Obama Sets Executive Pay Limits
 

Obama sets executive pay limits - CNN.com

I have to say, I salute Obama for taking this stand. I never supported the massive free-money grab-bag we're passing off as a stimulus plan, however I regained a lot of respect for Obama for this.

The primary reason I was severely opposed to the stimulus plan was it rewarded companies who took the huge risks. The risks allowed massive amounts of capital to flow into a company during the golden years, and I felt they should pay the piper during the bad years. I saw the stimulus packages as rewarding bad behavior while the companies who shied away from such risks as being double-punished.

At least this prevents the head honchos from being double-rewarded.

If I owned a company and it flopped, it is my fault. why is this different? since it affects more people?

I dont get this at all.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

If you run a large company, and you need taxpayer assistance to prevent it from flopping, the executives can't take 10% of the recovery money in salary. $500,000 is still quite a bit, but when one CEO was making $68.5 million before, it is a wake up call that he needs to fix his company and repay the taxpayers.

I like the idea.

I am amused by the whining that seems to be occuring on Wall Street (though who knows if it actually is occurring). I heard an interview with a "compensation consultant" who was complaining about how some of these poor executives had become accustomed to a lifestyle which they just couldn't maintain if they had to subsist on a mere $500,000 a year. I tried to make out some sort of contempt in his voice, but there was none: he was fucking seriously complaining on behalf of these douchebags. These people who are supposed to be so brilliantly able to manage money that they deserve million dollar salaries can't seem to figure out how to make it on half a million a year.

I know families who have eked out a living on roughly $20,000 a year who have just had to come to terms with the fact that one of them needs to find a new fucking job. If any of these fucking overpaid Wall Street babies think they have it rough, then they could stand to learn a thing or two about what it's like to try and make a living doing something other than dicking around with other people's money.

Then I thought about it, and I realized that this "compensation consultant" guy's job was to tell executives that they should be making more money, and that executives probably paid him pretty well to do that job. Of course he's going to try to make it sound like their current pay rates are justified, he's a lackey.

On a related note, I think that divulging spending on certain superfluous items like companies receiving bail out money will have to should actually be extended to all publicly traded companies. Right now, it is impossible to tell.

When companies can order the airbus a380 and remain anonymous, hiding away the expense under some sort of investment, the shareholder's interest is certainly not being served.

i support this move entirely.
it's becoming increasingly obvious that american corporate culture has grown dysfunctional as a whole. once the severing of capital from labor was rendered axiomatic, the distortions we are seeing now--which have been operative for a long time--followed in a straight line.

my main concern is that obama is addressing an obvious symptom rather than the disease---but as an aspect of a larger project of changing the political climate within which corporate culture operates, it is still a good move.

Gotta start somewhere. I figure pissing people off and putting their heads back under the clouds is a real good place. A little system shock'll do wonders.

The gesture is essentially empty. But if it makes people happy, I guess it serves a purpose.

Bloomberg.com: Politics

You know what would have a real impact? Doing something like saying to financial institution taking federal money who issue credit cards to discontinue the practice of raising rates on cardholders during this crisis. For example I have a card that I have had for about 13 years through a bank that recieved TARP money. The APR on the card was 11.9% and they raised it to 24.9% about a month ago. I don't give a crap about what the CEO makes, but I do care about the fact that they want to dig into my pocket as a consumer and as a tax payer.

Ditto. Esp. the part about dealing with symptom rather the the disease as a whole. Hopefully this is but one angle of attack on the overall all problem.

It's definitely a step in the right direction. I don't think it'll solve all of corporate American's myriad problems, but it definitely helps ensure that taxpayer dollars aren't going to pay for some CEO's wife's Botox injections.

Wait, so you want the government to intervene and regulate a completely legal and profitable business practice because you lacked the foresight to not get yourself in debt?

Ace, I'm impressed. Welcome to socialism. ;)

Gez, how much does botox cost? I figured with 500K a year you could get those least every other month.

Sorry for the sarcasm. But, when trying to communicate with liberals I often try to relate to them in a manner that they might understand, so as they obsess over executive pay they get screwed in so many other ways and not even know it.

Obama's winning over conservatives!
Obama's winning over a conservative!

