Inequality

[Rico1304]

 

You big daft mentalist.

 

Go and read some economics.  Or take a visit to the real world.

Have you been on an embedding course? Full marks.

 

Clown.

[Rico1304]

.

That's the most sense you've ever made.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Have you been on an embedding course? Full marks.

 

Clown.

Have you been on an economics course?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(A - No.)

[Jairzinho]

If it's twice as much or 250 times as much then that business decides. If it's wrong the business will fail, if the shareholders don't like it they'll change it, if it's a private company it's got fuck all to do with anyone else.

This simply isn't true.

 

You're painting a picture of a society that doesn't exist, certainly not in the UK.

 

Tax evasion, tax avoidance, subsidies, monopolies of certain markets, and a general prevailing ideology of corporatism prevents your vision of capitalism being reality.

[Rico1304]

Have you been on an economics course?

 

 Nope, have you?

 

Educate me then, tell me where I was wrong in that sentence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(A - No.)

[Rico1304]

I fucking hate that post.

 

This is why I can't have a drink with a tory, you seem like a decent person Rico but you're just wired a bit wrong, like everyone else who votes for those cunts.

Who do you think is losing out in that transaction?

[Rico1304]

This simply isn't true.

You're painting a picture of a society that doesn't exist, certainly not in the UK.

Tax evasion, tax avoidance, subsidies, monopolies of certain markets, and a general prevailing ideology of corporatism prevents your vision of capitalism being reality.

I'm the one talking about a society that doesn't exist? Wow.

[Mook]

Who do you think is losing out in that transaction?

In a general sense? The ones who always lose out, the poor.

[Rico1304]

In a general sense? The ones who always lose out, the poor.

No mate, I meant you not drinking with a Tory.

[Jairzinho]

I'm the one talking about a society that doesn't exist? Wow.

You're becoming progressively more pathetic, rico. I've no idea why, but forgive me if I just pop you on ignore.

[Mook]

No mate, I meant you not drinking with a Tory.

No one is losing out, it means a political row is avoided and nobody can be arsed with that on a night out (well some people can but it's not for me).

[Rico1304]

You're becoming progressively more pathetic, rico. I've no idea why, but forgive me if I just pop you on ignore.

Course I am kid, bye.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I'm the one talking about a society that doesn't exist? Wow.

Yes.  You're talking about a society in which a rational marketplace is populated by dedicated shareholders with a focus on the long-term welfare of the company, when they gather to discuss the remuneration of their executives.   It's like the bank in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.  (That's a work of fiction, in case you're getting confused.)

 

In real life, shareholders tend to be nothing more than fund managers for large institutions; their interest in the "success" of the firm consists solely of driving the shareprices up so they can flog them; a hugely-paid CEO is seen as an asset to drive the shareprices up, because shareholders understanding of the business tends not to extend any further than "he's expensive, he must be good"; shareholders are the least interested of all the stakeholders in the company;  thus, the system incentivises inflated executive pay, to the detriment of society and of the firm itself.

 

(I was hoping the gif's would have conveyed that.  Might have saved me a bit of time.)

[Rico1304]

So are shareholders hedge fund managers with a view to delivering success or people ignorant of the business they are investing in? Lots of the businesses I'm aware of have pension funds as their largest shareholders.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

So are shareholders hedge fund managers with a view to delivering success or people ignorant of the business they are investing in? Lots of the businesses I'm aware of have pension funds as their largest shareholders.

Exactly.

 

What is their interest in the day-to-day operation of the business?  What is their interest in the long-term survival of the business?  Other stakeholders - managers, workers, customers, suppliers, local residents, etc. - all have a vested interest in the sustained success of the business.  Shareholders can divest themselves of it completely at the drop of a hat and never look back.  Their only interest is ensuring that the share price is higher when they flog it than when they bought it.

