COMMENTS:
Voted : Yes, we need a salary cap
Could anyone really be worth what they get paid?
Voted : No, let them get paid as much as the corporation want to give them.
I believe in the free market, but I think the public should be more aware of corporate exec's salaries. It might influence our decisions as consumers. For instance, if I know that the top dog at Coca Cola makes $25 million a year, but the big boss over at Pepsi speads the wealth and "only" takes in $5 mil a year, I may start purchasing Pepsi products more often.
Voted : We need a more equal distribution of income
Actually, salary caps are for teams and not for individual players. However, I agree with your point: there should be some mechanism by and through which executive salaries are tied to some anchor, like performance perhaps. Maybe ALL salaries of a corporation should be tied to performance. Each worker and executive is paid according to how well the company does: if it makes a profit, it is shared via the importance of each role within the company. This, of course is socialism, but it seems more fair, no?
Mr. Bostonian: When has a truly free market ever existed on the planet? Certainly not in our memory. We have been manipulated by the IDEA of a free market, but prices have always been controlled by the rich elite, and the worker has always sucked hind tit.
Mahgaret, (that's how I pronounce your name) I agree that most senior executives are overpaid, and that it's sickening when a CEO makes tens of millions of dollars each year while he cuts jobs, salaries and benefits of those who work on the lower rungs, but legally, what can we do? You can't force someone to live modestly or to be empathetic.
As far as prices go, most of the time it's just supply and demand.
Voted : No, let them get paid as much as the corporation want to give them.
If customers of the corporation really find the pay offensive, I agree with Bostonian's idea of a boycott. Plus, it's really for the board of directors and the shareholders to make this call. They and the directors and shareholders of similar corporations make this decision as a group and as peers of a sort.
If the CEO's ruled the corporations themselves and continued looting the coffers, it would be a bit different, but, believe it or not, this kind of decision is done democratically. I may not agree with it, but, as the owners and management, they can do as they'd like with their property, the corporations.
Magaret:
Your idea is called communism, not socialism, so just be honest about it. You're basically dictating how others may use their own property. Who owns the corporation? Not you, not other armchair economists, not the rank-and-file, unless they hold stock in it, but you'd like to tell them what they could do with it.
Tell, you what, Maggie, the world's full of poor and homeless individuals, some performing backbreaking work, most without internet access or the leisure to access it. I'll bet you live in a nice little house somewhere, but it's not really "fair" that you own that when others haven't the same? To be "fair," I think I'll order that you live on the porch, and that each room in the rest of the house be given by lottery to a different Third World family. It's the IDEA of a free market that make you benefit unfairly, living in such an affluent country.
Try to remember to dodge those copies of the "Daily Worker" that the mailman will be tossing near your head each morning...
Correct: "makes" for "make" and get rid of the erroneous question mark.
Voted : We need a more equal distribution of income
If the big boys want to make the big bucks, let's make it performance-based. If you make big bucks for your company, you get a big bonus, just like the little fellow does. If your decisions cost the company money, then you don't, and the bad call goes on your record against you, *just like the little guy*. Writing this reminds me of that fine, upstanding fellow who is the CEO of Circuit City. Laid off thousands of workers in order to relieve the company of the burden of having to pay their benefits, then *generously* offers to *re-hire* them all as *part-timers*. CC loses money for the fiscal year, but he gleefully accepts a pay and bonus package of over $8.5 million. There's a word for this person, but I'm over my monthly cussing quota...
|
