CEO's
Perhaps the unseen hand that moves the economy is really greed. The recent actions of some of America\'s CEO\'s certainly would attest to that. What fueled the bull market of the late nineties? In retrospect, the market of the last decade appears to have been a shell game played by corporate directors to impress day traders and fund managers. Their game was certainly convincing for a while. The stock market was on a roll and at one point it seemed like even a monkey could have thrown a dart to pick a stock with a rising share price. This certainly wasn’t a market influenced by an overall motive to do the most good for the greatest number of people, either with regard to the environment or concern for social justice. In fact, the gap has widened between the haves and the have-nots, and as environmental destruction accelerates, the game continues. And to a great extent, how well the executives play the game determines how much they are paid. Their runaway salaries are but one manifestation of a greater problem that deserves serious evaluation. To appreciate how the corporate elite have commanded such wealth it is helpful to look at the relationship between the government and corporations . Top corporate officials woul
The average CEO is rewarded with a whopping $15.5 million in total compensation.# “The average CEO made 42 times the average worker’s pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990 and a staggering 531 times in 2000.”# Two very disturbing aspects of these statistics are: First, the amount of money paid to executives, especially when viewed in a perspective of fairness i.e. the division of wealth, and second the incongruity between the executive salaries and the overall health of their corporations. To further illustrate the first point look at the salary of the CEO Mr. Sanford Weill during his term at Traveler Insurance Company. Mr. Weill made $175 million! The top ten paid in the insurance industry for 1997 earned an average of 35 million dollars each.# That’s not a bad take considering 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance. The second issue is reflected by the fact that corporate bosses’ pay rose 7 percent in 2001 while their companies profits fell 35 percent. (New York times survey by the consultant Pearl Meyer & Partners)# If the salaries were based on a quantifiable merit like securing sustainability of the organization, providing meaningful jobs that pay a living wage, or contributing to the health of the environment, that would not make the amounts seem as outrageous. d never have been able to command such enormous remuneration if the evolution of capitalism had taken a different turn along the way. The history of corporations is rich in instances where their finances have been given full consideration before that of the public’s well being. Initially corporations were formed to assure that organizations which provided for the public like hospitals, bridge works, or coal mines would live on after the death of their owners. Before the seventeenth century, corporate structure was used strictly
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Approximate Word count = 1236
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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