• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

New finding CEO pay raises 28% this year alone.

Page 5 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
My company is on a 2-3 year long pay freeze... and some asshole somewhere is getting a raise for getting away with committing felonies on a daily basis in the financial district... love it.
 
Jhhnn said:
Perhaps, but I think we need to acknowledge that the incredible pay levels for American CEO's are part & parcel of the problem.

It's not like they're 20X smarter or work 20X harder than their predecessors of 30 years ago, or that they far superior to their international competitors.

If American workers need to compete against their international counterparts, American CEO's should, too.
Click to expand...

I don't often agree with you, but this post is on target.
 
xBiffx said:
My salary went up 33% this year. I am not a CEO. Am I still evil?

My salary has gone up over 300% since I graduated from college almost 10 years ago. I guess I am just an asshole for continuing to make more and more money every year when there are still some out there making less and less. Maybe I should redistribute some of my salary to those that are making less and less to make things more "fair."
Click to expand...

300% from 10k isn't much. 28% up from 10 million is a boatload.. especially coming from the same people who get 10 million severance for destroying a company.
 
shadow9d9 said:
300% from 10k isn't much. 28% up from 10 million is a boatload.. especially coming from the same people who get 10 million severance for destroying a company.
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter when its a percentage. Same goes for taxes. 33% is 33% no matter what your pay. Sure the number is larger/smaller depending on salary but its still cutting 1/3 of your legs out from under you.
 
rchiu said:
Yeah right, when is the last time you see politicians tell it like it is.

American love to hear politicians telling them what they want to hear. That's why you see guy like Obama with his hope and change gets elected. That's why you see these liberals with their PC ideas running around trying to make everyone feels all warm and fuzzy inside.

And that's why America is losing competitiveness and our place in the world. All these adventurous, hardworking and self-sufficient spirit is replaced by entitlement, complacency and blame everyone but ourselves attitude.
Click to expand...

What a good little corporate bootlick you are.
 
xBiffx said:
Doesn't matter when its a percentage. Same goes for taxes. 33% is 33% no matter what your pay. Sure the number is larger/smaller depending on salary but its still cutting 1/3 of your legs out from under you.
Click to expand...

How did the people in the top tax bracket survive when taxes where 70% in the sixties?
 
Ausm said:
How did the people in the top tax bracket survive when taxes where 70% in the sixties?
Click to expand...

Cause we are talking about survival in this thread at all right?

How do people favor progressive tax but not a progressive pay?
 
xBiffx said:
Cause we are talking about survival in this thread at all right?

How do people favor progressive tax but not a progressive pay?
Click to expand...

People on the left DO favor pay inequity for appropriate reasons, in appropriate amounts.

Tell me where you are on the following curve, and how you are going to join the 'mile high' on the far right.

Watch this first:

http://www.lcurve.org/LCurveVideo.htm

Zoom5.gif
 
Ausm said:
How did the people in the top tax bracket survive when taxes where 70% in the sixties?
Click to expand...

We had tax rates of 70% in the early 80's too, I prepared tax returns and did planning for wealthy people. Here's how they survived:

1. While the tax rates were higher, those on the left like to forget there were also all kinds of deductions available. Wealthy people availed themselves of these deductions to lower their effective of tax (and of course the amount of taxes they paid in.)

2. Defer income. Wealthy people spent much effort on ensuring they didn't get too much income in any year (even though we did have income averaging back then, another thing that made the tax rate lower that we don't have now).

3. Pursue extreme methods to defer or reduce tax. We have many techniques in law now that arose during periods of high tax rates. I'm speaking of expensive and highly technical legal strategies based upon trusts and other legal concepts ("substantial risk of forfeiture") that defer taxation. E.g., if you were possibly going to receive an extra $100K income, thus paying $70K in tax, it is worth it to hire an attorney for $25K to get out of it. Not so much for $35K.

4. More straight up cheating, evasion, not too mention all kinds of people engaging in highly risky tax positions of their returns. High rates encourage noncompliance.

5. Some people would actually also just work less. I'm serious. If you're a lawyer or physician making a $100 per hr and keeping $75 of it, fine. Keeping just $30 some said "F it" and went home early, it ain't worth it.

