<p>Well put, busdriver.</p>
<p>How does the CEO not get selected as a part of the free market? I think you’re saying that a specific part of the free market didn’t influence his hiring like it does with other workers. You show me a company willing to buck the trend and pay their guy way less than his competitors make, and I’ll show you a company taking too much risk. The golden parachute is a stipulation that employees in the highest demand require, it’s the same in football. First round QB’s picked high get a large portion of their 50 million dollar deal guaranteed, even if they bust and cost the billion dollar team 30 million and two years to recover.</p>
<p>Raiders, I know you are a high school student. I like your interest.</p>
<p>Start with reading this paper.</p>
<p>[Corporatism</a> Is Not the Free Market - Reason.com](<a href=“http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/03/corporatism-is-not-the-free-market]Corporatism”>Corporatism Is Not the Free Market)</p>
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<p>This is considered to be a very conservative paper, so it will avoid the liberalism I assume, based on your posts, you are too young to have yet embraced.</p>
<p>I’m not a high school student, I just so happened to have a high school education though. I was liberal on every issue except for guns, for 29.5 years of my 30 year life. When I started to pay attention to politics, economics, and the constitution I moved to the right very fast. The article was interesting. :-)</p>
<p>Then become the CEO if you want to “make 354 times the average worker”
Is there any issue with that? Anybody is banning somebody else from becoming the CEO. Not sure I understand what is raised by this statement at all.</p>
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<p>Check your work</p>
<p>MiamiDAP - you can’t become the CEO of a major American corporation. You are “banned” from that. You have a better chance of becoming President if the United States. If you don’t get that…</p>
<p>Argybargy, your insistence on arguing over the placement of the deck chairs as a justification for claiming the ship hasn’t hit an iceberg would be amusing if it wasn’t so evidently sincere.</p>
<p>I dont think there can be any argument- their methodology was wrong.</p>
<p>And, yet, even the Wallstreet Journal finds this relevant. </p>
<p>[Corporate</a> Pay: One CEO = 354 Workers - Corporate Intelligence - WSJ](<a href=“http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/04/16/corporate-pay-one-ceo-354-workers/?KEYWORDS=ceo+pay]Corporate”>http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/04/16/corporate-pay-one-ceo-354-workers/?KEYWORDS=ceo+pay)</p>
<p>As a guy who spends a lot of time investing in the Stock Market and watching the same, I can state without equivocation that many CEO’s are incompetent at their work, do nothing for stock holder value and yet still manage to pay themselves obscene amounts of money. Its simply evidence of the fact that many CEOs and the Boards who hire them, have narcissistic senses of entitlement. That’s why the Middle Class is being destroyed in this country, why people like Romney are clueless and have so much contempt for the other 47%. In their tiny minds (and I believe they are tiny), the people in the middle class or lower deserve nothing more than the few crumbs they get.</p>
<p>Didn’t the twinkies people give themselves raises as they were crashing and burning?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t mind the CEOs making what they make if the workers’ income kept up.</p>
<p>Of course for the workers to have kept up, workers would have to make 4 1/2 to 8 1/2 times more. There aren’t too many companies that can survive those kind of cost increases.</p>
<p>Actually, I have to rethink this, what would the shareholders end up with?</p>
<p>CEO pay is not benign. When ceos and others are paid in stock, Shareholders ownership stakes are diluted. Either the company buys back stock to prevent the dilution which is a dilution of assets per share or there is outright dilution.</p>
<p>Investors should watch and see how many shares are created each year due to payment in stock and options.</p>
<p>Are profits used to increase the business or to buy back the increase in shares?</p>
<p>And don’t forget, despite the laws against it, insider trading in companies is rampant. Ceo’s often get in or out of their stock with knowledge the general retail investor does not have. Anybody can follow the market and see how information leaks all of the time, which is why stock prices might fluctuate greatly in the days before a major public announcement. CEOs, i.e., have it as good as Congress did until recently when the laws making it legal for congressmen to trade on inside information were amended due to public outrage. I don’t think the average person is aware of just how much these guys at the top skim off of the top, backdating options, shorting or going long with insider knowledge, actually at times manipulating the prices of their own stocks, almost always getting away with it. The SEC is completely outgunned and impotent. Bernie Madoff was the clearest evidence of that. </p>
<p>I realize it is not news that there is a level of corruption at the top, but the scale of corruption is much greater than most people suspect. There is a reason the rich keep getting that much richer. Goldman Sachs, etc. are master manipulators of the markets. Our colleges have done a terrible job of instilling a sense of ethics and morality into those people who will be our leaders.</p>
<p>Puh-leeze. Insider trading is only illegal if you are joe citizen. It is encouraged and abetted if you are Joe TooBigToFail</p>
<p>[These</a> 12 Banks Got the Fed Minutes a Day Early](<a href=“http://www.cnbc.com/id/100632206]These”>These 12 Banks Got the Fed Minutes a Day Early)</p>
<p>I mean, at least Greenspan used to just have lunch with a few people, and didn’t write it down. He was discrete. They don’t even bother to hide it anymore. </p>
<p>I have no idea why anybody believes the markets are useful to the average investor.</p>
<p>^^^^^ LOL. Agreed. You can still make money in the markets, but you need to play the game, recognize the game is rigged, and ignore the puffing and outright lies coming from the CEO’s. What’s sad is that those who follow the market know just how corrupt it is and yet we are very good at pretending otherwise. The problem is of course not that the retail investor can be so damaged by the manipulations (the flash crashes, etc, where the shorts and longs who caused it made fortunes at the expense of investors who simply had their stops taken out . . . the accounting manipulations and on and on and on), but these sociopaths at the top caused the 2008 depression that caused so much misery to so many. When people no longer have faith in the integrity of the markets, we become no better than any other banana republic.</p>
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<p>There are seriously still people who think merit is the main factor leading to becoming CEO, or in determining their compensation?</p>
<p>Argybargy, there is no reason to believe that the methodology used provided information that was inaccurate in any significant way. You’re arguing that the actual ratio might be 325 to 1 or 300 to 1 instead of 354 to one - but even if that is true it is not significant. The change in the amount of fringe benefits on the overall issue is on the order of a rounding error. Even if fringe benefits increased from 0% of wages to 50% of wages - which isn’t true - there would be an increase in the ratio from 42 to 1 to 266 to 1 - which would still be a significant development.</p>
<p>Again - you’re arguing about exactly where the deck chairs are located. We’re talking about the iceberg.</p>
<p>There is a great deal of skill involved in being a CEO. Sometimes the skill is knowing what they’re doing and what the company direction should be. All too often the skill is the ability to successfully market themselves and schmooze. The Sunbeam guy went from senior position to senior position, not succeeding anywhere, but always persuading the next people he was a wonderful manager who deserved millions of dollars.</p>
<p>I watched firemen, emts and cops run towards a bomb yesterday but people still begrudge the fact they can retire young. CEO’s can deal with some of us thinking 354 times the average workers salary is a bit much. >>>>>>>></p>
<p>I just want to insert here, Tom, that I do NOT begrude those who work in harm’s way from retiring young. I should have made that clear in the other thread.</p>
<p>I do believe these folks are an elite, talented and gifted bunch and absolutely deserve to be THE highest paid person in the company. But the amounts they earn are absurd. Wouldn’t a million or two a year satisfy most anyone’s wants and needs? Why does anyone need the kind of money we hear about?</p>