We all have such strong feelings about money! But there is a difference between greed and burning desire for wealth, as taught in Napoleon Hill's excellent self help book Think and Grow Rich, summarized at http://shanelyang.com/2007/10/10/think-and-grow-rich/. Greed is wanting money for nothing or by cheating others. A burning desire for wealth, on the other hand, always lead to action and lots of hard work -- but doing the work you love so much that it doesn't even feel like work. I discuss the difference further in my post "Greed v. Desire" at http://shanelyang.com/2007/11/23/greed-v-desire/
I don't think we should put a "cap" per-se on CEO salaries. If they bust their hump to build (or expand) their company, they deserve a good salary. However, I -DO- think we need to crack down on a lot of the games corporations pull to shift money around at the top. Why should bridges fall down, seniors have to deal with a "donut hole," and children get substandard education while corporations and CEO's pay less taxes on their income than their secretaries (Warren Buffet's comment).
Legislation such as more minority shareholder say in CEO salaries if the company is publicly traded, IRS crackdown on CEO perks such as use of the corporate jet, and refusing to allow companies to write off the salaries (and perks) of CEOs for tax purposes above a certain income threshold would help discourage excessive CEO compensation. The FTC should also make it illegal to "buy silence" with golden parachutes as shareholders of publicly traded companies should have the right to know why CEO's really leave, and the golden parachute should not be tax deductable for the corporation. Also, the FTC needs to step up enforcement of shareholder laws when CEO's pillage a company, then leave.
As for "free market" proponents, I suggest they read the minutes of the first and second Constitutional Congress before they tout this problem as part of a "free market." The founding fathers loathed corporations because of meddling by corporate enterprises such as the East India Tea Company (tea party, anyone?). Corporations were illegal for the first 50 years of our nation except for the rarest circumstances until the 1830's. The whole "Andrew Jackson/Bank of the United States/impeachment" thing was pushback by the big business interests to make Corporations legal as soon as the founding fathers started to die off. It wasn't until the 1870's that Corporations gained full "personhood," and the result was the Robber Baron monopolies of that era. I suggest people actually -read- Adam Smith "The Wealth of Nations" and his position on these matters instead of quoting the rehashed misquotes printed in modern MBA books and toted by so-called "free market" advocates. You'd be amazed at what the father of modern economics -really- says.
Never at any time in our history, except the Colonial Revolution and later when Teddy Roosevelt took on Standard Oil, has our American economy been so out of whack. It upsets me that so many otherwise intelligent people walk around quoting policies based on economic theories nobody's actually ever read in it's entirety. Please people ... go to the SOURCE.
I don't love money or hate it. It's just a tool. I think it is possible to be financially responsible and even acquire wealth. Loving money too much can be the root of all kinds of evil. DOn't really know about hating money...
With everything in life, money is something I'm trying to find a happy medium with. I don't think anyone should love money and I don't think anyone should hate it. It's something that exists and it's something to be aware of but obsessing over it just can't be healthy.
I think that if you have a closet, a bed and a refrigerator, you're richer than 75% of the world.
I think that our culture, which doesn't see a problem with spending money on breast implants, designer clothes and McMansions while others go hungry, have no health insurance or are taught in dilapidated classrooms is twisted.
I think that many of the wealthy came by that wealth through family connection, access to excellent schools or other advantages that the poorest in our country don't have.
I think that the playing field isn't as level as we Americans would like to imagine.
I think that if we all measured the humanitarian value of what our wealth could buy, we'd feel ashamed at what we've wasted our American wealth on.
Well, if we were an entirely un-policed capitalist society, I might agree. However, there is legislation that tries to prevent corruption and illegal activities, and this directly affects our businesses. Anti-trust legislation that (supposedly) prevents the monopolization of an industry by a single company can be said to hamper free enterprise, but they are still a part of our (mostly) capitalist system. Restrictions on compensation can be thought of similarly, if you want. Anti-trust laws prevent monopolies that lead to price gouging; salary caps could (arguably) narrow the income gap between the rich and the poor. Well, even as I'm writing that, I don't truly believe it; I imagine that the response to a cap would be more psychological than anything.
