I fail to understand how obscene executive incomes were ever allowed to exist. Why wasn’t this knocked on the head at least a couple of decades ago?

How can any shareholder not be grossly outraged by the head of their company drawing an income that is greater in twelve months than they’ll probably see cumulatively in their lifetime? The same question applies for any member of the community that has anything to do with any company with an overpaid top echelon…or any member of the community that believes in fair pay and a closing of the equity gap rather than a steady widening.

Surely shareholders can see that their CEOs and top executives are not a hundred or a thousand times smarter than themselves and are not doing a job that is a hundred or a thousand times more important. So how on earth can they condone rates of pay that suggest that the big-knobs are this much more intelligent and more important?

How can anyone condone a free-market system that so blatantly makes the very rich rapidly richer and the keeps the poor poor?

Why doesn’t the community demand that the government cap these rates of pay?

Why the hell hasn’t any government seen fit to do this anyway?

Oow…well of course the answer to the last question is that big biz rules, not governments.

Obscene executive incomes indeed.

Why allow in foreign executives when 100 Australians could be employed for the same total money to do the same job?.

$10 million divided by 100 is $100,000.Plenty to live on.

This is one of the reasons why I express the view that people ought consider not voting for either the liberal or labour party.

However, with the political donation rules as they are, conventional political wisdom no doubt suggests that it is beneficial to harvest donating fat cats, who are easier to control as individuals than a big group of "fair days pay for a fair days work" thinking people.

As one drunk plastic catholic said to me recently:
"the key to my success was to express in advance my personal desire to be an adherant, not an advocate."

We forget of course that executives are not employers, but honcho
employees, with their snouts closest to the company trough
and cheque book!

What eventuates is a human foible of always wanting more, no
matter what you pay them. Sad but true.

The situation extends beyond the CEOs to the Boards and across industries. And there is an interlace between the two.

When Westpac was in trouble c. 1992, the ordinary shareholders moved a motion of no confidence against the the Sir Eric Neil led Board, the AMP Society which had a common director used the block of all the insurance, nominee and super funds under its control to defeat the gathered small shareholders. Soon after the Board was forced, yet there was clase each Board member received a pai out equal to all their emoluments received to date were they forced to retire. The payouts were in the millions. When John O'Neil ran the State Bank into debt, the Borad praised him and gave him huge pay raise.

In the early 1970s, when a school headmaster earned $8K pa and a bank manager of a sizeable branch $10K pa, Sir Robert Noman earned $100K. The CEO of a major bank now earn $20M pa. A branch manager does earn $2M pa nor a school headmaster $1.6M pa.

In the US, Citibank is receiving a USD $600M bailout, keeping the incompendents whom directed the sub-prime mortgage situation in a job.

Those with CBA super funds invested will have received a letter from the Bank stated its intention to back date unit prices in need (to protect the Bank). It will be interesting to test its duel pricing intentions against the TPA and the NSW Fair Trading Act (Sect 40, I think).

I think markrt forcess should be allowed to operate to clean away the existing organizations and their leaderships. Government should not be bailing-ou Banks, and the big salaried operators should go. In which case, (a) Asian overseas banks might take over ours', or (b) the Government does take control but to avoid socialism refloats the companies after three or four years. Shareholers will loose but that is their jeopardy for giving their voting who they did. It is the shareholder's right to loose for supporting the wrong board, who apppoint the wrong executives.

A timely and interesting quote.

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

Abraham Lincoln
President of the United States, 1864