Hey, as opposed to Rush I want Obama to succeed. I want him to read what I write and act accordingly. If he does what is right, I don't care about his political label. And I recognize that the current situation is mostly due to an irrationally based emotional response to what is generally a normal business cycle. If it takes empty gestures so that people regain confidence, so be it. the biggest problem right now is that his words describing our economic condition are making the situation worse. the stock market is ready to run, he needs to stop with dumping cold water on it.

It's a good idea, so long as it doesn't discourage people from actually wanting those top exec jobs.

If I'm a brilliant economist and I could make more than $500,000 in Signapore, i'm totally there.

On the other hand a company full of brilliant economists shouldn't need money from everyone's paycheck to keep their company afloat. If Singapore wants a bunch of overpaid failed businesspeople they can have them.

I can tell you from ground zero that they are laying off and cutting back staff here as well. The banking industry is in a global tailspin and the expat bankers are getting hit the hardest.

[quote]Wait, so you want the government to intervene and regulate a completely legal and profitable business practice because you lacked the foresight to not get yourself in debt?

Ace, I'm impressed. Welcome to socialism. /quote]

Not quite. If a company is failing, it should be allowed to fail. If it is deemed so important to the national system that something must be done, then do not allow the same policies which caused the company to fail to continue with taxpayer money.

Essentially it's telling the druggie in rehab he can't take a fix because that's what got him in the place to start with.

I'm giving him a chance (more than most give conservatives). And as I said in a previous thread... if he makes earmarks fully illegal once and for all I'll even vote for him (though doubt Pelosi will let him).

I don't know any expat bankers down here but I do know the brown substance is starting to hit the fan here. The peso's in a nose dive and the economy is dead. Much the local economy is driven by tourism, Mexican tourism. Many places are running at less then 40% occupancy. The service staff are being laid off left and right.

About time!

It's okay. It's not like these executive pay limits are contributing more to our screwing.

In any case, the article you posted doesn't really say anything all that interesting. The author seemed to be under the impression that everybody thinks Obama's plan would limit executive pay for every executive evar; I don't know anyone who is under this impression. It seems like it was written to burst a bubble that didn't exist.

I was for it until I read about the deferred stock options (with no limits that I know of). I would rather get paid in stock options, do I have to pay the 35% tax when I cash those out? If they are long term gains, would it only be 15% tax on the capital gain amount?

At least it will give the CEO and other executives an incentive to bring back their companies and work hard to do so.

Well, they can't cash out on those stocks until the federal loan is repaid in full. So I honestly don't care which of the tax codes it falls under as the government will get their money back with interest before it becomes a factor.

And if the company fails how much will their stock options be worth? Seems to me like suddenly they have a direct interest in the company's success. Before they made millions whether the company made or lost money.
-----Added 6/2/2009 at 10 : 14 : 16-----
I understand completely. When I try to communicate with conservatives I tend to use smaller words and talk real slowly.

But how are companies going to get the best and brightest CEOs if they insist that the CEOs actually care about what happens to the company?

haha, personally, i'm all for the 500K cap and anything extra in stock options that won't be exercisable until the federal money is paid off. Make the ceo put his money where his mouth is. As a stock trader/investor, i can say i'd feel MUCH better about putting money in a company if i knew the CEO's only way of making any 'real' money was by making the company profitable again.

The best and the brightest are going to take their ball and leave the play ground when they're forced to work for less than 200 million a year so I don't see the stock retainment issue ever having anything to do with them.

I think its a good start.

Pay limits are fine as long as they are applied to everyone's pay structure when all or partial funds come from the federal government. College/university execs, political organizations, federally funded advocacy groups, lobbyists, federal employees, senators, congressmen, the president, the list goes on and on. This would include all perks and freebies as part of total income.

I believe these excesses are irresponsible and should be addressed (like the obscene extravagance of the presidential inauguration during dire economic times). But this is only a drop in the bucket related to the real economic issues we need to address. These are diversions... sort of like all the hubbub about Olympians smoking pot and executive pay caps when a $780-827,000,000,000 government-expansionists wet-dream of a pork-deal is about to be voted in as a "stimulus" package... and most of you (America) and our Senators don't have a clue as to what's in the details. As long as everyone's feeling all hopey-changey, I guess the details don't matter.

