High-Priced CEO Salaries Unaffected by Public Outrage

Whether the company is privately or publicly held. As consumers and taxpayers who provide these companies with REVENUES, SUBSIDIES and even BAILOUTS this certainly is a topic of everyone's concern. The disparity in executive pay is not just between the board of directors, stockholders & CEO. The costs of increasing the bottom line whether it's product improvements or bonuses & pay- all get passed down to us. Why do the "rights" of a capitalistic market stop at our level? We are the main drivers of most any company's success. Once we stop buying what they're selling, they begin to collapse.

AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS needs to WAKE UP, come on, let's stop this raid on your money by the CEO's and the RICH. IT IS REAL you are having a hard time putting food on the table, health insurance has gone up up up for the past 10 years 10-15%, gas prices sky high, but oil companies get huge tax cuts and HUGE PROFITS all because of corporate greed.... the corporations are doing better than ever!!! I'm a capitalist... but this needs to stop. And if you complain the GOP and 1%er's call you a socialist.... eff them!! Time to fight back and save the middle WORKING class in America!!!

I think the super rich business class #$%$ [you know the golden parachute #$%$], who enjoy raping the planet and its people need to be held accountable. However I also prefer public execution. So lets put them together and start killing them in time square, so the whole world can see. You can conduct business, you can be richer then anyone ever before but you have to earn it and if you plan on being that guy you have to do it responsibly or you will be held accountable. If you want to do it by destroying lives and holding a countries economy hostage [banks, wall street, car manufacturers, ect], well then you're out of line and a lot of us are #$%$ Personally I have no objection to killing anyone, ever, so long as they deserve it. So sleep softly business class #$%$ we are coming for you, and you won't like it, but we will.

And this would be under Science why?

"But, in fact, the public has been concerned about executive salaries for decades and the outcome has rarely changed."

According to the Capitalists, the Free Market WOULD take care of this; in reality, in does not ACTUALLY do so.

Is anyone really surprised? You're the 99% and the subject of ridicule and bad jokes at executive cocktail parties around the globe where the sentiment is "let them eat cake".

Why is this is this in the Science section? It's NOT rocket science to hear that CEO are still being paid outrageous salaries.

I guess I'll just have to keep on eating cake.....

And then all the MO-'RONS are complaining about unions. If you are whining about a janitor making $20 per hour but think it's okay for a CEO to make 100-200 times what the average employee makes, then you are an ID' ''IOT.

Henry Ford once said: "An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous."

There are not many "idealists" running big businesses nowadays. Instead, executive compensation has become structured around the executives themselves. Often their salaries and perks are guaranteed in-advance by hiring contracts because it is assumed up front that they must be so talented that they have to be bribed simply to accept the job.

But the problem is that it has resulted in too many executives who are assured of making a lot of money even if the businesses that they run fail. In some cases, they may actually make even more money if the business fails (such as allowing leveraged buyouts). So instead of "idealists", we have "cynics", who see the system as a way to make themselves rich at the expense of others. It is a predatory model wherein incapable, but greedy, executives end up running big businesses.

This is why so many major banks and companies needed bailouts. Their execs were looking at their own bank accounts with more attention than they were paying to their companies' books.

It just shows that the rich are contemptuous of the rest of us.

This is a private matter between the board of directors, the stock holders, and the CEO. Private companies should be able to pay whatever they want to whoever.

The only people outraged are whiny liberals. And lets be real, who cares what they think? They would steal their kids milk money.

The word outraged is way over used. If your outraged you do something about what is raising you to that level. Whinning, crying and being highly #$%$ off about something is just simply being mad. I would say the public is mad not outraged.Who cares what CEO's make. That is between them, the company and shareholders. Maybe some people need to get a better job so they can enjoy those perks. And if it's bailout money going for those salaries and perks that's the governments business. You pay it, they spend it. Vote them out.

Corporate governance is totally crooked, just like the government. It's all the same thing, and we have to fix it or we will continue to be raped by the ruling elites that have waged active and successful class warfare against us for the last generation. They could care less what we think and they have bought the system.

YOu do not become CEO by hard work alone, you also must be a HARD but ethical person, with NOT ONLY a good education but someone who is an alpha thinker not enslaved to either left or right brained thought.

Its only a plus if your daddy is a large millionare with connections

You marry rich

You are a status quo who can sue your way in

Or posses something unique, that is not available to the rest of the industry. Maybe a machine, a patent, or contract.

So, let's get this straight:

A person takes over a failing company, restructures it, makes it profitable and they should not be rewarded for it?

Or how about this:

A medical company spends hundreds of millions of dollars to create a drug that cures a problem and helps people live longer, that company should not make any money to do this again, or tries a new drug that does not work, and still spends millions of dollars and needs to recoup some of the losses, they cannot do that?

Who decides how much an executive is worth?

Who decides how much profit is acceptable?

If the company is private, then the owner do.

If the company is public, the shareholders do.

Don't forget, that everyone, and I mean everyone who has a retirement plan with any type of investments probably has stocks in them (Mutual funds) do you want your retirement to suffer because these companies cannot be profitable?

Be honest. If you were making 6 or 7 figures (plus a golden parachute), would you really care if the public is outraged or not? You are still set for life.