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Feedback ForumShould there be laws to limit executive compensation?Submissions for this question are no longer being accepted. Previously submitted comments appear below. Comments may have been edited for content or space. Poster: Anastasia Comment: YES, CEO's wages should be limited, but under the control and discretion of the Board of Directors, not the government. Corporate governance rules and guidelines are needed for Directors to perform their duty which should be first to customers, then to shareholders and employees, including executives. Poster: Bill Twain Comment: No. An effective executive should receive higher compensation. If that person, moves a company along and severs ties, the executive will not find employment like an ordinary worker. You do not just look in the want ads for a CEO position. This is an exceptable risk by both parties. Poster: Brenda Comment: Legislating salaries would create too many problems and inflexibility.A better way would be to use the tax system to encourage a more equitible range of salaries. Also, the members of the executive board need to be held accountable for executive salary structure and have the rules actually enforced.. At present there is a too clubby relationship among executives and board members. In addition, people have to stop basing their self-worth merely on the size of their salary. Surely, they feel pride in a job well done and the opportunity to make a difference. Is this not a form of compensation? Unfortunately, it will be very difficult to change the status quo because too many people (especially politicians) have a very strong financial interest in having the system remain the same. It will take an awfully strong citizen movement to effect any change. Poster: Ron Comment: Absolutely. It is sickening to have corporations who are making record profits force workers to accept less and less while they hand over increasingly obscene compensation packages to their criminal executives. This is nothing more than a massive theft from workers. If there is not a reasonable cap on executive compensation, then the government should tax the hell out of all income over $150,000 and mandate that the revenue is used to fund social programs, education, and health care. Poster: Dan Comment: Yes, particularly for publicly owned corporations. Poster: WDibelka Comment: Executive compensation should be tied to corporate success and not exceed a reasonable limit based on base salaries within the business. No golden parachutes based on name recognition or established friendships. Poster: A BATUM Comment: By giving corporate executives large sums, the corporation steals from investors. This is not a proper investment for capital gain and should be limited to a percentage of growth of company, inflation or some other ceiling. Poster: Cynthia Yellowbird Comment: I think that executive compensation should have a legal formula, pinned to the overall expansion numbers of both the company and the economy. Of course greedy executives making a year and a half worth of the average man's income per hour would disagree with me. Not only are todays executives and leadership in this administration unrestrained with greed and power lust, they are a pack of bullies. All this makes me not care what happens to my country, because I don't have a country to call mine. It is quite definately THEIRS and I am just a pawn in it. Poster: Ironshooter Comment: I believe laws to limit executive compensation are long overdue. Who really needs millions of dollars to sustain themselves? Obviously its about prestige and rewards for capitalists however it spurs those in lower economic brackets to spend creating predator lending further widening the gap between the rich and poor. Poster: zelia edwards Comment: Yes, there should be laws. Especially since boards seem unable to govern themselves and those they serve. Poster: Dick Gilluly Comment: My experience as an employee of a consumer-owned electric utility several years ago made it clear to me then that consumer ownership can be especially effective for many industries. Indeed, the utility I worked for had the lowest wholesale power rates in a seven-state area as well as a much-envied model contract with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- while at the same time paying its managers salaries far below those of executives of neighboring investor-owned utilities (IOUs). In many industries, including utilities, which often are monopolistic by nature, consumer ownership is the ONLY sensible kind of management despite IOU propaganda to the contrary. Indeed, consumer ownership is the ONLY rational way to operate most utilities most places, as the chaos and exploitation caused by deregulation of utilities in recent years has amply proven. Yes, of course there should be laws to limit executive compensation in most industries, especially utilities. Poster: Robert Goldman Comment: Dr. Bezrushka's analysis is compelling. He argues that limited differences in wealth between upper and lower segments of the population results in improved health for all. He cites the health of post WWII Japan as an example. In contrast, extreme differences in wealth produce relatively unhealthy countries, and all levels of society are adversely affected. From a public health standpoint, therefore, the answer to your question is yes. Poster: Daniel Boone Comment: Absolutely! As a point to start the discussion how 100 x the salary of the lowest paid employee. Poster: Raymond Strachan Comment: Yes there should be a compensation law, in every country that claims civility. When there is no law it becomes too commonplace for CEOs to focus only on the Shareholder to the detrement of employees. Lay off 5000 employees, stock goes up, also cut back on safety maintenance, better bottom line. Bad for employees and general public. CEO looks like genius until this form of cuts catches up to Him or Her. Then they can get a ridulous severence and move on to screw up another company, and on and on. My big wish is and has been for many years