOs. This at least, is, I take it, your point. I wonder, though, if you are being a bit superficial here, comparing generals to CEOs in this fashion. It occurs to me, that generals need need a driver, a security detail, someone to manage their communications equipment, and a coterie of assistants, all of whom are high-ranking military officers themselves. And generals typically don’t fly commercial.
Note: I think that most colonels fly coach, drive themselves around, and answer their own cell phones.
Retirement pay is also a concern, but I'll move on to other difficulties with this analogy. Generals are like CEOs, in that what, is it that they won’t have to worry about being bossed around by superiors when conflicts arise? Yeah, okay, to that I say that more than 100 general- and admiral-level positions have been created since the Sept. 11 attacks. Why do we have so many generals? What’s the difference between a brigadier general, a major general, a lieutenant general, and a plain-old general? The number of stars on their uniform.
I never bought into this analogy between generals and CEOs. I get an analogy between generals and admirals, if you want, but with CEOs, your point is clearly to demand: What do CEOs do all day long to deserve their pay? What do the CEOs of big companies actually do all day? Well, whatever it is that they do, if you think that they are overpaid then be a CEO, right? I mean, who pays their salary, what business is it of mine? Note, that you believe that CEO pay has gotten out of hand and is too high. This belief strikes me as totally arbitrary -- they get too much pieces of paper, it's not fair. But why count pieces of paper? The world is complicated, I'm willing to let it be complicated and meaningless. The idea that there needs to be fairness in my perception of what somebody else deserves, makes sense to me when I'm paying for their services.
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