It's not moot to talk about shareholders having a say in a company's management just because there are private companies who don't accept cash from individual investors on a stock exchange. Also, just because a shareholder owns a very small piece of a company doesn't meant that they don't have a great deal of personal wealth invested in it. It's tough for me to know how much of a say shareholders should have in a company's management, though, as I never really pay close attention to my investments.
I actually think that stock compensation might be one of the more logical ways to reward performing CEOs. If a company is doing well, and their stock goes up, they win big, right?
The company I work at, which is very small. I make more in actual salary than my boss...true he owns most of the company, but he still pays at least one of his employees more than himself!
I was recently fired and maybe a few of these points applied to me, but not really, I think it was just my paranoia. I didn't even get my performance review because a "conference call came up" and it got pushed...and never rescheduled. Then the next week, I was fired!
It sucks because I was a new graduate in a supporting role and so it's kind of hard to tell if these points apply to me or if it was just due to me being in a subordinate position. Nevertheless, without any external factors (i.e. mergers, losing an account, etc) or personal factors (i.e. huge mistake on my behalf) being part of the equation, my firing was really out of the blue.
This is why I try to not give business to companies that are really abusive in this regard where the CEO is grossly overcompensated and the employees are treated poorly and underpaid for their job category. If I know this information and have a choice I will go with the company that has better policies toward the employees and less focus on artificially inflating their stock that others. It IS my business if I am a customer or in a business relationship with a company. I would rather not give my money or assistance that have what I consider rather corrupt business ideals. Those being treat your employees like garbage, pay them as little as you can possibly get away with, and try to rake in as much cash as possible as job one and above everything else.
Sadly, it has become harder these days to find companies that give a darn about their product, their customers or their staff.
I've worked for private companies ever since I graduated. I knew a couple of the CEOs' compensation because they talked about it in company meetings. It wasn't excessive but these CEOs were founders and owned large stakes of the companies. So when there were stock dividends we all knew the CEO was getting a hugeass check. I didn't think that was unfair. Additionally, some private companies are already huge so all this talk about public stock shares and votes are moot. (See this list here: http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/09/largest-private-companies_05private_lan...) I wouldn't be surprised if these CEOs are paid just as well as the public companies' CEOs since they're all running large operations and all companies are competing for great leaders.
So once again the bottom line is that CEOs should be paid whatever companies are willing to pay them. That's free enterprise, and restrictions on compensation is not.
My grandmother and mom always swore by using toothpaste for minor burns. And it works. I've never heard of it being used for cleaning though! Pretty cool.
This works even better if you have a vacuum sealer. Either use a canning jar with the jar sealing attachment or use one of the manufacturers Tupperware-like vacuum container or marinator. The near vacuum means gasses leave the cucumber or whatever you are pickling and the flavored brine solution replaces it and seeps in deep.
I couldn't figure out how to discuss private companies since, as you mentioned, the compensation isn't public. And the companies that I have worked for in which I knew the CEO were private. I'd have a really hard time estimating what they make as a salary, but I'm going to guess it wasn't 100 times what I made.
But who knows? Maybe one day those companies go public, and the CEO makes a gigantic salary.
Umm.. I did read the article, and yes, board members all have agendas of their own. Individual investors usually own very little of public companies out there so as a result they have no voice. There is nothing unfair about that. Even the institutional investors do not own much of public companies because each mutual fund own a tiny sliver of the shares.
You forget to mention that oodles of companies are private, and that means that CEO compensation isn't even publicized in those companies. Noone seems to be complaining about those companies. So I agree with David when he says that it should be up to the businesses themselves what to pay their leaders.
The flip side to staying at home is when the spouse gets to mid age at 55 and cannot draw social security or worse, the working spouse decides to leave and now the stay at home spouse HAS to work and have no job skills
I didn't actually propose capping salaries (I had considered the Steve Jobs example), and I do believe in free enterprise, but I'm also stuck on the notion that just because a few very rich people are happy keeping themselves and their friends rich doesn't mean that it should be allowed, especially when a CEO has failed miserably at the task at hand.
Most corporations, of course, are not co-ops, so the employees don't have a say in their CEOs pay.
Also, the example of telling people how many children to have is a disingenuous comparison. Private familial units are different, both in terms of the law and our culture, than a business that is publically traded on the stock exchange. However, it's not like we don't have laws governing society that affect family - polygamy, for instance, is illegal.
