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[Najataagihe]

 

I'm not picking on you, Brisko, but you mentioned three interesting points.

One of the problems with CEO pay is that it is not really linked to performance.  I don't think I need to provide citations for this but I will if I have to.

It is not.

It is linked to negotiation.

You want what I got, you pay my price or you look somewhere else.

Athletes' and actors' salaries are completely tied to performance and market forces.

Nope, negotiation, again.

You want what I got, you pay my price or you look somewhere else.

Would you like to address any of the real world problems surrounding compensation in the US?

I'd be happy to do so.

The biggest single problem with compensation in the U.S. is the self-esteem mindset that permeates current theories of raising children.

These children are now in the workplace and place WAY to much value on themselves.


One of my relatives is a prime example.

He will not accept a job making less than $X/hr, because he has a college degree.

The fact that his degree is useless without social skills (he has none) means he has never held a job in that field.

BUT, because he has a degree, he refuses to work at McDonald's or Wal-Mart because he "is worth far more than that."

Of course, the fact that that attitude has kept him unemployed for thirty years does not cast aspersions on his belief that he is a valuable asset for the workplace, but employers are too dumb to understand that.


MOST Americans are overpaid for what they do, based on the value of their services to society.

They are paid EXACTLY what their employers think they are worth - or less, never more.


The 431:1 "disparity" is due, ENTIRELY, to negotiation or negotiator-picking skills.


In other words, if you don't like what someone else is making, go negotiate yourself a better deal or mind your own business.


If you CAN'T negotiate yourself a better deal, then that's where you bloody well are, isn't it?



 

[Piano man]

Najataagihe, there's a market distortion built into CEO pay. It's called the 'proxy problem'. It's not an ideological issue--it's a structural problem that's recognized by economists of all stripes. There's little question that CEOs are generally paid more than they're worth.

Stockholders own corporations. CEOs work for them. As a practical matter, the CEOs tend to have the intelligence and influence to enrich themselves at the expense of their putative employers.

Every attempt at solving this problem has backfired. LBOs and stock options were both market-based remedies to align CEO interests with stockholders, and both ended up causing problems.

Another problem is simple motivation. For instance, a CEO who wangles an excessive salary gets to keep it in its entirety. An institutional stockholder (say, a retirement fund) can put in all the expense and risk of legal action to oppose excessive CEO compensation, but gets only a tiny proportion of the bounty for its risk and efforts.

The fact that CEOs usually have disproportionate influence over boards makes it worse.

This is not a simple problem and has never been solved.

Like you, I long for capitalistic, self-regulating, 'whatever-the-market-will bear' kinds of solutions. Unfortunately, the proxy problem has resisted market solutions since the beginning of corporations.

[ddickerson]

when, if ever, would you say, dd, that executive salaries were too excessive?

do you believe that executives should be able to "raid" the assets of a company and defraud stock holders?

If an executive breaks a law, they should be punished. When has the setting of a salary become the subject of breaking the law? What law was broken?

If you think that the government has the 'right' to set pay scales of private citizens, then you friend are a fascist, socialist, progressive, communist, or social justice activist. Take your pick.

Pay scales are contracts between two parties. It is none of your business, unless you are one of the two parties.
 

[Piano man]

If an executive breaks a law, they should be punished. When has the setting of a salary become the subject of breaking the law? What law was broken?

If you think that the government has the 'right' to set pay scales of private citizens, then you friend are a fascist, socialist, progressive, communist, or social justice activist. Take your pick.

Pay scales are contracts between two parties. It is none of your business, unless you are one of the two parties.

I'm trying to decide which part of this post deserves the most praise--its thoughtfulness, its subtlety, or its sophistication.

You should read up on this issue. If we taxpayers are on the hook for bank failures (under the terms of the FDIC), and certain companies are too big to fail (according to the last two administrations, each of different parties), then this **** is our business.

We are one of the parties. Sorry you care more about a handful of CEOs than about millions of your fellow taxpayers.

[ddickerson]

I'm trying to decide which part of this post deserves the most praise--its thoughtfulness, its subtlety, or its sophistication.

