Can the 1 percent accept “enough”?
The rich can’t stop trying to justify exorbitant salaries for everyone from Wall Street bankers to college coaches
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/10/can_the_1_percent_accept_enough/singleton/
I have always felt that there is a very low value on the upper limit of reasonable salaries. The idea that one person can impact a company with thousands of employees to such an extent that he or she is worth millions of dollars a year is insane. This idiocy is magnified by offering compensation based in part on the incremental increase in stock price (something trivially manipulated by senior executives) that don’t actually require the executive to ever actually purchase anything to realize the reward (i.e., they take no risk whatsoever (sort of like our Wall Street Ponzi scheme we (99%) are still digging out of)). Of course, I don’t blame the CEOs for asking for the astronomical compensation, why shouldn’t you ask for more? The problem is that the CEOs are already in bed with the board members (look it up; you might be shocked (sickened?) by how many of these guys (or their wives) are on each others boards) and since the board members have absolutely no personal skin in the game they don’t give a damn about the size of the CEO’s compensation (very analogous to how our government freely gives tax dollars to these very same crooks; the President doesn’t lose a nickel because he gave a trillion dollars to Wall Street!). I respect (but do not necessarily like, but that is another matter) people like Gates, Jobs, etc., they at least worked their asses off to achieve their rewards, taking great personal risk, working long hours, etc. Often they don’t take much compensation as salary, they just sell off parts of their stock (note, most of the time it is real stock, not options).
So, how much should be enough? Well, except under extraordinary circumstances (at this moment I can’t think of any exceptions) I would say a few hundred grand (indexed, as always, with inflation). Except in some of the most expensive places in our country that amount of green, if properly managed, allows one to live in a very very nice house, send their kids to the best schools and drive around in really nice cars AND retire at 50 if they are so inclined. If they want to have more, then they should put some personal skin in the game and take some of their salary and invest it in starting their own business or helping to grow the one they already run, then, if their efforts were successful, their reward would be the increased value of the stock they own, not some silly-assed back-room payoff for looking the other way when a compatriot ripped of another company.
I know all sorts of perfectly qualified (I would argue in most cases the people I know are vastly more qualified (I even dated one for a couple of years!) than the overpaid buffoons currently in control) people who would be cheerfully happy to take a couple of hundred grand to take on the challenge of managing a corporation at the top. Just because these assholes are paid millions doesn’t mean they are worth it, in actuality, based on my research over the years, the actual long-term health of a corporation is _inversely_ proportional to the pay of the senior executives!
Would it make any difference? Not today with our oligarchy-controlled government. In the laughably unlikely scenario that something like this appears to be getting passed by our Congress, I am quite positive that any look at the details will immediately reveal that there are so many exceptions that it basically has no meaning whatsoever (but will, I am sure, be used to punitively punish those few from the middle class who start to claw their way to the edge of the 1%).
