Persons earning twice the minimum wage would have to work 497 years to earn what Michael Eisner of Disney made in 1997 alone. (That doesn't count Michael's nearly $600 million in unexercised stock options.)
While CEO pay increased 54% from 1995-1996, their companies' profits rose only 11% and factory workers saw a paltry 3% increase in pay.
These are just a few of the disgraceful facts about executive pay in America and are descriptive of the widening gap between haves and have-nots. Though peaks and valleys of income disparity have somewhat leveled at times, e.g. the post-WW II era, we're back on the roller coaster and the ride is wilder than ever. America's wealthiest fifth outearns the bottom fifth by 11:1 - among the highest in developed nations. In Japan it's only 4:1, in Great Britain, 7:1. Specific to CEO versus worker pay, that ratio is now 212:1, up from 44:1 in 1965. Without brakes being applied, the roller coaster is headed for a humdinger collision with mass discontent.
So you don't think Mr. Eisner and his $10,653,820 income are being used here as an atypical example of wealth concentration and executive-pay mania, what follows is 1997 information on several other executives extracted at random from "Executive PayWatch" - watchdog of America's S&P 500. This sampling readily produced a less-than-subtle trend of trickle-up.
GTE Corporation's Charles Lee scooped up income of $5,295,571, and that's not counting last year's $7,602,188 in stock options or the $20,742,420 in previously unexercised options. Mr. Lee, I was once a business customer of yours in another state, and you were unable to dispatch a phone man on the week promised, let alone the day. And for this you're getting $33,640,179? Well, ring-a-ding-ding.
At Philip Morris, Geoffrey Bible made a kool $9,723,755. His stock options total $84,396,322. Obstruction of justice might land you or me in the slammer, but it helped put Geoffrey on easy street.
GE's board of directors brought a lot of good things to Jack Welch's life when it paid him $8,800,797. Seeing that less than $10 million a year is tough for a family man to get by on, it threw in another $18,783,000 in stock options. After all, he only had $182,243,818 in unexercised options from previous years.
Candyman Kenneth Wolfe of Hershey Foods was among the low-income losers, taking in only $3,213,390 and a mere $1,329,326 in stock options. Come on, Hershey, how can you expect motivation and productivity from your people when you pay them peanuts like that?
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Phil Carpenter's U.S. Politics topic, please visit the Discussions page.