You should read up on this issue. If we taxpayers are on the hook for bank failures (under the terms of the FDIC), and certain companies are too big to fail (according to the last two administrations, each of different parties), then this **** is our business.

We are one of the parties. Sorry you care more about a handful of CEOs than about millions of your fellow taxpayers.

See, that is why I am against all these bailouts. The government steps in, bails out a company or whatever, then, gee guys, since we gave you our money, guess what, you have to play by our rules now.

Now, everybody thinks they have the right to diktate to corporations. I'm against bailouts. I always have been. It's just a door to let the government 'controllers' take over companies.

I'm not for or against a handful of CEOs. I'm for freedom and liberty. Government control takes that away. You legislate for less than 1% of all corporations, but then, the other 99% lose their freedoms and liberty in the process.

This country was founded on the establishment of liberty. You people want the government controlling everything; which takes away all of our liberties.

President Obama sees the constitution as an impediment that restrains the government from doing to(oops...'for') the people what he thinks it should be allowed to do. That restraining impediment is exactly what the constitution was designed for; to keep the government from running over the people.

That constitution was designed to protect our liberties not provide 'social justice'.

 

[Bradpet]

For those of you who seem overly worried that the upper class in America is not wealthy enough, or that Marxists might be stealing your babies in their sleep ......

CEO-worker pay ratio shoots up to 431 : 1

Roughly 40% of America's wealth is in the hands of the wealthiest 1%.

Not to dispute the quote, but I didn't find a link to the facts (this link is 3 years old) and the stats quoted are from 2004.  Be interesting to see accurate numbers from 2007 or 2008, or is this just old, old news?

To some other points made, if it is a publically traded company, isn't CEO pay public?

So, the question I have is would you rather get the pay of the average worker raised to an appropriate ratio, restrict salaries, or tax the H_LL out of them to redeem your ounce of flesh/$$?  

[Piano man]

DDickerson, we're on the hook, with or without bailouts.

The FDIC (which isn't of recent vintage) requires us to protect banks, for the good purpose of preventing bank failures. Some of the non-bank corporations that were 'too big to fail' could have brought down banks that taxpayers were on the hook for.

You can't bring everything down to ideology. The concentration of power among corporations isn't always superior to the concentration of power among the people (although both are generally bad).

[sly fox]

If an executive breaks a law, they should be punished. When has the setting of a salary become the subject of breaking the law? What law was broken?

If you think that the government has the 'right' to set pay scales of private citizens, then you friend are a fascist, socialist, progressive, communist, or social justice activist. Take your pick.

Pay scales are contracts between two parties. It is none of your business, unless you are one of the two parties.

dd:

(yawn)

when you want to be serious, you can get into a serious discussion, however, accusing (me) someone of being, at the same time, a fascist, socialist, progressive, communist or social justice activist shows either your ignorance or your lack of willingness to engage in adult conversation.  I have better things to do than to engage in your type of aggrevation.  So other than this, your response deserves no further thought or discussion.  As WC Fields is reputed to have said:  "Go away kid, ya bother me"  Adults are trying to have an intelligent discussion here, so again: 

(YAWN)

[Andrew Meronek]

Najataagihe, there's a market distortion built into CEO pay. It's called the 'proxy problem'. It's not an ideological issue--it's a structural problem that's recognized by economists of all stripes. There's little question that CEOs are generally paid more than they're worth.

Would it be possible to find a link that explains how this mechanism might work? I did a search and didn't come up with anything relevant to this topic.

[sly fox]

interesting article which may shed some light here:

could a CEO, receiving "excessive benefits" from a company going down the tubes face criminal prosecution by the Federal government for acting:  “to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

Read:

Sidebar
A Question of When Dishonesty Becomes Criminal
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: October 12, 2009
WASHINGTON

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/us/13bar.html?adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1255418103-DjuGVKuDsMVflod+myizZw

Should such a prosecution take place?