The point of the article was to provoke discussion, not to say that one thing or another had to be done. The CEOs that I have worked for over the years have been compensated in a reasonable manner, and are almost always the founders of the company - men and women who work themselves to the point of exhaustion to get a business off the ground. I wouldn't begrudge them the money they've earned.
I read the article. It seems to me that the point is the ridiculous salaries that CEOs make and what should be done about it.
Nothing. It is none of our business, it is not our company. One could argue that it is the shareholders company, but if they dont like the decisions the company is making they can sell. The shareholders are in the game to make money, the CEOs are in the game to make money, and the board is in the game to make money. If they find and easy way to do it, more power to them.
PS: in my original message, i did not mean to put an apostrophe in company's, i meant *ahem* "companies"
I don't think Xin Lu or David really read the article. One point made is that the compensation committees are filled with people who have a hugely vested interest in paying CEO's gobs of money (the few examples of low paid CEO's are mostly publicity bits). The members of these committees hope to someday reap these benefits themselves and/or they will see their own compensation rise due to being "nice" to the CEO.
Also it may be a free market, but if I buy a few shares of a big company I can do absolutely nothing about these pay scales - why do you think 99% of all shareholder initiatives fail - the major stockholders also play the same game, the institutional investors that hold the majority of a companies stock are never going to vote to lower CEO pay - these hedge funds and mutual funds function the same way, the people that run them collect huge salaries...
With all the different aggregators for different types of accounts - email, social networking, IM - what does the ideal aggregator include without becoming overwhelming? At Fuser, we've tried to focus on offering users a way to manage their data in a way that is useful to them - and for us that started with Email, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. What do you all think, what should an aggregator include, and when does it become just another account to manage?
We all have such strong feelings about money! But there is a difference between greed and burning desire for wealth, as taught in Napoleon Hill's excellent self help book Think and Grow Rich, summarized at http://shanelyang.com/2007/10/10/think-and-grow-rich/. Greed is wanting money for nothing or by cheating others. A burning desire for wealth, on the other hand, always lead to action and lots of hard work -- but doing the work you love so much that it doesn't even feel like work. I discuss the difference further in my post "Greed v. Desire" at http://shanelyang.com/2007/11/23/greed-v-desire/
I don't think we should put a "cap" per-se on CEO salaries. If they bust their hump to build (or expand) their company, they deserve a good salary. However, I -DO- think we need to crack down on a lot of the games corporations pull to shift money around at the top. Why should bridges fall down, seniors have to deal with a "donut hole," and children get substandard education while corporations and CEO's pay less taxes on their income than their secretaries (Warren Buffet's comment).
Legislation such as more minority shareholder say in CEO salaries if the company is publicly traded, IRS crackdown on CEO perks such as use of the corporate jet, and refusing to allow companies to write off the salaries (and perks) of CEOs for tax purposes above a certain income threshold would help discourage excessive CEO compensation. The FTC should also make it illegal to "buy silence" with golden parachutes as shareholders of publicly traded companies should have the right to know why CEO's really leave, and the golden parachute should not be tax deductable for the corporation. Also, the FTC needs to step up enforcement of shareholder laws when CEO's pillage a company, then leave.
As for "free market" proponents, I suggest they read the minutes of the first and second Constitutional Congress before they tout this problem as part of a "free market." The founding fathers loathed corporations because of meddling by corporate enterprises such as the East India Tea Company (tea party, anyone?). Corporations were illegal for the first 50 years of our nation except for the rarest circumstances until the 1830's. The whole "Andrew Jackson/Bank of the United States/impeachment" thing was pushback by the big business interests to make Corporations legal as soon as the founding fathers started to die off. It wasn't until the 1870's that Corporations gained full "personhood," and the result was the Robber Baron monopolies of that era. I suggest people actually -read- Adam Smith "The Wealth of Nations" and his position on these matters instead of quoting the rehashed misquotes printed in modern MBA books and toted by so-called "free market" advocates. You'd be amazed at what the father of modern economics -really- says.
Never at any time in our history, except the Colonial Revolution and later when Teddy Roosevelt took on Standard Oil, has our American economy been so out of whack. It upsets me that so many otherwise intelligent people walk around quoting policies based on economic theories nobody's actually ever read in it's entirety. Please people ... go to the SOURCE.
