I’m a capitalist at heart and strongly believe that there needs to be incentives to get many people to work hard.  In addition, that people who do such things as lead/manage, take risks, innovative, create and just plain work harder than others should be rewarded more than others.  There is nothing wrong with a person making lots of money.  Finally, I also believe that the “collective” work concept does not work.

I also now think that the “capitalist pendulum” has swung too far to one side, and that things need to be brought back to a little more balance.  For example, CEO’s in the fifties and sixties made excellent money and lived a good life, but they were not living “light” years ahead of the middle class workers.  The first three links below are good articles with various information about CEO pay ratios.

My rant today was motivated by the article about Yahoo linked below.  Basically, here is my motivation:

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/25/marissa-mayer-will-make-186-million-on-yahoos-sale-to-verizon.html       

Yahoo shareholders will vote June 8 on whether to sell the company's internet businesses to Verizon Communications for $4.48 billion. A yes vote, which is widely expected, would end Marissa Mayer's largely unsuccessful five-year effort to restore the internet pioneer to greatness.

But Ms. Mayer, the company's chief executive, will be well compensated for her failure. Her Yahoo stock, stock options and restricted stock units are worth a total of $186 million, based on Monday's stock price of $48.15, according to data filed on Monday in the documents sent to shareholders about the Verizon deal.

That compensation, which will be fully vested at the time of the shareholder vote, does not include her salary and bonuses over the past five years, or the value of other stock that Ms. Mayer has already sold. All told, her time at Yahoo will have netted her well over $200 million, according to calculations based on company filings…..
       

Maybe I’m upset because I had to give up my long-time Yahoo email and go over to the Google dark-side, because apparently my email address was one that was “sold” by the Yahoo hackers; as my contacts and I started having all sorts of email problems.

No, I’m really upset because today it does not matter if you do a great job or a horrible job: the way it now works is that “golden parachutes” will protect you, no matter what.  Is that really capitalism?

I feel the same about sports and entertainment salaries.  Why should someone with a MLB batting average of two-fifty make millions of dollars a year?  When I was growing up we were talking about the three-hundred hitters, or complete games of pitchers…..

End of rant.

Why We Need to Stop Obsessing Over CEO Pay Ratios

https://hbr.org/2017/02/why-we-need-to-stop-obsessing-over-ceo-pay-ratios

Ceo to Worker Pay Ratio: CEO Pay Has Increased By 937 Percent Since 1978

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/ceo-to-worker-pay-ratio/

Top CEOs Make 300 Times More than Typical Workers

http://www.epi.org/publication/top-ceos-make-300-times-more-than-workers-pay-growth-surpasses-market-gains-and-the-rest-of-the-0-1-percent/
           

Corporatism is a natural evolution of capitalism if/when the government allows it to run rampant. 

I honestly don't think capitalism is a good model for the humanity's present or future - when robots will be doing most of the jobs, we are either looking at a distopian future where capitalism has no place, or 'everybody is poor and unemployed except for a few uber rich morons' capitalist scenario.   

Lots of naive comments thus far...

OP, it sounds like you are confused about what "capitalism" is and is not.

The purest form has never existed.

If you don't ban usury, none of the principles you claim to believe in will amount to anything, as capital, wealth, the owners prevent a meritocratic system from ever forming.

I’m a capitalist at heart and strongly believe that there needs to be incentives to get many people to work hard.

Huh? If you are for the owners and usury, then you realize that those without wealth and capital don't have a choice, but to "exchange" their labor.

It is legalized theft, yet you are a strong believer in it?

Sure, we charge rents to our tenants, but I don't like the system I was born into, as we are able to create more wealth for ourselves from doing nothing but simply being owners and taking advantage of those without capital/the disadvantaged.

Usury is evil.

Inheritance...patents...

Corporatism is a natural evolution of capitalism if/when the government allows it to run rampant.

The natural evolution of where the government leaves businesses alone is where the government directly gives incentives that prop up certain businesses to the detriment of smaller ones?

That's not capitalism and isn't its natural evolution.

The only reason why the government is giving them incentives is because corporations are also buying out politicians to make even greater profits.

And the only reason they are able to receive those incentives is that the government has taken an active role in controlling the economy in such a way, as opposed to the idea of capitalism.

Capitalism gets a bad rap because it doesn't allow us humans to have children without having the money to feed them. If you were on a farm as a landowner, or a sharecropper, then your kids could be assets. They could have help till and harvest the land. But now, a child is a liability well into adulthood. Most humans think forced education to every child is a good thing, but what's so good about a system that makes humans hate learning because they associate it with learning things that don't interest them all for the justification they need to be a well-rounded human for society? Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnege, Thomas Edison, and Steve Martin (the comedian) all benefitted by working at a very young age. Stevey worked in Disney Land during lax child labor laws where he learned magic and started practicing gags with tricks. If they were forced into farm work or school work, then these men might have had different lives.

Capitalism without government regulations create markets where products have shards of metal in them. Capitalism with too many regulations limits a child's opportunities as he delays entering the marketplace. The best thing for all of us is to make money soon, learn to love making money in a way that fulfills us, then try to improve on our chosen field before we die.

What a wonderful world it would be if kids learned to love providing for themselves, traveling around the world, and investing in what believe in. Let kids be adults and capitalistic principles will have a whole new rap.

