10/16/2007

Greed in Corporate America

80% of the public, including 2/3 of the CEOs interviewed, agreed that the salaries of American CEOs were too high. Only 2.2% said it was too low. Understandable. The high salaries of American CEOs have been going on for too long. It is the worst kind of robbery, robbing minority shareholders of their real worth and the latter cannot do anything about it. What they need to do is to sack all of them across America and pay half of their existing salaries to the next in line or those young and eager beavers to take over. Corporate theft in the American style has been going on even in our squeaky clean island. And they did it all legally and legitimately by getting the boards to pass all the resolutions to grant them more shares, bonuses and higher pay. Oh, they will not call this robbery but legitimate rewards for their talents.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some even pay themselves salaries in millions. They approve these payouts themselves. I too would like to join, can or not?

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

i too.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

The great majority of people are jealous about how much these top managers are paid—but like all labour, what they get is The Market Price for their services.

No one can earn what their labour and skills are worth, because "someone else" has to value that labour and put a price on it. It is the market (i.e. the "needs" of The Consumer) who values a doctors services higher than a burger-flipper at McD's, and therefore the doctor's price is higher. If the doctor's services were valued at at the same (low) amount of a burger-flipper, not too many people would bother studying for years and spending all that money to get a medical degree, because they can earn the same amount flipping burgers.

Therefore, if you earn $10 an hour as a cleaner, that is what your labour is worth. If you earn $10million (plus plus) as a successful CEO, that is what the market values your services.

No one can "pay themself", in the true sense of that phrase, because we all work for someone else, and ultimately The Market is our real boss. The Market is the place where we trade our labour services for wages or fees—whether one is a brain surgeon, a hooker, a professional blogger or a office peon, and the party "buying" your labour services has in his mind some idea of how much he is willing to pay you in exchange for those services.

Simple fact of life: If you want to earn more, make yourself WORTH MORE to others

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

matilah, when you talk about the market and market pricing, you must have a relatively free market to begin with.

these ceo's salaries are not determined by the market but by the board of directors. in many instances they are in cahoot with each other. i pay you and you pay me. the real owners, the minority shareholders have no control over how they are being paid.

not the market. salaries of lower level employees may be determined by the market. some ceo's salaries may be too, if they want it to be so. but for those who paid themselves obscenely, don't ever mention the market. the market is irrelevant.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

> the real owners, the minority shareholders have no control over how they are being paid. <

...and you know this as "fact"?... and it is "common place"?

I don't think so.

The true owners of the companies are the shareholders. If what you say is REALLY going on on a MASSIVE scale, then the shareholders deserve to be duped. (you can't cheat an honest man)

In Australia, the stingy shareholders are tenacious about realising their returns. Yes, Aust CEO's earn millions, but they are grilled by shareholders, and so is the board. what the "small fellas" do is they form "shareholder associations", which makes their combined holdings pretty substantial—comparable to the board.

Board members who own stock are perfectly within their rights to GIVE AWAY their hard earned money to a CEO.

> don't ever mention the market. the market is irrelevant. <

The market is everywhere, and is ALWAYS relevant, as long as humans are SELFISH, and resources are SCARCE.

Every board and every shareholder wants his stock to make money, and at the end of the day comes down to ONE PERSON—the captain of the ship, the CEO.

CEO salaries are high because most of these guys are fucking good at what they do.

Is there corruption in corporations? Of course there is, just as there is corruption in govt, in religious organisations, in political parties— any GROUP of human beings assembled for specific purposes—you can't get rid of it.

...unless of coursde you consider yourself some kind of "Angel of Death" sent by God to SMITE all the evil people in the world. ;-)

Are you that redbean? Or are you one of those "stone throwers" who is completely without sin?

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

of course i ain't any angel. there are no angels in this world. only pretending to be angels, plenty.