Citing a pressing need to siphon wealth from workers to Job Creators, corporations have embarked on a long con to convince us all that excessive CEO pay is absolutely necessary. After all, they must ensure that the Best and Brightest are at the helm! CEOs make so many important decisions, every day, all the time! They must therefore make these important decisions from the comfort of a private jet, or they will soon be making all of these important decisions on behalf of another company — one that is willing to give them a private jet — because CEOs are in such wild demand and the pool of replaceable workers is so small. Except now, a bunch of commie-liberal academics have demonstrated that inflated CEO pay is not necessary in order to retain top talent given that CEO skills are not all that transferable. Also, when a CEO moves from one firm to another, they usually screw the pooch.
New research by Charles M. Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, and Craig K. Ferrere, one of its Edgar S. Woolard fellows … conclude[s], contrary to the prevailing line, that chief executives can’t readily transfer their skills from one company to another. In other words, the argument that C.E.O.’s will leave if they aren’t compensated well, perhaps even lavishly, is bogus. Using the peer-group benchmark only pushes pay up and up.
“It’s a false paradox,” Mr. Elson said in an interview last week. “The peer group is based on the theory of transferability of talent. But we found that C.E.O. skills are very firm-specific. C.E.O.’s don’t move very often, but when they do, they’re flops.”
We should note, of course, what it means to “flop” within the context of this report. A CEO “flops” when he fails to create long-term shareholder value. But anyway, we digress. The point here is that we can now outsource the job of CEO, probably. After all, if they “flop” when they come from an outside firm, why not just bring them from an outside Chinese or Indian firm? They’ll probably “flop” just as hard but for less pay. Just an idea, anyway. We’ll put a pin in it for now, come back to it later.
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President Mitt will amend the constitution requiring CEOs to get at least 47% of the profits every year.
I want a president who will amend the constitution requiring CEOs to be taxed at 47% of their personal earnings/investments. How's that sound?
Need more cowbells.
We should just do whatever they say. That's the best way.
"Give me the money and nobody gets hurt."
Compliance is Liberty.
"That's a nice country you got there, pity if anything should happen to it…"
If you don't strain at the leash, there's no pain.
What about CEOs of companies that exist only to buy and run (perhaps into the ground) other companies? They must be very highly skilled, right? And super-duper highly paid. I mean, they're buying (and running) lots of different companies. Like, Mitt, amirite? That guy must be a genius's genius.
Best and Brightest are at the helm
Can someone please tell me how R'Money got there? He sure as fuck isn't the best and brightest, though I will admit he was the best the GOP could pull out of their clown car this year.
Most ruthless.
Exactly. Mitt Romney ain't afraid to cut a bitch.
That's why Home Depot prospered under "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. His expertise at
sucking Jack Welch's dickmaking jet turbines and railroad locomotives at GE just transferred naturally to selling 2x4s out of bins at the home center.Speaking of Jack Welch, why does everyone think he was great? I think it was the legacy of his crap leadership (trashing the EV1 etc..) that forced GM into it's bailout phase. CEOs are overpaid louses.
When I was employed at a Home Depot the CEO made at least 1700 times as much as I did. There is no human activity that any human can do even 1000 times better than me. just saying.
There is no human activity that any human can do even 1000 times better than me
Not true for me. Hank Aaron had 2,297 RBI in 3,298 major league baseball games. You could put me in 4,000 major league games and I doubt I would get 2 RBI.
Now, running Home Depot, on the other hand — I don't think anyone could do that 1700 times better than the chimpanzee who ate that lady's face.
Jack could do Donald Trump math- he borrowed as much cash as he possibly could on GE's card, and invested it in all sorts of enterprises. GE's revenue and earnings looked great! Of course, betting every number on the wheel doesn't pay off forever and getting back 5% while paying 6% doesn't fool everybody. But it fooled enough people long enough to make Jack a lot richer and get him a hot new wife.
And screwing the future hot wife (behind the old wife's back) while she interviewed him for his Harvard Business School case (hagiography) didn't hurt his bullshit legacy at all, right?
Hagiography? I love you sir or madam for using that word.
Cheers, FYO! It was 'sir,' last time I looked.
Home Depots horrible CEO did come from GE, but was Bob Nardelli. Al Dunlop was the one who "helped" Scott Paper and Sunbeam to financial ruin.
