Why Hillary! Is Both Wrong and a Giant Hypocrite for Criticizing High CEO Pay
Hillary Clinton, under pressure from the left wing of her Democratic Party to aggressively campaign against income inequality, voiced concern about the hefty paychecks of some corporate executives in an email to supporters.
Striking a populist note, Clinton, who announced on Sunday she was running for president in 2016, said American families were still facing financial hardship at a time “when the average CEO makes about 300 times what the average worker makes.”
There is both a punchy way to respond to this and a thoughtful and analytical way to respond. Nobody really cares about the thoughtful and analytical way to respond, so I’ll concentrate on the punchy way.
First, Hillary makes a pretty penny herself, does she not? I seem to recall “dead broke” Hillary making $300,000 a speech (the “special university rate”) while demanding travel in private jets and staying in hotels’ “presidential suites.”
Second, will anyone ask Hillary if she thinks Oprah is overpaid? Oprah is worth $3 billion, and makes $77 million in a bad year and $290 million in a good year. How dare she? Why, that’s more than 300 times what the average worker makes! $77 million is, in fact, almost 3000 times the medium annual salary in the United States.
If you don’t like Oprah as an example, pick your favorite Friend of Hillary and ask her that question. Any highly paid person in Hollywood will do.
Now for the more thoughtful analysis, which nobody really cares about, so I’ll put it beneath the fold:
Thomas Sowell addresses CEO pay in his book Economic Facts and Fallacies. You can read most of the argument here and finish up the analysis here. I’ll summarize the argument in a couple of paragraphs, although Sowell’s analysis is worth reading in full.
For a CEO to make, say, $8.3 million a year (the median CEO pay in 2006, when the book was written), somebody had to decide the CEO was worth that. How do they make such a decision? Because they believe the CEO is worth it. CEOs make important decisions that affect companies worth billions. As Sowell notes, if a CEO can reduce mistakes by 10 percent in a company worth billions, he might save the company $100 million or more. If he does, is that worth $8 million?
In other words, like any voluntary economic transaction, a company paying a CEO generally makes both sides better off. (More about the situation where this doesn’t happen below.) Sowell gives the example of paying George C. Scott a handsome sum to star in “Patton.” This salary only comes at the “expense” of people making the movie if Scott will not attract more filmgoers than someone who would star for less money. Yet do politicians go around calculating and decrying the margin by which the pay of someone like George C. Scott exceeds that of, say, the key grip? No, because it’s obvious that this one man is, indeed, worth it.
And as far as what is means to say someone’s services are “worth it” to a company — who is the best situated to make such decisions: those with a stake in the company, or third parties (like shrill, dishonest presidential candidates)? Why would we assume Hillary Clinton has a better handle on what would benefit a billion-dollar company than the people whose fortunes rise and fall with those of the company?
What about those “golden parachutes” for CEOs who end up hurting the company? Isn’t that unfair? Again, for a business, fairness is not as important as making money — and when you learn you have a bad CEO, it’s important to get them out quick. As Sowell notes:
Since human beings are going to make mistakes, whether hiring an entry-level employee or a corporate CEO, the question is: What options are available when it becomes clear that the CEO is a failure and a liability? Speed may be the most important consideration when someone is making decisions which may be losing millions or even billions of dollars. Getting the CEO out the door as soon as possible, without either internal battles within the corporation or lawsuits in the courts, may well be worth many millions of dollars.
You might not like what CEOs get paid, but you’re not the one whose dollars are at stake. And if you are offended by the pay Company x gives to its CEO, you’re free to buy from Company y. If Company y can’t give you as good a price or as good a product as Company x, maybe the CEO of Company x is, in part, to thank.
In short, what CEOs make, for helping make people happy in the free market, is none of Hillary’s damned business. By contrast, what she makes (and arguably what her CEO supporters and donors make) is a fair subject of questions.
Big Media will get around to asking those questions, too . . . about one month after she is elected.
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 4/13/2015 @ 6:51 pmI have been hearing this 300 number since the ’70s. That’s about forty years. Won’t somebody give somebody a raise? Enough is enough.
nk (dbc370) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:03 pmMaybe she and the media could start off by taking an in-depth look at what her buddies Tom Steyer and Tim Cook earn. But hey, that 2.5 Billion she
elissa (d3f72b) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:07 pmneedswants for her campaign doesn’t grow on trees!Nor do Lear jets…
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:08 pmThe only way the Democrats can remain true to their populist roots is to nominate someone who lied about being an Indian to get a six figure Harvard gig.