As long as they're only applied to companies that receive bailout money, I'm all for it. I see this - without sarcasm - as a case of two wrongs making one right. Not very right, right on a mediocre level actually, but it's going to mitigate the insanity.

I guess the democrats are determined to take back the mantle of fiscal liberalism after the GOP stole it.

I'm of two minds on this:

1) How the hell is it the Government's right, even if they DO give money to these companies, to make demands on CEO compensation? Last time I checked, neither the Executive branch nor the Legislative branch aren't given any such powers in the Constitution! Let the marketplace will sort it out.

and

2) ALL CEO's compensations should be limited, anyhow. I think that the gap between the normal salary in a company and the CEO's salary has gotten way out of hand. I think that it should be limited to some multiple of the mean salary in the company. The way it exists now, the CEO does a GOOD job by keeping the workers' salaries low, or by shipping jobs overseas, where labor is cheap. By limiting salaries to a multiple of the mean workers' salaries, there is actually an incentive to keep jobs in the US!

And then my head explodes from the conflict.

A loan company has full right to tell people how they are to use loaned money until it's paid in full. This is a similar situation.

I figure if the CEO runs the company well, the company should decide how much it's worth. The companies clearly were mismanaged, if they were so mismanaged they need government aid then the CEOs should not retain their massive income.

I prefer to bang my head against my desk, it releases the pressure before it completely explodes.

How would the marketplace sort it out? What would be the end result?

Just for fun, let's say that the failed companies (all of them) go down like Enron, WorldCom, etc... The top executives having done nothing wrong in this case (because it was the slow down in the economy), would have made an additional $XX million dollars, and probably had paid themselves first. They would care a little bit, but at the same time, retirement wouldn't be a horrible option either.

But, what happens to all the employees of these companies? Can they form a new company from the ashes? Will there be enough loans to start this company? Would a foreign company with cheap labor and living standards provide the service?

The unemployment rate will go up, home prices will fall as people don't have enough savings to continue living in their homes (let alone buy a new home), more jobs will be lost in the smaller businesses around town, and pretty much what is going on in some places now. Politicians would lose their jobs because of the situation.

I like pictures.

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/im...0205171751.gif

From today's WSJ. Here is a link to the full article.

Loopholes Sap Potency of Pay Limits - WSJ.com

Does Obama really believe his words and empty gesture would have an impact on actual executive compensation, or is he using words and an empty gesture to sucker people?

gee, ace, that's a one-dimsensional reading of one-dimensional pictures.
you could also use them to argue that there's something unhinged about american corporate culture in general, and that the wasj is advocating fraud---which is not recognized as fraud because the corporate culture that it synchs with is itself unhinged (a circle, you see)...

This is extremely accurate and true. I am not a person who believes CEOs deserve great amounts of money when they lay people off or take tax revenue/abatements to operate.

But, the real focus right now should be on those banks who got TARP monies and are raising their Credit Card rates. My Chase went from 11.9 to 22.9 in one month. Minimum payments went up from $10 to $25. Another card from an RBS subsidiary bank went from 9.9% to 25% with a raise in minimum payment from $25 to $75.

Now, if I am having problems paying my credit card off to begin with due to this economy, how the Hell am I going to pay those increases? Let alone the interest on items I bought thinking I was buying at 9.9% now I'm paying 1/4 of the price in interest?

Let's see Obama do something about that, not freaking lip service to try to appease the people, while not truly changing anything.
-----Added 9/2/2009 at 11 : 39 : 27-----
I truly believe it is the latter.

You call it "unhinged", I call it "people will do what they think is in their best interest." I think that is honest. I would not trust a CEO to do what is best for me, nor would I trust a politician to do that either. It is my responsibility to make sure things happen that are best for me. That is a fundamental difference between me and many who post here.

what the wsj is advocating, ace, is fraud.
that's the point.
the explanation for it is an unhinged corporate culture, one in which all that is important is me me me, what's in my interest, what serves my immediate material requirements.

how is it fraud? the WSJ loopholes are just that loopholes. Fraud is fraud. It isn't any different from some divorcee who puts all assets in the new spouse's name to keep their worth and value whole.

here's some nice excerpts from the oxford english dictionary definition of fraud.
figure out which ones apply for yourself.
it's fun AND it's easy.