Just make sure the private jet has roll down windows.
Naw. The rich folk can afford power windows
On the farm a "flop" is what we called cow shit. Evidently CEOs produce flops. No surprise here.
That's shocking, SHOCKING.
The real talent lies underneath the levels of CEO. As far as I can tell, all a CEO really needs is an ego so large that he (I would say he/she, but I haven't had any experience with "she" CEO's. I assume too busy with the sammich makin') can make unflappable decisions, and a black heart. Additional perks are being tall, and a full head of hair.
Yes, Dennis (Tyco, Mid-State Correctional Facility) Kozlowski's only real crime was not having the hair.
Pick me! I'm not tall, but have a full head of hair!
That bullshit idea is reinforced by the very MBA programs many of these CEO jackasses graduated from as if the skills they "teach" are rare. As if.
I know lots of egotistical self centered narcissistic overpaid jackasses who don't know/can't do their jobs.
I'm in a soul sucking MBA program right now and can confirm this comment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA
My favorite commercial EVER. That happened to come out when all of my college friends were earning their MBAs.
I was never in the MBA program at my school…. I did get my undergrad. in Business Admin., and I will tell you, even on that level, professors basically brainwash their students into believing that CEOs are gods among men and are the best and brightest out there. Oh wait, I forgot… all college professors are commie liberals…. right? lol
There seems to be this weird assumption that a CEO just needs to know how to be a CEO and doesn't need to know anything about THE FUCKING INDUSTRY THAT THEY ARE IN. But what the fuck do I know, I'm not even a manager.
Someday, you'll get to be Mr. Manager.
That's BigSkullF*ckingManager to you!
Acceptance of CEO dogma is the first step toward joining management.
That might be a problem as even my boss and my bosses boss don't think executive management knows what they are doing.
Sounds like you've got a good boss
Sound like your department's going to be outsourced soon.
Apple replaced Steve Jobs with a guy who knew the soft drink business, John Scully.
Mr. Scully decided the problem was Apple wasn't enough like IBM and set about ruining the company by stifling product development and hiring a bunch of corporate salesmen in blue suits. Eventually the engineers revolted and Scully was given several million dollars to go away. Steve Jobs came back, a year later, we all had iPods. Steve Jobs was not interested in selling soft drinks. He never considered leaving his tech roots to pursue a career as a corporate douche bag. Jobs made billions by creating designer tech shit but Scully made millions by fucking shit up.
Basically correct, but Jobs got kicked out in 1985 and returned near the end of 1996. iPods showed up in 2001. Steve said he'd rather make good stuff and fail than make crap and succeed, and that attitude let him succeed.
Also, moving production to sweatshops in China. A visionary!
One of the reasons I'll never own another Apple product.
(Both of my iPods were refurbished, so I feel somewhat clean on that front. But, really, I worked with Macs for years and loved them, but now … well, it's just overpriced and overrated electronics aimed at hipsters who are willing to spend too much money on gadgets. I just don't get it. But WTF do I know — I'm not a CEO.)
Might want to read what Paul Krugman has to say on that…and that certainly doesn't differentiate Apple from the other electronics manufacturers.
Tried to verify that on my Apple Newton but it's not working well these days.
One C-suite executive I worked for was so incompetent we called her "Miss Management." If she knew we meant it as biting sarcasm, she never let on.
Did you work for E-Bay or HP?
Most C-level people I've met have been doofuses. Ah, that's not entirely true. They're talented and whatnot, but they're not … sharp. It's a hard expression to put across. They're not the whizz, the bang, the "I get it all".
Sometimes the CEO isn't either, and those companies go down. When the CEO is the man with the bang, the companies win because he can MAKE them work.
I'd imagine a company with a good CEO and good C-level execs would make a fortune.
Cunts are still overpaid in the US.
And when CEOs become president of the U.S. we really find out the meaning of "flop".
Outsourcing the CEO job sounds like a wonderful fucking idea!
100% of the incompetent asshole at 1/10th the price.
Outsourcing senior management: my not-so-secret Christmas wish for years now. Surely, we can find sociopaths in Bangladesh or Madagascar or Paraguay who deindustrialize us while weakening our solvency for one *tenth* the price that the batch do.
