another thing the libs don't understand---wealth and income are not the same thing.
But I do think that some CEO pay is out of line when salary, bonus, stock grants and options, and other fringes like cars are considered.
The question then becomes: if CEO pay was limited would the difference be shared equally with every employee or would the shareholders get it as dividends?
None of this is ever as clear as fools like RW want to make it.
Because it's not a problem. The only reason people care about what someone else is paid, is because they are greedy and envious.
People like me, who are not greedy or envious, are not worried about what someone else makes.
As long as I am getting paid what I should, and I'm doing better today than I was yesterday, that's all that matters.
If Warren Buffet today, was kicked out of Berkshire Hathaway, and end up a Walmart greeter..... how would that benefit me? It wouldn't.
If Warren Buffet were to double his income today.... how would that harm me? It wouldn't.
The only reason I would ever care about how much Warren Buffet was making, is if I became greedy and envious, and didn't like others doing better than me.
Short of that, it doesn't matter.
And CEO pay logically should increase, if the company is doing better. That doesn't mean that every individual employee going to do better.
Let's say that I own a store. The store earns a small by consistent profit. Netting me $3,000 a month. That's after all wages are paid, upkeep is paid, and maintenance is paid. Everything.
I save up money and open another store. The new store is exactly like the old store, netting me $3,000 a month.
Can I pay my employees more? No. Each store makes it's own profit, pays it's own wages, pays it's costs and so on. If I increased the pay, my profit would be gone, and I wouldn't bother running the store. I'd close it.
So I save up more money, and open store after store. With each new store, my income goes up.
But each employee wage is exactly the same, because each store has the same financials.
So I open 1,000 stores, making $3,000,000 a month, for $36 Million a year income. Each individual store, still has the exact same financials.
If you limit pay, so that I can't earn more by opening another store.... then I wouldn't do it.
If you said I could only earn a max of $1 Million a year, at 27 stores, I would max out my income. Opening another store, I would not be able to earn anything off it.
Tell me... if you are investing into something, would you invest into anything that you can't earn any money off of?
Of course not.
So those 973 stores that I would have built, I'm not going to. The thousands on thousands of jobs I would have created, I won't. All those products people would have been able to buy, they can't. And the country as a whole, is less wealthy than it would have been.
That's how limiting CEO pay works. If there is no benefit to growing the company in the form of higher pay, why bother? If there is no benefit to providing more jobs, why do it? If there is not benefit to producing more products, why risk it?
I don't see a problem with CEO pay. Mike Duke of Walmart got paid $17 Million.... yeah.... and he provides 2.2 MILLION jobs, and he sells $476 billion dollars worth of product to customers who want it.
There are few if any other companies creating as many job, and providing as much goods, as Walmart. Is that not worth some money to the CEO? I think it is. I like Walmart. I go there. They have good prices.