That’ll show us conservatives.
Steve57 (cd6f9a) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:14 pmMeanwhile, sensing that Ole Joey B might be viable after all, Neil Kinnock rummages around in the attic for his faithful Remington typewriter. Cinders, you shall go to the ball.
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:18 pmLet’s add another dimension to the equation. Someone or something is worth whatever someone (or some group, say, a corporate board) is willing to pay. Example: somebody may think his house is worth $500,000, but if the only offers he gets are for $350,000, then that’s what that house is worth at that particular time. A company CEO is worth his or her because the corporate board (which has every incentive to pay the CEO as little as possible) is willing to pay him or her that much.
A minimum wage worker, on the other hand, is paid $7.25 only because it’s illegal to pay him or her less. Most if not all minimum wage workers would be paid less than $7.25 if there were no minimum, so they’re worth much less.
Something to think about when progressives compare CEO salaries to average worker earnings, no?
MrJimm (dfcd39) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:31 pmYeah, but……fairness!
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:35 pmAnybody who complains about what a good CEO gets paid ought to work for a company with a bad CEO. I was at Atari at its 1984 crash, and the 30,000 or so workers would gladly have sent in 1% of their pay to get a good CEO, because they were shortly out 100% of that salary.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:37 pmIMHO, CEOs should be paid mostly in stock warrants, with a 3-year vesting period. Let them build solid value and they can retire to a private island for all I care.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:41 pmi think sports salaries have a good deal to do with the amounts company heads make.
if Lebron James makes 30 million, how much is the person who heads the generation of hte money that pays Lebron worth in compensation?
that said, i would really like to see some companies reduce the compensation that their hierarchy makes and spend those dollars on the lower levels of the work force and reduced prices.
seeRpea (d1cf05) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:44 pmI view it differently. Minimum wage workers are worth what they’re paid. If they weren’t, the company would not employ them. But . . . there are people who are worth less than minimum wage who would willingly work for less than minimum wage. The company would employ them for what they would be willing to work for, but the law does not allow it, so those people do not work.
We don’t see those people, but they exist.
Patterico (9c670f) — 4/13/2015 @ 7:51 pmUh oh. I sense a disturbance in the force. Nate Silver accuses Ezra Klein’s Vox of stealing charts. (And I’m tying it into this thread because a smart CEO named Jeff Bezos was wise enough not to fund Ezra and the Juiceboxers.)
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2015/04/fivethirtyeight-founder-and-statistics.html
elissa (d3f72b) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:00 pmA company CEO is worth his or her because the corporate board (which has every incentive to pay the CEO as little as possible) is willing to pay him or her that much.
That’s not how corporate culture works — it’s a crony network where board members getting $1 million a year for an aggregate one week’s work hire another good ole boy — but it doesn’t matter. It’s a private affair and if you think your iPhone costs too much because Tim Cook is overpaid, get a Lumia. Lkewise, if you’re a shareholder looking at ROI, switch your stock holdings. This kind of class resentment Hildebeest is peddling, besides the hypocrisy, is for food stamp gutter trash.
nk (dbc370) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:01 pmBig Media will never ask any pertinent questions of Hillary!
When it comes to CEOs and their pay, anecdotal examples are spectacularly misleading.
I can find dozens, hundreds, thousands of anecdotal examples that I can spin to make it look as if all CEOs are overpaid.
That will ignore hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of further examples which would, when plotted, show my anecdotal examples to be atypical.
The standard deviation in the marketplace is quite large. Large numbers of individual transactions, looked at in isolation, are going to be impossible to defend, because large numbers of corporate boards, out of ginormous numbers of corporate boards in total, behave stupidly.
But Hillary! isn’t smart enough to micro-regulate this in a better way than the market does, over time and on average.
No one is smart enough. And that’s the whole point. That’s the ultimate truth these jerks can’t ever absorb or act upon.
Beldar (fa637a) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:23 pmPeople had better recall that Hillary had the nerve, the audacity, the chutzpah, to claim not all that long ago that she left the White House in a condition of semi-deprivation. It was only upon a closer assessment of her actual financial status that it was glaringly obvious her so-called struggle to make ends meet in 2001 was about as legitimate as her instance of dodging sniper fire on an airport tarmac.
