A disturbing factoid

[Jeffrey Makiel]

I was watching CNN Lou Dobbs last night and seen an interestingly sad factoid. He said that large corporate CEOs make 430 times the median American worker. That is, what a CEO makes in one day takes the average American worker 2 years.

Then, the next segment talked about the CEO of United Health Care. Given the fact that health care is unreachable for 20% of the US population, and almost 50% are under-insured, it did not stop the CEO from a $1.1 billion dollar salary package.

What's gone wrong?

-Jeff

[Chuck Wintle]

So what happens when those among the 20% become seriously ill and require medical care?

[Dennis Peacock]

While this topic is extremely volatile, I ask that the discussion be reasonable and non-attacking. Please?
This topic alone makes my blood boil. So I'll not comment.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

Dennis...if you want to delete my post, that's OK. Besides, I'm not sure if boiling blood is covered by my health insurance policy!

-Jeff

[Al Willits]

Someone once commented to me that the middle class is slowly decreasing in size, corperate greed has become uncheckable and gov't become its own worse enemy...might be right.

Not sure what can be done, seems voting has become the better of two evils and I pay over 50% of my income in some sort of tax....makes ya kinda wonder huh?

I'm betting more than Dennis has blood is boiling, over this subject...

Al....yup, me too

[Jim Becker]

Besides, I'm not sure if boiling blood is covered by my health insurance policy!

It is likely excluded due to it being experimental...

[Stuart Johnson]

So what happens when those among the 20% become seriously ill and require medical care?

Many can receive medicaid. There is another group like I am in right now. Not sufficient wealth / income for private insurance but with too much for medicaid. Too young for medicare and too old to find meaningful work. We have two choices.
1. Pay for care until there are no assets left then sign up for medicaid.
2. Die.

Number 2 seems like a poor option until you realize number 1 will leave your spouse with no real assets. Plus, with medicaid you'll get second rate care after the illegals are handled and then die anyway.

[Russ Filtz]

There must be some good happy medium between capitalistic greed and a socialist State!?

[Jack Dickey]

Our parent company ( worth 50 billion five years ago when they bought us for 2 billion ) bought us from another company worth 20 billion at the time .. I wont name any names here publicly , but you all know the smaller one really well .. Man talk about greed , jeesh these guys , even the liitle wheels , like our branch president are knocking down the money .. On the one hand I dont have an issue with it , on the other hand I do .. I had an offer for free college when I joined they Navy 32 years ago , and turned it down , so I cant complain too much there .. But the severance packages , and packages if you get fired are ridiculous ..
When the president of the smaller company retired in 1998 or there abouts , his severance was more per year than his salary , including his stock options ..
It would take me 40 years at my current salary to equal his retirement ..

[Ken Garlock]

First the 430 times number:
Let us say that the average worker makes 40,000 per year. That would mean that the average CEO makes 17,200,00 per year. Not excessive for a person in charge of billion dollar company. Most likely part of that compensation is in stock options; if company doesn't do well under the CEO leadership, the options aren't worth the paper they are written on.

The 1.1 billion pay:
The implication is that you want to divide up that with the 20% that have no medical coverage. Let us take away 1 billion, and leave the poor CEO with a meager 100,000,000. We have 300,000,000 people in the USA; hence, 20% is 60,000,000 people. Let us divide that billion dollars by the 60 million that are said to have no medical insurance.
1,000,000,000/60,000,000 = 1,000/60 = $16 and 67 cents. Wow, that will really pay some big medical bills!
Like the first case, that 1.1 billion may be in stock options and other performance based pay.

A publicly traded company has a board of directors that set the executive salaries for all the corporate officers, CEO, division presidents, and vice presidents. The CEO doesn't write his own ticket. He is most likely on the board, as is one or more vice presidents along with executives from other companies, educators and others that are respected in their field. But, the CEO, and VPs only get one vote just like everyone else on the board.

So, before every one goes 'postal', stop and put things in perspective. Yes, the numbers seem high for one person, but his pay would be a drop in the bucket of attempting to cover the uninsured.