[ddickerson]

Here is an interesting take from 1948 dealing with what we're talking about today:

http://nationaljuggernaut.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-cartoon-seemed-far-fetched-in-1948.html

[ddickerson]

dd:

(yawn)

when you want to be serious, you can get into a serious discussion, however, accusing (me) someone of being, at the same time, a fascist, socialist, progressive, communist or social justice activist shows either your ignorance or your lack of willingness to engage in adult conversation.  I have better things to do than to engage in your type of aggrevation.  So other than this, your response deserves no further thought or discussion.  As WC Fields is reputed to have said:  "Go away kid, ya bother me"  Adults are trying to have an intelligent discussion here, so again: 

(YAWN)

Ok, how would you describe a person that believes in the government setting payscales in the private market place? Or, interfering with a contract between two parties? (a legal contract)

I understand you don't like the labels, so how would you describe it?
 

[BGuttman]

Personally, I have no problem with a CEO getting a huge salary if his company is making big money.  Especially when they are selling a worthwhile product or service and are not breaking any rules.

I have problems with anybody getting more salary than their employer can afford.  Football player, Movie actor, or CEO.  It may not be illegal, but it's immoral.  On the other side, I have no sympathy for a completely incompetent CEO who runs his company into the ground.

I also have a problem with the CEO getting a big salary by deliberately pushing down the wages of the people who are making his money for him.  By moving manufacturing to countries where they have very low payscales and slave labor.  By adjusting work times so everybody works 30 hours a week and can be called part timers so you don't have to pay benefits.  People bending the rules to extract profit.  People who create de-facto monopolies and then aren't reined in by government (monopolies ARE illegal in this country, in case you hadn't figured it out).

[Baron von Bone]

Personally, I have no problem with a CEO getting a huge salary if his company is making big money.  Especially when they are selling a worthwhile product or service and are not breaking any rules.
 
I have problems with anybody getting more salary than their employer can afford.  Football player, Movie actor, or CEO.  It may not be illegal, but it's immoral.

For the hard right those kinds of ethical considerations don't apply to those high enough up the totem pole to be considered high enough authorities, because those with authority are those who makes the rules, and that's the only real consideration in terms of whether the rules are valid.
 
 

I also have a problem with the CEO getting a big salary by deliberately pushing down the wages of the people who are making his money for him.  By moving manufacturing to countries where they have very low payscales and slave labor.  By adjusting work times so everybody works 30 hours a week and can be called part timers so you don't have to pay benefits.  People bending the rules to extract profit.  People who create de-facto monopolies and then aren't reined in by government (monopolies ARE illegal in this country, in case you hadn't figured it out).

Commie.
 
You just want to see America fail!

[LarryT]

431 is a prime number!

 

So is 9 and 11!

George W. Bush has 11 letters in his name and middle initial!

This can only mean one thing. It is a Republican conspiracy!

[Russ White]

.  It may not be illegal, but it's immoral. 

Morality is completely irrelevant in the world on the right, other than the false morality of religious fanaticism. As long as it meets the "Golden Rule ( He with the gold makes the rule)" it's perfectly OK to them.

[Najataagihe]

There's little question that CEOs are generally paid more than they're worth.

Oh, really?

That is the same as saying BMWs cost more than they are worth because they cost more than Chevrolets.

Worth = value.

Value on anything is what someone ELSE will pay to obtain it, whether it be material or service.


Your statement would be accurate if you said there is little question in YOUR mind that CEOs are generally paid more than they are worth.

Then, the validity of the question hinges on the credibility of your opinion in regards to the function of CEOs.


Obviously, in the opinion of those doing the hiring, the value of a particular CEO is precisely the value of the services they believe he will provide or they would hire someone else.

Whether the CEO is competent or not is not part of the equation.

What is relevant is perceived value.


If you think a CEO is paid too much, you should be questioning the judgment of the hiring body, not the CEO.

It is not the CEO driving a company into the drink, it is the idiots who hired him.


A CEO sets company policies (the "How"), but the vision of what the company is going to do (the "Where") is determined by his bosses - the stockholders via the Board of Directors.


