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The profit margin doesn't include things like CEO salary, correct? I could see a scenario where the issue is still corporate greed just not greed that's measured by profit.

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lotsofpulp 3 months ago | parent | next [-]

All employee compensation, including CEO and board of directors, is included in the expenses used to calculate profit margin.

Profit margin is all revenue minus all expenses.

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bawolff 3 months ago | parent [-]

Isn't that a bit misleading? Salaries wouldn't be included, but a lot of compensation at the very high end is based on owning stock, and dividends i assume would be part of that profit margin.

	▲	lotsofpulp 3 months ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Compensation, even in the form of equity, has an equivalent cash price that is owed at the time it is awarded. The receiver has to pay income tax for this compensation, even if it is not cash, and the business has to record it as an expense. >and dividends i assume would be part of that profit margin. Dividends and share buybacks are not expenses. They are not money spent for the purposes of operating the business, they are awards to the shareholders. As such, they are not an expense. Dividends and share buybacks happen with the profit, so they will never be included in expenses used to calculate profit margin. There are lots of highly qualified people at the SEC and FASB working to ensure some semblance of accountability. There is a reason why people from all over the world want to invest in a developed countries’ public equity markets, and that is a belief that most of the time, the numbers are very close to the truth.
	▲	hbosch 3 months ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>Isn't that a bit misleading? In practice yes, but technically no. If a "non-profit" brings in 100 million dollars, and pays all 100 employees a million dollar salary, then that "non-profit" has made no profit. But when someone hears that a "non-profit" made "100 million" dollars, they think it is some kind of scam or something.

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MattGaiser 3 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Executive pay is such a tiny fraction that eliminating it would be lost in period to period fluctuations.

	▲	pas 3 months ago \| parent [-]
		One one hand true, on the other hand running all these huge corporations are not cheap. United has 440 000 employees. And who knows how many subcontractors, and so on. The end-to-end cost society spends on paperpushing is easily hundreds of billions of dollars per year. (Including time lost while waiting on hold to call them, the actual literal work of dealing with these fucking printouts at each stakeholder, the extra effort placed on the paper industry, the postal service, and so on.)