now, is that every working person would wake up some Monday morning and announce, I am not going to word today,,,nor tomorrow, nor the next day until workers are regarded as important or moreso than the so-called BUSINESS SECTOR. Workers are in business, they sell their labor and their talents on too many jobs that are totally unfullfilling and provide the bare necessities. Poster: Nori Lane Bishop Comment: It certainly seems as if something like that might help the absurd situation we have now. Bill George advocates voluntary adherence to some sensible restructuring of executive salaries, but I doubt that many corporate CEOs would step up without legal restrictions. The siphoning of profits of the capital that should be educating our next generations of workers and leaders and maintaining the health of the population and the land needs to be stopped whatever way is necessary, and apparently our corporate capitalists won't do it unless they are forced by law and can't find a loophole, so introduce the legislation, and let's get moving! Poster: Danny Greene Comment: We are going back to the era of the robber barons. We should be going forward, not backwards. There will be major push back otherwise, and the robber barons will lose. There is strong democratic and populist history here, that the present leaders ignore at their peril. Poster: Nina Nichy Comment: I was taught the USA functions on a 'PYRAMID CAPITALIST SYSTEM', starting with investments at the bottom. When most of our money is at the top, as it now, with 98% of our capital in the hands of 1%.....the pyramid is due to crash. Poster: Chic Young, P.E.,CSM,CET,EHF Comment: The limits on Executive Compensation, in both salaries and in Corporate Stock acquisitions, should be done through Tax Laws that are enforced by the IRS. Our laws must be written to effectively limit the ratios of the gross incomes of the highest paid members of each and every Corporation when compared to the mean income of those in non-management positions below second level supervision of all salaried and hourly workers in that Corporation, and any owned, or controlled subsidiariesof that Parent Corporation. A sugested top ratio would be 50-to-one. Poster: Jean Beek Comment: Yes there should be laws to limit executive pay to no more that 20% of the lowest paid worker in the company. This would allow all workers to share in a company's prosperity. Poster: Ben Taylor Comment: Of course not. This kind of talk is nonsense. Pay should be based on a competitive free market where people are paid based on market demand for their skills and the available supply of people who possess similar capabilities. Then there needs to be a realistic assessment made of performance and whether the executive is delivering the level of results/progress expected. If not the executive should be replaced. This is the big leagues if you don't deliver your out and better talent is brought in. Poster: MLW Comment: What can one person possibly do on a daily basis that is worth millions of dollars per year? These corporations have set themselves up as feudal societies headed by evil vampire like people who use the rest of us like farm animals. Yes there should be limits to their compensation. How about a percentage in relation to common workers pay? Poster: richard g. collins Comment: Yes, by all means. Something that is long overdue, and, apparently, the only solution to this outrageous practice. Poster: Ruth Uebel Comment: Yes, should be limited. Poster: Mary Chatlos Comment: The outrageously overblown compensation of CEO's is an obscenity--a crime that calls to heaven for vengeance. Poster: dee anne moore Comment: Dictating the wages of CEO's and top officials should be done by the board of the corporations. However, the more important issue addresses the wages of those whose labor provides the corporate income that then affords the saleries of the executives. Rather than a minimum wage, laborers should receive a livable wage. This could help our society balance the dispariety between those whose lifestyles abound in oppulance and those who struggle to even survive. Poster: James Hall Comment: Since I am not an executive and there is little chance I will ever be one, I think compensation to those executives who manage to save a sinking corporation is something they deserve. We all know the Greed level when we see it. Poster: shaber403 Comment: Absolutely there should be a law, because these people are completely incapable of any moral direction. They do not understand the damage they do to the country by allowing this huge difference between the CEO pay and the janitor's pay. The country is better off with the largest number of people getting a decent income and very very few at the top of the wage scale--sort of [dare I say it: communism]. Poster: Jacqueline Kelley Comment: Yes. The imbalance between average workers and the CEO is totally out of whack and is contributing to a banana republic of rich and poor with little inbetween. Poster: Bob Powell Comment: While national policies assure there is a vast excess of supply of labor compared to demand to depress the pay of those who work for a wage, corporate board and executive collusion assure exorbitant executive compensation. For more on supressing wages, see exponentialimprovement.com/cms/labor.shtml Poster: Ivan Hughes Comment: Why limit executive compensation? It's traditional for everyone to 'look after yourself and your interests and get what you can'. There ought to be rich and poor and no middle in between... actually, it appears to me that a capatalistic democracy is more concerned with making money than social issues that cost money. Executives getting more than their fair share is just a sign of an endemic disease within this country of ours. Poster: Ruth - I4peas Comment: Yes! The deppening divide wethween the excessively wealthy and the scarce middle class is huge, but not a huge as the distance from poverty to wealthy! We can't put all our eggs in one basket or all our money into one ceconomic class! |
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