<p>BTW I don’t think we need FDR - I think we need Huey Long. Others will, obviously, disagree :)</p>
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<p>As a stockholder, it’s in my best interests to scrutinize executive compensation and how they pay their employees. Ditto as a taxpayer, who helped fund bailouts of some of those selfsame companies. And an employee of a private corporation is going to be extremely interested in executive compensation, especially when that employee’s wages remain flat while their workload increases dramatically. Even Henry Ford knew that it was a good idea to pay his workers well, and for other employers to do likewise, in order to expand his market base. </p>
<p>The issue isn’t that some people earn more, or earn a lot more. The issue is that the level of income inequality, both in the US and worldwide, has grown dramatically. </p>
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<p>That’s from an Atlantic Monthly report on some of the results from the CBO study (which I’ve not read yet; I usually prefer to read the original before the analysis) on this issue. [Income</a> Inequality Is Not a Myth - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic](<a href=“Income Inequality Is Not a Myth - The Atlantic”>Income Inequality Is Not a Myth - The Atlantic)</p>
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<p>Remember Imperial Russia? A society with tremendous income inequality isn’t a very good idea, either.</p>
<p>[Congressional</a> Budget Office - Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007](<a href=“http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12485]Congressional”>http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12485)</p>
<p>Some folks might find this of interest (I have been following Wilkinson’s work for years):</p>
<p>[Richard</a> Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies | Video on TED.com](<a href=“http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-10-25&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email]Richard”>http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-10-25&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email)</p>
<p>Slitheytove,</p>
<p>Absolutely it is your right and even your responsibility as a stockholder to sell off stock in companies who compensate employees in a manner with which you disapprove. Similarly, you should by all means vote your protest against administrations who engaged in corporate bailouts if that chapter in our recent past offends you. There are many candidates running in 2012 at every level of government who did not participate in that and who are on record of being against it.</p>
<p>What I would object to is if you try to legislate a council or committee or governing entity to “fix” corporate compensation levels and oversee who gets what. Sorry. I feel as if that’s where all the outrage is headed and I think it is a lousy idea. I like that companies can pay their employees whatever they want to pay them. I really don’t think that should be up to voters or the government.</p>
<p>I don’t think gov’t should regulate compensation levels either.</p>
<p>I just think they should tax the heck out of them (starting with an Assets tax).</p>
<p>^ same thing.</p>
<p>And it is a lovely prospect isn’t it, solving everything by taxing the other guy?</p>
<p>Oh, I’d be taxing myself. My elderly mother is a “job creator”, and so I stand to become one.</p>
<p>(and, no, it isn’t even close to being “the same thing”).</p>
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You’re not being totally fair dstark. There are many CEOs who produce and are likely worth their compensation, just like a lot of the sports stars and, pop stars, actors, and the like yet most of the anti CEO people make an assumption that none of the CEOs are worth a nickel and are only out to scrape what they can from the company with no regard to improving the company’s prospects. Likewise, there are some sports people, pop stars, actors, and media people, just like there are some CEOs, who really aren’t providing adequate value and aren’t worth the compensation they’re getting and should be dismissed (and are dismissed).</p>
<p>I think it makes sense for shareholders and employees to scrutinize not only the CEO but also the board and other executive leadership since it’s telling of how the company will likely perform. However, I don’t think the government has any business doing so and neither do people without an interest in the company - I don’t care at all what Coca Cola or Google, or UofChicago decides to pay their executive staff. They could pay them nothing or $50M and it makes no difference to me and should make no difference to most people. </p>
<p>I think there’s simply a lot of envy and it’s being fueled at the moment. People are better off concentrating on climbing up the rungs themselves rather than trying to feel better by tearing others down. I don’t understand why so many people have so much animosity towards people who happen to earn more income than themselves. I really do think people should be grateful to most of those in the 1%, like I am towards Hayden, knowing that they pay not just a couple of dollars more in taxes than the average taxpayer, but substantially more to the tune of orders of magnitude greater.</p>
<p>There seem to be a number of people on this thread who state that they’re in the so-called 1% and seem to be calling for higher taxes on people in their own category. I wonder how many are walking that talk themselves by purposely not claiming any tax deductions at tax time.</p>
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<li><p>the election process is next, should preclude a ginormous violent revolution or a massive change in the political system in this country… BUT do we have creative, practical, forward-thinking, appealing candidates? (We thought we did with Obama…)
Can we have a government that is efficient and independent of the powerful money concentrated into the hands of the 1%???</p></li>
<li><p>Till recently, there was a huge tolerance of wealth accumulation in the USA- the land of the dream, equal opportunity, freedom to move up economically. There has been a HUGE change in the attitude towards wealth accumulation. The aging population has low prospects, the unemployment rolls include the young, the under-qualified, the over-qualified, the 50 and ups, lots of former believers in the opportunity to succeed and become wealthy existed for them, too, explaining why many did not complain about CEO’s and such…
This is a new terrain, a serious twist for the USA. In the meantime, the government is struggling to maintain its hugely expensive and not so efficient operation, and private enterprise is thinking about very ST results, using Just in Time inventory, JIT, employment, JIT for the next quarterly earning report.