I have been informed we are no longer allowed to question the ruling class. Because Ruling, duh. Especially since they have ultimate knowledge of all things. But let's just put windows that roll down in their private jets, just for them, 'kay?
I can see it now.
"What does this butto….oh, god, ahahahahhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."
The Man I used to work for rode three companies into the ground. Don't know exactly how much he got paid to do that but I know it was seven figures. I left just before he rode number three into the dirt, and then he left to preside over another company in another rotten town.
CEOs are looking down on us from just the right height.
As always, I'm willing to take over any failing company at half the CEO's pay, and run it into the ground in half the time. Beat that Wall Street.
That's the can-do spirit we're looking for.
Can we have a rule, let's call it a "law" that every company has to keep CEO pay and lowest paid worker pay within a ratio of, say, 20-30 to 1? If they don't, they owe employees outside the ratio double what they should have paid.
Socialism! Free markets, invisible hands argle gargle!
"Chainsaw" Al Dunlap 2016!
You people are lucky these CEO's are even performing for you. Bastards!
Come on now, it's not like any CEOs would suggest something so profoundly stupid as installing roll-down windows on a jet plane.
I keep waiting for a campaign explanation of this brilliant idea, but have yet to see one.
I've seen a few trolls elsewhere try and claim that he was talking about opening windows when a plane lands, even though looking at the whole statement that's clearly not the case, and we liberals are all just being mean to Mitt and trying to make him look stupid by – repeating exactly what he said.
Look, wingnuts, the reason we point out that so many of the alleged gaffes that you pin on Obama are taken out of context is because, well, they are out of context; if you read or listen to all of his statements, they are completely reasonable and true. But when Romney says something stupid, hateful, or both, and you claim it's taken out of context, make sure it really is; most of the time the full statement is actually even worse than the one-liner.
You know you are threatening the very fabric of our existence with these questions, right? On the other hand, my poor market choices could sure use more dividends, and they've got to come from somewhere – god knows these CEOs of mine are not making brilliant decisions….
GORDON GEKKO LIBEL
He's so green and cute, and that accent he has is really cool.
I am pretty sure that the CEO's DIDN'T ASK THOSE RESEARCHERS ANY FUCKING QUESTIONS!
It is kind of ironic that most CEOs seem determined to do everything they can to prove that Marx was right.
Romney: "Would you like to purchase any rope to go with those pitchforks?"
I watched this Book TV with Richard Wolff this weekend. He gives long history lectures in answers to questions, so not for the impatient, but lotsa snark too.
http://www.booktv.org/Program/13807/Occupy+the+Ec…
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
- Groucho Marx
I wish I could snark about this, but this sort of thing is why my 401K is now worth a really mediocre used car. Oh well, I wasn't planning on retirement anyhow, just a trip down to the voluntary euthanasia center to watch a nature film (with Beethoven's Pasturale playing in the background) and fill out a questionnaire on what kind of cookie I would want to be reincarnated as, or something like that…
Soylent Snaps is people!
Corporations are people!
Soylent Snaps taste better, and don't leave a nasty aftertaste.
But they do leave a nasty afterlife.
Beggin' Strips!
Now made with even more beggars!
If you cash in for a big enough car, you can live in it.
These jackanapes spend all their time repeating self-serving lies to each other until it becomes the "common knowledge" of their class. For the good of the nation it is the duty of our class to clock these shoats with our hard earned understanding of the real world.
Theirs is a high and lonely destiny.
The Socialite-Man's Burden ?
I believe this situation involves CEO and Board of D. in vigorous reach-around action.
The worst thing is a bozo like Carly Fiorina who HP had to PAY $25M just to get lost!
There was one a couple months ago who got paid $44M after getting canned, having worked one day. He didn't even have time to bankrupt the company!
CEO = circlejerk everyone off.
One Australian mining tycoon thinks $2/day is an adequate miner's wage:
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-ri…
Face it, you're just jealous.
(Of the commie liberal academics! What did you think I meant?)
It's a simple fact that job creators deserve very large salaries, and we must be prepared to lay off some workers to pay for that salary.
Excellent shorter.
Or possibly quoting…..?
These excesses are also in the public sector, taking for example Ohio State U. President Gordon Gee. In his five year tenure thus far, he made 8.8 million plus 7.7 million for his expenses. As a Mormon, he knows charity starts at home.
Dayton Daily News article
But how much did the football coach make?
