CEOs of the world, unite! Forget that CEOs make 364 times more than the average worker (not including perks and benefits) - the average PE and hedge fund manager makes 61 times that of the average CEO.
Side rant regarding sub-workers: The study, conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy (IPS / UFE), factors in part-time jobs to the average worker salary. If you take the average for a full-time non-managerial job (40k), CEO pay is a mere 270 times the average worker. It’s good to know a fairer society is only a few theoretical adjustments away.
Don’t get your guillotine mobs in a bunch though, CEOs have toned it down, from the lavish 525 times the average worker salary they made in 2000 (that was the record). Forget the fact that in 1989 CEOs made only 71 times the salary of the average worker (Reagan just paved the way for that socialist Bush). Seriously, forget it. Sleep tight knowing that people who make $40k are only imaginary, like the borough of Brooklyn, or the strange creatures adorning the cover of Barbara Ehrenreich’s diary (those aren’t unicorns).
The real story is that CEOs are being forced into exploitative contracts, lulled by the false consciousness of 5 and 44. Sure, the common worker can get coerced into an oppressive labor agreement because he needs a common wage to survive, but CEOs need a robust portfolio of high-yielding alternative investments to survive as well, at the country club. CEOs have never felt as inadequate as members of the Second Estate, partly because PE/Hedge fund managers have several more estates.
CEO pay: 364 times more than workers [CNN Money]
Posted by Bulging Bracket , Aug 29, 2007 1:04PM
This is always a specious argument, but what a shock, it's coming from union rabble trying to play at economics so that they can bring la revolucion.
First, comparing the average wage of all workers to those of the CEOs of large firms is exceptionally inappropriate. Compare the average salary of those CEOs to the average of their full-time employee. Exempting managers from the "worker" average eliminates huge numbers of people, since such a huge number of symbolic manipulation jobs also involve managing. So we're only counting the average wage of people in their first 2-5 years of employment to the CEO? And the difference is huge? No Shit Sherlock.
Second, historical comparisons are crap because of the vast value of perks that were doled out in the past that have either been curtailed or added to calculated compensation - corporate jet use by CEO's family, for A. There's also the shift to stock based incentive compensation that these leftists FORCED with the elimination of salary deductibility over $1M.
It's bad enough that everyone else accepts these numbers without comment. You know better but you still carry water for those who applaud genocidal murderers and encourage Chavez to go ever further in his pursuit of a place in the Black Book of Communism.
Posted by Jason , Aug 29, 2007 1:06PM
Their math is either incorrect or they didn't note that they are pulling from a tightly focused sample.
If the average hedge fund manager pulled in 600 million and we take a conservative estimate that there are 6,000 of the damn things crawling about, that's 3.6 trillion in compensation dished out to them alone.
I'm guessing that's not accurate.
Posted by KH , Aug 29, 2007 1:21PM
Yeah Jason, I noticed that (was in my original post but took it out)... it seems ridiculously high (and the average CEO makinig $11 million seems high as well).
If you figure they got the decimal wrong, and it's $66 million or so, that still seems high, but a little more in range. Then the average CEO salary would be a shade over $1 million to be 1/61st the PE/Hedge Fund manager salary. That seems closer to accurate, although then the average worker salary to average CEO pay ratio makes no sense...
Posted by Bulging Bracket , Aug 29, 2007 1:34PM
FTFA: The top 20 CEOs of U.S. companies made an average of $36.4 million in 2006.
They're cherry-picking the top few people to get exorbitant stats. It doesn't show up in the CNN/Money article you linked, but their hedge numbers are based on the top 20 hedge managers (it showed up on CNBC, and you can the CNN article mentions that they compared the top-20 CEOs to other "top 20" categories in America).
Posted by , Aug 29, 2007 1:39PM
Cool, I want to be a hedge fund manager. But not during the proposed crash tomorrow.
Posted by JT , Aug 29, 2007 1:45PM
The fact that so-called "legitimate" news outlets cover this blatent populist bullsh!t is ridiculous. At this point its more than irresponsible journalism (if you can even call it journalism), and is approaching criminally irresponsible. Pushing these kind of "statistics" results in all sorts of bad sh!t (that's the technical term) - labor unrest, protests, riots, employees going postal in the C-suite, etc.
A proactive call to arms against not necessarily the obviously biased originators of this propoganda, but the irresponsible outlets who propogate it is in order.
Posted by , Aug 29, 2007 2:11PM
Additionally, the average CEO and hedge fund manager work more than twice as many hours as an entry level worker. Even without all the other misleading statistics, the pay per hour is inflated by at least 100%.
Posted by , Aug 29, 2007 2:34PM
Especially Sender @ Exis, with 19+ monitors it likely takes him 40hrs/week just to figure out whats where and when
Posted by , Aug 29, 2007 7:41PM
It sure would be nice if McCarthy were around today to finish the job he started.
Posted by Anonymous , Sep 05, 2007 11:14PM
To Anonymous 29, 2007 2:34PM -
The only difference regarding Sender @ Exis is that he returned over 20% net - in August 2007 alone! If you returned over 20% in a month as volatile as August 2007 was, you'd also be allowed to have 19+ monitors like Sender does.