Median CEO Pay Crosses $10 Million For First Time

i want to be a CEO when i grow up!

at least they work. good for them!

i worked my way up from burger flipper to an i can flip anything flipper.

i got the biggest paycheck since i signed everyone else's.

a reply to: Hoosierdaddy71

I kinda viewed the sheriff of Nottingham as a criminal. :-) it just depends on the view. Besides, water, food, energy, of any other abundance would appear overnight.

Inequality is a major problem. How we as people treat money and salary needs to be reconsidered. It is fundamentally broken.

originally posted by: jjkenobi
Another non-issue. Liberals think the CEO's paycheck is stealing money from the poor. It is no more than Bruce Springsteen's $33 million dollar income last year stole from the poor. Or the $60 million Lebron James made. Or Tom Hanks $350 million net worth. They generate value, and are paid accordingly to what the free market dictates. Why would you cap a CEO's pay and not cap a musicians pay? Or an atheletes? Or an actors?

And I've never heard a conservative say anyone has to give the rich money. It's a straw man argument. Say your opponent says something just so you can refute it. Conservatives believe in earning their money, and keeping it. The idea if giving money to people is called redistribution and is a liberal's wet dream.

Cap the pay of both. Institute wealth gaps of 20x (what JP Morgan advocated). If the lowest paid employee at a company makes 7.45/hour, the highest paid employee can't make more than $149/hour ($309,920/year). If the person at the top want to make another $20/hour, that person at the bottom is making an extra $1/hour.

Also, conservatives talk about giving the rich money all the time. Tax cuts to the high earners, no corporate taxes, negative tax rates (especially this last one). These are all party line policies that conservatives preach. We've seen this in action too... trickle down, wall street bailouts, corporate welfare, and so on.

originally posted by: abeverage
A CEO is not the company the employees are the company. If a CEO takes a 200% increase the Employees should as well! But instead they are offered a .01% increase and these modern day ROBBER BARONS create golden parachutes.

This is not Capitalism this is Hyper-Capitalism and Cronyism! If we the 99% voted with our money and held up companies with good employee policies instead of the bottom line this would not be a problem...but keep shopping at Walmart.

Capitalism is at an all-time low. Name your metric to measure capitalism and you'll see it hardly exists any more. Every system is on the rise EXCEPT for capitalism. There is more economic socialism, economic communism, and economic fascism. Capitalism has been fading out for a long time.

I remember hearing about CEO salaries about 20 years ago - it has been going on for a long time.

The system is absolutely rigged. They call it networking but it's really a true non-spoken agreement of a relatively small group of people to give each other high paying positions.

Your golfing buddy is on the Board of Director's of corp X - he'll approve your 100 million salary and in return you will make sure someone he is connected to gets a great contract or inside info.

I can't stand when people say if corporations get more money they will hire more people - BS. If they get more money, they most likely will just give it to high paid executives.

CEOs see the US going to H**l and are getting what they can before the democrats ruin the US.

many of the CEOs see there companies going bankrupt due to the government and they plan to retire when it happens.

You people are not thinking logically. When you spread out the CEO salary among thousands or tens of thousands of employees it won't add up to a huge increase in everyone's paycheck..

originally posted by: RickyD
a reply to: buster2010

I usually find myself in opposition to your posts in most threads however you are spot on here. I am sickened by people who can accept so much for doing so little and simultaneously observe the majority of people on the brink of fiscal doom day in and day out. There is only so long that those on top can continue their selfish ways until POP…and you know what they say "the bigger they are the harder they fall".

ETA: I don't see a point in having more money than you can possibly spend. I would have a hard time not giving money to everyone I saw who needed it…BECAUSE IT MAKES ME FEEL GOOD I COULD HELP…maybe that's where the rest of us differ…we actually care about other humans.

I think it is easy to say we would do this or do that IF we had the money... But would we? Or would we do exactly the same? Have a nice expensive car. Millionaire house. More extravagent holidays... You can do whatever you want! You would really be dishing out money to everyone? I would like to think I would but not so sure...

originally posted by: libertytoall
You people are not thinking logically. When you spread out the CEO salary among thousands or tens of thousands of employees it won't add up to a huge increase in everyone's paycheck..

That is true... But who needs it more? If you're poor even $10 will make the difference.

originally posted by: ANNED
CEOs see the US going to H**l and are getting what they can before the democrats ruin the US.

many of the CEOs see there companies going bankrupt due to the government and they plan to retire when it happens.

Oh please you can look at these ceo pay from 1980 and they have gone up almost every year while wages go down or stagnate. You wanna blame democrats? when republicans have held the white house 28 years since 1970 and democrats 17 years.

Republican leadership has succeeded in making us a 2 class society, the rich and the poor. You agree with not paying a livable wage so government has to spend our money, our tax money to subsidies there workforce?

What a joke!

originally posted by: libertytoall
You people are not thinking logically. When you spread out the CEO salary among thousands or tens of thousands of employees it won't add up to a huge increase in everyone's paycheck..

But then claim that they can't afford to pay more is a complete lie!

Unchecked capitalism is probably what caused communism to rise in the first place!

From 1936 through 1950, executive pay barely changed and was made up simply of a salary and a bonus. Then around 1950, CEO pay started to include a small amount of stocks and options in the company. That trend grew more noticeable over the next 40 years, only to begin skyrocketing during the 1990s.

Why the big change? In 1993, a change to the U.S. tax code capped deductions for executive pay at $1 million. But a loophole to the change allows “performance-based" income (pay packages like stocks that are directly tied to company's share performance, earnings or market share) to exceed the $1 million limit.

