“Economic fact: the rich get richer. Doesn’t mean the poor get poorer, just that the gap grows ever wider. (Remember: today’s “poor” have food, heat, AC, cable, etc; our “poverty line” is 20x the world median income.)”
And since it’s an “economic fact” it’s how things should be? Executive pay is a hot button issue. It’s not tied to performance, and in public companies, it’s not controlled by the shareholders as it should be. The relationship of the board to the executive staff is incestuous.
In a private company, I don’t care if the CEO is paid 1000000 times what a worker is paid. Don’t care, doesn’t matter, doesn’t affect me.
In public companies, some form of control or restraint should be employed. First, I seriously doubt there are more than a handful of CEOs that deserve the compensation they make. Second, how can it be equitable when the rate of compensation is decided by a small close knit group, and decidedly not tied to performance.
The average American doesn’t pay attention to much, but they do see the corporate disasters with executive staff floating away from the wreckage on golden parachutes. I’ve been told many, many times here, that those people earned it, and deserve it. I don’t believe that, and the average American doesn’t believe it. The status quo, executives with ever increasing pay gaps with their staff, will net you an electorate that is fed up and pretty ok with a socialist.
It’s what we have now. This wasn’t hard to see coming.
Well, what's the solution? Have people not related to the situation dictate it (as you imply support for governmental interference)? That's socialism, and paints you as one.
The interesting thing about this CEO pay issue is that it is mostly driven by people who have no business therein, or do but don't make use of the means they have. Most shareholders just want to buy a magic talisman for making money: buy the stock, wait for it to go up, sell; they have no interest in becoming involved in improving the company operations, but whine when they don't make a buck off it. That leaves only the executive board to decide what gets done and who makes how much - and make sure that if they screw up they CAN float safely to earth on parachutes which may as well be gilded. Shareholders COULD control the pay issue if they wanted to, but they don't.
If you're tasked with managing billions of dollars to make money for thousands of people, darn straight yer gonna take a tidy cut of the profits. Yes, some of those at the top just know the right people and "get away with it"; most actually do work for it, if only to take responsibility for simple but very big decisions. Are YOU willing to manage $10,000,000,000? really? for a paltry salary?
You can complain about how painful the law of gravity is, but there it is. If you try to manipulate/beat it, that's gonna cost you, and the law will win out in the end anyway (and with more pain than just following it in the first place).
You can complain about how unfair the law of economics is, but there it is. If you try to manipulate/beat it, that's gonna cost you, and the law will win out in the end anyway (and with more pain than just following it in the first place).