However, I think she’s less contemptuous than all those Americans who fall for her bilge. Hillary, after all, at least gets the brass ring when preying on such stupid Americans. By contrast, the Americans who support her get nothing more out of the deal than looking like the fool and proverbial sucker, the one who’s born every minute.
BTW, I’m less troubled by the big incomes of most corporate CEOs than I am by all the monies grabbed by well-paid members of the public sector. The reason is because in just about all cases I’m not forced to pay for the salaries of those CEOs, while I’m forced to pay for the cushy comforts of government bigwigs, local, state and federal, particular via the IRS or state franchise tax board.
Mark (5d67f7) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:26 pmThe first rule of any Democrat politician is to enrich themselves. That is also true of Republican politicians. That is the first rule of the political fight club. The second rule is to confuse the rubes. The third rule is they don’t talk about the fight club.
With that in mind, does anyone believe this crap the media is peddling?
We are supposed to believe the former First Lady and Secretary of State and declared Presidential candidate just strolled into a Chipotle, along with Weiner’s beard, in sunglasses and ordered up a burrito? And the only evidence is a security camera. If that is true, then the Secret Service is further gone than we thought and the media is already in the tank.
nm.
Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:26 pmThe guy who killed himself at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday was carrying a protest sign that said “Tax the One Percent”.
elissa (d3f72b) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:30 pmFor you, Ag80. http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/205064/
nk (dbc370) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:30 pmBesides which, when people say “Tax the CEO’s” they really mean “Tax the Hedge Fund Manager that’s getting paid through Carried Interest and only pays the Long-Term Capital Gains Tax Rate on the money he’s earned.”
Xmas (bfaacb) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:38 pmnk, one candidate is worried about a challenge from Walker, the other needs one to get around.
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:39 pmHow much do principals involved in “non-profit” corporations compensate themselves?
Like, I’m just tossing this out for no particular reason, those involved with the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. 85% of what they take in goes to overhead. They spend 60% of what it takes in on miscellaneous expenses.
I’m not entirely sure, but I think that definition could be stretched to cover any costs Billy Jeff would have incurred on, to, or fro pedophile island that his buddy Jeff Epstein didn’t pick up.
Steve57 (cd6f9a) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:40 pmThat was the Obama (both of them) mantra in their campaign day. Don’t go into corporate America, work for a non-profit, which to the uneducated suggest some noble cause. When in fact many of those who do produce nothing of any value, rubber awareness bracelets notwithstanding, and profit very handsomely. At least companies produce actual products that people can use.
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:52 pmHeh, Gazzer!
There’s also what “Havana” means in the Rubio household versus what it means in the Clinton household.
nk (dbc370) — 4/13/2015 @ 8:54 pmThe exponential rise in senior executive compensation is an obscenity. Yes, certain execs are worth it. However, that the “too big to fail” boys are making financial goals through the easy money flooding the system does not justify the multiples of increased management compensation as a class.
I have no good alternative, other than sharp governance by individual boards of directors/trustees. It wouldn’t hurt if the giant public accounting firms would actually adhere to once accepted minimum standards. Those have gone the way of the Dodo that said accounting firms may retain accounts. Have you heard of a single accounting firm brought to trial on felony charges in the derivative and real estate scandals which brought about the crash of 2009?
Phony compensation metrics fashioned by clueless, or even corrupt boards, with gamed financial statements, and a near-total abrogation of duty by the various oversight agencies/DOJ have us hurtling towards calamity.
Ed from SFV (3400a5) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:06 pmWith one you get to relax on the sofa, the other you spend the night there.
Like Hill and Bill have slept in the same room once over the last 20 years!
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:07 pmObama’s henchmen called the administrators of various pension funds terrorists for trying to insist on being first in line, as they were secured bondholders and should have come in ahead of the UAW when the feds were divvying up Chrysler’s carcass.
Is this abrogation of duty any surprise?
Steve57 (cd6f9a) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:13 pmI’m guessing Jon Corzine is still walking around a free man?
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:23 pmHillary had a tostada at Chipotle. She is a lady of the people. Because she is being chauffeured around in a van. Because she hasn’t driven a car since the 90’s. Yup, a champion for the people that need a champion. Raise your hand if you were sitting around thinking, I sure do need a champion. $300,000 for a speech lasting less than an hour, then off to Chilotle, because she is just like you.