 

Don't take my word for it.  Ha Joon Chang is an infinitely better economist, a better writer and a more committed Capitalist than I could ever be.

http://digamo.free.fr/23things.pdf

 

Companies should not be run in the interest of their owners

 

What they tell you

Shareholders own companies. Therefore, companies should be run in their interests. It is not simply a moral argument. The shareholders are not guaranteed any fixed payments, unlike the employees (who have fixed wages), the suppliers (who are paid specific prices), the lending banks (who get paid fixed interest rates), and others involved in the business. Shareholders’ incomes vary according to the company’s performance, giving them the greatest incentive to ensure the company performs well. If the company goes bankrupt, the shareholders lose everything, whereas other ‘stakeholders’ get at least something. Thus, shareholders bear the risk that others involved in the company do not, incentivizing them to maximize company performance. When you run a company for the shareholders, its profit (what is left after making all fixed payments) is maximized, which also maximizes its social contribution.

 

What they don’t tell you

Shareholders may be the owners of corporations but, as the most mobile of the ‘stakeholders’, they often care the least about the long-term future of the company (unless they are so big that they cannot really sell their shares without seriously disrupting the business). Consequently, shareholders, especially but not exclusively the smaller ones, prefer corporate strategies that maximize short-term profits, usually at the cost of long-term investments, and maximize the dividends from those profits, which even further weakens the long-term prospects of the company by reducing the amount of retained profit that can be used for re-investment. Running the company for the shareholders often reduces its long-term growth potential.

 

Karl Marx defends capitalism

You have probably noticed that many company names in the English-speaking world come with the letter L – PLC, LLC, Ltd, etc. The letter L in these acronyms stands for ‘limited’, short for ‘limited liability’ – public limited company (PLC), limited liability company (LLC) or simply limited company (Ltd). Limited liability means that investors in the company will lose only what they have invested (their ‘shares’), should it go bankrupt.

However, you may not have realized that the L word, that is, limited liability, is what has made modern capitalism possible. Today, this form of organizing a business enterprise is taken for granted, but it wasn’t always like that.

Before the invention of the limited liability company in sixteenth-century Europe – or the joint-stock company, as it was known in its early days – businessmen had to risk everything when they started a venture. When I say everything, Ireally mean everything – not just personal property (unlimited liability meant that a failed businessman had to sell all his personal properties to repay all the debts) but also personal freedom (they could go to a debtors’ prison, should they fail to honour their debts). Given this, it is almost a miracle that anyone was willing to start a business at all.

Unfortunately, even after the invention of limited liability, it was in practice very difficult to use it until the mid nineteenth century – you needed a royal charter in order to set up a limited liability company (or a government charter in a republic). It was believed that those who were managing a limited liability company without owning it 100 per cent would take excessive risks, because part of the money they were risking was not their own. At the same time, the nonmanaging investors in a limited liability company would also become less vigilant in monitoring the managers, as their risks were capped (at their respective investments). Adam Smith, the father of economics and the patron saint of freemarket capitalism, opposed limited liability on these grounds. He famously said that the ‘directors of [joint stock] companies … being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they would watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery [i.e., partnership, which demands unlimited liability] frequently watch over their own’.

Therefore, countries typically granted limited liability only to exceptionally large and risky ventures that were deemed to be of national interest, such as the Dutch East India Company set up in 1602 (and its arch-rival, the British East India Company) and the notorious South Sea Company of Britain, the speculative bubble surrounding which in 1721 gave limited liability companies a bad name for generations.

By the mid nineteenth century, however, with the emergence of large-scale industries such as railways, steel and chemicals, the need for limited liability was felt increasingly acutely. Very few people had a big enough fortune to start a steel mill or a railway singlehandedly, so, beginning with Sweden in 1844 and followed by Britain in 1856, the countries of Western Europe and North America made limited liability generally available – mostly in the 1860s and 70s.

However, the suspicion about limited liability lingered on. Even as late as the late nineteenth century, a few decades after the introduction of generalized limited liability, small businessmen in Britain ‘who, being actively in charge of a business as well as its owner, sought to limit responsibility for its debts by the device of incorporation [limited liability]’ were frowned upon, according to an influential history of Western European entrepreneurship.

