Wachovia information paper

In “The Overpaid CEO” Susan Homberg and Mark Schmitt bring to attention how CEO pay in America is ridiculous in numbers as opposed to other parts of the world. Looking back, in the nineteen hundreds CEO pay was relativity average. As businesses and companies began to expand there was a demand for higher pay. Between 1978-2012 CEO pay increased by 875%! Many rules and regulations were put in to place to limit the pay of a CEO, such as the Securities Exchange Act that I will explain later on, regardless CEO pay kept getting higher and higher as many loopholes were found. Bonuses pay a large part in the salaries of CEOS’, as an effect CEOS’ tend to partake in risky behavior in order to score those big paychecks.

The fact that CEOs do not stay with a company very long also factors into the supply and demand of the CEO position. With CEO positions being opened up all the time that means there is a high demand for such positions, but they must be filled with highly trained professionals with years of experience, something a lot of people do not have to the quality of work needed. So if there is a high demand and a low supply it would mean that the compensation for these high position employment opportunities must equally be high to entice people for the position.

According to the Wealth Inequality in America video, the CEO of a company makes 380 times more than the average paid worker. With these numbers, the average worker must work over a month to make what the CEO makes in an hour. That’s insane, there is no way that the average worker does not work as hard as the CEO of the company works, the workers are what make the company what it is. Sure the CEO has worked very hard to get to where they are in the company, but with the way everything else is, can we truly be sure that the way the CEO is getting paid is

Executive Compensation. I’m in agreement with Thomas Piketty that the one cause of rising inequality in the United States “the rise of supersalaries” for top executives (Piketty & Goldhammer, 2014, p. 298). The average American estimates CEO to worker pay ratio at about 30-to-1, which is more than 4 times what they believe to be ideal. The career review site Glassdoor reported from 2014 data that the average pay ratio of CEO to median worker was 204-to-1 and that at the top of the list, four CEOs earn more than 1,000 times the salary of their median worker with the very top pay ratio of 1,951-to-1. In some cases a CEO makes in one-hour what it takes the average employee six-months to earn. In comparison, the Washington Post reported for the

The higher the difference between the CEO salary and the average worker salary, the lower the worker's performance due to the

2. There is no world in which the current CEO salaries would be considered justified or rational. Today, CEOs make about 344 times the average pay of workers which is up from 30 to 40 times about thirty years ago (Doc A). While they should be rewarded for success and advancing their business, there is a point where it begins to hurt both the company and the rest of the economy. It takes money away from taxpayers and is used to increase the personal wealth of millionaires.

Number Ten: The company pays its workers pretty well. The average hourly rate was at $18 in 2013, while the mean annual wage was set at $40,000. The executives’ pay is capped at 19 times the average worker’s pay. This means that they cannot earn more than 19 times the average

However, not many studies have made it clear as to how wide is the gap between CEO pay here in America compared to the minimum wage worker and how does this gap compare to other countries. There is an article called CEOs Get Paid Too Much, According to Pretty Much Everyone in the World by Ms. Gavett. The article is interesting to point out the differences in CEO pay gaps according to the minimum wages around the world. The article also gives what many people perceive as an ideal pay gap between the wealthy and poor around the world. I was not surprised to see that the America CEO pay gap is the highest in the world and by a large margin.

1. Do you think the fact that most American CEOs are paid so much more than rank-and-file employees suggests CEOs are overpaid? Explain.

According to Plato in an ideal society the ruler should be paid no more than four times what the lowest member of that society get paid. In 2012 the CEO compensation pay was 354 times average salary of a CEO for example Thomas Montag CEO of Bank of America received nearly 30 million dollars, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs and Walid Chammah, CEO of Morgan Stanley were each given about $10 million in compensation during the financial crisis. The CEO of these financial institution steered the United States into worst economic crisis since the Great Depression which lead to lose of millions of jobs, homes and retirement savings.

The final reason that the companies are over paying CEOs is that the nonprofit organizations are paying their CEOs very highly. According to Peter Frumkin in his article “Are nonprofit CEOs overpaid?” he writes about “264 big nonprofit CEOs earn a salary of $207,990… and a CEO of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation earn 389,327” (83). These are a nonprofit companies yet they are paying there CEOs quite a bit of money that could be going toward the cause they are trying to raise for. The CEOs should not be earning that amount of money when it is being given to go towards the cause that they people are giving their money for. A CEO that is supposed to find money to help find a cure for cystic fibrosis is taking a good amount of the money home that

Take severance packages for example. When the average employee in no longer benefitting the company, chances are they will be let go. Besides a final paycheck for hours worked and the possibility of unemployment collection, they do not receive anything else from the company. When a CEO is no longer performing up to standards, they are forced to resign but walk away with much more than a final paycheck. Chuck Prince of Citigroup was shown the door after the company lost $64 billion in market value, yet he left with $68 million and a cash bonus of $12.5 million (Nickels, McHugh & McHugh, 2010). Not only are CEOs paid a substantial amount more for their work, they are paid a substantial amount more to leave the company all together. In 2009, President Obama and Congress put limits on executive compensation of firms receiving money under the federal government bailout programs. The payout to CEOs leaving their companies was limited to $500,000 but it wasn’t for all companies across the board. This new limit only applied to companies who had borrowed money from the government during periods of economic downfall and hadn’t yet paid it back. Despite the decrease in monetary payout, CEOs were still allowed a decent portion of restricted stock which amounted for a fairly large payout when the stock could be sold a few years down the line.

By Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis • June 21, 2015. "Top CEOs Make 300 Times More than Typical Workers: Pay Growth Surpasses Stock Gains and Wage Growth of Top 0.1 Percent." Economic Policy Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept.

This report explores the issue of the pay that top executives make, and the reasons why they do. It also suggests improvements that can be made to make the system better. High Pay Seems Small When Compared To Company Profits Many companies pull in profits that are extremely high. When an employee of such a companies salary is compared to the amount of profit that the company earns, it starts to seem reasonable. It only makes sense that if the employee is directly responsible for the success of their company, then they deserve to get their payback. It seems ironic, but many salaries even look small once compared with a companies profits. Top Executives Are Under A Lot Of Pressure Being the CEO of a

In 2003 the average pay for CEOs at 200 of the largest U.S. companies was $11.3 million--but there are a good number whose compensation packages approach the $100 million mark. Faced with these figures, Americans from all walks of life--who revile CEOs as greedy fat cats--are overcome with bewilderment and indignation. Astonished to learn that what an average worker earns in a year, some CEOs earn in less than a week--people ask themselves: "How can the work of a