I see those definitions and understand them, but again, don't see how it is fraud. There is no deceit.

maybe renaming a ceo position in order to avoid caps on compensation can be understood as just manoevering for material advantage, but it can also be understood as an act of deception in itself.

kinda in the way that a corporation passing it's liquidity through a network of offshore accounts in order to manipulate its tax rates or for other purposes is deceptive, even if it's legal.

more generally, you'd think people would recognize the severity of the situation we're in and kinda work within that rather than working out ways to reconfigure job titles in order to keep maximum income flowing to themselves.
but maybe thinking that way is beyond the scope of what one should expect under this form of capitalism from those who benefit from the way the system is organized.
but if that's the case, the problems that organization is moving through are more fundamental that any of us think.

sorry yes the CEO renaming is close to fraud since the spirit of the law would I assume not saw something as pigeon holed as CEO/PRESIDENT or the like.

but the rest of the compensation packages can be generated creatively. I found some editorials overseas interesting that they viewed the current group of people in positions not the savvy tenured financiers but the 2nd and 3rd stringers because the 1st stringers all moved to private hedge funds and equity management firms.

I'm not in agreement to any pay caps normally, but since they are playing with both of our money, I think there's some accountability that is required. This is why I wasn't a fan of the bailout to begin with, the banks should have just failed and a fire sale for their assets ensue.

Pretty interesting. Some how I get the feeling that there is a view that a CEO or executive can not be worth the money they get paid. In sports, if you have a star performer it is easy to see how and why they can demand the highest compensation, but the same is true in business. There is also a risk. In some cases a corporation might pay too much for a person that under achieves. If this is the case, I suggest that we let the market punish the corporation for the mistake. It seems that Obama and many who support his empty gesture differ. So, "games" have to be come part of the culture. The bottom-line is performance is going to get rewarded and poor performance punished. Just let the system work.

Speaking of games here is another tid-bid I read today related to empty gestures:

Cap Won't Hold Back Street's Big Dogs - WSJ.com

Who is at fault? the managers? Harvard? All parties are adults, if there was fraud it was in the pretense on the part of the critics thinking they could get what the Harvard thought were top tier money managers on the "cheap".

And so it goes, Obama wants to play games and some think the market won't respond. Top executives are worth more than $500,000/year and they will get paid.
-----Added 9/2/2009 at 02 : 03 : 42-----
Why don't you see the deception in Obama's empty gesture?

Government is in over its head, we discussed this in some other threads on regulation. Regulators will always be behind the the creativity of those who participate in the market. At best all regulators can do is respond and hope they get it right. A simpler and better approach is A) not bailing companies out and B) Full and fair disclosure.

ace--give me a break. if there's a consistent assumption at play in this rather tedious exchange, it is yours, and it is that ceo's are necessarily worth what they're paid. the second one is simpler still--that obama's statements concerning excessive executive compensation in the context of firms that are getting bailout money is somehow "empty"--and you seem to further assume that if you write the phrase "empty gesture" enough times that it will stop referring only to itself and will acquire some kind of weight for people who are not you.

but the facts are not with you on this, as they are not on most things when you try to argue from your rightwing political viewpoint: what prompted obama to say that such levels of compensation are "shameful" is obvious. that you do not think it was shameful has much to do with your sycophantic relation to the imaginary "captains of industry" that seem to dance about in Heroic Conservative Pseudo-accounts of contemporary capitalism and nowhere else.

the cause of these incidents is self-evident as well: no controls built into the first round of tarp money.
to dodge this, you adopted a kind of peculiar limbaugh-esque imaginary history that blames obama for it. fine, whatever.

you operate under the illusion that markets are rational, that bad actors are punished blah blah blah. at this point, i see no reason to take that nonsense seriously any more--i've made an effort to engage you on this and it's clearly a waste of my time.

in order to make this ridiculous a priori viewpoint operational in the present context, you are reduced to wishing away a significant crisis of captialism itself--and in that, you are simply dreaming. dream as you like, ace, but don't expect that your dreaming will be confused with an account of reality.

i'm going to do something that's more interesting than talking with you---i'm thinking that stapling my hand to my desk would be more fun. let's see, shall we?