Interestingly, one of the first people who realized the significance of limited liability for the development of capitalism was Karl Marx, the supposed arch-enemy of capitalism. Unlike many of his contemporary free-market advocates (and Adam Smith before them), who opposed limited liability, Marx understood how it would enable the mobilization of large sums of capital that were needed for the newly emerging heavy and chemical industries by reducing the risk for individual investors. Writing in 1865, when the stock market was still very much a side-show in the capitalist drama, Marx had the foresight to call the joint-stock company ‘capitalist production in its highest development’. Like his free-market opponents, Marx was aware of, and criticized, the tendency for limited liability to encourage excessive risk-taking by managers. However, Marx considered it to be a side-effect of the huge material progress that this institutional innovation was about to bring.

Of course, in defending the ‘new’ capitalism against its freemarket critics, Marx had an ulterior motive. He thought the joint-stock company was a ‘point of transition’ to socialism in that it separated ownership from management, thereby making it possible to eliminate capitalists (who now do not manage the firm) without jeopardizing the material progress that capitalism had achieved.

 

The death of the capitalist class

Marx’s prediction that a new capitalism based on joint-stock companies would pave the way for socialism has not come true. However, his prediction that the new institution of generalized limited liability would put the productive forces of capitalism on to a new plane proved extremely prescient.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries limited liability hugely accelerated capital accumulation and technological progress. Capitalism was transformed from a system made up of Adam Smith’s pin factories, butchers and bakers, with at most dozens of employees and managed by a sole owner, into a system of huge corporations hiring hundreds or even thousands of employees, including the top managers themselves, with complex organizational structures.

Initially, the long-feared managerial incentive problem of limited liability companies – that the managers, playing with other people’s money, would take excessive risk – did not seem to matter very much. In the early days of limited liability, many large firms were managed by a charismatic entrepreneur – such as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or Andrew Carnegie – who owned a significant chunk of the company. Even though these part-owner-managers could abuse their position and take excessive risk (which they often did), there was a limit to that. Owning a large chunk of the company, they were going to hurt themselves if they made an overly risky decision. Moreover, many of these part-owner-managers were men of exceptional ability and vision, so even their poorly incentivized decisions were often superior to those made by most of those well-incentivized full-owner-managers.

However, as time wore on, a new class of professional managers emerged to replace these charismatic entrepreneurs. As companies grew in size, it became more and more difficult for anyone to own a significant share of them, although in some European countries, such as Sweden, the founding families (or foundations owned by them) hung on as the dominant shareholders, thanks to the legal allowance to issue new shares with smaller (typically 10 per cent, sometimes even 0.1 per cent) voting rights. With these changes, professional managers became the dominant players and the shareholders became increasingly passive in determining the way in which companies were run.

From the 1930s, the talk was increasingly of the birth of managerial capitalism, where capitalists in the traditional sense – the ‘captains of industry’, as the Victorians used to call them – had been replaced by career bureaucrats (private sector bureaucrats, but bureaucrats nonetheless). There was an increasing worry that these hired managers were running the enterprises in their own interests, rather than in the interests of their legal owners, that is, the shareholders. When they should be maximizing profits, it was argued, these managers were maximizing sales (to maximize the size of the company and thus their own prestige) and their own perks, or, worse, engaged directly in prestige projects that add hugely to their egos but little to company profits and thus its value (measured essentially by its stock market capitalization). Some accepted the rise of the professional managers as an inevitable, if not totally welcome, phenomenon. Joseph Schumpeter, the Austrian-born American economist who is famous for his theory of entrepreneurship, argued in the 1940s that, with the growing scale of companies and the introduction of scientific principles in corporate research and development, the heroic entrepreneurs of early capitalism would be replaced by bureaucratic professional managers. Schumpeter believed this would reduce the dynamism of capitalism, but thought it inevitable. Writing in the 1950s, John KennethGalbraith, the Canadian-born American economist, also argued that the rise of large corporations managed by professional managers was unavoidable and therefore that the only way to provide ‘countervailing forces’ to those enterprises was through increased government regulation and enhanced union power.

However, for decades after that, more pure-blooded advocates of private property have believed that managerial incentives need to be designed in such a way that the managers maximize profits. Many fine brains had worked on this ‘incentive design’ problem, but the ‘holy grail’ proved elusive. Managers could always find a way to observe the letter of the contract but not the spirit, especially when it is not easy for shareholders to verify whether poor profit performance by a manager was the result of his failure to pay enough attention to profit figures or due to forces beyond his control.

