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Which of these CEOs are (or were) worth their pay?

Which of these leaders are worth their salaries/bonuses?


  • Total voters
    16
  • Poll closed .

Neomalthusian

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Which of these business leaders are (or were) worth what they earn(ed) annually?

Explain.
 
If the shareholders think a CEO is overpaid they can change that. What exactly are you proposing? For Barack Obama to decide what each CEO should make?
 
If the shareholders think a CEO is overpaid they can change that. What exactly are you proposing? For Barack Obama to decide what each CEO should make?

Actually, I don't get why they don't. Studies have shown that CEO pay is not correlated with CEO performance. It is one of the only jobs in a capitalistic system where pay seems to have absolutely nothing to do with results. I can't figure out why that is tolerated. My guess is that shareholders are stuck in a "higher paid CEO = higher return" heuristic that has absolutely nothing to do with reality. In other words, people want higher paid CEOs for the same reason people will shell out big money for fish eggs and goose liver, because expensive allegedly always equals good.
 
If the shareholders think a CEO is overpaid they can change that. What exactly are you proposing? For Barack Obama to decide what each CEO should make?

Heavens no. Not proposing anything. Interested to know if people think some of these guys (but not others) are worth their salaries/bonuses.
 
Seriously, why does it matter what a CEO is paid?
 
I thought Larry Page was the CEO of Google. Has there been a coup in Geekland?
 
Which of these business leaders are (or were) worth what they earn(ed) annually?

Explain.
But what you're showing isn't what they're really making. I mean, it's not like they only get their paycheck the same as Joe Sixpack does. Add in the stocks, stock options, and other goodies to what you've posted - then we'll talk.
 
But what you're showing isn't what they're really making. I mean, it's not like they only get their paycheck the same as Joe Sixpack does. Add in the stocks, stock options, and other goodies to what you've posted - then we'll talk.

That's true, including the value of their stocks/options/etc. dramatically increases those figures further, but it's not as if the question is unanswerable in its current form. Are they even worth those base salary/bonus figures?
 
No person is worth a single penny.

All people are nothing but worthless property of the state.
 
Which of these business leaders are (or were) worth what they earn(ed) annually?

Explain.

They pretty much all are. As it's been pointed out, this is only a fraction of their pay, but just for argument's sake let's take this at face value.

Google is a 50 billion dollar company, a million a year is nothing. For the radicals out there, let's say we take that million and split it among the 30,000 employees: That's $33 per employee. I'm sure most of them would pay that in order to have a competent CEO making sure they keep their jobs.

Same deal with the highest paid on this list, Leslie Moonves. If you split her 31 million over 21,000 employees, that's only $1,476 per employee, which considering most at CBS are pretty well paid, that's basically nothing.

Stock options are also another great thing. These people have incentives to make profit for their companies, because it effects their own money too.
 
Seriously, why does it matter what a CEO is paid?

Small groups of powerful people are using their social and political power to continually vote themselves raises, leading to a culture of rampant pay inflation that violates the basic tenant of capitalism: reward success and punish incompetence.

You know how conservatives complain about teachers that are incompetent, overpaid and impossible to fire? Its like that, only instead of the students and taxpayers, they're ****ing over shareholders, customers, the people that work for them, and the economy in which they teeter.
 
Small groups of powerful people are using their social and political power to continually vote themselves raises, leading to a culture of rampant pay inflation that violates the basic tenant of capitalism: reward success and punish incompetence.

You know how conservatives complain about teachers that are incompetent, overpaid and impossible to fire? Its like that, only instead of the students and taxpayers, they're ****ing over shareholders, customers, the people that work for them, and the economy in which they teeter.

The problem is maybee lack of medals. That does a person really becomes more happy if he earns 1 or 2 million instead of 0,5 million for material reason? Maybee it is instead mostly about status, power, and a sense of accomplishment that makes people wanting to earn that much. So the trick is maybe is finding medals and other ways to make Ceo to feel important that is less costly then throwing money at them.
 