Huh? I don't understand what you're upset about? That she received a lot of money while working at Yahoo despite not being able to save the company? Nothing was given that wasn't promised to her before her joining Yahoo so what's the problem?

Are you upset that she was allowed to work at Yahoo in the first place? A quick wiki search of her resume shows that she very well worked hard and is one of the top talents in the world of IT to get to that position.

Sure, Ms. Mayer seems to have grown up in an upper middle class family which helped her excel to Standford and catapult her into the top 1% but why do you have to compare yourself to the top 1% thinking that they're the happiest people on Earth? Hint, the ultra rich have problems too.

If you're really that worried about money and assuming you're earning a first world country's income of let's say... greater than $30,000 per year, there really isn't much to complain about. As a single person if you can't save 50% or more of that per year it means you've spent too much money on useless things, or luxuries as I like to call them. That's more privilege than most parts of the world already. It also means those luxuries are more important to you than saving money for your future.
If you do live simply and are able to save like that then you can teach your children the same principles of simple living; your children will be mid to upper middle class by the time they're adults and and their children will grow up with an upper middle class education. There, three generations and you've successfully brought your family into a very wealthy position that Ms. Mayer was born with. That's more than 90% of the world is capable of doing already. Those people are the ones born without privilege.

I’m upset with the idea that the CEO is “entitled” to an enormous payout even if the CEO does not perform.  There is lots of documentation that “entitlement” programs do not always motivate people to perform at their highest levels. For example, look at how many sports stars “underperform” after they sign the big contact.  They had excellent performance to earn the big contract, but once they got it…… Basically, all I’m really saying is that a CEO should be held accountable for their performance and compensated according to their performance; that compensation should not be guaranteed.

Yahoo knew about a hack in 2014, but waited before advising us users.  To Mayer’s credit she did turn down her bonus for that year, and other Yahoo workers were forced to leave.  But, why did Yahoo wait so long?  Was it because Yahoo was starting to negotiate with Verizon about a buyout?  Whatever happened to the idea that the Captain of the ship is responsible in the end?  Was her future compensation reviewed and linked?  Why did we later learn about a hack in 2013?  I’m actually having a hard time keeping track of what hacks took place and when.  Maybe I need a Yahoo hack scorecard….

If Mayer owned her own business her decisions would impact her and her wealth, but Yahoo is a publically traded company, she is “hired help,” and her decisions impacted the wealth of others.  For example, she laid people off.   When many other workers who don’t perform lose their jobs, if they are lucky their “golden parachute” is unemployment insurance.

Finally, telling someone that they will receive their compensation whether they perform or not, IMHO, sounds more like a “collective” work philosophy than a capitalist work philosophy.   Again, why were CEO’s in the fifties, sixties and seventies able to live great lives without having salaries extremely higher than their workers? 

More Than Half a Billion Yahoo Accounts Have Been Hacked, Yahoo Confirms

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/22/yahoo_hack_in_2014_exposed_500_million_user_credentials_company_confirms.html

The urgency feels a bit awkward, however, coming from a company that apparently required almost two years to discover, confirm, and notify its users of the breach. Reports of the hack first surfaced on Aug. 1, when a hacker known as Peace began publicly selling alleged Yahoo user credentials online. (Peace told Vice’s Motherboard blog he or she had been trading them privately for some time before that.) Yahoo said at the time that it was “aware of the claim” and its security team was “working to determine the facts.”

That means users’ credentials were out in the open for nearly two months before Yahoo confirmed the breach and notified them. Verizon, which is in the process of acquiring the long-troubled internet giant for $4.8 billion, said in a statement Thurdsay that it was only notified of the issue by Yahoo “within the last two days.”

Yahoo Says 1 Billion User Accounts Were Hacked
By VINDU GOEL and NICOLE PERLROTHDEC. 14, 2016

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/technology/yahoo-hack.html

SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo, already reeling from its September disclosure that 500 million user accounts had been hacked in 2014, disclosed Wednesday that a different attack in 2013 compromised more than 1 billion accounts.

The two attacks are the largest known security breaches of one company’s computer network.

The newly disclosed 2013 attack involved sensitive user information, including names, telephone numbers, dates of birth, encrypted passwords and unencrypted security questions that could be used to reset a password. Yahoo said it is forcing all of the affected users to change their passwords and it is invalidating unencrypted security questions — steps that it declined to take in September.

It is unclear how many Yahoo users were affected by both attacks. The internet company has more than 1 billion active users, but it is not clear how many inactive accounts were hacked.

Yahoo says executives knew about hack in 2014

https://www.ft.com/content/88603346-feca-11e6-96f8-3700c5664d30

 Yahoo hack warning: What happened and should you be worried?
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/02/16/yahoo-hack-warning-happened-should-worried/

Yahoo to cut 15% of workforce

https://www.wsj.com/articles/yahoo-plans-to-say-it-is-exploring-strategic-options-1454444977
                       

Good videos actually. I didn't take you for a fan of PragerU.

My favorite is Sam Harris. He's so intelligent and knowledgeable. So interesting and well spoken. Fascinating stuff.

https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg

https://www.youtube.com/user/samharrisorg/videos