The New National CEO Pay Figures: The Outrage Continues

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



The New National
CEO Pay Figures:
The Outrage Continues

Despite the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, top corporate executives are still taking home staggeringly more than their counterparts a generation ago.

April 6, 2009

By Sam Pizzigati


Millions of Americans last year lost their jobs, their homes, and their retirement security. American CEOs last year lost some pocket change — and some of them didn’t even lose that. In 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported this past Friday, pay for typical big-time U.S. CEOs dropped a mere 3.4 percent, to a $7.6 million median. On Sunday, the New York Times pronounced a 9.4 percent CEO pay falloff last year. But the Times put median CEO pay at $8.4 million, a higher total.

The Journal figures cover the first 200 U.S. corporations with over $5 billion in revenue to file executive pay figures for 2008. The Times tally spotlights 200 CEOs at companies that last year took in at least $6.3 billion in revenue.

Several major U.S. corporations haven’t yet disclosed their 2008 pay numbers. CEO pay specifics for last year, consequently, will likely change somewhat over the coming weeks as other national news outlets — USA Today and Forbes, among them — hit the streets with their annual CEO pay surveys.

But any new specifics that may emerge won’t alter the larger CEO pay picture. In 2008, despite the worst economic meltdown in over 75 years, U.S. chief executives continued to take home over 300 times more pay than their workers. That’s a gap ten times wider than the gap between top execs and workers that existed just a generation ago.

Corporate boards of directors seem determined to keep this massive gap intact. Most corporations are refusing to make even symbolic gestures toward more common-sense executive compensation.

Remember last fall's firestorm over executive jets? In 2008, over half America’s big corporations — 104 of the 200 the Wall Street Journal tracked — continued to foot the bill for the personal air travel of their top executives, only three fewer than the year before. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/april6a.html

[Autumn]

1. This whole thing

has become a fucking

[Alcibiades]

2. It already was

This debacle has been going on since the 1980's. It's become so outlandish in the context of a recession, though, that folks are finally waking up to the reality that the entire modern economy of the US is a game rigged for the benefit of well-connected insiders.

[Autumn]

3. It certainly has been a

rude awakening and what is so disheartening is I just don't think any thing will change.