<story><title>McKinsey, technocratic management, and structural inequality</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckinsey-destroyed-middle-class/605878/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>creato</author><text>&amp;gt; 2. CEO salaries are certainly relevant to the working middle class, since they are commonly seen as tremendously too high and the extra money could contribute to the middle class&amp;#x27; wage.&lt;p&gt;This may be how they are &amp;quot;commonly seen&amp;quot;, but is it correct?&lt;p&gt;Walmart pays 5 of its executives a total of ~$70m&amp;#x2F;year [1]. Walmart employs 2.2m people [2]. Redistributing 100% of these 5 executives&amp;#x27; salary to all 2.2m workers would be a raise of... $32&amp;#x2F;year.&lt;p&gt;The bigger issue with wealth inequality is the investor class and favorable treatment of capital (low capital gains tax rates, carried interest, shady real estate business, etc.), not salaries&amp;#x2F;wages, even extremely high salaries like those of executives. Even talking about &amp;quot;management&amp;quot; as relevant to this issue is a distraction.&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www1.salary.com&amp;#x2F;WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www1.salary.com&amp;#x2F;WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corporate.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;newsroom&amp;#x2F;company-facts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corporate.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;newsroom&amp;#x2F;company-facts&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>samcal</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t expect to change your mind, but I had a very different reading of this article than you did and here are my thoughts on the 4 points that you raised:&lt;p&gt;1. I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s a big secret that stamping out unions is a key part of modern management. If McKinsey and other consulting firms were management consultants, they should be even more aware of that strategy and would have been in a key position to effect that change over a large number of companies.&lt;p&gt;2. CEO salaries are certainly relevant to the working middle class, since they are commonly seen as tremendously too high and the extra money could contribute to the middle class&amp;#x27; wage.&lt;p&gt;3. I think the point of that sentence is more like &amp;quot;the amount of effort it takes to become successful is significantly greater than it was when the system worked better.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;4. He&amp;#x27;s not trying to be the technocratic management, he&amp;#x27;s literally arguing against its existence.</text></item><item><author>dvt</author><text>Oh boy, another Yale, LSE, and Oxford graduate lecturing us on &amp;quot;structural inequalities&amp;quot; -- yawn. He&amp;#x27;s also decided to double-dip and is now back at Yale Law teaching after clerking for a federal judge. Excuse me while I roll my eyes a full 720 degrees. How exactly, sir, are you &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; than Pete Buttigieg? This is the pot calling the kettle black to the n-th degree.&lt;p&gt;My main problems with the article, apart from the above:&lt;p&gt;1. The connection between consulting firms like McKinsey and dwindling union memberships is tenuous at best. I&amp;#x27;m not sure that there&amp;#x27;s any causal link, and the article just kind of shoehorns it in.&lt;p&gt;2. Wait, why are we talking about CEO salaries? What does this have to do with anything? Oh, I get it -- it&amp;#x27;s going to get The Atlantic a bunch of &amp;quot;controversy clicks&amp;quot; on Facebook and Twitter.&lt;p&gt;3. &amp;quot;Whereas a century ago, fewer than one in five of America’s business leaders had completed college, top executives today typically have elite degrees&amp;quot; -- a century ago, we also didn&amp;#x27;t have little boxes that could access the entirety of human knowledge in about 30 milliseconds. A millennia ago, most of us were illiterate. Times change. I&amp;#x27;m genuinely not sure what the point is here.&lt;p&gt;4. &amp;quot;This is a dangerous belief. Technocratic management, no matter how brilliant, cannot unwind the structural inequalities that are dismantling the American middle class..&amp;quot; -- but Yale &amp;amp; Oxford educated lawyers can. Got it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ddebernardy</author><text>&amp;gt; Redistributing 100% of these 5 executives&amp;#x27; salary to all 2.2m workers would be a raise of... $32&amp;#x2F;year.&lt;p&gt;But that&amp;#x27;s besides the point. What on earth do they need to get paid that much for? Even if you assume they&amp;#x27;re contributing 100x what line workers are doing, they&amp;#x27;ll do just fine earning under $1M&amp;#x2F;year.&lt;p&gt;Plus, you then pinpoint the bigger issue. Yeah, the investor class exists because, you know, someone shaved $32 off of everyone&amp;#x27;s salary so 5 people could get paid a total of ~$70M&amp;#x2F;year.</text></comment>
