Washington Post Special Report: Breakaway Wealth

[Baron Scicluna]

I never said "10 times the size of the company = 10 times the work."

But managing a bigger company requires skills that few people have. It's a big job and, if the company is run well, and the person has been responsible for some/all of that growth, his/her pay should reflect that.

If you're processing milk at a dairy factory, your actual job probably hasn't changed much with the growth. Maybe there's more automation, but you don't necessarily have more responsibility.

You were implying that since the CEO was running a company 10 times bigger, then he deserved 10 times the compensation. I pointed out that he's not doing 10 times the work.

 

[poindexter]

Of course you could fill it at a lower salary, but could you fill it with someone who could grow the company like the current CEO for a lessor salary?

Top CEOs are in demand.

And, while everyone has their own skills -- we've all seen shows like Undercover Boss, where the boss struggles in the lower paying jobs within their company -- I'm betting that I could hire and train someone to, "process, pasteurize and package the milk," pay them less than $23.00, and not show much of a difference in the work.

I am quite positive that CEOs pretty much arent all that impressive. Seen it too many times. BP president during the Gulf Spill? Nuthin.
Enron president? Fool.
The parade of clowns we saw during the financial crisis? A forking joke. None of them had a forking clue that giving $700,000 mortgages to strawbery pickers would end in financial ruin. As Bear Stearns melted down, James Cayne spent 10 of 21 workdays out of the office, taking a helicopter from Manhattan to New Jersey on Thursday afternoons for regular golf games and skipping work to play in bridge tournaments.

On and on.
fork that shirt about CEOs being so valuable. You got to be a Grade A moron to believe that tripe.

 

[LongTimeListener]

What about CEOs who farm out American jobs as part of that tenfold increase? Oh never mind, I know that's fine by you.

I'm not "pro moving jobs overseas." I'd much prefer to see it not happen.

But, in a global economy, many of those jobs wouldn't be competitive here any more. I'd prefer to see the company still remain based here and grow than go out of business.

Nike and Apple don't make sneakers or computers here, but they still employ a lot of people here. And the people they do employ here make good salaries.

Would it be better if we put them out of business instead of have them do their manufacturing overseas?

Can you take us through the logical steps from "don't pay the CEO quite so obscenely" to "the company will go out of business"?

 

[dooley_womack1]

YF, maybe the CEO should get off his/her 10-times-the-moxie-of-mortal-man ass to figure out how to make U.S. production more efficient, without using pittance labor overseas as the default.

 

[Armchair_QB]

How should we go about curbing CEO pay?

 

[YankeeFan]

I think if you do some research, you'll find that CEOs do not come from some predetermined class of people.

The best CEO I ever worked for was a college dropout who rose from a Navy mechanic to an airline CEO. (Gordon Bethune of Continental Airlines.)

heck, the worst CEO I ever worked for rose from a factory forman to CEO. (Vince Naimoli of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.)

Neither came from anything. Both succeeded because of their talents.

To dismiss CEOs as some cabal of inner circle idiots who fell into their jobs based on birthright, is to not understand how business works.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Front page of NY Times Business Section this morning:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/business/19gret.html?_r=1&ref=business

The short version: Top executive pay has gotten out of hand by any measure.

Some of the numbers: Total executive pay for the 483 S&P 500 companies they gathered data for last year was equal to the GDP of Tajikistan, or $14.3 billion. That was the pay of 2,541 people. The population of Tajikistan is 7 million. They put the compensation numbers into some pretty interesting contexts.

You can argue that these are publicly-owned companies and that its ultimately up to shareholders to see to it that pay practices are kept under control. But it is obvious when you see the numbers added up that way that shareholders are generally not informed enough, because they would be way more fired up about this than they are.

 

[poindexter]

I think if you do some research, you'll find that CEOs do not come from some predetermined class of people.

Who said they did??

 

[suburbia]

What about CEOs who farm out American jobs as part of that tenfold increase? Oh never mind, I know that's fine by you.

I'm not "pro moving jobs overseas." I'd much prefer to see it not happen.

But, in a global economy, many of those jobs wouldn't be competitive here any more. I'd prefer to see the company still remain based here and grow than go out of business.

Nike and Apple don't make sneakers or computers here, but they still employ a lot of people here. And the people they do employ here make good salaries.

Would it be better if we put them out of business instead of have them do their manufacturing overseas?

Thing is, it's gotten beyond just manufacturing jobs and now includes even scientific and technical jobs. The education levels in India and China are now high enough that they can do research, development and engineering work that they couldn't do 20 years ago. And since the cost of living in India and China is still considerably less than it is here, employees can be paid much less.

There are plenty of people here with PhDs or PharmDs or MDs here in the USA who lost their jobs due to outsourcing.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

What about CEOs who farm out American jobs as part of that tenfold increase? Oh never mind, I know that's fine by you.

I'm not "pro moving jobs overseas." I'd much prefer to see it not happen.

But, in a global economy, many of those jobs wouldn't be competitive here any more. I'd prefer to see the company still remain based here and grow than go out of business.

Nike and Apple don't make sneakers or computers here, but they still employ a lot of people here. And the people they do employ here make good salaries.

Would it be better if we put them out of business instead of have them do their manufacturing overseas?

Nike has over 30,000 employees. Less than half (14,000) are in the U.S. Plus, there's another 650,000 in Nike contracted factors around the world.

http://nyjobsource.com/nike.html

I'd rather see a lot more of those 30,000 workers in the U.S. But that would mean that people would pay $200 for a pair of sneakers made by a $10/hour worker instead of $150 for a $3/day worker.

 

[JakeandElwood]

Of course you could fill it at a lower salary, but could you fill it with someone who could grow the company like the current CEO for a lessor salary?

Top CEOs are in demand.

And, while everyone has their own skills -- we've all seen shows like Undercover Boss, where the boss struggles in the lower paying jobs within their company -- I'm betting that I could hire and train someone to, "process, pasteurize and package the milk," pay them less than $23.00, and not show much of a difference in the work.

I am quite positive that CEOs pretty much arent all that impressive. Seen it too many times. BP president during the Gulf Spill? Nuthin.
Enron president? Fool.
The parade of clowns we saw during the financial crisis? A forking joke. None of them had a forking clue that giving $700,000 mortgages to strawbery pickers would end in financial ruin. As Bear Stearns melted down, James Cayne spent 10 of 21 workdays out of the office, taking a helicopter from Manhattan to New Jersey on Thursday afternoons for regular golf games and skipping work to play in bridge tournaments.

On and on.
fork that shirt about CEOs being so valuable. You got to be a Grade A moron to believe that tripe.

Thank you.

 

[YankeeFan]

What about CEOs who farm out American jobs as part of that tenfold increase? Oh never mind, I know that's fine by you.

I'm not "pro moving jobs overseas." I'd much prefer to see it not happen.

But, in a global economy, many of those jobs wouldn't be competitive here any more. I'd prefer to see the company still remain based here and grow than go out of business.

Nike and Apple don't make sneakers or computers here, but they still employ a lot of people here. And the people they do employ here make good salaries.

Would it be better if we put them out of business instead of have them do their manufacturing overseas?

Can you take us through the logical steps from "don't pay the CEO quite so obscenely" to "the company will go out of business"?

Do you think Nike or Apple would be the companies they are, or would even be in business, if they manufactured here?

It's about margins. They make those profits by selling lots of shirt at low margin. Take away that margin and the whole business falls apart.

And, at best, they'd be bought out by a foreign company who would move the jobs overseas.

If they don't make money, but could if run differently, they'd be ripe for a takeover.