Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 12:19:05 -0500
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: US profit rates


>At 10:58 AM 8/19/96, Rahul Mahajan wrote:
>
>>Any figures on profit rates where you executive compensation is included in
>>profits? That would seem to be a more important figure.
>
>Important to the CEOs, but not really of much macroeconomic importance.
>Especially now that the bulk of top exec pay is in the form of stock
>options, whose cost to the company is basically only the dilution of
>profits experienced by existing shareholders when the options are
>exercised.

I'm not sure I buy this. Stock options, of course, are irrelevant. Speaking
purely economically, though, the salary (in real money) that executives
draw represents, for the most part, surplus extraction as surely as the
profits the capitalists make. It's also, if I'm not mistaken, not
completely insignificant in size compared to the total profits.
Politically, of course, it has a different significance. In the good old
days, the capitalists made economic concessions to the class struggle by
creating a "labor aristocracy." Now, they do it by creating a class of
managers.

Rahul




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