 

The holy grail or an unholy alliance?

And then, in the 1980s, the holy grail was found. It was called the principle of shareholder value maximization. It was argued that professional managers should be rewarded according to the amount they can give to shareholders. In order to achieve this, it was argued, first profits need to be maximized by ruthlessly cutting costs – wage bills, investments, inventories, middle-level managers, and so on. Second, the highest possible share of these profits needs to be distributed to the shareholders – through dividends and share buybacks. In order to encourage managers to behave in this way, the proportion of their compensation packages that stock options account for needs to be increased, so that they identify more with the interests of the shareholders. The idea was advocated not just by shareholders, but also by many professional managers, most famously by Jack Welch, the long-time chairman of General Electric (GE), who is often credited with coining the term ‘shareholder value’ in a speech in 1981.

Soon after Welch’s speech, shareholder value maximization became the zeitgeist of the American corporate world. In the beginning, it seemed to work really well for both the managers and the shareholders. The share of profits in national income, which had shown a downward trend since the 1960s, sharply rose in the mid 1980s and has shown an upward trend since then.3 And the shareholders got a higher share of that profit as dividends, while seeing the value of their shares rise. Distributed profits as a share of total US corporate profit stood at 35–45 per cent between the 1950s and the 1970s, but it has been on an upward trend since the late 70s and now stands at around 60 per cent.4 The managers saw their compensation rising through the roof (see Thing 14), but shareholders stopped questioning their pay packages, as they were happy with ever-rising share prices and dividends. The practice soon spread to other countries – more easily to countries like Britain, which had a corporate power structure and managerial culture similar to those of the US, and less easily to other countries, as we shall see below.

Now, this unholy alliance between the professional managers and the shareholders was all financed by squeezing the other stakeholders in the company (which is why it has spread much more slowly to other rich countries where the other stakeholders have greater relative strength). Jobs were ruthlessly cut, many workers were fired and rehired as non-unionized labour with lower wages and fewer benefits, and wage increases were suppressed (often by relocating to or outsourcing from low-wage countries, such as China and India – or the threat to do so). The suppliers, and their workers, were also squeezed by continued cuts in procurement prices, while the government was pressured into lowering corporate tax rates and/or providing more subsidies, with the help of the threat of relocating to countries with lower corporate tax rates and/or higher business subsidies. As a result, income inequality soared (see Thing 13) and in a seemingly endless corporate boom (ending, of course, in 2008), the vast majority of the American and the British populations could share in the (apparent) prosperity only through borrowing at unprecedented rates.

The immediate income redistribution into profits was bad enough, but the ever-increasing share of profit in national income since the 1980s has not been translated into higher investments either (see Thing 13). Investment as a share of US national output has actually fallen, rather than risen, from 20.5 per cent in the 1980s to 18.7 per cent since then (1990–2009). It may have been acceptable if this lower investment rate had been compensated for by a more efficient use of capital, generating higher growth. However, the growth rate of per capita income in the US fell from around 2.6 per cent per year in the 1960s and 70s to 1.6 per cent during 1990–2009, the heyday of shareholder capitalism. In Britain, where similar changes in corporate behaviour were happening, per capita income growth rates fell from 2.4 per cent in the 1960s–70s, when the country was allegedly suffering from the ‘British Disease’, to 1.7 per cent during 1990–2009. So running companies in the interest of the shareholders does not even benefit the economy in the average sense (that is, ignoring the upward income redistribution).

