What do you people mean that keep claiming the US is getting socialistic?

This is a good example, as much as Les Miles makes, the CEO of Dow Chemical makes 5 times as much.

 

Middle class and upper middle class work ethic and education level is closer to wealthy, therefore culturally they're much closer and relate better. Besides, middle class folks want to be wealthier, not poorer.

This "class warfare", populist concept of the working poor is a useful little tag line but falls apart under analysis. People who work hard and make relatively good choices don't stay poor because employers love those kinds of people and promote them.

People who work hard and stay poor are making bad choices and largely causing their own demise. The exceptions to this are rare.

Again, not an abstraction - I've both lived this and am now observing this daily in my own life.

 

And as much money as Les Miles helps bring in for LSU, I'm sure that the CEO of Dow Chemical makes at least 5 times as much for his company.

 

I agree - it gets obscene. Athletes make ridiculous money as well, and they are labor and aren't taking as much financial risk as the owners.

However, in a free market, the price will rise to match what the market will bear. If ticket prices get too steep, attendance will fall and salaries will, too.

At some level, salary envy is jealousy and a skewed concept of "justice". IMO.

 

Yes, but there's a much better chance for a person in the middle class to move up into the executive level pay than for them to move down into the working poor class.

That is a concept that you have ignored. Most CEO's started in the middle class, and many people in the middle class will work their way up.

 

He got a 25% pay raise in a year when profits declined and volume of sales went down.

 

CEO's cannot control everything about their company's success or failure. I don't know enough about the company to say whether the pay raise was warranted or not, but I do know that the company's success is not the only measurement of a CEO.

Was this an intelligent move by the BOD? Maybe not, but it is the free market at work. What would your suggestion be to change it?

 

It's not envy. I just believe that it's better for the country when there's a more wealthy middle class, that can afford good health care, afford to send get their kids a quality education, and affort their own retirement, than the uber rich stockpiling more of the wealth that they don't need.

The CEO of Exxon retired with a half a billion dollar retirement package, do you know how many baby boomers retirement some of that could have funded?

 

I didn't say YOU were envious. But many, many folks who follow your line of thinking are (like most of my relatives :grin.

As for the half billion dollar package - maybe it could fund a bunch of retirements, but those other people aren't entitled to the package.

What you suggest here is socialism - distribution of wealth regardless of entitlement. Socialism no workee.

 

I would say that a 25% pay increase when the company you're running's profits drop, you don't raise his pay.

What do I suggest? Well for starters, how about not having the CEO pay set by the BOD, who are appointed by and recieve their compensation by the CEO?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2005/aug/04/executivesalaries.executivepay2

When executive salaries hit the political radar in the US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, in a rare pithy moment, described the "infectious greed" that had taken hold of corporate America during the late 1990s that led to fraud at the likes of Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing.

Alan Greenspan is hardly a pinko liberal democrat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06pay.html

Conflicts of interest are pervasive among executive compensation consultants, according to a Congressional investigation. Moreover, the inquiry found, consultants who do other work for companies while helping them devise executive pay recommended significantly higher pay packages than consultants who had no such additional relationships.