Oh, Ezra Klein has the only autocorrect on the planet that converts the word “stand” to “tostada”. Because he is racist.
JD (7f7589) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:25 pmCorzine is more connected than Bernie Madoff.
Steve57 (cd6f9a) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:26 pmnk’s comment about Havana reminded me of this.
http://www.icuban.com/food/papas_fritas_con_mayonesa2.html
It’s quick.
It’s good. And it will keep you out of Chipotle where you might run into a lurking Hildabeast.
Steve57 (cd6f9a) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:30 pmGazzer–It’ll be quite interesting to see how Hill and Bill play this. Perhaps there’re some others out there, but I can think of only one picture of the two of them where they were at least pretending to be a normal loving couple. That was the obviously posed “dancing on the beach in bathing suits” pic from a while back. You see them together at events and with Chelsea, and on vacations etc., but never really looking affectionate or being tender or connected. What will their campaign and PR teams do about this, I wonder.
Here they are at Amagansett a few months ago where they were paying $100,000 to rent a property for 3 weeks. I wonder how a relationship expert would analyze these photos. Of course, this article and these pictures come to us via a British paper.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2720212/A-straw-visor-muumuu-Hillary-SoulCycle-shorts-Bill-Relaxed-Clintons-enjoy-downtime-beach-dogs.html
elissa (d3f72b) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:34 pmhttp://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/08/08/article-2720212-205E75B300000578-592_634x660.jpg
Billy Jeff, checking to see if he has any texts from his main squeeze the Energizer Bunny.
Steve57 (cd6f9a) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:40 pmI’m not a relationship expert. But that’s my take.
Steve57 (cd6f9a) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:41 pmWonder how much to rent the puppy?
Gazzer (8d02a8) — 4/13/2015 @ 9:52 pmI could never vote for anyone who willingly eats at Chipotle.
JVW (a1146f) — 4/13/2015 @ 11:19 pm85% of what they take in goes to overhead.
I understand that a large number of charitable organizations (eg, Red Cross) take a big chunk of their donations and funnel it into compensation (and, btw, overly padded salaries too) for the executives and staffers of such non-profits. The Salvation Army is reportedly one of the few charities that manages a better balance of that and therefore isn’t sort of a front or facade for such organizations’ version of Bill and Hillary, or “limousine liberals” be thy name—standing tall, standing shamelessly.
BTW, if most of the tycoons of the US were ideologically similar to George Soros — but no less greedy and no less Machiavellian — many people on the left would zip their lips about the 1% the same way they zip their lips when the topic of sexual harassment — and other women’s-libber type of issues — and Bill & Hillary enter the fray.
Mark (5d67f7) — 4/13/2015 @ 11:43 pmDemocrats prefer warren but she won’t do to hillary what obama did in 2008. You will need to get 66% of white vote to beat her and know republican has ever got more then 61% of white vote The other 39% of whites hate you as much as the minorities do and are not gettable. Now mexicans hate republicans as much as blacks do and 100,000 minority kids turn 18 every month and they have ids so you can’t stop them from voting!
5,000,000 new minority voters (5dd334) — 4/14/2015 @ 1:19 amRound zem wetback kids up and ship them to Iran. No one hates anyone more than I hate you mr. minority f-up.
mg (31009b) — 4/14/2015 @ 3:23 amYou are certifiably insane, Perry. Seek help.
JD (7f7589) — 4/14/2015 @ 3:29 ami seriously seriously doubt she even has any idea she’s sent an email to supporters in which she expressed concern about ceo pay
the Reuters propaganda sluts try to make this sound like she had the balls to say this out loud
but nope it’s just an email the propaganda sluts have been instructed to spin just so cause she needs to shore up her support among the filthy socialists who slobber over elizabeth warren
happyfeet (831175) — 4/14/2015 @ 3:45 amToo many people get their ideas about businesses, CEOs & corporations from drama shows rather than real life. Dramatic license is necessary for good theater but we must remember that good theater is not a source of truth. Carefully watch a show and note the mistaken assumptions necessary for “good theater.” Leverage is one of the worst offenders.
Michael Keohane (23df00) — 4/14/2015 @ 4:08 amMr Jimm wrote:
Not really. I remember when the minimum wage was $5.15 an hour, and it stayed at that level for so long that the economy passed it; even the traditional minimum wage employers were offering significantly more — in most areas — because they couldn’t find anyone who would come to work for $5.15 an hour.
