We Can't Afford This New Breed Of CEO. We Need To Cut Their Pay By 90%. They ---

[TheMastersNemesis]

would be just fine with 10% of what they already get. They would still be multimillionaires with all the money that they could ever spend. That 90% should go back into the companies for pay and benefits and pensions. Stock options for management should be illegal and any board granting that should be charged with a felony.

Until we trash these arrogant bastards nothing will change.

[BlueCaliDem]

1. I agree. Not to mention, today's CEO's do a piss-poor job

and aren't worth the pay they currently get which is 400% of what their average employee makes.

[EOTE]

11. Actually, CEOs make about 23,100% what their average employees make.

Or 231 times what their workers make. The U.S. has the highest ratio of CEO pay to worker pay in the entire world by a long shot.

[BlueCaliDem]

21. Actually, according to CNN Money, from info derived from AFL-CIO, it's 380x, to be precise.

CNN Money 04/19/2012:

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Chief executives at some of the nation's largest companies earned an average of $12.9 million in total pay last year -- 380 times more than a typical American worker, according to the AFL-CIO.
Average CEO pay rose 14% compared to 2010, when they earned $11.4 million on average, according to the union group.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.htm

I simply rounded it off.

[EOTE]

24. That's not rounding off, that's off by many magnitudes of order.

400% is 4x. If you wanted to round up to 400X the amount, you'd want to use 40,000%.

[BlueCaliDem]

25. That's still FAR more accurate than your "231x". And the 400x number is

what the union leader used when he mentioned CEO pay on The Ed Schultz Show this past week. That's why I noted the "to be precise" part in my post since it's clear you believe that's more important than the glaring fact that there's a huge pay gap between CEOs and employees. At least you can't deny that . . . no matter how hard you'd want to.

[EOTE]

27. No, it's not at all. This is fairly basic math.

The figure that I had seen was 231x, which is 23,100%. The number you cited was 400% which is 4x the pay of the average worker. 4x the pay of the average worker would actually be a fairly decent ratio, yet no developed country has even close to such a ratio. Even if you were to assume that the true number is 400x rather than 231x, my figure would be off by about 60% rather than being off by 10,000%. To recap, 4x = 400%, 400x = 40,000%. That's a big difference. "To be precise", as you wrote the figure, you are off by a factor of 100.

On edit: To put is even more simply, 23,100% is far closer to 40,000% than 400% is. It's actually within one magnitude of order.

[LiberalEsto]

2. Tax bonuses 90%

The bonus system is helping destroy the middle class.

[HooptieWagon]

3. I think we can find other CEOs...

Who are smarter, harder-working, and would be thrilled at 10% of usual US salaries... Japan maybe? There's no reason CEO jobs can't be off-shored.

[HughBeaumont]

5. Look around . . . their pilfering at nearly a 500:1 ratio is ONLY a problem in America.

[Canuckistanian]

8. Wow, I never knew there was such a disparity

Where do those numbers come from?

[Sekhmets Daughter]

26. When Ken Lewis was CEO

of Bank of America, and leading them down the road to Bailout Land, he was earning 1,800 X what the average Teller earned at B of A branches. Of course, since then B of A has laid off thousand of those highly overpaid Tellers.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

17. Venezuela is surprisingly on that list.

[Sadiedog]

18. Oh My! I love that idea! NT

[HughBeaumont]

4. It's a Larceny Industry now. It's not about running a company, it's about "Cash and Carry".

The modern CEO Larceny Industry is nothing but a legalized and far more powerful Mafia. Hostess, WorldCom, LTV, HP, Home Depot, (insert large financial corporation here) during The Financial Crisis of 2008, etc. have proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt. They cry "AUSTERITY FOR THEE", but don't you DARE try to impose that shit on OUR American Royalty.

[RepublicansRZombies]

6. AND tax their already ill gotten gains, the 1% already took all the money, we need to get it back

Tax total wealth AND income until the debt is paid. It's the right thing to do. I am sure the fiscal conservatives will agree

[Initech]

7. If I were in charge vulture capitalism would be a class A federal felony.

Punishable by 20 years in prison with no parole. What these scumbags are doing is flat out disturbing and dangerous and it needs to be stopped now.