Like Obama you communicate in platitudes; "give me a break", "the facts are not with you", "self evident", "operate under the illusion". There is no reasoned response I can give. You present a lot of words, with little in specifics. Now that I have that off of my chest, I will get back to a focus on my "dreaming".

If a corporation of, say, 50,000 employees decides to give their CEO $10,000,000/year (and by this, I mean the Board of Directors decides), and that CEO fails, you suggest that the market should punish the corporation for the mistake. Isn't the end result of such "punishment" a round of low-level employee layoffs and a comfy severance package for the outgoing CEO? In other words, why support a system that punishes the lower level workers for the mistakes of the executives?

Actually it is the shareholders that get to punish the company. Shareholders can request the BOD to remove the CEO. The workers SOMETIMES get punished in the harshest of environments and situations, but not always.

Sumner Redstone (majority stock holder) punished Frank Bianci and Tom Freston directly after stock prices didn't respond upwards to the "good moves" they were doing.

Note that many PRIVATE companies don't have the same monetary performance requirements but still compensate their CEOs with million dollar salaries.

cyn--what that builds into corporate governance is one and only one feedback loop--the only responsibility a ceo has institutionally is to increase shareholder value. in most european countries, there are a variety of such institutionalized loops, some of which link the ceo to labor (at least in theory) by way of production councils (i can't remember the exact name for them at the moment--comité d'enterprise in french)--you'd think that multiplying these institutions would make corporations less despotic (except with reference to shareholder profits)...more later maybe,

I'm be happy to pay European prices for goods and services... if those same kinds of controls are in place. I don't think everyone else is willing to pay that high a price for goods and services.

In this respect, how do you create different loops since the bank is nationalized at this point?

I'm with Ace, good CEOs are like superstars. They have a knack or talent to get people motivated and excited about their company, this goes for workers, consumers, bankers, manufacturers, etc...

Makes sense to me. Also, it's not just CEOs who are making over $500k in these companies, either. Sometimes there are thousands of employees in large multinational companies making over $500k, so while what Obama is talking about might sound reasonable and responsible on the eve of a $800 billion economic stimulus package, it really has no basis in reality.

conservatives and their information phobia...there should be a drug that can be taken to deal with that disorder.

you might want to check this out.

http://www.faireconomy.org/files/exe...xcess_2008.pdf

the report has a particularly interesting spin which points out the amount of money taxpayers--you know, those folk the right likes to pretend it defends--end up losing as a function of the tax code which effectively subsidizes these pay levels.

personally, i look at this as an insane skewing in the distribution of resources and cannot for the life of me figure out how it is exactly that the populist right was persuaded that defending this sort of nonsense was in any way in their economic interest. but there are greater mysteries in the world, ones that do not lead toward total cynicism in thinking about the way this one does.

Maybe because a lot of us in the populist movement realize historical fact when we see it. That in no society in history has everyone held an equal share, and they never will so long as we're human?

My reasoning has nothing to do with CEO's being paid well, it has to do with CEO's that failed miserably being paid well. People are paid by how difficult they are to replace. If a manager is integral to a company's success, he should be compensated as such. If a manager is worthless he should be paid as such. The CEO's who need bailouts failed in their duty, so if they need a bailout they should not get a windfall.

This is not a failure of the capitalist system no matter how you try to force that square into the circle. This is a failure of the people in charge keeping a lid on lending to those who can repay, and a failure of those keeping a lid on corporate expenses vs. international competition.

the alternative is not either exactly the way things are (minus the requisite "bad apples") or absolutely flat income for all--the alternative is more an entirely skewed distribution of resources as over against one that is less so, more functional and equitable. read the report, if you haven't. the data in it is surprising, particularly the comparisons between ceo income levels and the average salary of working people in america--you know, wage laborers, regular folk.

imagine the research and development that might take place were this system less entirely geared around shareholder profits detached from any possible linkage of production to a social totality. imagine the jobs that might be created if a significant percentage of the money paid to the upper ends of corporations were instead plowed back into long-term investments.

i don't think this populist movement has thought real hard about any of this. that movement sure hasn't gathered much information, if the only option on the table is A or the complete opposite of A.

