In 1999, the average CEO of a major corporation earned $12.4 million, including salary, bonus and other compensation such as exercised stock options, according to Business Week. That's $34,000 a day including Saturdays and Sundays.
In 1980, CEOs made 42 times the pay of average factory workers. In 1990, they made 85 times as much. By 1999, CEOs made 475 times as much as workers.
Computer Associates CEO Charles Wang led the gravy train with $655 million. Next were TycoInternational CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski with $170 million, Charles Schwab CEO David Pottruck with $128 million, Cisco CEO John Chambers with $122 million and America Online CEO Steve Case with $117 million.
Many CEOs have amassed future fortunes in stock options not yet exercised. Yahoo CEO Timothy Koogle leads with $2.3 billion in unexercised stock options, followed by American Online's Steve Case with $1.3 billion and Barry Diller of USA Networks with $1 billion.
Average Americans subsidize outrageous CEO compensation through company deductions from taxes. Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., wants to change that by limiting the tax deduction for CEO pay to 25 times that of the company's lowest full-time salary.
Holly Sklar is co-author of "Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap."
Comments (3)
for some reason i saw this item and thought of you..instantly... i mean is this a pavlov reaction?
hehehe...
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040528/80/euqyq.html
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Oy, that's a lot of money!
Oh, and in response to the comment on my entry about Mortimer J. Adler: yes, he was co-editor of the 15th edition of Encyclopedia Britanica, and probably edited a few more in his time. He was head of the Philosophical Research Institute, and wrote a number of books like, Summa Dialectica and How to Read a Book.
So far the book has been very interesting.
This is the kind of tax policy we need, along with putting no "top cap" on FICA/Medicaid taxes, because now it is cheaper for a company to give their CEO a million dollar raise than it is to creat a million dollars' worth of entry-level positions, and that is wrong.
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