[PD Turk]

9. IMO what needs to happen

IMO what needs to happen is to remove the ability for them to get paid ungodly amounts of money for failure. I'm not a legal scholar so I don't know if/how to make it work exactly but the 800lb gorilla in the room is the fact that they can negotiate themselves contracts that obligate the company to pay them enormous sums no matter how dismal their performance. If find such behavior from a class of people who love to preach about things like incentive, motivation and personal responsibility ridiculously hypocritical. Their excessive irresponsible behavior has brought this country to the brink of ruin.

Yank their golden parachutes, if they want to justify the big money with the old canard "we are the risk takers" , then let's see them actually take some big personal risks to get the dough. As it is, the only thing they ever risk is somebody else's money and well being.

[HooptieWagon]

10. They're able to get those salaries and bonuses...

Because they sit on each other's Board of Directors and vote each other those big pay checks.

[moondust]

20. Compensation Benchmarking, Leapfrogs, and the Surge in Executive Pay

http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:139538

"Cozy relationships and ‘peer benchmarking’ send CEOs’ pay soaring"
http://tinyurl.com/bxcvz9s

[Cal Carpenter]

12. Trashing these arrogant bastards will just open the door for new ones

It's not the individuals, it is the system.

We need systemic change to stop this type of wealth disparity.

[City Lights]

13. I'm in favor of outsourcing their jobs.

If third world countries are good enough to make their products, they're good enough to staff upper management positions. Imagine the money the corporations would save by outsourcing upper management!

[Populist_Prole]

14. Their "team" was trounced last election: Why are they doubling down on the shitheadery?

Now I'm not naive enough to think the last election was the death knell of corporatism, but I should think they'd like to affect a more benign sounding lower profile; even if it's just glib smoke blowing. Anything else would be just impolitic.

Really though:

Is it a tantrum?

Is it that they are on one last huge grab to help solidify their position as some sort of bulwark against what they see as a trend of populism against them? Getting their licks in while they can, so to speak?

[Turn CO Blue]

15. At the very least CEO pay should be performance-based.

The very idea that a Company can lose millions in a quarter and some suit gets a giant bonus and payraise while everyone else takes another 10% cut and no Christmas bonuses for the 5th year in a row - is CRIMINAL!

They give the executive payhikes as incentives to not lose "talent" -- but who is measuring the level of talent and their performance? Why are the boards not holding these executives accountable for performance, innovation, improvement, reinvestment in infrastructure, stock increases, increases in customer satisfaction, increases in employee satisfaction, etc. etc.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum.

[rhett o rick]

16. It all depends on jobs. With so many people unemployed, the corporations can literally

do what they want to us.

[0zone]

19. CEO of Unitedhealthcare gets $10 million/year

To justify his outrageous salary he has to come up with new schemes to deny claims and raise premiums 25% a year. $10million just to sell you an insurance policy. What new invention did he create? There is nothing he could do to justify getting paid $10million!!! If he was paid half a million it would still be too much!!!

[ErikJ]

22. Easy solution: Bring back 90% top tax rate.

90% of any income/ compensation over $3 mill goes to the gubmint.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

23. Raise the top rate....

It's pretty simple. When you look back to the 1950's and the level of CEO compensation compared to today, there's a simple reason why CEO's didn't make as much. It's because that with a 90% top marginal rate, it just didn't make sense to pay someone that much, when 90% of the "gravy" was going to the government. When we lowered the top rates, it started to make sense to pay exorbitant salaries.

At the very least, we should create a new top rate of 50% of salaries in excess of $2 million per year. Why $2m? Because according to my expert calculations $2 million in 2011 would be roughly equivalent to a $250K salary back in 1955. And in 1955, $250,000 was a damned fine salary.

I have no probably with people doing well (even really well) but there comes a point where their doing well is harming the rest of us.