It is a very similar situation to the President of the United States of America.

Obama does not write law, impose taxes or dispense tax money - that is done SOLEY by Congress.

What Obama does is enforce law, collect taxes and distribute predetermined expenditures.

Whether he is good at it or whether he was the right man for the job can only be determined by his performance in the eyes of his bosses - the population who elected him.


Same thing with CEOs.

They may CAMPAIGN for policies that would destroy the company, but the final authority rests with the Board of Directors.

If he can personally intimidate the members of the Board, then the stockholders made poor choices in selecting their representatives.

Stockholders own corporations. CEOs work for them. As a practical matter, the CEOs tend to have the intelligence and influence to enrich themselves at the expense of their putative employers.

In which case they should be fired.

Every attempt at solving this problem has backfired. LBOs and stock options were both market-based remedies to align CEO interests with stockholders, and both ended up causing problems.

There is a solution to this that is not practiced because it is inconvenient.

When you get right down to it, as most corporations are structured now, the CEO is a convenience for the Board of Directors.

If you don't like the way the CEOs you can hire run the company under this system, you fire them all and run it by committee.

This has the advantage of diluting power and the disadvantage of strangling the corporation's ability to rapidly react to market forces.

THIS is the trade-off that caused the invention of the CEO, in the first place.


Unfortunately, most Boards of Directors did NOT take a look at the Constitution of the United States of America and realize that the power of a CEO must be limited and balanced with TWO other entities, so no one could easily dominate another.

This resulted in a system where the Directors hired the CEO, directly, resulting in a two-legged system, instead of three.

To restore the stability offered by that third leg:

Directors AND CEOs should be directly elected by the stockholders for a limited term.

That is the solution for which you seek.


Corporations structure themselves in alignment with the original government - Administrative Branch (CEO), Policy Branch (Board of Directors) and Overview Branch (Stockholders), so the restrictions are theoretically in place to curtail excesses by individual CEOs.

The biggest problem is that the Overview branch is rarely functional, resulting in the two-legged system mentioned earlier.

Another problem is simple motivation. For instance, a CEO who wangles an excessive salary gets to keep it in its entirety.

This is as it should be.

If a CEO has a salary considered inappropriate by the stockholders, the stockholders should fire the Board of Directors and replace them with more competent people.

An institutional stockholder (say, a retirement fund) can put in all the expense and risk of legal action to oppose excessive CEO compensation, but gets only a tiny proportion of the bounty for its risk and efforts.

The whole issue of perceived excessive CEO compensation by the stockholders is a subject that should be addressed by the replacement of Directors.

The legal costs to which you are referring are the costs of breaking a formal contract and SHOULD be born by those who dispute it - after all, THEY entered into the contract (by proxy) and are trying to renege on it.

The fact that CEOs usually have disproportionate influence over boards makes it worse.

That is a personal issue that is resolved by replacement of the influenced Director(s).

This is not a simple problem and has never been solved.

This statement is false.

It IS a simple problem with a simple solution, it is just hard to implement.

And, it HAS been solved in individual corporations.

Like you, I long for capitalistic, self-regulating, 'whatever-the-market-will bear' kinds of solutions. Unfortunately, the proxy problem has resisted market solutions since the beginning of corporations.

The key word is "resisted," not "immune."

What is usually lacking in resolving these types of problems is a lack of concern or resolve on the parts of the stockholders.

If they fail to perform their duties as Overseers, then they are not entitled to complain, if the corporation is dysfunctional.


If you, as a stockholder, do not like the way things are being run, you have two choices:

Withdraw your support (sell your stocks in that corporation and invest in corporations run to your liking)

OR

Lobby other stockholders, form voting blocs and replace the Board of Directors.


The question for YOU, as a stockholder, is: which way gives the best return on the investment of your time and effort?


Most vote with their money and leave.

If enough do, the corporation folds.

If not, then they get what they deserve.


In any case, if you are not a stockholder in a particular corporation, it is none of your business how it is run or how much they pay whom.


Mischief managed.

