CEO Pay Skyrockets--And So Do the Perks:

[EV_Ares]

Even as CEO pay has increased, their perquisites, from personal flights on the corporate jet or yacht, to cars and drivers, to country-club fees and home alarm systems, have persisted.

The perks mean free stuff for a crowd that could afford to pay its own way. After all, the median 2006 total pay for the CEOs at 386 Standard & Poor's 500 companies analyzed by The Associated Press was $8.3 million.

In 2006, the group's total amount of "other compensation" was $169.2 million. Besides all the cushy perks--which are considered taxable income by the government--many companies picked up the tab for those costs, too.

For the first time this year, investors got a better look at all this extra stuff. New proxy rules required companies to disclose perks that cost more than $10,000, a much lower threshold than the previous requirement of $50,000, or 10 percent of total annual compensation.

Tax Payments

Some of the year's biggest perks came in the way of payments for executives' taxes. Public Storage covered CEO Ronald Havner Jr.'s $2.6 million in taxes on his bonus payments, which included $3 million in cash and $786,500 for performance-based compensation.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/19169989

[LiberalEsto]

1. Time to tax them bigtime

I am so fed up with the obscene, disgusting greed of corporate CEOs. It is beyond piggishness. They don't NEED the money; it's just feeding their outrageously inflated egos. It's not like they do any actual work, either. If this were the French Revolution, they would be headed straight for the guillotine like Marie "Let them eat cake" Antoinette. The least we can do is tax them hard.

By contrast, my daughter came home from her waitress shift the other night, feet sore, having made only $12 in tips. Another slow night at the restaurant, because the average person, struggling to keep the car's gas tank filled, can't afford extras like eating out. In better times, she made at least $50 a shift, sometimes twice that amount.

The inequality in this country has gotten worse and worse in recent years, and people are getting fed up. Any Democrat that wants my vote from now on had better take steps to remedy this situation.

[EV_Ares]

2. I feel the same way; they only build bigger houses, buy Hummers &

then complain when it is brought up their pay should be tied to how well the corporation does.

Our incentive pay is tied to our production but they feel above that.

It is way out of hand and I thought congress was going to look at this.

[LiberalEsto]

3. They get their $$$

even if the corporation doesn't do well. If they screw up and get asked to leave, they still walk out with enormous compensation packages.

I'm not sure what Congress is planning to do about this but I sure wish they would start doing something!