MONEY MONSTERS
MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!!
Regardless of your personal views on capitalism or theories about late stage capitalism, the fact is...
MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND:
We all need it. To house, feed, and cloth ourselves and our families. We all need it to fuel our cars, pay our utility bills, support our small businesses, keep up with modern technology, and everything else under the sun.
Forget about quality of life, money is so crucial to our ability to simply survive, that we have essentially created a world in which it has become an essential need;
- oxygen
- water
- food
- sleep
- shelter
- MONEY
And based on how much some people are forced to work in order to make just enough money to survive, you could argue that money should move above sleep and shelter on that list.
SOME PEOPLE JUST NEED IT MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE:
Like Mark Zuckerberg and his Executives. Meta announced this week that executive bonuses are increasing 200% following 25,000+ employees being eliminated. And that 25,000+ doesn't even count the thousands of independent contractors who are not renewed.
But it's not just Meta and Zuck. In the past three years, a troubling trend has emerged in the Big Tech world, companies laying off tens of thousands of employees while simultaneously raising bonuses for top executives.
This dichotomy has sparked outrage and raised questions about fairness, corporate responsibility, and the growing divide between workers and leadership.
While businesses often justify layoffs as necessary for financial health and long-term growth, the hypocrisy of rewarding executives with massive increases in their bonuses during such times are hard to ignore.
Do you remember when Wall Street crashed the global Economy and cost tens of thousands of Americans their jobs? They lost more than their livelihoods, they lost their retirement and saving accounts and they lost their homes.
Do you remember how we got out of that crisis? The US Tax payers had to bail out Wall Street. Not only were none of the Wall Street Executives held accountable, guess what they did with that tac payer bail out. THEY GAVE THEMSELVES BONUSES.
The Layoff Landscape
Big tech has announced and conducted sweeping layoffs. Companies like Meta, Twitter (X), Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, Uber, EBay, PayPal, Snap, and many others cut tens of thousands of jobs, citing economic uncertainty, over hiring, and the need to streamline operations. More than 120,000 people left without income.
For employees, these layoffs are devastating. They represent not just the loss of income but also the erosion of stability, benefits, and career trajectories. Many workers are left scrambling in an uncertain job market, often with little warning or support from their former employers.
And at the exact same time...
Executive Bonuses on the Rise
While rank-and-file employees bear the brunt of these cuts, executive compensation has continued to climb. In many cases, CEOs and top executives have received record-breaking bonuses and stock options, even as their companies downsized.
- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's Compensation: Andy Jassy received a compensation package valued at approximately $212 million.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook's Compensation: Tim Cook received a compensation package totaling around $98.7 million.
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's Compensation: Satya Nadella's total compensation was approximately $49.9 million.
- Telsa CEO Elon Musk's Compensation: Elon Musk’s compensation package was valued at over $6.6 billion, making it one of the largest CEO compensation deals in history.
When the CEO of a major tech company receives a compensation package worth tens of millions of dollars, while the company lays off over 10,000 employees there is a clear and present problem with values that we as a society have decided are most important.
What's more shocking is the disparity fuels public anger and accusations of corporate greed, but there are no signs of any changes to how we as a society operate.
Proponents of high executive pay argue that these bonuses are tied to performance metrics and long-term company goals. They claim that retaining top talent is essential for navigating challenging economic conditions and driving innovation. However, critics counter that these justifications ring hollow when juxtaposed with the human cost of layoffs. If a company is struggling financially, why are executives being rewarded while employees are being let go?
The Ethical Dilemma
The practice of laying off employees while boosting executive pay raises significant ethical questions. At its core, it reflects a prioritization of shareholder value and short-term profits over the well-being of workers.
When viewed through a Macro lens, it's not just the well-being of workers of a specific company, or even industry. It's the well-being of an entire society.
When companies across all industries operate in this manner it undermines trust in corporations and exacerbates income inequality, which has already reached staggering levels.
There is a disconnect between leadership and the workforce.
Between policy makers and the population.
Between the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS.
HISTORY IS NOT KIND
If history has taught us anything, when the disconnect between the haves and have nots widens to historic proportions a redistribution of wealth and power soon follows.
And if we look to history for what that means exactly...
Stanford historian Walter Scheidel who studies the history of peace and economic inequality has uncovered a very grim correlation between violence and inequality over the millennia.
SO WHAT'S NEXT
The trend of corporations laying off thousands while raising executive bonuses is a stark reminder of the imbalances in our economic system.
True leadership means sharing the burden during tough times, not shielding oneself from the consequences of difficult decisions.
As we move forward, it’s crucial to challenge this status quo and build a more equitable corporate culture—one that values all contributors, not just those at the top. Before we reach a point of no return.
Unfortunately there are few signs that indicate we are going to change our economic and corporate instincts and actions any time soon.
There is an active move for even less transparency and accountability in corporate decision-making. There is an active move to disempower labor unions and unionization. There is an active move to erode labor laws. There is an active move to replace American workers with foreign labor. And on and on and on...
When do we as a society reach a breaking point? What is the high water mark for wealth disparity? When does the inequality hit it’s peak?
And what do We the People do about it?