08.30.2008 11:11 am
CEO pay
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A line in BusinessWeek caught my eye, and might provoke some discussion this Labor Day weekend. “3 hours: Approximate time that an S&P 500 CEO had to work in 2007 to earn what a minimum-wage worker earned for the full year.”
The S&P 500 is a stock index that includes America’s largest publicly-held corporations. BusinessWeek tells us that the CEOs at such a companies were paid more than $4,000 per hour.
Jim Gallagher is a business reporter, covering banking and finance. He also writes a Sunday column on personal finance. 
Just an old fashioned GOP love song, playing up in BushMcCain harmony!
Jim, you gave me my laugh of the day. The way you posed the question I can just visualize The board of directors of the S&P 500s frantically setting up board meetings to select a Mininum Wage worker to be the CEO.
Hilarious.
CEO and executive compensation in many public companies is out of control. An insult to shareholders. Look no further than A-B. Former CEO Pat Stokes will receive $141 million in the InBev buyout at a time when A-B will have to slash $1 billion in costs. That payout is 14% of the total sum that A-B needs to achieve in savings. That is sick. Workers are being phased out of A-B and their families affected, yet for the $141 million Stokes will receive, A-B/InBev could pay 1,410 workers a salary of $100,000 each over the next year. Instead the cash will be lavished on Stokes and others no longer even on the scene. That is what is wrong with America.
S.D.
And if the Yankees weren’t paying $275 million to Alex Rodriguez, they could pay 2,750 of us 100K to play third base. The problem, of course, is that my 2,750 can’t hit, and your 1,410 can’t run a Fortune 100 company.
Rodriquez, Stokes and other very highly paid people are compensated the way they are for one simple reason - they were perceived by the marketplace to be the best of the best in their field, and the folks who hired them thought rightly or wrongly that they could make more money with that hire than they could without them. It is thus and will always be.
Supply and demand works. Envy dozes on the couch alongside the Tim Hogans of this world while whimpering about the unfairness of it all.
Well, love your comment about stars being paid what they are worth because of the market. That may be true with a baseball player or an actor, but the problem with CEOs is that they sit on each others’ board of directors. It’s kind of like you scratch my back and I will scratch yours.
I guess you think that the reason they are paying Augie and the upper level boys all that money is because of the unique value of their service to the brewery, or mabe it’s a bribe not to fight the takeover or cause any problems.
You keep on thinking positive, I like that. And let us know the next time you see the tooth fairy or Santa.
What we really should do is go get us some English executives and bring them over here. They run their companies better than we do for the most part, and they speak much better English.
And as far as the English execs, I forgot to ad the best part, they are cheaper and that always helps the bottom line. Just ask the Walmart people.
Jim Gallagher:
With the exception of Jamie Riley, the entire Post-Dispatch editorial staff is worth less than the $1 per month Barack Obama’s half brother lives on.
Way to play the class warfare game Jimbo.
Would you prefer all business were nationalized so
CEO pay could be regulated by Democrats?
You might want to check & see if President Chavez or Mayor Daley
is looking for a spokesperson.
Another good reason to vote Democrat. Not that they’re perfect, but at least they are more labor and middle class friendly.
DC:
While I’m sure you could find a number of instances where CEO’s do sit on one another’s board, I think you would also find that that the “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” argument is largely a left wing canard. And even if it were not, we’re talking about a miniscule number of people - there are almost as many major league pitchers as there are Fortune 500 CEOs, and the impact of their combined salaries on a 13+ trillion dollar U.S. economy is less than negligible.
This issue is just one among many that the left uses to turn the base human emotions of envy and resentment to their political favor, and it totally disregards the fact that any shareholder who feels insulted by the salary paid to the CEO holds the ulimate means by which to express their displeasure - they simply sell their shares.
Which one of the prominent leftists will be the first to fore go their salary for the common good?
Wealth envy and class warfare are key planks in the leftists platform. Down with the Czars. Power to the people. The people’s republic will take care of us all.