If we leave the minimum wage alone, the same thing will happen again. If anything, the minimum wage tends to hold wages down, keeping them lower until the economy has passed it so thoroughly that the economy forces raises. It might be a raise at the beginning, but it doesn’t last.
The economist Dana (f6a568) — 4/14/2015 @ 4:30 amYeah, I went to this place with very pretty young hostesses who all seemed to be working for just one dollar. People must have felt sorry for them — it looked like they could not even afford clothes — so everybody was slipping them an extra dollar when their boss wasn’t looking. I did too.
nk (dbc370) — 4/14/2015 @ 5:33 am1.) Athletes and CEOS might be “overpaid”, but that money is coming from butts put voluntarily in seats. If they don’t sell something that people want to buy, they have nothing with which to overpay. (My only objection to professional athletes is that they demand stadiums from the taxpayer when they could well afford it themselves, but it’s the voters who are dumb enough to fleece themselves over it.)
2.) The highest paid state job, in most states, is coaching. Whether that’s fair or unfair, the same government that is supposedly going to rein in CEOs is the one paying coaches that much.
3.) The management of nonprofits are just as able to enrich themselves–the Clintons are a fantastic example. A non-profit is still a corporation as much as GM or a mom-and-pop store is. A non-profit does not have shareholders.
Gabriel Hanna (c17820) — 4/14/2015 @ 5:36 amwe need to eliminate “non-profits” from the tax code… there is no such thing.
and everyone needs to have to pay into the federal kitty: once everyone, individuals, corporations, organizations, even churches, feels the sting on April 15th, maybe people will stop believing in, and voting for, free stuff.
redc1c4 (6d1848) — 4/14/2015 @ 5:51 amThe lure of non-profits is not the tax-exempt status of the entity itself. Any corporation can do a spend down and show no taxable profit at the end of the year. The lure is the deductibility of the contributions from the donors’ taxable income — they are not taxed and they also lower the taxpayers’ bracket. Mitt Romney would still donate to Brigham Young even if he still paid tax on the money and it dis not lower his bracket, but would George Soros still contribute to NPR? Tax-exemption practically means survival for most of the NFPs.
nk (dbc370) — 4/14/2015 @ 5:59 amnk s just so helpful and generous.
The amused Dana (f6a568) — 4/14/2015 @ 6:00 amthat’s another good reason to eliminate them, nk.
after all, the big fuss is all about getting everyone to “pay their fair share”, right?
flat tax, no deductions, no fuss, no arguing, no massive pile of forms and regulations.
everyone wins but the accountants, tax lawyers and all the instantaneously redundant and unneeded slugs at the IRS who will have to then find honorable employment for the first time in their lives.
redc1c4 (6d1848) — 4/14/2015 @ 6:06 amYes. I may have overemphasized the importance of the taxpayer’s exemption. It’s not dollar for dollar, it’s only your tax rate. If Soros gives $1.00 to NPR, he’s out one buck. If he holds on to it and pays the tax, he has $0.57~ left for himself. So generosity is also involved, and likely a more important consideration than the tax exemption. That’s certainly true of Romney like I said above, and Bill Gates is also another good example.
nk (dbc370) — 4/14/2015 @ 6:32 ami feel sorry for NPR having to whore itself out to George Soros like that
they have to do everything he says and they don’t get to do quality independent journalism anymore
it shouldn’t have to be this way
happyfeet (831175) — 4/14/2015 @ 6:40 amCountries with a simplified tax rate seem to have a consumer tax a/k/a VAT, sales tax, good and services tax, et cet. Sweden’s, I know is 25%, Greeces’ 20%, and new Zealand’s 15%. I know, in Greece, the majority of “IRS” agents are guys who go to businesses and count the customers and the empties in the trash cans to make sure the businesses are reporting their sales properly and not deep-sixing their invoices. The beast must be fed one way or another. We’d do better by decreasing the civil service roster by two-thirds. Don’t starve the pig sty, cull it.
nk (dbc370) — 4/14/2015 @ 6:41 amthey’re just negotiating fees, pikachu,
narciso (ee1f88) — 4/14/2015 @ 6:44 amThis kind of class resentment Hildebeest is peddling, besides the hypocrisy, is for food stamp gutter trash.
The Democrats have a “top and bottom” coalition which is made up of welfare recipients and limousine lefties. The CEO pay shtick is to make the one percenters feel good about themselves. They don’t give to charity, at least anonymously. They give to Democrats who spread it around for them.