The problem is maybee lack of medals. That does a person really becomes more happy if he earns 1 or 2 million instead of 0,5 million for material reason? Maybee it is instead mostly about status, power, and a sense of accomplishment that makes people wanting to earn that much. So the trick is maybe is finding medals and other ways to make Ceo to feel important that is less costly then throwing money at them.

LOL, we're docking your pay, but the good news is, you're getting this "Achievement medal" we bought at hobby lobby.
 
LOL, we're docking your pay, but the good news is, you're getting this "Achievement medal" we bought at hobby lobby.

We need to give them a certificate they can hang on their refrigerator. Let them know how good they are doing, and how proud we are of them.
 
The CEOs of most companies are not really the problem yet have suffered too much of the focus.

If you want to hone in on the parasites of this economy who are doing the most damage you need to examine the money trail of the country's richest families and their political influence. For that you would need to deal with the banks who are complicit.

A CEO who makes a paltry few million dollars a year pales in comparison to the slim percentage who own most of the country's financial stock or capital assets.
 
All of them are worth that much, because that's what the market has set their price at. Their skill, expertise, and knowledge within that job is evidently viewed as beneficial enough to their company AND potential competitors that the company is willing to allocate such a large amount of money towards them because that's similar to what other companies would offer.

There is no inante, universal, utterly objective, natural law that dictates how much money a particular style of work or type of position is actually "worth" or "deserves"...those things are dictated by the supply and demand surrounding the various jobs.
 
Small groups of powerful people are using their social and political power to continually vote themselves raises, leading to a culture of rampant pay inflation that violates the basic tenant of capitalism: reward success and punish incompetence.

You know how conservatives complain about teachers that are incompetent, overpaid and impossible to fire? Its like that, only instead of the students and taxpayers, they're ****ing over shareholders, customers, the people that work for them, and the economy in which they teeter.

If you don't like the CEO of a company, or how much a CEO makes, don't purchase that company's goods or services. If enough people feel the way you do, the behavior will likely change, or it could impact that company's ability to compete in its industry. If you work for a company like that, go work somewhere else. If you're a shareholder, sell your shares and buy stock in another company.
 
Having worked in the F-500 for most of my life I can tell you that the CEO is the most worthless and easily replaced person in the company. The premise is that they make all the big decisions but the reality is when ever a big decision is to be made an external consulting company is almost always hired. I can hire a bum that lives under the bridge and pay him minimum wage to operate a telephone that calls someone else to make the big decisions. Furthermore when they do make the big decision and it fails they are given millions to go away. They are a complete waste of money.
 
That's true, including the value of their stocks/options/etc. dramatically increases those figures further, but it's not as if the question is unanswerable in its current form. Are they even worth those base salary/bonus figures?
I think a ratio of 100:1 from highest to lowest paid is pretty steep already - but it's much worse than that. For example:

Apple has awarded new CEO Tim Cook 1 million shares of stock.

At today's prices, those shares would be worth $383 million.
Read more: Apple Awards Tim Cook 1 Million Shares - Business Insider

That's waaaay beyond a 100:1 ratio and makes his "salary" a spit in the bucket.
 
They are all worth what the market dictates they should have. Performance driven people deserve all they can get. People that want to punch a clock and then whine about what they should get need to STFU.
 
Which of these business leaders are (or were) worth what they earn(ed) annually?

Explain.

It is only any of my business if I own stock in those companies.
 
Interesting responses so far. I kind of agree with almost all of you (even those whose posts differ markedly from one another).

On one hand, I would not advise the federal government step in and fix this, and I believe companies operating legally and doing what their customers demand and what it takes to survive should be left alone to self-govern or self-destruct.

On the other I question whether it ultimately works for the company or anyone else long-term to have fully adopted this equity-based pay model that aligns their interests with the stockholders. There are obvious upsides to this, but it's probably not without downsides. For example, the alignment might be to the detriment of the product/service, the reputation of the company, the long-term going concern (rather than short-term growth/profitability), and other things.

http://law.harvard.edu/faculty/jfried/How%20To%20Tie%20Equity%20Compensation%20to%20Long%20Term%20Results.pdf
 
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