 

[LarryT]

Morality is completely irrelevant in the world on the right, other than the false morality of religious fanaticism. As long as it meets the "Golden Rule ( He with the gold makes the rule)" it's perfectly OK to them.

I find it odd that you believe someone who makes a lot of money through legal means and hard work is immoral, but you (the left) are OK with partial birth abortions and male pedophiles sleeping with underage boys (Kevin Jennings, i.e. the safe school czar).

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/23/critics-assail-obamas-safe-schools-czar-say-hes-wrong-man-job/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/28/at-the-presidents-pleasure/

It is easy for the left to criticize the right about morality. It is easier to condemn those that have morals and fall short due to human frailty than to have none at all and use it as carte blanche permission to live a decadent, immoral and perverted lifestyle.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” - Rules for Radicals - Saul Alinsky

[Brisko]

Two problems, interrelated, are that boards have little real accountability to shareholders, and the balance of power is skewed so far in favor of the executive over the board that there is little actual negotiation going on.

A couple of quotes from the article that I linked earlier that address this:

To stiffen individual directors' spines, especially those on comp committees, a growing number of pension funds, mutual funds, and other institutional investors - the folks who control on behalf of you and me most of the shares of America's biggest companies - have decided to direct their throw weight to the issue of "majority" voting.

Here's how it works. Typically in the past, companies would put up a slate of directors, and shareholders could vote "yes" or "withhold."

One "yes" sufficed to get you reelected. Now owners are increasingly backing resolutions requiring that directors need to get more "yes" votes than "withholds."

In 2004, according to the Institute for Shareholder Services, there were 12 such proposals, and they got about 12% of the votes. The number has swelled this proxy season to 143 proposals.

Thirty-three have garnered over 50%, often at companies where CEO pay was an issue - UnitedHealth, Home Depot, Exxon, GM.

Warren Buffett has long believed, as he told FORTUNE, that "the only cure for better corporate governance is if the small number of very large institutional investors start acting like true owners and pressure managers and boards to do the same."

In the models of how capitalism works in public companies with widely distributed ownership, directors stand at the pinnacle of power.

While the CEO runs the company day to day, directors hire, supervise and, if needed, fire the CEO. That's the theory.

In practice, for most of the postwar era, the CEO ran the show; directors were little more than boardroom decoration - "like the parsley on fish," as an ex-CEO of U.S. Steel (Charts) described them.

In the wake of the post - Enron/WorldCom reforms, power has been shifting back to boards - but perhaps not fast enough.

Speaking of thought exercises, here's one more. "Can you recall a single instance where a CEO has walked because the board refused to pay him enough?" asks a money manager with $3 billion in long-term assets.

No, we can't. (But if we've missed one, volunteers are standing by to take your calls.) In real markets, some negotiations just don't work out. When that starts happening, then you'll know we really are getting somewhere on CEO pay.

But hey, yeah, it's just negotiating.

[sly fox]

Ok, how would you describe a person that believes in the government setting payscales in the private market place? Or, interfering with a contract between two parties? (a legal contract)

I understand you don't like the labels, so how would you describe it?
 

DD

welcome to the grown up table (lets see how you do).  first, I wouldn't call a person a socialist, communist, fascist (all of which reflects belief in different political theories) just because a person believes that government has the right to interfer with contracts.  My own belief:  I don't think I can improve on that B.Gutmann said @8:03 today, so I will just adopted it (I hope he doesn't mind.)

Second, government has always interferred with the right to contract.  Basically a contract is an agrement b/t two or more parties that is enforcible at law.  Thus, the government decides what is a contract.  Certain ones are so bad, government says you can't do that.  It used to be against the law (church law) for a Christian to lend money and charge interest.  That is why those of the Jewish faith got the reputation as "money lenders" because they would lend money in exchange for a promise to pay it back plus interest.  Now, for example, it is illegal to hire a minor to work more than a certain amount of hours or work at certain times, or work at certain jobs - all interferences with the allmighty right to contract under a pure capitalistic system.

more later, (depending on your reasonable response), gotta run.