Steve Ballmer is set to make $1 billion a year for doing nothing | CNN Business
For most people, passive income is a bit of extra pocket change that requires minimal effort to earn to supplement a main source of income. For Steve Ballmer, it’s $1 billion.
Shower thought: if everyone gives a % of their labour value to the government it's called taxes and is evil communism. If everyone gives a % of their labour value to an individual it's called capitalism and is glorious. How does that mental gymnastics work?
Propaganda is a strong and prosperous machine.
We are capitalist society working in feudalistic companies
No, we are workers exploited by capitalists.
Unless you are not selling your labour and instead living on the profit derived from the workers, you are not a capitalist.
It's a very simple system laid out in Das Kapital and still taught in economics today (at least in the UK):
Aristocrats - people with wealth by virtue of controlling land
Capitalists - people who have wealth by virtue of having wealth (i.e. they can invest/speculate)
Worker (or Proletariat) - people who have to sell their labour to capitalists or aristocrats to survive
Lumpenproletariat - an underclass that has fallen out of society and resort to the black or grey market to survive
Here's a better shower thought: the government exists to govern you, not to serve you. When you pay taxes, you fund new mansions for the ruling class. When you invest into the business instead, you create new jobs, new tech and your future.
Workers have unelected bosses dictating the majority of their waking lives. Most companies literally tell you what you can and cannot wear (dress code policy), when you can and cannot eat (designated breaks), and what you can and cannot say online (social media policies). All so they can control you to extract wealth and buy super yachts.
Look at the list of wealthiest US politicians. I cannot find a single one that didn't make their money extracting it from workers or inheritance. Abuse of office happens; abuse of workers' surplus is the standard.
Making money for doing less than nothing, just like when he was CEO!
It’s a sickening juxtaposition since Microsoft also laid off thousands of people this year too.
Assuming $100k salary per employee, the money Balmer didn't need could have saved ten thousand jobs. That's a disgusting amount of wealth. No sane person hordes that much money.
Is totally gonna trickle down, just you wait!
Wealth is not money.
:(
It's not for doing nothing, it's for doing things he already did. He got the stock as part of his compensation plan at Microsoft.
And a dividend of $0.75 per share is 0.2% interest at the current share price, he could get more in a savings account and 20x that in a CD or something. The dividend isn't crazy high. He just had a shitload of their stock.
Executive compensation as a whole is a story, but Steve Ballmer is not doing anything particularly noteworthy.
It’s not for doing nothing, it’s for doing things he already did.
Yeah, I'm more interested in how much Steve Jobs daughter made last year. Money gets whitewashed into the next generation like royalty.
stock ownership need to have an expiration date. Sure he did work to reclaim the gains of these shares, but at a certain point these stocks need to be relinquished and shared among the real contributors of the company so they could also get a taste of their work. You can't keep leeching off of people like this all the time, or whats the point of having kids and procreation overall ? Even 1 billion$ isn't much to make a globe changing endeavour like space travel, but its too much that if he chose to keep having coke injected directly into his body for the rest of his life he would still have money left. The mere existence of this person is just a nuisance, like many anonymous others
Guess what!? I work a hell of a lot harder for a hell of a lot less. isn't that strange?
he racks such wealth because he is a shareholder who leeches off of the effort of 1000s of people like you that do actual honest work.
I mean, that is how capitalism works. This is as true for any owner as it is for Balmer.
Doesn't make it right. And we should highlight each and everyone by name. Don't let them get away with hiding behind anonymization such as "shareholder", "owner", or "CEO".
the rich are rich as they care not for the poor
Eat his ass
In a Justice way or in a Juicy way?
Lazy guy. I bet he spends some of that on drugs or alcohol.
