Executive Pay

The New York Times asked an executive compensation data firm called Equilar (who knew there was such a thing) to look at executive salaries.  The results are in and were reported in last Sunday’s paper.  The median pay for the top executives at the 200 biggest companies was $10.8 million, a 23% jump from last year’s median of $9.6 million.  The median is the midpoint--half of the executives made more than that, half less.  

Philip Dauman of Viacom received the most--$84,500,000.  (Full disclosure:  I own some shares in Viacom and just cashed in my $16 dividend check today.)

Let me point out that if any of these top executives live in Minnesota, where the state government has shut down, they won’t notice.  Their kids won’t be attending public schools, they don’t need the police in their gated communities, public transportation is not in their experience, state parks are for poor people, health care costs can be met, Social Security is not important.

Please don’t tell me that those executives deserve that level of pay.  Nobody earns that level of compensation.  They receive it, but it is not earned.

In my next post I’ll explain why it is perfectly ok to resent the rich.  In fact, it is part of our evolutionary heritage, and for good reason.  Stay tuned.