The 6 Pack Economist

Insulting CEOs (while letting them keep their perquisites) may be fun. But it doesn’t begin to address what’s killing the U.S. economy: the rancid notion that one person’s hard day’s work deserves more pay than another’s.

Ted Rall for those who don’t know is a writer who is left of, well everybody come to think of it.  The primary premise for this editorial is that the CEOs of these failed banks should be tarred and feathered and that is something we agree on.  But after that we differ on just about everything else.

I don’t like CEOs who get paid enormous amounts of money and run the company into the ground.  I believe in rewarding success and not failure.  But I firmly believe that some people should have more than others, if they deserve it because of their efforts.   I also think that the only person who can get someone out of crappy financial situation is themselves. 

First we must recognize people are not poor because of the money they have or don’t have.  They are poor because someone else has more money.  Poor and Rich are both relative.  Always remember that.  Even in the height of communist Russia there was still rich and poor. 

“In 1980, according to a Forbes magazine study, executive compensation was 40 times the average worker’s pay; by 2007, that had soared to more than 400 times,” CBS News reported on February 25^th. Now that the companies those ridiculously compensated executives were charged with running are tanking, CEO pay is coming under attack by pundits and politicians.

So what does this mean to the average employee?  Let’s say the average employee makes 50K a year and that there are 100000 employees in the company.  How much would it matter to each employee if the difference between 40 and 400 times was distributed evenly between those employees?  50K a year multiplied by 40 is 2 million.  Then 50K multiplied by 400 is 20million.  This yields a difference of 18million.  But what does that mean to the 100K employees; about 180 bucks a piece.  What would this have done to the average employee’s bills, something between diddly and squat. 

I want people to know that I do not think they deserve to get paid if the company goes down the toilet.  They should be the last ones paid but when they do well they should be richly compensated.  But the current compensation scheme is out of whack.  I would like to see a limit on salaries.  Before you call me a hypocrite I think there should be additional types of compensation.  Their money should come from bonuses and shares of stock in the company.  The bonuses would be paid at the end of the fiscal year based on the net profit of the company while the stock would be rewarded to the CEOs but it could not be sold for 2 years. 

This brings me back to my primary purpose of my post.  People should get paid what their days worth of work is worth.  I am sorry that the best someone can do is ask “do you want fries with that” but why should that person get the same as someone repairing an electrical circuit on the top of telephone pole.  A job that is both hard and dangerous.  Or perhaps someone guy making a decision that could destroy or rejuvenate the company.  I know that most left wingers believe that the CEOs of many companies are heartless pricks but in actuality they are human beings who care about their employees.  They might not be as caring as we would like but very few of them don’t sweat over laying people off. 

Although there are still too many pricks out there.