I don't love money or hate it. It's just a tool. I think it is possible to be financially responsible and even acquire wealth. Loving money too much can be the root of all kinds of evil. DOn't really know about hating money...
cheers,
Ken
Foggy bathroom windows?
Rub some men's shaving cream on the glass... let it sit for five minutes, then wipe off.
I saw this on TV and was amazed. I tried it out and it works!
With everything in life, money is something I'm trying to find a happy medium with. I don't think anyone should love money and I don't think anyone should hate it. It's something that exists and it's something to be aware of but obsessing over it just can't be healthy.
Luckily I was able to drag my brown ass away from my job that works me to the bone to read this post. thankyouverymuch
As long as the stay-at-home wife is keeping her man satisfied with good food and regular sex - what's wrong with that?
I think that if you have a closet, a bed and a refrigerator, you're richer than 75% of the world.
I think that our culture, which doesn't see a problem with spending money on breast implants, designer clothes and McMansions while others go hungry, have no health insurance or are taught in dilapidated classrooms is twisted.
I think that many of the wealthy came by that wealth through family connection, access to excellent schools or other advantages that the poorest in our country don't have.
I think that the playing field isn't as level as we Americans would like to imagine.
I think that if we all measured the humanitarian value of what our wealth could buy, we'd feel ashamed at what we've wasted our American wealth on.
This flash presentation makes one think.
http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
Interesting that Bechtel was on the top-ten list you linked to, Xin. I wonder if they would have a better reputation if they disclosed their finances?
Well, if we were an entirely un-policed capitalist society, I might agree. However, there is legislation that tries to prevent corruption and illegal activities, and this directly affects our businesses. Anti-trust legislation that (supposedly) prevents the monopolization of an industry by a single company can be said to hamper free enterprise, but they are still a part of our (mostly) capitalist system. Restrictions on compensation can be thought of similarly, if you want. Anti-trust laws prevent monopolies that lead to price gouging; salary caps could (arguably) narrow the income gap between the rich and the poor. Well, even as I'm writing that, I don't truly believe it; I imagine that the response to a cap would be more psychological than anything.
It's not moot to talk about shareholders having a say in a company's management just because there are private companies who don't accept cash from individual investors on a stock exchange. Also, just because a shareholder owns a very small piece of a company doesn't meant that they don't have a great deal of personal wealth invested in it. It's tough for me to know how much of a say shareholders should have in a company's management, though, as I never really pay close attention to my investments.
I actually think that stock compensation might be one of the more logical ways to reward performing CEOs. If a company is doing well, and their stock goes up, they win big, right?
The company I work at, which is very small. I make more in actual salary than my boss...true he owns most of the company, but he still pays at least one of his employees more than himself!
I was recently fired and maybe a few of these points applied to me, but not really, I think it was just my paranoia. I didn't even get my performance review because a "conference call came up" and it got pushed...and never rescheduled. Then the next week, I was fired!
It sucks because I was a new graduate in a supporting role and so it's kind of hard to tell if these points apply to me or if it was just due to me being in a subordinate position. Nevertheless, without any external factors (i.e. mergers, losing an account, etc) or personal factors (i.e. huge mistake on my behalf) being part of the equation, my firing was really out of the blue.
This is why I try to not give business to companies that are really abusive in this regard where the CEO is grossly overcompensated and the employees are treated poorly and underpaid for their job category. If I know this information and have a choice I will go with the company that has better policies toward the employees and less focus on artificially inflating their stock that others. It IS my business if I am a customer or in a business relationship with a company. I would rather not give my money or assistance that have what I consider rather corrupt business ideals. Those being treat your employees like garbage, pay them as little as you can possibly get away with, and try to rake in as much cash as possible as job one and above everything else.
Sadly, it has become harder these days to find companies that give a darn about their product, their customers or their staff.
I've worked for private companies ever since I graduated. I knew a couple of the CEOs' compensation because they talked about it in company meetings. It wasn't excessive but these CEOs were founders and owned large stakes of the companies. So when there were stock dividends we all knew the CEO was getting a hugeass check. I didn't think that was unfair. Additionally, some private companies are already huge so all this talk about public stock shares and votes are moot. (See this list here: http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/09/largest-private-companies_05private_lan...) I wouldn't be surprised if these CEOs are paid just as well as the public companies' CEOs since they're all running large operations and all companies are competing for great leaders.
