Maybe the Government Needs to Regulate CEO Pay

After adjusting for inflation, we pay CEOs today four times what they made in the 1970’s.  Pay-for-performance is the idea behind exorbitant CEO pay, but the fact is that CEO’s make big money whether their companies perform or not.  CEO pay is a problem that is affecting us all as we struggle to afford housing, health care and education in the middle class, while the 1% continues to hoard resources.  We need to reach some social consensus on what to do about this problem.  Otherwise, the stratification will continue.  From Time:  Are We Paying Our CEOs Enough: A New Survey From the Wall Street Journal and Hay Group Suggests Maybe Not | Business | TIME.com.

5 thoughts on “Maybe the Government Needs to Regulate CEO Pay

  1. You want the government to determine salaries?What else need they control?
    Excessive discretion in the realm of regulation can eventually roll downhiill and destroy your freedom.Think about it.
    You people here amaze me-you can support anarchists in the “Occupy” movement and then in the blink of an eye support government breathing down your neck-you can’t have it both ways.

  2. Is this an oxymoron, kind of like the intellectual attributes of Joe Biden? Government control of expenditures of anything, price control of anything, growth of government control, and now salary control is kind of wrongheaded thinking that created the current silliness of borrowing 44 cents of every dollar the government spends. Whatever the problem, if there is a problem and not just envy of those who get and those who don’t, the marketplace and success or failure of private corporations are best left to regulate themselves within expected norms of law, regulation and sound business sense. I note that CEO pay increased 1.9% last year, but Congress gave itself a 5% pay raise.

  3. Only the post headline said government should control CEO pay, I take that as an attention-getter, not a serious proposal for the reasons posted above.

    However, on balance CEO pay has gotten out of hand – (in part the same tactic teachers use in bargaining) – each company wants to be above the median to get the best talent. This is best controlled by the Company Boards and stockholders they are SUPPOSED to represent, as excessive pay has the potential to come at their expense. I wonder what the role of mutual funds, pension boards and other institutional stockholders is with regard to this issue. As someone who has a few stocks I can say small shareowners seem to have no effective say.

  4. Why focus on business? One wonders at pay scales universities, for example. Should they not also be regulated by “government,” since Presidents of many colleges and universities may earn 20 times what lowly faculty members earn, or college football coaches who earn more than a million dollars a year. Perhaps professional athletes should have their salaries regulated, earning as they do salaries as high or higher that those of the evil corporate executives. The market works its will, and that is as it should be.

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