The executives don't set their own pay, and didn't necessarily ask for a bonus. What, you would decline the bonus and step down to restore your honor in their position? Doubtful. Meanwhile, the shareholders are giving bonuses which likely result in lower overall comps for these executives, after taking into account that the RSU's and options in their comp packages become nearly worthless. This is done to keep the company operating smoothly during restructuring.
Also, read the rest of the thread to get a better understanding of the mechanics before casting judgment. At every step of this process, the relevant decision makers made the rational and moral choice to arrive at this situation, as dictated by the US corporate bankruptcy system.
While technically the board of directors sets executive compensation, one must remember that those board members are largely executives at other companies and the executives are often board members elsewhere. So in practice it’s a circlejerk and executives do set their own compensation via implicit quid pro quo.
Also, you appear to be confusing morality with legality. Screwing over line employees up to and including looting the pension funds to pay executive bonuses is legal (see Hostess bankruptcy for an example), but it’s also immoral.
It's possible to have an immoral result without any individual doing an egregiously immoral thing. In fact it seems like a lot of law and corporate structure encourages these situations. Some examples that come to mind are paying low level employees such that they need government assistance, or situations where a corporation can break a law and profit more than whatever fine they might receive.
Corporations are legal and social entities. It's reasonable to consider what our laws and customs allow or encourage in an effort to nudge society towards a more just future.
> Some examples that come to mind are paying low level employees such that they need government assistance
In many cases the alternative to paying that amount is outsourcing or automating the job. If the job can be automated for $8/hour then you can't pay $10, or your competitors will automate for $8 and put you out of business. But you can pay $7.25.
And where does this leave the employee? If they were willing to take a $7.25/hour job then presumably a higher paying job isn't available or they'd have taken it to begin with, so their alternative is unemployment, which is even more of a drain on public resources. (Recall that minimum wage was originally instituted as a racist policy to keep minorities unemployed.)
Meanwhile even for the subset of employers who can just pay more without reducing their domestic labor force, wage controls are still being paid for by other citizens in one way or another, e.g. through higher prices. So then the question is not whether other citizens are to subsidize the wages of workers who can't command a living wage in the market on their own, but rather which citizens pay for it. Do you want to put the cost on low income retail customers who then have to pay more for necessities through a minimum wage, or on wealthy taxpayers through a UBI or raising the EITC?
> or situations where a corporation can break a law and profit more than whatever fine they might receive.
This too is sometimes a reasonable outcome. Sometimes a fine exists because it costs society some amount if you do something.
Suppose there is a noise ordinance which imposes a $500 fine if you make too much noise and disturb your neighbors. A company has some equipment which doesn't make that much noise when it's operating but makes a loud racket which violates the ordinance if you hit the emergency stop. Then some idiot drops a bag of screws into the machine and the only way to stop it from destroying a million dollars in equipment is to hit the emergency stop and suffer the fine.
Then they should do it and pay the fine. The neighbors might be annoyed for a minute, but not so annoyed that it isn't overcome by them having to pay $500 less in taxes on net, which is the whole idea.
On the other hand, if the fine was only $5/day and as a result the company was operating a machine that continuously violated the noise ordinance 24/7, that would be a problem -- but the real problem then is that the fine is smaller than the harm, which is a failing of the government rather than the business.
> It's possible to have an immoral result without any individual doing an egregiously immoral thing.
I disagree. Better terms might be structural failure or misallocation of resources. Is death by aging immoral? No, it's just the consequences of many moving parts.
We should still improve the system where possible, but calling something like this immoral implies that a witch-hunt is in order.
Who did the immoral thing here?
The executives don't set their own pay, and didn't necessarily ask for a bonus. What, you would decline the bonus and step down to restore your honor in their position? Doubtful. Meanwhile, the shareholders are giving bonuses which likely result in lower overall comps for these executives, after taking into account that the RSU's and options in their comp packages become nearly worthless. This is done to keep the company operating smoothly during restructuring.
Also, read the rest of the thread to get a better understanding of the mechanics before casting judgment. At every step of this process, the relevant decision makers made the rational and moral choice to arrive at this situation, as dictated by the US corporate bankruptcy system.