So once again the bottom line is that CEOs should be paid whatever companies are willing to pay them. That's free enterprise, and restrictions on compensation is not.
My grandmother and mom always swore by using toothpaste for minor burns. And it works. I've never heard of it being used for cleaning though! Pretty cool.
This works even better if you have a vacuum sealer. Either use a canning jar with the jar sealing attachment or use one of the manufacturers Tupperware-like vacuum container or marinator. The near vacuum means gasses leave the cucumber or whatever you are pickling and the flavored brine solution replaces it and seeps in deep.
Thank you for the clarification. I didn't want to think you had any intention to exclude anyone and your explanation helps a lot. :)
I couldn't figure out how to discuss private companies since, as you mentioned, the compensation isn't public. And the companies that I have worked for in which I knew the CEO were private. I'd have a really hard time estimating what they make as a salary, but I'm going to guess it wasn't 100 times what I made.
But who knows? Maybe one day those companies go public, and the CEO makes a gigantic salary.
Umm.. I did read the article, and yes, board members all have agendas of their own. Individual investors usually own very little of public companies out there so as a result they have no voice. There is nothing unfair about that. Even the institutional investors do not own much of public companies because each mutual fund own a tiny sliver of the shares.
You forget to mention that oodles of companies are private, and that means that CEO compensation isn't even publicized in those companies. Noone seems to be complaining about those companies. So I agree with David when he says that it should be up to the businesses themselves what to pay their leaders.
The flip side to staying at home is when the spouse gets to mid age at 55 and cannot draw social security or worse, the working spouse decides to leave and now the stay at home spouse HAS to work and have no job skills
It not always a happy ending
I live in Sweden and there is no such thing as a cap on CEO salaries here. Good idea though.
I didn't actually propose capping salaries (I had considered the Steve Jobs example), and I do believe in free enterprise, but I'm also stuck on the notion that just because a few very rich people are happy keeping themselves and their friends rich doesn't mean that it should be allowed, especially when a CEO has failed miserably at the task at hand.
Most corporations, of course, are not co-ops, so the employees don't have a say in their CEOs pay.
Also, the example of telling people how many children to have is a disingenuous comparison. Private familial units are different, both in terms of the law and our culture, than a business that is publically traded on the stock exchange. However, it's not like we don't have laws governing society that affect family - polygamy, for instance, is illegal.
The point of the article was to provoke discussion, not to say that one thing or another had to be done. The CEOs that I have worked for over the years have been compensated in a reasonable manner, and are almost always the founders of the company - men and women who work themselves to the point of exhaustion to get a business off the ground. I wouldn't begrudge them the money they've earned.
I read the article. It seems to me that the point is the ridiculous salaries that CEOs make and what should be done about it.
Nothing. It is none of our business, it is not our company. One could argue that it is the shareholders company, but if they dont like the decisions the company is making they can sell. The shareholders are in the game to make money, the CEOs are in the game to make money, and the board is in the game to make money. If they find and easy way to do it, more power to them.
PS: in my original message, i did not mean to put an apostrophe in company's, i meant *ahem* "companies"
I don't think Xin Lu or David really read the article. One point made is that the compensation committees are filled with people who have a hugely vested interest in paying CEO's gobs of money (the few examples of low paid CEO's are mostly publicity bits). The members of these committees hope to someday reap these benefits themselves and/or they will see their own compensation rise due to being "nice" to the CEO.
Also it may be a free market, but if I buy a few shares of a big company I can do absolutely nothing about these pay scales - why do you think 99% of all shareholder initiatives fail - the major stockholders also play the same game, the institutional investors that hold the majority of a companies stock are never going to vote to lower CEO pay - these hedge funds and mutual funds function the same way, the people that run them collect huge salaries...
With all the different aggregators for different types of accounts - email, social networking, IM - what does the ideal aggregator include without becoming overwhelming? At Fuser, we've tried to focus on offering users a way to manage their data in a way that is useful to them - and for us that started with Email, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. What do you all think, what should an aggregator include, and when does it become just another account to manage?