That number would be three times greater. Remember, this is Ohio, where the battle of Romney vs. Bin Laden is legend.
Exactly.
Forget university presidents. Look at their ADs and coaches.
Well we here in Penn State country know about the fine job Graham Spanier did and all the while making PSU the highest tuition public univeristy in the nation. You cant get incompetence like that for less than a million per year.
In a related story the sun came up today, … and Carly Fiorina guided the James Madison University Board of Visitors.
the fuck is a "Board of Visitors"?
Its time to fire the job creators and hire the wealth creators.
Well, to be fair, their pay packages are huge but their taxes bills are very small so it all evens out amirite?
HELLO, they're JOB CREATORS people. Honor them. Bow before their mere presence.
I'd moon them, but you REALLY don't want to put yourself in that position.
Well, it's not always the case that successful CEOs go on to become huge flops later. In certain cases — Dubya comes to mind — they suck balls from the very start.
All CEO bonuses should be based on something like the 3-year performance of a company and not quarterly. No more 'golden parachutes', no performance or salary bonuses decided by a board of directors but by a majority vote of stockholders. And anyone makes over one million a year has to spend one week every six months doing the most low-level job that company has.
Hey they figured out how to move the production work overseas and save $15 per hour on the pay rate for the workers. Then fucked over the American workers who earned a decent living. Now that's some serious managing. Clearly worth millions and millions. And we are blessed with loads of Made in China crap that most of us don't need and is poorly made to boot. All those middle class factory workers getting all uppity and shit wanting safe work places and for businesses not to dump their shit anywhere they feel like it. Fuck em they had it coming and they did it to themselves voting for Ronald Raygun, W and his Daddy.
They're rioting at FoxConn. Even they get fed up eventually.
But CEOs are the only ones who can create jobs for us! We must beg for their blessing by giving them huge sums of money. What if they abandon us? Where will we go? What will we do?
The best thing that happened to Alaska was Palin leaving the executive branch and talking a high paying position in the entertainment industry.
Unfortunately, it sucked for the rest of us.
Seriously, what do we have to do to make these assholes "Go Gault"?
Our CEO justs holds a meeting, steals our ideas and cashes the check. Voila!
I will be your CEO for lunch money and some new clothes. Any takers?
I am "middle management". These fuckers are fucking morons for the most part. Ugh. All they care about is the holy bottom line, fuck actually delivering a product, that's my problem.
HAHAHA OKOKOKOK now do MBAs!
OT, but in the spirit of "two blocks from where I live," tomorrow the company where I've worked for 20 years is being taken over by a company financed in part by Bain Capital. I'll be fine — but what irks me most is that, since they sell the same kind of software we do, they'll probably be throwing out most of what we've created. We were a profitable company. They're causing tremendous turmoil and worry in my coworkers' lives, not to make a better product, but to eliminate their competition and make some big bucks for our major stockholders.
Knowing somebody who used to work for a crazy, crazy CEO, I can say that article is a VAST understatement. Her boss didn't know how to operate a computer, but he was ready to launch a stream of spittle-flecked curses at anyone who brought him bad news.
I've long felt they've become this cocooned class of queen bees, cushioned from every discomfort. Contractually assured of a soft fall (into millions usually, though not as many as if they did make a go of it) they don't care to plan much beyond the next quarter. As near as I can figure their primary skill is excelling at office politics. The higher you go the less you know.
Insane in the membrane; insane in the Bain!
Something something Cross of Gold something something Mammon something something rope through eye of needle.
CEOs: innocent helpless victim's of Obama's Uncertainty WMD – this nebulous yet devastating weapon works by generating a beam of pure epic confusion at CEOs over whether to put any of their sky-high profits back into circulation, or just strip down & wiggle around in it like dogs rolling in shite some more instead.
Oh the uncertainty! OH THE UNCERTAINTY!
I'd be glad to run a corporation into the ground for a hell of a lot less than these jackass CEOs are demanding…… and fuck a private jet, just help me get a new front tire for my Honda Civic…
The bodies are cheap enough to buy, but the souls; the souls require exorbitant pay packages.
Well, that's one tranferable skill, right? 'Cause my CEO is a filthy-tempered, foul-mouthed, emotionally incontinent lying asswipe who shits where he eats because he talks through his ass.
And a screamer, also too.
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