The fat cats, however productive they are, at the top of corporate enterprise really should be investing in the future of their companies, not just paying themselves higher and higher amounts, while cutting costs everywhere else.
I am NOT a liberal or anything close, but here it is, economically.</p></li>
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<p>GladGraddad, I used the word some…I did this “some”…to highlight the word some…</p>
<p>performersmom…I like your post… :)</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us/politics/poll-finds-anxiety-on-the-economy-fuels-volatility-in-the-2012-race.html?_r=2[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us/politics/poll-finds-anxiety-on-the-economy-fuels-volatility-in-the-2012-race.html?_r=2</a></p>
<p>dstark - Yes, I noted that and I’m glad you included the modifier, but I was applying the ‘some’ word to the other categories as well (which was why I said ‘not fair’) - sports players who don’t perform up to the anticipated level for the salary (and it happens all the time), pop stars, actors, and producers who are 2 or 3 hit wonders, which jacks up their compensation, and then are bombs afterwards, and we can probably all think of a few of those. And these are just some of the more public figures most are aware of but it applies across the board at different levels.</p>
<p>Performersmom, I also like your post because it addresses something that gets to the core of what I see as one of the problems. The leaders of today don’t think about the long term. What is their compensation comprised of . . . cash and stock options. What are stock options really. They expire in perhaps 2 to 8 years for the most part. I think options exercisable in that short a period of time makes for choices that sacrifice sound long term decisions. The lack of employee training is one bad short term decision with equally bad long term consequences. Another one is hiring foreign contract consultants instead of full time American employees who might need some of that training because it’s cheaper. Now there’s a good use for that excessive exec comp in my opinion.</p>
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<p>And it must be very comforting to know that nothing at all stands in your way to give over all that largesse coming from your mom to the US treasury. </p>
<p>But do you really think you should be making this decision for all those with a lot of money? Some actually earned theirs and perhaps don’t have a lot of confidence in what the government will do with their money. Bill Gates, of course, could just give over the hundreds of millions in his foundation to the federal government instead. Why on Earth doesn’t he???</p>
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<p>If you are a shareholder in the company, your money is at stake. Shareholders do have an interest in seeing that they get good value for the money when the company hires executives to run the company.</p>
<p>When even Forbes, the self-proclaimed “Capitalist Tool”, runs articles and opinions about how executives are overpaid, that can be an indication that shareholders may not be getting their money’s worth.</p>
<p>[Why</a> America’s Highest Paid CEOs Are Insanely Overpaid - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/10/25/why-americas-highest-paid-ceos-are-insanely-overpaid/]Why”>Why America's Highest Paid CEOs Are Insanely Overpaid)</p>
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<p>Note that the creation of the USSR was a reaction to a situation where a large, desperate, poor majority perceived that the country’s wealth was all going to a tiny number of super-rich people, and that the poor had no opportunity within the system to become non-poor.</p>
<p>Surely, it is in the interests of the wealthy to ensure that the rest have sufficient opportunities so that they do not feel that their only opportunity is a communist-type revolution.</p>
<p>ucba – where are you going with your train of thought?</p>
<p>I really don’t like getting up on the soapbox but this country was founded on the whole idea of freedom from religion and tyranny and taxation.</p>
<p>You seem to think people in America at this moment are in the same condition of the peasants of pre-Revolution Russia? Okay. Show me someone seriously malnourished in America who is not either (1) an abused child, or (2) a mentally ill adult.</p>
<p>I just don’t even know where to begin in a conversation like this. </p>
<p>I can tell you, though, that I really don’t think the issue is our tax structure. I think it’s our education system which has not only done an egregious job of producing workers with marketable skills but has also eroded critical thinking skills, and inculcated a generation or two into thinking they are entitled to majoring in art history and then earn a comfy salary with benefits at the Met.</p>
<p>Mini…I enjoyed the TED presentation.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link.</p>
<p>“And back to my other point, do you or do you not think that as a group AfAms have experienced an upward mobility in terms of relative wealth between this generation and the previous one and then again from that one to the prior one?”</p>
<p>Jumping ahead from page 2, and hoping someone has found a link to the answer, it seems i have read that for African Americans, the generation after the first to go to college often, or perhaps even usually, has less relative wealth. This will almost certainly be true for my kids. Don’t flame me, but I think this is in part because my relative wealth, and time here on CC, has “allowed” them to go to college without regard for their future employment. A RADICAL change from H and I.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap: that is interesting. I wonder how different this is from the WASPs of my generation who, having been raised in economic security, didn’t feel it necessary to worry about high income jobs. However, we have been satisfied with much less than our parents. Although until recently have still benefited from our parents’ economic success… much of which had to do with increases in real estate investment.</p>
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<p>“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” -
– John Adams</p>
<p>founding father - seems to think art history is sort of a good thing to study?</p>