This exception encouraged companies to compensate their CEOs outside of their base salary -- a decision that the Roosevelt Institute argues hurts the economy in the process.

Why CEO pay exploded....

Another thing that changed under Nixon was the first round of tax cuts for the rich, then again under Reagan, then under Bush and All of them said it would help the economy, well trickle down economics or whatever they call it now is a big fat lie!

originally posted by: abeverage
A CEO is not the company the employees are the company. If a CEO takes a 200% increase the Employees should as well! But instead they are offered a .01% increase and these modern day ROBBER BARONS create golden parachutes.

This is not Capitalism this is Hyper-Capitalism and Cronyism! If we the 99% voted with our money and held up companies with good employee policies instead of the bottom line this would not be a problem...but keep shopping at Walmart.

I'm too poor to shop anywhere else! Funny how that works. The cycle perpetuates itself. One might almost say it was designed to do so.

I wonder who these CEOs are, and how they got these amazingly well-paid jobs that don't hold them accountable.

Wow, these guys must be something real special to get so much love and adoration.

If people got paid what they deserved, raising kids should be the highest pay.

originally posted by: LDragonFire
Unchecked capitalism is probably what caused communism to rise in the first place!

If you really want to see what capitalism does, look at the US shortly before 1913 when the strong level of capitalism in the US ended. Here is an excerpt of a solidly (though not 100%) capitalist life:
"For the emerging middle class, benefiting from growing incomes and increases in leisure time, the expanding city offered many advantages. Department stores, chain stores, and shopping centers emerged to meet the growing demand for material goods. Parks, amusement parks, and baseball stadiums were built to meet aesthetic and recreational needs. Transportation systems improved, as did the general infrastructure, better meeting the increased needs of the middle and upper class city dwellers."
www.loc.gov...

So, there you go, the peak of capitalism was the flourishing of the middle class. And now the death of capitalism will be the death of the middle class. The US should have pushed closer to to 100% capitalist but instead we are now much closer to all of communism, socialism, and fascism. The one system that the world has abandoned almost entirely is capitalism. The rest of the economic systems are very much alive and well.

I predict based on my theory that the US will not recover for at least 20 years because capitalism is dead for at least 20 years. I can predict that Singapore will flourish over the next 20 years because it is quite nearly a capitalist place. If you want financial success, move to Singapore. So if you think I'm wrong, then tell me how the rich-poor gap is going to get worse in Singapore and infant mortality and other poverty-related problems will rise in Singapore because "That is what happens with unfettered capitalism".

originally posted by: DeadSeraph

originally posted by: abeverage
A CEO is not the company the employees are the company. If a CEO takes a 200% increase the Employees should as well! But instead they are offered a .01% increase and these modern day ROBBER BARONS create golden parachutes.

This is not Capitalism this is Hyper-Capitalism and Cronyism! If we the 99% voted with our money and held up companies with good employee policies instead of the bottom line this would not be a problem...but keep shopping at Walmart.

I'm too poor to shop anywhere else! Funny how that works. The cycle perpetuates itself. One might almost say it was designed to do so.

Do what you can, but if you can shop else where. I spend a tiny bit more to shop at another story both in Gas, Time and Money to avoid that place. I save and I do not eat out at chains or buy coffee from Starbucks. What did you do before Walmart? In my area it hasn't always been here so what I did is I went without...a very strange concept these days.

originally posted by: wayforward

originally posted by: abeverage
A CEO is not the company the employees are the company. If a CEO takes a 200% increase the Employees should as well! But instead they are offered a .01% increase and these modern day ROBBER BARONS create golden parachutes.

This is not Capitalism this is Hyper-Capitalism and Cronyism! If we the 99% voted with our money and held up companies with good employee policies instead of the bottom line this would not be a problem...but keep shopping at Walmart.

Capitalism is at an all-time low. Name your metric to measure capitalism and you'll see it hardly exists any more. Every system is on the rise EXCEPT for capitalism. There is more economic socialism, economic communism, and economic fascism. Capitalism has been fading out for a long time.

What Planet do you live on? In the past 20 years we have seen the Communist countries implode and open their markets up and have structured their economies on capitalism!

a reply to: wayforward

Why not also look at the injustices of capitalism, government had and has to force regulation on them such as workers compensation, environmental protection, there seems to be no ethics when it involves big business. At one time there was no workers rights and the capitalistic big industry took advantage when they could, be it child labor, sweat shops, unfair wages, unsafe working environment, you were expected to sacrifice life and limb for there profit.....

Even today the corporation has more rights than the citizen, you have no free speech, the corporation will fire you for Facebook posts, they force drug testing, back ground checks and financial checks, yet citizens united supreme court decision states that corporations are people, so how do they have rights over other people?

They are taking our rights away and are taking all the profit while the worker gets the scraps, uncool

a reply to: LDragonFire

Unchecked capitalism is probably what caused communism to rise in the first place!

Actually when Marx "re-defined" Capitalism and declared it "Evil" is what caused Communism to "rise" above its own abilities.

Just ask any banker.

originally posted by: DeadSeraph
I'm too poor to shop anywhere else! Funny how that works. The cycle perpetuates itself. One might almost say it was designed to do so.

Make do with less? Walmart isn't that much cheaper. Skip a meal once a week and you break even without giving Walmart your money. Neat fact for you too, Aldi's is cheaper than Walmart and they're not evil people.

I have a huge list of stores I won't shop at and brands I won't buy. Sure I'm probably not impacting anything when you look at the big picture but atleast I'm not the one perpetuating the cycle of consumer apathy and supporting corporations that need to disappear.