Honda CEO takes $47k pay cut. Corporate America is finally learning that the CEO/worker pay disparity is a problem.

Exactly how is that disparity a problem? A CEO has much more responsibility and importance than anyone else in a company.

That's like, what, 0.5% pay cut for him?

anyway, the ceo/worker pay discrepancy is a myth. it only exists if you look at huge mega international companies. If you exclude the 350 or so enormous companies like Merck, the average CEO salary in America is 178,000 or so. hardly the stuff of abuse.

Typical use of statistics to muddle the truth for political reasons.

well that 178k figure doesn't mean much either.

But when there are hundreds of thousands of companies, you can't just look at 350 companies/people and complain about their salaries - it's a meaningless thing to do.

Yeah, your $178K number is a head scratcher.

Whether or not you pin a number on CEOs, it's clear that large companies have had growth of large profits without much of an increase in average worker's pay.

So you still have a large number of people doing the work that greatly enriches a small number of people.

X-Runner wrote:

Yeah, your $178K number is a head scratcher.

Whether or not you pin a number on CEOs, it's clear that large companies have had growth of large profits without much of an increase in average worker's pay.

So you still have a large number of people doing the work that greatly enriches a small number of people.

well you make a lot of assumptions there.

You are assuming that the average worker at, say, Merck, has not seen increasing wages. I bet she has. Workers at these enormous companies are generally pretty well educated and paid - they are probably in the top groups of wage increases. They are not the victims of this economy you are trying to defend.

But the main point is that to get a meaningful number on the CEO/worker gap or inequality at all...you can't just look at the extremes. whatever 350 people are paid in this country of 300 million...it just doesn't matter a whole lot. better to look at broader calculations.

Corporations are not spending enough.

Whether it's not high enough salaries, not enough employees (while making their current employees work harder), or other expenditures.

The money is not flowing through the economy as well as it could be, all for the sake of padding profits.

This, not only to the expense of their employees but at the expense of smaller companies that could be getting higher sales.

The distribution of revenue earned by these large companies that bring in lots of dough is out of proportion to what is optimal for the economy as a whole.

X-Runner wrote:

Yeah, your $178K number is a head scratcher.

Whether or not you pin a number on CEOs, it's clear that large companies have had growth of large profits without much of an increase in average worker's pay.

So you still have a large number of people doing the work that greatly enriches a small number of people.

Its a business not a charity. Why do you expect them to pay people more money just because they are making more money? The logic doesn't make any sense.

Furthermore, did you ever consider that perhaps they have hired more people? In other words, maybe the average salary stayed the same but there are more total workers.

Your illogical statements have far too many assumption though.

X-Runner wrote:

Corporations are not spending enough.

Whether it's not high enough salaries, not enough employees (while making their current employees work harder), or other expenditures.

The money is not flowing through the economy as well as it could be, all for the sake of padding profits.

This, not only to the expense of their employees but at the expense of smaller companies that could be getting higher sales.

The distribution of revenue earned by these large companies that bring in lots of dough is out of proportion to what is optimal for the economy as a whole.

well that's a lot of assumptions again.

maybe it is optimal, but there is some other reason why the economy is growing slowly - like high corporate taxes. Or crap education. Or poor lifestyle choices. or simple globalization lowering wages in the US for non skilled workers.

It is very easy to blame the big companies for a slowed economy but it sounds to me like you are just repeating the conventional wisdom.

Corporate American? Honda is a Japanese company!

agip,

If you look at say the bottom half of companies, the title CEO is a myth. Just because my roofer owns his roofing company and only makes 5 time more than his only employee that carries the shingles you can't use those numbers to knock down the stats on publicly traded companies.

sdvmowJHB wrote:

agip,

If you look at say the bottom half of companies, the title CEO is a myth. Just because my roofer owns his roofing company and only makes 5 time more than his only employee that carries the shingles you can't use those numbers to knock down the stats on publicly traded companies.

agreed - that is probably the source of that $178k figure I first cited and then withdrew.

But it doesn't make any sense to cite the salaries of just 350 people either. Which seems to be the source of all these articles citing 400x numbers.

Does corporate America own Japan too?