This is not all. The worst thing about shareholder value maximization is that it does not even do the company itself much good. The easiest way for a company to maximize profit is to reduce expenditure, as increasing revenues is more difficult – by cutting the wage bill through job cuts and by reducing capital expenditure by minimizing investment. Generating higher profit, however, is only the beginning of shareholder value maximization. The maximum proportion of the profit thus generated needs to be given to the shareholders in the form of higher dividends. Or the company uses part of the profits to buy back its own shares, thereby keeping the share prices up and thus indirectly redistributing even more profits to the shareholders (who can realize higher capital gains should they decide to sell some of their shares). Share buybacks used to be less than 5 per cent of US corporate profits for decades until the early 1980s, but have kept rising since then and reached an epic proportion of 90 per cent in 2007 and an absurd 280 per cent in 2008. William Lazonick, the American business economist, estimates that, had GM not spent the $20.4 billion that it did in share buybacks between 1986 and 2002 and put it in the bank (with a 2.5 per cent after-tax annual return), it would have had no problem finding the $35 billion that it needed to stave off bankruptcy in 2009. And in all this binge of profits, the professional managers benefit enormously too, as they own a lot of shares themselves through stock options.

All this damages the long-run prospect of the company. Cutting jobs may increase productivity in the short run, but may have negative long-term consequences. Having fewer workers means increased work intensity, which makes workers tired and more prone to mistakes, lowering product quality and thus a company’s reputation. More importantly, the heightened insecurity, coming from the constant threat of job cuts, discourages workers from investing in acquiring company-specific skills, eroding the company’s productive potential. Higher dividends and greater own-share buybacks reduce retained profits, which are the main sources of corporate investment in the US and other rich capitalist countries, and thus reduce investment. The impacts of reduced investment may not be felt in the short run, but in the long run make a company’s technology backward and threaten its very survival.

But wouldn’t the shareholders care? As owners of the company, don’t they have the most to lose, if their company declines in the long run? Isn’t the whole point of someone being an owner of an asset – be it a house, a plot of land or a company – that she cares about its long-run productivity? If the owners are letting all this happen, defenders of the status quo would argue, it must be because that is what they want, however insane it may look to outsiders.

Unfortunately, despite being the legal owners of the company, shareholders are the ones who are least committed among the various stakeholders to the long-term viability of the company. This is because they are the ones who can exit the company most easily – they just need to sell their shares, if necessary at a slight loss, as long as they are smart enough not to stick to a lost cause for too long. In contrast, it is more difficult for other stakeholders, such as workers and suppliers, to exit the company and find another engagement, because they are likely to have accumulated skills and capital equipment (in the case of the suppliers) that are specific to the companies they do business with. Therefore, they have a greater stake in the long-run viability of the company than most shareholders. This is why maximizing shareholder value is bad for the company, as well as the rest of the economy.

 

The dumbest idea in the world

Limited liability has allowed huge progress in human productive power by enabling the amassing of huge amounts of capital, exactly because it has offered shareholders an easy exit, thereby reducing the risk involved in any investment. However, at the same time, this very ease of exit is exactly what makes the shareholders unreliable guardians of a company’s long-term future.

This is why most rich countries outside the AngloAmerican world have tried to reduce the influence of freefloating shareholders and maintain (or even create) a group of long-term stakeholders (including some shareholders) through various formal and informal means. In many countries, the government has held sizeable share ownership in key enterprises – either directly (e.g., Renault in France, Volkswagen inGermany) or indirectly through ownership by state-owned banks (e.g., France, Korea) – and acted as a stable shareholder. As mentioned above, countries like Sweden allowed differential voting rights for different classes of shares, which enabled the founding families to retain significant control over the corporation while raising additional capital. In some countries, there are formal representations by workers, who have a greater longterm orientation than floating shareholders, in company management (e.g., the presence of union representatives on company supervisory boards inGermany). In Japan, companies have minimized the influence of floating shareholders through cross-shareholding among friendly companies. As a result, professional managers and floating shareholders have found it much more difficult to form the ‘unholy alliance’ in these countries, even though they too prefer the shareholder-value-maximization model, given its obvious benefits to them.

Being heavily influenced, if not totally controlled, by longer-term stakeholders, companies in these countries do not as easily sack workers, squeeze suppliers, neglect investment and use profits for dividends and share buybacks as American and British companies do. All this means that in the long run they may be more viable than the American or the British companies. Just think about the way in whichGeneral Motors has squandered its absolute dominance of the world car industry and finally gone bankrupt while being on the forefront of shareholder value maximization by constantly downsizing and refraining from investment (see Thing 18). The weakness of GM management’s short-term-oriented strategy has been apparent at least from the late 1980s, but the strategy continued until its bankruptcy in 2009, because it made both the managers and the shareholders happy even while debilitating the company.