Two things to remember,
1) This is not a socialist society, you are expected to work for what you get.
2) IF you wait on the government to help you, you will be sadly disappointed.

Yes, I agree that a giga buck is excessive pay....

[Dennis Peacock]

OK.....Just to remind everyone before we get this out of control:

No politics....so let's leave out the Socialist, Democrats, Republicans, and yes, even the independents.

No Politics and No Religion and we can keep this "discussion" moving right along.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

When anyone gets paid so much, why should they care about the long term health of the corporation? A recent example is the new CEO of Ford that got a $13M signing bonus. This is probably small potatos in corporate Americal, but he can be fired tomorrow and still make more money than 10 working folks make and spend in a lifetime. On top of this, Ford is going thru an unprecedented layoff and plant shutdown.

Also, stock options for CEOs are not the same as for the public. Even if the company is loosing, many CEOs have a special buyout provision that sets their stocks artificially high. Again, where is the incentive for the long term health of a company? And in this case, the short term health?

In Ken's calculation, getting rid of just one CEOs exhorbitant salary will yield 16 dollars per unisured person. That may not seem like much, but this is only one CEO. What about getting rid of 1,000 CEOs with bloated salaries? That's $16,000 per uninsured person. We might need a bigger bucket.

Another factoid presented on CNN was that 57% of Americans do not believe the "American Dream" is no longer acheivable. In my area of the country, a small 60 year old home is $400,000+, property taxes are $7,000/year, independent family health care is $26,000/year, car insurance is $2,000-$3,000/year, and sales tax is 7% now. Also, natural gas and oil increased 20% in the last two years, and electricity (which was deregulated in NJ in 2004) increased 25%. I see why the 57% feel the way they do, and I did not even mention income taxes, homeowner insurance, and gasoline prices.

Something has gone wrong when the trend is that a few have millions, and millions have few.

-Jeff

[Jack Dickey]

Oh yeah Ken I definetly agree with all you commented on .. A HUGE portion of our BIG WHEELS income is from stock options and the like , if the company doesnt do well , then they miss that income .. And like many money funds managers , people follow the CEO's of companies , when it comes to investing their money in stocks .. They move around somewhat , and if the CEO has a great track record of making money for a company , then when he moves on to another , odds are he can do it there as well .. And many times , he knows very little about the intricacies of the particular business he may be in command of .. But basic buisness principles are the same every where , and that is where he excels ..
Enuff of my rant , I'll back off ..

[Ken Garlock]

The health care CEO is the exception. The only CEO salary I have knowledge of was that of the Texas Instruments CEO when I worked there. His salary was right around one million dollars, write a check and put it in the bank. Depending of the profitability of TI in a particular year, he may or may not get a bonus or say a half million. And he could also get stock options. It was not a sure thing and he would the extra money or options. In the 2001-2 time frame, TI was a 10 billion dollar per year sales company. You can't squeeze much welfare health care from this CEO.

People don't believe in the American dream? Probably because too many of them are setting back and yelling Ubi Meum est?, instead of E Pluribus Unum. They are waiting for our government to dole it out to them.

[Gary Herrmann]

Theres been a string of articles on the CNN site lately regarding the middle class. It started with the eroding middle class and poor representation in government. It saddens and upsets me. My father was a fireman and my mom stayed home, so I was raised in a middle class family. Technically I guess I'm not middle class, but I maybe I still think that way.

I do remember working for a large not for profit healthcare company 10+ years ago and the CEO was making over a million per year. When it came time for performance appraisals, I wanted to promote and give a nice big raise to one of the women that worked for me. I was told I couldn't due to budget constraints. This woman took the bus to work every day. Rarely missed and was worth her weight in gold to my group. She was making less than 8 bucks an hour.

I think you can earn a good wage in this country if you work at it. However, I also think that for others, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you're never going to get much above subsistence living. I always think about her when this topic comes up. I would hire her in a second if I needed someone. Hopefully, I could pay her better.

The world isn't fair, but nobody every promised it would be.