Exorbitant Executive Pay a Serious Drag on Society
Re “Executive Compensation Climbs Into Stratosphere” [July 5]. It is only through publicizing such obscenities on an ongoing basis that we have a chance of correcting the imbalances that will destroy our country if they are permitted to continue.
“Compensation” of this magnitude does not do anything useful for its recipients beyond noting, for those interested, the relative rankings of the executives at a grown-up version of Monopoly; it has no other value except as an indicator of their ranking as players.
When considered as a proportion of corporate earnings (a brilliant reporting stroke) and compared with the total operating payroll (something you might consider reporting in the future), it is clear that these out-of-control “compensation” arrangements constitute a serious drag on society and shortchange both the shareholders of the businesses and the consumers of their products.
I don’t know of any good solution to this problem; however, keeping people aware of its existence and magnitude may eventually result in some wise person figuring out how to solve it.
Perhaps another form of scoring the business game could be invented that would allow executives to vie for something that would not take food out of the mouths of those who actually do the work that now makes them rich.
Honor comes to mind as a value, although it is probably too hard to quantify.
KARL BALKE
Westlake Village
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These salaries are utterly ridiculous, undeserved and will lead to social chaos in this country.
At least Bill Gates takes a modest salary and relies on performance to create his wealth. While I am no Gates fan, most of those listed do nothing for their shareholders and simply rip them off.
There are hundreds of people qualified to run any of the companies named who would be happy to do so for fractions of what these robber barons are getting while telling their employees that “costs are going up, so we can’t give you a raise.”
CARL HOKANSON
Encino
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New game-show concept: “Who Wants to Win a Golden Parachute!”
Contestants are delivered by chauffeured limousine each morning to corner offices in Fortune 500 companies’ executive suites. Here they are not required to do anything useful or productive, vast numbers of supporting players will deliver a steady stream of “reports” and “market surveys,” and at least once a week a few pale men with thin gray hair and sober black suits will ask for a meeting to convey the concerns of the “board.”
In the evening, contestants are taken to a home in a gated suburb where a trophy wife has redecorated the house again and there seem to possibly be children present somewhere in the house, though they are not central to the house’s importance. After a year of this existence, anyone left with a will to live will be rewarded with $40 million, with which he can divorce the present trophy wife, jettison the inconvenient family and “start fresh.”
KENT SOUTHARD
Dana Point
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I would like to know how much federal tax was paid by the executives who were given such exorbitant compensations when they left their jobs.
And how the ones who paid little or none got around it.
JANICE J. SAPINSKI
Rialto, Calif.
