Why do CEOs earn so much?

The last time I checked the average CEO pay for American companies is nearly $14million buckorinos.

CEOs are technically "staff" and not capitalist porkies shareholders (the two aren't mutually exclusive). The CEO is hired by the board of directors, which is elected by the shareholders, to maximise short term profits. The modern company structure didn't exist for Marx so the conventional texts don't seem to discuss this.

It would make rational sense for shareholder porkies on the board to pay the CEO a more "human level" pay and just pocket the savings as yummy dummy dividendies. So why do CEOs make so much fucking money?

They know every secret of the corporation. You are paying them a lot so other corporations dont bribe your CEO and steal your secrets.

Even through class is a relation to the means of production, it's culturally irrelevant in the distinction between shareholders and CEOs. They both walking in the same milieu.

Modern CEOs have some sort of feudal relationship to the bourgeoisie, not unlike a duke to a king. It's a reciprocal share of power.

14 million is fucking nothing for a major corporation, I'm sure the top ones get more than that. News anchors gets paid that much annually by the MSNBC and CNN

Because porky then can go and say "See? If you work hard enough you can also get to the top! Fourteen-million?! Mein gott!". And by that they totally subvert the debate from discussing the ownership of the means of production to some more banal debate about salaries.

Just look at the discourse of the so called popular progressive left. You keep hearing about this and that CEO, their salaries and bonuses, but rarely you can hear them talk about the owners that pay those salaries.

CEOs are paid mostly in stock options

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They work harder than anyone else and are the smartest people of society

You have to understand that the CEO is just very well paid prole. He is the most important worker in the company and there is much competition for best leaders so their wages go up.

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Mainly because the modern corporate structure needs them and other high level executives. That's another one of Capitalism's inefficiencies. They do work a lot of hours and do do important work, but ultimately they aren't ultimately necessary for the business to function, just to function in a way that profits the owners. Their role is like the role of vassals of feudal lords; the serfs will farm just fine on their own, but there needs to be someone who makes sure the serfs are actually doing what they need to be doing to benefit the lord, the lord would like to not have a vassal and not give him a cut of the power and taxes, but he needs him regardless.

I agree with you that the left should stop talking about manager and CEO salaries.

Sure, the golden parachutes and the insane salaries are a symptom of capitalist degeneration, but you should really emphasize what's wrong with private ownership if MoP/shareholding. You don't overthrow monarchy just because you pay the kings cupbearer less.

Because boards of CEOs decide the salaries of other CEOs and vice versa. It's all a nice little mutually beneficial circlejerk.

So one porky pays his CEO 14 million out of his own pocket to fool all the workers, even those in competing companies?
Nah.

To be honest we must admit that Marx' class analysis fails here. CEOs are not bourgeoisie, yet they are so closely connected to them via the cultural milieu that they are practically the same.

They're usually publically traded companies, go and buy some shares and you can become porky too

This bears an interesting question I'd like to discuss.

Is a worker holding 0,0001% shares of the cooperation he is working in porky?

That doesn't change the fact that the capitalist is going to want to make maximum profits, which you do not accomplish by taking it upon yourself to keep capitalism floating. That's government job. More likely I think is the position of CEO is granted as a favor or something similar. "Sell me the product at this price and I'll make your nephew CEO" and so on and so on.

Also something like this.
There's probably also some prestige in paying your CEO a lot of money. 14 million is peanuts anyway compared to what some companies have to pay their the entirety of their workers.

This tbh

I'd say not since any input he would have to the means of production would be minute at best.

The problem with liberals is that they believe money in itself has value. Production and physical goods have value. You don't run out of money in capitalism because it profits beyond the capabilities of production. Owning the means of production and getting rid of the usurious scheme, would actually be more conservative considering that running out of valued 'wealth; would mean running out of goods we depend on. Unlike capitalism which can buy out first order goods, wastes them, and is covered up by the blanket of money. Taxing the rich is more of a symbolic tactic than actually doing anything. As long as we bitch about taxes, and never about production, nothing will change.Taxing the rich in consumerist based economies is like possessing air and being proud you did something.

No, only if it's a significant share of the company and gives the shareholder voting rights.
Your average prole who buys some stock or index funds with their saved wages doesn't become bourgeois; they're still just proles who were smart enough to hustle a little profit off the bourgeois economy.

You have to take a look at how corporate governance actually works. CEOs have a lot of influence on the board.

The role of the CEO is to make big picture decisions based on all the information they get from the people they supervise. If you have a big company, it means that decisions will imply large gains or losses. This means that if someone is just marginally better at making these decisions than others, they are already bringing some more millions into the firm. Therefore, the marginal willingness to pay of shareholders for CEOs is pretty high.

Also, for some reason, a lot of people here seem to believe that the most important thing for business is the physical act of producing goods themselves. That was true in the past, probably up until the 20th century. Nowadays, that's the easy part. What's difficult is the organization of the firm itself, as the efficient organizational structure of the firm, supply chains, managing of the reputation, etc. are what is going to give that small edge over the competition or the small improvement in profits shareholders keep on demanding.

What happens to the company if no workers work for a day? No money is made.
What happens to the company if the CEO doesn't work for a day? Nothing.

The cock who owns Walmart has a salary of about 1 million a year, but he got 14 million in 2015. Most of that is a bonus, and a little bit of it is from stocks.

They are "smarter" because of the access to higher education.

Also, many smart people are not brought to the top due to the economic chains they face.

Ancaps keep saying that men are inequal yet, treat man as if they are equal.

I know this is bait but actually that's not even wrong. They do work harder than the rest of society. That doesn't make the system better