National security for the lefties is what the guys in sunglasses with earpieces do for them. They can be anti-gun because no thug in his right mind would go after a rich lefty knowing here are plenty of guns around under suit coats with ear pieces.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 4/14/2015 @ 7:48 am@nk:
ibidem (a9e511) — 4/14/2015 @ 8:45 amIf NPR couldn’t get any more donations from George Soros, that would be a *good* thing. How do you miss that?
Good point, ibidem.
And it’s worse than that. I remember when Congress wanted to change the estate tax brackets, the objectors were the “charities”. They stood to lose money if people were taxed at the same rate before and after the donation — fewer people would make charitable donations part of their estate planning. An instance where “charitable donations” are a stick and not a carrot in the tax code.
nk (dbc370) — 4/14/2015 @ 8:54 amI know, in Greece, the majority of “IRS” agents are guys who go to businesses and count the customers and the empties in the trash cans to make sure the businesses are reporting their sales properly and not deep-sixing their invoices.
Yet in Greece (and Italy and other countries with high VAT tax avoidance has become a national sport. I believe that a number of European countries have reduced the VAT on hotel stays precisely because that was one of the items that was so heavily abused through under-reporting and cash transactions.
Here of course we have a fetish for making tourists and business travelers shoulder an unbelievable portion of the tax load. Ever noticed the break-down of taxes on most hotels and rental cars here, with their “energy use tax,” “local bed tax,” “airport concession rate” and the like? Your rental car picked up at the airport and rented for three days at $35 per day ends up being $180 by the time they get done tacking on the additional taxes and fees.
JVW (a1146f) — 4/14/2015 @ 9:01 amYou guys will like this jpeg or double your money back. http://www.je-suis-stupide-j-ai-vote-hollande.fr/blog/wp-content/uploads/socialisme-capitalisme.jpg
nk (dbc370) — 4/14/2015 @ 9:25 amConsidering that Hillary is going to spend $2.5 billion (Obama spent $1.1 billion in 2012), she has a lot of gall bashing other people for their wealth.
Of course, “gall” is her watchword.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 4/14/2015 @ 11:00 amHow much a CEO earns in nobody’s business but the shareholder’s. As nk mentioned above, if you don’t like it: sell your share and/or boycott their product. Something else to consider: my Dad was chairman of the compensation committee for a Fortune 200 corporation and the CEO never wanted a raise, mainly because as the founder, he was doing just fine with his stock holdings. They had to remind the guy on an annual basis: if your salary doesn’t go up, then those underneath are stuck.
Beasts of England (5732d8) — 4/14/2015 @ 12:31 pmI should add: about twenty years ago the guy freaked out when his salary was going to eclipse a million per year. So all the complainers should realize that these ‘evil capitalists’ are not all greedy.
Beasts of England (5732d8) — 4/14/2015 @ 12:37 pmHillary gets a $14 million book advance. How much did the book make for the company?
Davod (f3a711) — 4/14/2015 @ 1:47 pmI get what she is playing into. People generally have a very bad image of CEOs – people entirely disconnected from their business who talk in MBA-speak and act like something straight out of Dilbert. I’d imagine that the CEOs who are competent are not the ones blathering on about their paradigm shift or mouthing politically correct platitudes, so they are less visible. Seeing an awesome actor or a masterful athlete makes their worth obvious. When you see the impact a player has on a team, or how a command performance makes a movie more watchable, you start to understand why they rake in the bucks. Where do you see a similar demonstration for a CEO? This is an honest question.
It is entirely possible for a company to do well in spite of horrible leadership and outright idiocy of the management thanks to good subordinates or political connections. And as others have mentioned, CEOs are often selected for reasons other than pure skill.
Lastly, there is the media portrayal of CEOs. Seriously, they are portrayed as the less likable version of a mob boss or at best a high-functioning sociopath. I think there is a market for a book that actually explains what a CEO does and what they are like. I mean, I can explain the average job duties in a science lab to a non-scientist fairly easily. I’m sure Patterico could explain a typical day at the office for him with requiring us to have a legal dictionary handy.
OmegaPaladin (d9cb70) — 4/15/2015 @ 7:19 pmWalter E. Williams explains the importance of this issue.
Michael Ejercito (d9a893) — 4/15/2015 @ 8:37 pm