I don't remember too many leaving the US (I had some very wealthy do it though), but Europe's rate were as high, if not higher then. Nowadays, I'd expect more people to leave US for a lower tax rate country.

Fern
 
Last edited:
Oprah makes 3x as much as the highest paid CEO on that list. She makes 1/3 of a BILLION per year sitting around whining about being a woman.
 
Nobody is talking about returning to the marginal rates of pre-Reagan tax structure, Fern, but about creating higher effective rates for extremely large incomes and of creating higher effective tax rates on extremely large inheritances, which is un-earned income and assets for the recipients. It's also about denying many of the tax avoidance strategies currently employed by the very wealthy among us.

All of which is a little off base wrt this topic. The only way to alter the cronyism of our current corporate governance system is to profoundly re-think our conceptual framework from the ground up, and to assert that corporate structures exist at the will of the people, not just the stockholders.
 
Seems risky start-ups are paying execs well too:
http://www.dailytech.com/Solyndra+C...About+Govt+Handouts+Surfaces/article23011.htm
Reports indicate Solyndra's base executive pay in 2010 was $400,000 USD [source], but another report indicates that the company's CFO received $831,000 USD [source] in total compensation that year. Thus it's likely that Mr. Harrison pocketed somewhere in the range of $500k to $1M USD before the company went under. He has refused to disclose his severance package, which may have boosted that total higher.
Click to expand...
 
Schadenfroh said:
Seems risky start-ups are paying execs well too:
http://www.dailytech.com/Solyndra+C...About+Govt+Handouts+Surfaces/article23011.htm
Click to expand...
Reports indicate Solyndra's base executive pay in 2010 was $400,000 USD [source], but another report indicates that the company's CFO received $831,000 USD [source] in total compensation that year. Thus it's likely that Mr. Harrison pocketed somewhere in the range of $500k to $1M USD before the company went under. He has refused to disclose his severance package, which may have boosted that total higher
Click to expand...


Hey, 400,000!!!! That's the same amount our POTUS makes, and he's doing just as fine a job as these folks, bankrupting our nation!!!
 
xBiffx said:
My salary went up 33% this year. I am not a CEO. Am I still evil?

My salary has gone up over 300% since I graduated from college almost 10 years ago. I guess I am just an asshole for continuing to make more and more money every year when there are still some out there making less and less. Maybe I should redistribute some of my salary to those that are making less and less to make things more "fair."
Click to expand...

Dude you're a loser at life. Stop trying to act like your an online success story and you can relate to the industrialists.
 
BarneyFife said:
Dude you're a loser at life. Stop trying to act like your an online success story and you can relate to the industrialists.
Click to expand...

Sorry, did someone say something? Was counting my benjamins. 😎

In all honesty, you don't know me, so stop showing your ignorance by trying to judge that which you know nothing about.
 
Fern said:
5. Some people would actually also just work less. I'm serious. If you're a lawyer or physician making a $100 per hr and keeping $75 of it, fine. Keeping just $30 some said "F it" and went home early, it ain't worth it.
Click to expand...

You really shouldn't lump lawyers in with doctors because the legal field is severely over-glutted and the majority of people with JDs either can't find jobs as lawyers or don't make all that much money.

What's interesting is that in spite of the huge supply of unemployed and underemployed JDs available, those lawyers who are employed, at least the ones earning the six figure salaries, end up working their asses off at the large and medium-sized firms, even the partners. The threat of high marginal tax rates doesn't seem to effect them because they are terrified of losing their associate positions or of getting voted out of the partnership (for failing to pull their weight). (Law is a shitty, miserable profession and even those who are earning the six figure salaries are often working 65+ hours/week.)

Let's suppose that people did decide to work fewer hours. Would that be so awful? Given the huge amount of underemployment that we have in this country amongst college graduates, it's not as though other people couldn't be hired to work their jobs.

(The only area where it's a problem is for physicians where the number of people who can attend alleopathic medical schools is artificially limited by the number of medical school seats available and AMA accreditation, which is an example of a non-free-market force at work.)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top