Executive Pay

Recently, many of us watched the protest in major cities asking why the 1% receive so much pay. In fact they are receiving what the 99% receives. A serious discrepancy. Today, the Globe and Mail ran an editorial by Margaret Wente with the title "Bringing executive pay back down to earth." Now, that is a surprise since she writes for the Globe and Mail a business paper. She mentions a bank executive who used to run the bank before stock options and before executives made 250 times more than the average employee. Her point is that CEO's pay is related to performance but points out that CEO pay has increased by a factor of 8 in 20 years. In the beginning,pay was tied to performance much like sports and the arts. The incentive that corporations picked for CEOs was stock options. The way to do well was increase the price of the stock which was not related to selling more stuff or making more money. Today's hero is Steve Jobs who lived in a relatively ordinary house but what Margaret Wente forgets is that he managed to earn a incredible amount of money so there are still things to exam.
The questions that is being asked once again: "How is it that executives get to make lots of money even if the company doesn't do well?"
Hopefully, the protesters will look at this and start targeting the CEO's buy a stock or two and be in the position to ask questions.