<story><title>McKinsey, technocratic management, and structural inequality</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckinsey-destroyed-middle-class/605878/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>creato</author><text>&amp;gt; 2. CEO salaries are certainly relevant to the working middle class, since they are commonly seen as tremendously too high and the extra money could contribute to the middle class&amp;#x27; wage.&lt;p&gt;This may be how they are &amp;quot;commonly seen&amp;quot;, but is it correct?&lt;p&gt;Walmart pays 5 of its executives a total of ~$70m&amp;#x2F;year [1]. Walmart employs 2.2m people [2]. Redistributing 100% of these 5 executives&amp;#x27; salary to all 2.2m workers would be a raise of... $32&amp;#x2F;year.&lt;p&gt;The bigger issue with wealth inequality is the investor class and favorable treatment of capital (low capital gains tax rates, carried interest, shady real estate business, etc.), not salaries&amp;#x2F;wages, even extremely high salaries like those of executives. Even talking about &amp;quot;management&amp;quot; as relevant to this issue is a distraction.&lt;p&gt;1. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www1.salary.com&amp;#x2F;WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www1.salary.com&amp;#x2F;WALMART-INC-Executive-Salaries.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corporate.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;newsroom&amp;#x2F;company-facts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;corporate.walmart.com&amp;#x2F;newsroom&amp;#x2F;company-facts&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>samcal</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t expect to change your mind, but I had a very different reading of this article than you did and here are my thoughts on the 4 points that you raised:&lt;p&gt;1. I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s a big secret that stamping out unions is a key part of modern management. If McKinsey and other consulting firms were management consultants, they should be even more aware of that strategy and would have been in a key position to effect that change over a large number of companies.&lt;p&gt;2. CEO salaries are certainly relevant to the working middle class, since they are commonly seen as tremendously too high and the extra money could contribute to the middle class&amp;#x27; wage.&lt;p&gt;3. I think the point of that sentence is more like &amp;quot;the amount of effort it takes to become successful is significantly greater than it was when the system worked better.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;4. He&amp;#x27;s not trying to be the technocratic management, he&amp;#x27;s literally arguing against its existence.</text></item><item><author>dvt</author><text>Oh boy, another Yale, LSE, and Oxford graduate lecturing us on &amp;quot;structural inequalities&amp;quot; -- yawn. He&amp;#x27;s also decided to double-dip and is now back at Yale Law teaching after clerking for a federal judge. Excuse me while I roll my eyes a full 720 degrees. How exactly, sir, are you &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; than Pete Buttigieg? This is the pot calling the kettle black to the n-th degree.&lt;p&gt;My main problems with the article, apart from the above:&lt;p&gt;1. The connection between consulting firms like McKinsey and dwindling union memberships is tenuous at best. I&amp;#x27;m not sure that there&amp;#x27;s any causal link, and the article just kind of shoehorns it in.&lt;p&gt;2. Wait, why are we talking about CEO salaries? What does this have to do with anything? Oh, I get it -- it&amp;#x27;s going to get The Atlantic a bunch of &amp;quot;controversy clicks&amp;quot; on Facebook and Twitter.&lt;p&gt;3. &amp;quot;Whereas a century ago, fewer than one in five of America’s business leaders had completed college, top executives today typically have elite degrees&amp;quot; -- a century ago, we also didn&amp;#x27;t have little boxes that could access the entirety of human knowledge in about 30 milliseconds. A millennia ago, most of us were illiterate. Times change. I&amp;#x27;m genuinely not sure what the point is here.&lt;p&gt;4. &amp;quot;This is a dangerous belief. Technocratic management, no matter how brilliant, cannot unwind the structural inequalities that are dismantling the American middle class..&amp;quot; -- but Yale &amp;amp; Oxford educated lawyers can. Got it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samcal</author><text>Right, the relevant part is that there are 5 people whose annual salary totals $70 million. That is tremendously too high, and allows those 5 people to have undue influence on the society that allowed them to get such power. I&amp;#x27;m sorry that I implied that the only benefit of this point was the redistribution part.</text></comment>