Running companies in the interests of floating shareholders is not only inequitable but also inefficient, not just for the national economy but also for the company itself. As Jack Welch recently confessed, shareholder value is probably the ‘dumbest idea in the world’.

[Stu Monty]

I'm being a retard? Are you switching the argument to hours worked or value to the business.

 

You might not be, but it doesn't mean someone else can't be. The person in charge gets paid the most, simple. If it's twice as much or 250 times as much then that business decides. If it's wrong the business will fail, if the shareholders don't like it they'll change it, if it's a private company it's got fuck all to do with anyone else.

I said pretending to be a retard because I genuinely though you were deliberately missing the point. Apparently not. The post you responded to was very specifically about the ratios of pay and work. Obviously. Painfully obviously.

 

The idea that what a private company does has fuck all to do with anyone else is probably one of the stupidest things ever said on one of these chats about a serious topic.

 

Slaves in cotton fields? None of your business!

Bonded child labour? None of your business!

Pumping chemicals into the sea? None of your business!

Chopping up debt that will cause a global crash? None of your business!

 

It very much is our business as even a passing knowledge of the last few decades shows that all that matters to many shareholders is that it makes money. No matter how corrosive, dangerous or illegal the activity might be.

 

That "success" is not a substitute for moral judgement, it requires a psychopathic or sociopathic view to think it does.

 

You know this. And I'm sure you wouldn't stand by that post. As it's totally mental, and I don't think you are.

[Rico1304]

All of the things you mentioned are illegal, you might as well have said being being whipped or murdered for poor performance. I specifically talked about pay and you are extending the statement to include all sorts.

[Stu Monty]

All of the things you mentioned are illegal, you might as well have said being being whipped or murdered for poor performance. I specifically talked about pay and you are extending the statement to include all sorts.

Slavery wasn't illegal, FYI. Neither was chopping up debt, or selling sub prime mortgages, or not maintaining the Deepwater pipes.

 

What has illegality got to do with it, you quite clearly stated that as long as shareholders are happy it's none of anyone else's business.

 

Completely missing the point that it is the fact that other people making it their business is what changes the law (as shareholders are happy to keep doing it otherwise).

[Rico1304]

You're like a kangaroo. What a business pays its employees has nothing to do with anyone else as long as it's legal.

[Stu Monty]

You're like a kangaroo. What a business pays its employees has nothing to do with anyone else as long as it's legal.

So people who argue to raise the minimum wage should shut up then? And should have before, leaving it on the floor?

 

Anyone that needs the law to define their morality for them really isn't thinking hard enough for themselves.

 

If you don't want people pulling you on stupid broad statements then don't say them. Or even maybe don't have the brass to avoid the point someone was making about ratios of pay and work and then moan about people making wider points.

[Stu Monty]

Also, given you always want consistency then why aren't you showing it here?

 

Why is one legal activity nobody's business (pay) but seemingly you set that apart from other legal but immoral activity that shareholders allow to continue (many of the above).

[Rico1304]

Nope, they can do whatever they want, but until it becomes law then the business has no requirement to change.

 

All of these businesses have customers who can vote with their feet if they are that bothered. Look how long people were arsed about Google and Starbucks.

[Stu Monty]

Nope, they can do whatever they want, but until it becomes law then the business has no requirement to change.

 

All of these businesses have customers who can vote with their feet if they are that bothered. Look how long people were arsed about Google and Starbucks.

So you (not other people) are fine that a company can do anything it wants as long as it's legal?

 

Fucked up, that. Seriously.

 

It's that attitude that allows terrible shit to go on.

[Rico1304]

Yes, they can do whatever they want. How that effects their business is their lookout, if customers are that arsed and leave they'll have to adapt or die.

[Rico1304]

As for consistency, people on here moan like fuck about the treatment of tesco or Amazon staff but how many boycott them? Boycott can be really effective but only they are stuck with.