The employees of failed companies go to work for successful companies.
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 11 : 35 : 58-----
Your use of the word "only" is misleading. A CEO of a publicly traded corporations has legal and fiduciary responsibilities responsibilities to constituents other than shareholders.
-----Added 10/2/2009 at 11 : 41 : 59-----
In the Key Findings section:

The problem is not with the CEO but with the convoluted tax code. Taxation based on consumption would tax people based on lifestyle rather than "income" which can be manipulated very easily. If a person lives like a billionaire they should be taxed accordingly, we should not tax labor, savings and investments.

yeah? a lot of companies hiring these days? do tell

There are companies hiring. There is unemployment compensation. There is a concept called saving for a rainy day. There are educational and job re-training opportunities. There is taking your skills and starting your own business. There is Ebay. And let's not forget the government is going to be hiring.

Notice how lately many are talking about the acceleration in job losses in the past three months. By chance could this be correlated to Obama's election and his continued negativity? We don't need our President continually telling us that this is the worst economic environment since the Depression. It wasn't three months ago when he said it and it is not now, but if he keeps saying it - it will become truth.

Gordon Brown already said it.

BBC NEWS | Politics | World depression claim 'a slip'

"We should agree as a world on a monetary and fiscal stimulus that will take the world out of r... depression."

that's absurd, ace.

the reasons for job loss have everything to do with demand collapse on the one side and the consequences of the ongoing credit freeze on the other, which in turn has to do with structural problems within neoliberal-style capitalism as a whole. and this is a global phenomenon. it doesn't matter whether you agree with this or not--it's simply an empirical fact that you can choose to either wrap your head around or not.

since you provide no factual support for your various pollyanna claims that everything is basically normal and such problems as there are follow from bad people who say negative things, i really don't see why your position should be taken seriously unless you start providing some basis for them beyond your vague pronouncements about the state of things.

First I simply presented a question on commonly available information, ie. job loss, Obama's election and Obama's comments.

Second, there is market psychology that has an impact on consumer spending - this is commonly known as well.

So there you have the basis of my "non-factual based" question.

Your response seems odd to me. I am a very curious person, and I get pleasure from questioning conventional wisdom. I get the feeling that at one point you got enjoyment out of questioning conventional wisdom and had a high level of intellectual curiosity, in reading your responses to my posts, I get the feeling you have lost that and that and now you just go with the flow of what you believe and have believed for years and won't challenge your views any longer. Saying things like I should not be taken seriously add no value. I don't care. My behavior won't change based on such comments. And I actual take comments like that as a sign of a person not willing to engage or respond in a reasoned manner. If my comments are not worthy of engagement or a reasoned response I would think they would be ignored.

If your -- ahem -- "wisdom" is no longer conventional, it's because most, even conservatives & capitains of industry have moved on.

actually. ace, the contrary is true of me in general.
what i'm losing interest in--and fast--is interacting with you.

you want a more comprehensive indication of my general position on ceo salary levels as a massive misallocation of resources, read the report i posted above.

Here's the market "punishing" executives for failure again:

Circuit City wants to pay execs bonuses | InsideNova.com

so yeah, that's $2.3 million split 16 ways if the executives who mis-managed the company into non-existence "meet their goals" (HA HA HA) while the remaining $750k will be split among the other 34,000 employees.

Viva the Free Market Economy!

How about a little further definition of context by answering a couple of questions. How do you define "a massive misallocation of resources?" Who determines if resources are misallocated? Where is the threshold for "a massive misallocation of resources?"

Never mind about answering the questions related to a topic, why not tell me more about me and my failings. Since you are not really interested but continually tell us how you are not interested...

