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CEO pay is so high because precisely of threads like this. Everyone knows what CEOs make. CEOs know what each other make. This gives them incredible leverage. Add to this boards that are willing to pay their CEO more than their rivals, this creates a natural upward trend.
The same concept applies to professional athletes. How else do you think Miguel Cabrera signs a contract for $292 million?
Larry Ellison is a true and legitimate co-founder. He founded Oracle along with two other co-founders, both of whom have left the company, and he remains firmly in control of Oracle. Give him his due..
The stock market is booming and he is sucking every dime out of the shareholder's pockets. Oracle is flat as a pancake in this market? I won't give him his due at all. I think he took more than his due years ago. How about he leaves. Of course he would suck the company even more dry if he did. He and his buying of an island and whatever else he feels he deserves after draining the company to nothing and leaving the real owners with nothing.
Don't accept the job? And be poor? Another company is going to do the same thing, it's hard to find honest pay in this country.
This is exactly the problem. Most people cannot negotiate because most jobs are in fact over-saturated right now because they are basic skilled. During the recession we saw a good number of high wage and middle wage jobs slashed and replaced with lower paying. Of course that means those jobs had some skills that were lost and the low wage jobs would imply that they are low skilled or over-saturated. Unless there is a high skilled opening that you ave the skills for, you can't really negotiate your wage.
Are they grouping McDonald franchise owners with CEO's from huge multinationals ?
Stop worrying about CEO salaries..you aren't paying them unless you buy their products.
I'm no fan of the Waltons since Sam died so I don't shop at Wallymart.
So which mega corporation is your internet service provider and how much is that CEO paid? Or your grocery store chain? Or your utility company? Or your strip mall holding company?
This is exactly the problem. Most people cannot negotiate because most jobs are in fact over-saturated right now because they are basic skilled. During the recession we saw a good number of high wage and middle wage jobs slashed and replaced with lower paying. Of course that means those jobs had some skills that were lost and the low wage jobs would imply that they are low skilled or over-saturated. Unless there is a high skilled opening that you ave the skills for, you can't really negotiate your wage.
Oh please, more
Get off the couch, go back to school or take night classes, increase your education, obtain better skills or improve the ones you have but most important, spend the time you waste on the Internet complaining and do something about the situation.
You can always negotiate a wage. You see, no one forces you to work for a certain employer. Go to a different potential employer and negotiate there.
If you don't know how to negotiate for your compensation, THAT IS THE PROBLEM, not what some CEO figured out before you did.
If most people can't figure out how to negotiate their compensation, then they deserve exactly what they get. Knowledge and skills can be obtain for free if you get off your butts and do something more than pound away at the keyboard complaining.
CEO pay is so high because precisely of threads like this. Everyone knows what CEOs make. CEOs know what each other make. This gives them incredible leverage. Add to this boards that are willing to pay their CEO more than their rivals, this creates a natural upward trend.
The same concept applies to professional athletes. How else do you think Miguel Cabrera signs a contract for $292 million?
People who worry about what other people make don't deserve more than they get.
Who is stopping anyone from being a CEO? The person in the mirror. Who stops anyone from building a company and making billions? The person in the mirror. Who stops anyone from succeeding financially?
The person in the mirror.
The "me" generation is reaping its just rewards, no one wants anything to do with them. All they do is want, take from others and give nothing in return.
Nobody ever paid 90% of their wages to taxes. There were many more deductions back then.
Well, there were many more tax brackets back then, maybe as many as 40, IIRC. You pay at the margin. I know that.
That means, to those who do not understand (and I know you do understand) that any and all salary earned that falls above the margin is taxed at that marginal rate. Not the entire salary. Just that portion which falls above the marginal rate.
Way back in the day there was this popular myth perpetuated by the ignorant that claimed that when you got a raise, you moved into a higher tax bracket and so you paid more in taxes than you made in your raise. That was, of course a lie. Well, a myth, anyway.
A couple of years ago, some famous golfer or other threatened to leave California because the marginal rate climbed fro 10% to 13%. Since his annual compensation, including endorsements, was well over 60 million, in effect 99% of his compensation was subject to the highest marginal rate. So it goes for the ultra wealthy, from golfers to professional athletes to CEO's.
My point was entirely this: that there is a direct relationship between lower marginal rates and more and more wealth retained by the ultra rich. So why shouldnt they cash out when they can?
As a Christian with a maybe overly developed moral center, I am guided by a moral principal. While intellectually I dont care how much people make, as a Christian I have to ponder the immorality of greed, which is defined morally as seeking more and more than you need while those around you have less than they need. EG CEO's who line their pockets while firing employees and shipping those jobs of to China. Legal? Yes. Good for the shareholders? Yes. Moral? I leave it to those with moral centers to consider.
Aren't the stocks usually vested anyways? They have an incentive and obligation to keep improving the company. A CEO's decisions also carry 257x more weight.
The questions has been and remains: are people paid what they are worth?
If people find that they worth more elsewhere, they are free to move. But until they find that condition, I believe it is logical to hold that people in a free society are paid what they are worth.
This is not a truly free society or meritocracy.
People would only be paid what they are worth if the following conditions were true:
1) No wage arbitrage: This means no shipping the jobs to China or India where you can a worker with half the experience for 1/5 the price. No illegal aliens being paid $3 an hour under the table - none of that. The pay and benefits for any given job with any given requirements would have to be within a narrow range across the planet, with only competition driving small variances (companies wanting the best workers, workers demanding more pay for their experience, etc.)
2) Plenty of jobs to go around at all levels: This means there's no market forces distorting wages in various sectors, with some being overpaid or - as you see these days - many being underpaid because of a lack of jobs and too many people who need work. This would also mean there would be no unemployment crisis or people who are vastly underemployed thanks to a lack of jobs.
3) All hiring and retention decisions are based on merit: No crony networks, no "beer buddies" getting lifetime employment despite being useless, no board members voting each other big raises, and no executives being given golden parachutes worth millions of dollars even if they completely fail at their tasks.
Since none of those conditions are being met, one cannot say people are being paid what they are worth.
My goodness, people are paid for what they negotiate. How difficult is that to understand?
If you don't like what compensation you are offered to work, don't accept it, work someplace else. People need to grow up and stop waiting for someone else to take from others and give to them.
That is not so. I can ask $1M salary, yet nobody is going to talk to me. So theoretically you are right, but in practice something changed in the economic athmosphere that companies are willing to negotiate such ridiculous salaries with executives. In the past, they would not consider that, today it's fine. That's the change.
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