Personally, I don't see much in the way of objection to CEO pay when stocks are rising and profits are being made. I hear a lot of objections when a CEO leaves a company, gets a multimillion golden parachute while leaving the company worse off than before.
If it's a serious problem, executive contracts need to be written differently to allow for terminating the skunky CEO without giving a golden parachute. I do think that companies which take that approach will be less likely to entice the best and brightest CEOs, however.
Something tells me that screwup CEOs getting hundreds of millions of dollars is like a man bites dog story in that it gets reported more because it is rare and seems newsworthy.
There are also no parallels between CEO pays of today and CEO pays of yesteryears. So what's the point? I just simply refuse the argument that CEOs deserve hunderds of millions of dollars but your averge employee should be happy with the current situation because hey they're far better off than they were fifty years ago.
I'm not sure I follow you. You kept hearkening back to the industrial revolution by comparing aborers of today with starving workers in sweatshops. I pointed out that such a comparison is unfair because in this day and age, even our poor can afford luxuries well beyond the necessities of life. Whether or not CEOs "deserve" their multi-million dollar bonuses in general I can't argue, but that's what the market will obviously bear, so I'm not sure why you're so worried about it. If the companies can't afford to pay them those kinds of wages, they either won't, or they'll go under.
If your average employee
isn't happy, there are plenty of jobs out there at companies which don't reward CEOs with hundreds of millions of dollars.
For the same reason that the CEOs are entitled to their bonuses and stock options. Again maybe not to the same amounts. But the current situation where employees get nothing and CEO's get the most of everything is not my idea of "fair".
Different companies are run different ways. At my company (a privately owned company whose current CEO is also the owner), employees are rewarded annually based on the success of the company and the length of their service. While I'm happy about that, it's a bonus, not the salary I expect to receive from the company. And I don't get rubbed wrong that the execs get more of a bonus than I do. They are also the first to take cuts when we have to tighten our belt.
Again, if you don't like your total compensation package with a company, or if you don't like the CEO's compensation package specifically, go elsewhere - there are plenty of other options out there. I just don't see why the government would need to get involved or set caps on any sort of earning.
Look up the previous posts where I cited 2 publicly traded companies where the total CEO compensation amounted to $300 million++ each for one year alone (year 2007).
I didn't argue that it never happened. Why did those CEOs receive those bonuses? Were they just out of the blue gifts for being good ol' boys? Or had those CEOs exceeded some benchmark for corporate productivity, sales, profits, expansion, etc., that made them (in the eyes of the board) worth the bonus?
I find it ironinc that we question why the average worker should get his share of bonuses and stock options but we're very quick to give the CEOs the benefit of the doubt. Well let's assume that the CEO did deserve his $200 million bonus/stock options because the company was able to turn around and have it's profit tripled. But don't tell me that the CEO did everything while everyone watched and did nothing. I thought we agreed that the success of a company is not the result of the CEO's work alone and that the success is the result of the collaboration of the workers in that company from all levels. So if the CEO deserves his $200 million why is it that the average worker deserves nothing?
This thread is rife with discontent about CEOs who "run their company into the ground." If we're so quick to
blame the CEO for corporate failure, I'm not sure why we don't assign a similar proportion of responsibility for success.
Employees, customers and investors can vote with their feet and their dollars. If an employee is easily replaced, it stands to reason that their contributions are of less value, does it not?
To be clear, I'm not CEO material. I'm just not cut out for that. However, I do have the pleasure to know several executive types who
are CEO/COO/President material. My guess is that the people who claim that executives work no harder than the average Joe, and don't have any special skills beyond your average lay worker either don't really know any execs or have a very small sample of incompetent execs they are using as a basis for their opinion. Yeah, there are some worthless ones out there - as in any job - but it would be a mistake to assume that just anyone could do the job well.
Yeah, yeah yeah - I know - the employee gets his salary but so does the CEO. Again, this sort of thing does not happen in all US public companies but its an undeniable fact that the ratio between CEO and employee compensation has never been higher.
So what? I'm still trying to understand why we should involve the government to "fix" the problem? It's not as if the government is particularly known for its fairness or efficiency. Look, I understand thinking the situation is unfair. I support rewarding employees for their contributions, but I fail to see why the government needs to step in to make things fair in your eyes.
I also think we're mixing up a number of subjects:
1. Should CEOs
ever get huge bonuses?
2. Should CEOs get huge bonuses without rewarding every janitor and fry cook in the business?
3. Should CEOs get huge bonuses when the company fails?
4. Should CEOs get huge bonuses when the company fails and it is their fault?
5. Should the government step in and make the situation more "fair" by adding more restrictions, laws and regulations, setting salary caps and bonus caps and generally meddling in corporate affairs?
My answers:
1. Sure, if the market will bear it.
2. Sure, if the market and employees will bear it.
3. It depends on what is in their contract.
4. It depends on what is in their contract, but I'd
hope that they wouldn't.
5. Absofrigginlutely not.