Posted on 05/02/2011 6:46:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Few things raise the dander of radical egalitarians more than the growth of CEO pay. The umbrage is as much aesthetic as it is economic, as evidenced by the fact that the most impassioned complaints leveled against these corporate titans are not so much criticisms of their failure to deliver value for money but over the gap between CEO pay and wages for everybody else. That's because the former criticism raises the inconvenient question, value to whom? And therein lays the answer to the riddle posed by this column.
First the facts. CEO pay has undoubtedly been on a tear. The numbers are eye popping. And I don't mean just for the founder-CEOs who can lay claim to creating the machine that pays them. The hired hands are raking it in as well. According to salary.com average total compensation for a representative sample of S&P 500 CEOs exceeded $11M in 2010. That's a boatload of money. How can you not suck in your breath when you hear that?
But the story takes on different shades of meaning from there. Google up the words CEO Pay and you notice a few interesting things. First, the AFL-CIO has purchased the right to be at the top of the first page of search results. Taking their cue from President Obama's recent declaration of class warfare, this lets them show off their new Executive Paywatch website that documents the unseemliness of excessive CEO pay. Prominent on the site is a chart showing how many nurses, teachers, police officers, and fire fighters could be supported if you could somehow confiscate and redistribute the pay of an average CEO. No, our nation's union bosses aren't demanding that - yet. But the inference is inescapable.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Here’s my say:
GO FOR IT DUDES (and DUDETTES!) MAKE AS MUCH AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT TAKES IT ALL AWAY!................
Where is the outrage over the morons in sports and on TV/movies/rock that makes much more than this for something that really has little tangible value at all; does not actually contribute anything to the progress of society?
Oh, I know - liberals in particular worship these people. It’s OK for them.
Well, the company DH and I worked for outsourced about 8000 employees...some over seas...and was rewarded with an almost 2 million dollar bonus for doing so.
That doesn’t sit real well with me, free enterprise or not.
Great article bump
“How to Have Your Say On Outrageous CEO Pay ...-OR-...
You could mind your own business..”
From the article.....
“It is no more your business what some random CEO makes than it is your business to tell the Yankees how much they should pay their starting lineup.”
The thing about capitalism is that it works best when the people have morals.
My boss is on that list and he’s worth every penny.
No, you are the one that does not understand, people in sports, and entrainment earn their salary based on the real free market. In short if people do not vote for them with their dollars they do not make crap.
“How to Have Your Say On Outrageous CEO Pay ...-OR-...
You could mind your own business..”
If you own stocks... in many cases it IS your business.
Do you think the HP stock holders would have liked to have had a say on what Carly Fiorina made for trashing their stock value?
Compensation for performance is fine, but what gets me are the “Golden Parachutes” and severance packages that are paid out for failure (to the tune of 6 to 9 figures).
The stockholders hired him and are responsible for his actions.. else "they" would/should fire him..
The stockholders in America hired an in your face Marxist as President..
They need to fire him -OR- allow him to loot and dismantle a profitable business..
My sentiments exactly. I think these people are naive to think, that it'll stop with those making millions. Once this ball starts rolling, anyone who makes enough money NOT to be on government assistance will be targeted.
The only catch is most peoples 401k mutual fund holdings are scattered among 100’s of different equities. This makes it nearly impossible to avoid a particular company’s stock if you want to “protest” their CEO pay for performance results. It’s my opinion that most of an executive’s compensation should be given in stock on a vesting schedule with performance targets set as a criteria for taking ownership.
If only it were that easy. I remember years ago when AT&T was fighting with its union so the union was trying to get one of their members elected to the BOD. They found out that if every member and everyone every member knew who owned stock voted their shares it wouldn't even make a dent compared to the stock that was still controlled by the company. The directors were hand picked and approved by the company and nobody was going to change that. Those hand-picked members also controlled compensation and were themselves well compensated for their time. So you are talking about a fair world as opposed to the real one where the game is rigged.
As for your American stockholders, how easy do you think it would be to get the Marxist off the ticket even if his own party members saw him as a liability? How did we get McCain in 2008 when there were others clearly more qualified? The "stockholders" were only given the choice of rubberstamping the picked candidate or sitting it out. Again, the game was rigged and there wasn't a thing you could do about it.
I think the left considers those particular morons to be part of labor. Therefore, it's all good.
Now it is the 'CEO class.' They vote themselves into power, vote their buddies onto the board and then they vote themselves huge pay packages. They are invulnerable because shares are owned by their buddies, pension funds run by their buddies, investment trusts run by their buddies and the auditors are paid handsomely to look the other way. Life is sweet!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.