Here's a list of CEOs taking pay cuts amidst the coronavirus crisis

[FlyingPenguin]

Glad to see this, and I hope there's more.

Most CEOs of major companies are millionaires (if not billionaires). If they (and maybe some of the top tier board members) all forfeited their salary for a year they might be able to keep all or many of their employees for the six or eight weeks we may all have to stay at home.

They can afford it (if you are worth 200 million and you have to sacrifice your one mil salary to help keep your trained workforce, generate good will, and ensure a smooth ramp up after it's all over, it's certainly no big inconvenience. Maybe just put off buying that $500K Bugatti this year.

I'll go even further. Any company sitting on a pile of cash - like Apple, can afford to write the year off as a total loss and pay their employees out of reserve cash. That's peanuts for a company like Apple sitting on $245 BILLION in cash reserves.

Companies should also take their entire advertising budget for the year and use it to keep their employees. Brag about it on social media. That's going to be better advertising and generate more good will. I just did a quick lookup. Apple spent $1.8 BILLION on advertising last year.

And I wouldn't feel sorry for advertisers. They charge too damn much. Maybe a year of greatly reduced advertising, and companies realizing that generating good will is more valuable than ads, will bring down the absurd ad rates for the Super Bowl.

Okay maybe that's all too simplistic, but my point is that many companies that have done exceedingly well over the past 10 years after the recession, can certainly afford to cushion the impact of the economic hit from the virus for their employees.

Sure, there are stupid companies like Boeing that squandered the boom times, and now they want a bailout. I just looked it up. Boeing's cash flow the past 10 years has been $58 billion. Instead of putting some of that away for the inevitable bad times, they spent $43 billion during those same 10 years (74%) buying back their own stocks.

Now we're expected to bail them out because of the virus, not to mention the fiascoes of the Dreamliner and 737 Max.

If they weren't necessary for national defense, I'd say let them go bankrupt. Might not be a bad idea anyway - they'd probably come out of the other side of bankruptcy with smarter leadership.

Children can't learn to walk without falling flat on their faces a few times first.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-a- ... 06258.html

[darcy]

It's a start,, .

[psypher]

I personally think cruise ships should all go bankrupt. Sink all the ships are turn them into artificial reefs!

[FlyingPenguin]

Cruise companies are victim of their own stupidity and success. The cruise business has been booming, so they all built WAY too many WAY too large ships, with WAY too small accommodations to pack them in. Then you wonder why everyone on the cruise catches the same cold.

They never let these behemoths sit in port so repairs and upgrades happen during cruises, so BIG SURPRISE when the engines blow up due to lack of proper maintenance and over-use, and you're stranded out in the ocean without air conditioning.

Having done a few cruises I will likely never sail on one of the big ships again (and the "big" ships I've sailed on are nowhere near the size of the beasts they have today). I'd rather save up my money and sail on some of the smaller, pricier, cruises that pamper you. Yeah it costs more, but at least you aren't cattle crammed into a cattle pen.

A cruise is a LUXURY. You go bargain basement, you get what you pay for.

[Losbot]

I personally think cruise ships should all go bankrupt. Sink all the ships are turn them into artificial reefs!

Show us on which deck where the cruise industry hurt you. LOL

What have you got against the cruise industry? I'm curious.

[psypher]

I personally think cruise ships should all go bankrupt. Sink all the ships are turn them into artificial reefs!

Show us on which deck where the cruise industry hurt you. LOL

What have you got against the cruise industry? I'm curious.

Growing up in S.Fla I've been on tons of them, my parents would do some crazy shit and just call the day the ships were heading out and snag cheap weekend cruises out of the blue. As an adult I've been on a handful of them, mostly 1 week cruises, sometimes splurging sometimes not. Half the stops suck. I've been through a good portion of the Caribbean, and personally I rather just go to a specific island/country and stay at a resort. Corona virus didn't just create a unique situation for them, they have a long history of wide spread illnesses, I'm sure you've hard the term Floating Petri dish Most of the crew are practically slave labor, having to work 6-7 days a week for many months. A cousin of mine worked on one for a summer thinking it would be fun, he hated it. They register their boats outside the US to minimize their tax liabilities. It's legal, but doesn't mean I have to like it. Glad to see Trump agrees. Not sure if the provisions to disqualify them from aid made it to the final bill.

BUT, my comment wasn't really serious. As a kid I loved them (Royal Carribean > Carnival) and I know a lot of people like them. But as an adult, having traveled around the world, there are way more places I rather be than on a ship in the ocean. If you go on a cruise once in your lifetime I think that's more than enough. I know people that go on them 2-3 times a year and that's all they do, cruises! Like this one cousin (adult with older kids) that only goes to Disney World every year, my gawd there's a whole world out there!

[Losbot]

What's wrong with Disney? In EPCOT, you can visit numerous countries. LOL

More seriously, yes, they're floating petri dishes. I still live in SoFla and my parents would take us on cruises. I still enjoy taking one every few years but I refuse to go on the cheaper ones and it's really just my opinion that on the cheaper ones like Carnival, you get a lower class of traveler. The kind that I believe is not as concerned about cleanliness, are more rude, don't keep their kids under control and are just not pleasant to be around. I want to travel with people that behave like humans, not animals. My wife's family books on the cheap and when they want to take a cruise with everyone, we find ways to nicely decline and get out of it. We'll book something to create a conflict.

So yeah, I feel ya. The valet in my old building told me about when he worked for the cruise lines. There is good and bad. If you're not at least some form of officer, you get crappy everything on the ships.