Or, how about some infotainment from one of my biased sources of information. This one is interesting:

Bloomberg.com: Exclusive

You have to admit, that's some funny stuff.:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
-----Added 11/2/2009 at 11 : 03 : 24-----
They should have unionized, or got into management.

you've not addressed the point with either of these answers.

unionization is a red herring argument, and we both know that you can't run a company with all managers an no workers.

but it's unsurprising that a Republican would turn his nose up at the little guys and blame them for their own financial shortcomings. If only they'd worked harder, right?

as usual, ace, you seem to operate in a private universe.

this is a much more accurate assessment of the overall situation we are moving through, from the cognitive problems that the leadership of the country are collectively performing before our collective eyes, but which passes without being named by a media apparatus locked inside the same problem (compounded by the need to maintain a certain ideological continuity with the obsolete mode of thinking that is neoliberalism, if only to avoid questions of "if this is as stupid an ideology as is now apparent, how exactly did it become the lingua franca for relaying infotainment?).....the persistence of a highly skewed model of wealth distribution in a context of arbitrary regulation that would have been unthinkable without neoliberalism as a figleaf....a problem of growing public anger, which threatens all of the existing arrangement if it becomes focused at any point (an eventuality that the press has every interest in preventing, as it owes its advertising revenue to the existing order and so by definition affirms whatever the existing order is, even as it functions as "loyal opposition" within it)....

there are serious problems to be addressed, but neoliberals cannot even begin to do it, and the residuum of 35 years of neoliberal hegemony is such that incoherence caused by it dances all of us toward the edge...

Surtout ne changez rien ! - Les blogs du Diplo

it's in french.

Advertising revenues are way down in print media. This is immediately apparent when you pick up the newspapers. They're very thin these days. For one, papers don't have many writers anymore. The Chicago Tribune cut staff and has compensated by reducing the physical size of the paper while increasing the size and numbers of pictures. (Of course superCEO Sam Zell is rewarding himself handsomely for making a foolish decision and then running "his" purchase into the ground. Staff gets fired, Zell gets a load of cash -- even with his heavily, leveraged, doomed-from the start deal paid for mostly with other people's money and TribCo in bankruptcy.) The other reason the papers are thinner is because there are a lot fewer ads. There is talk of running papers as public services. That is interesting because it means that the system is not capable of reproducing its ideology and providing information, at least when it comes to print media. (Obviously, tv & radio are more functional as organs of the ideological reproduction of the status quo. ) So, either print media withers away, or it survives as something else. There is a possibility that print media could become something more critical. It has to change, because the system has effectively decided it doesn't need print. That's the optimistic take on it, anyway.

I will admit to being cold and heartless, if you admit to wanting others to do your "heavy lifting". To me it seems that there are millions of people who share your view. If a few of you got together and bought Circuit City or started your own store, you could run it the way you want paying the janitor the same as the CEO, and not worry about profits. If all your friends bought from that store you can drive all the other "irresponsible" folks out of business. So, my point is - stop complaining about stuff in your control. If hourly workers are under paid, they should do something about it.

And please don't tell me it can not be done. there are mutual insurance companies, owned by policyholders. There are credit unions owned by depositors, etc, and the funny thing is often these companies struggle to get members who think like you do.

you misunderstand me (or are creating strawmen, you tell me). I'm not suggesting CEO's and janitors get paid the same. I'm suggesting that paying out bonuses to 16 executives at Circuit City as a reward for running the company into the ground makes no sense to me. Frankly, none of them should get bonuses.

I don't know the circumstances of Circuit City's problems, but what if there were circumstances outside of the control of the executives who got the bonuses but they managed the company above what would have been reasonably expected? what if these executives had contracts? What if the bonuses were for people to stay long enough for an orderly liquidation? I would also think that a bankruptcy judge looked at the compensation and ruled on if the bonuses were appropriate. All I know is that I did not shop at Circuit City, did not invest in circuit City, did not work at Circuit City and don't consider it my business what they paid their people.

theory doesn't exactly hold true to a lot of other areas in life though, does it?

Principles do. One of my principles is to let others conduct their business as they see fit as long as they don't violate the law and don't engage in fraudulent activities. If the people who own circuit City want to pay some people bonuses to the degree that it harms the company, who am I to say no to that?

that's fine, but the entire reason I brought it up was to refute the notion that executives are punished for bad business decisions

I worked for a corporation that went bankrupt. There were people, executives, that had worked for the company years. They had stock options and used their own money to invest in stock. In a few of these situations the executives were less than a year from planned retirement and lost everything they counted on. So, yes - there may be some who walk away from a failure laughing all the way to the bank, but my gut tells me that is the exception and that executives who go through a failure have to do what everyone else does. Dust off and find another job. The lesson I learned is, lookout for yourself.