The business of America is Business. Good wages from Business has elevated the USA to a solidly middle class country in the last 100 years. We have now developed a problem, since the ‘80s that threatens capitalism by reducing citizens faith in the system. The vast run up in relative CEO pay. The very men we should look to for leadership in our society, the heads of our largest businesses, have in large measure disqualified themselves for that national leadership by abusing their positions at the head of our major publicly traded corporations by taking too much for themselves. When a CEO parachutes into a company, at pay a hundred or more times the median pay of the companies employees, then leaves with a golden parachute 5 years later, regardless of performance, which is so common as to be the norm, something is wrong. There is no shortage of CEO talent available in this country of millions of MBAs. Our system of corporate governance has been corrupted. One problem is incest:7-11-03 Forbes article listing CEO’s that serve on many boards, it points out at least one interlocking incestuous relationship that is a good example of the circular nature of the CEO compensation game. This is a pertinent quote from that article: “Verizon Vice Chairman and
President Lawrence Babbio serves as a director of Aramark and, until leaving
the compensation committee in February of this year, determined the salary
and benefits for its chairman and chief executive, Joseph Neubauer.
Neubauer in turn, serves as a director of Verizon, and up until this year when
he vacated ts Human Resources committee, determined Babbio’s salary.”
The very next paragraph describes a similar link between Verizon and
Wyeth, a large pharmaceutical company. We have a problem here that treatens capitolism, abuse by those that can.
