Something Is Going Great
 

The Dow went past 18,000 yesterday for the first time in history as the stock market continued to record highs. Investors saw this as the latest encouraging news in the economy that showed the US grew at the fastest pace in more than a decade in the third quarter.

This was extracted from The Daily Sun, Dec. 24.

"Double, double, toil and trouble..." Shakespeare Quotes: Double, double, toil and trouble Intro

This artificial low interest rate driven bubble will eventually burst as all bubbles eventually do. PEs are not yet in the stratosphere but they are not far beneath it at 19.48 in the S&P 500 as of 12/19/14. http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/pag...1-peyield.html

Plus, our national debt is now over 18 trillion dollars. http://www.usdebtclock.org/#

A Santa Claus rally continues. Merry Christmas.

Fortunately, US companies are making record profits as a percentage of GDP and our economy is a safe haven compared to the rest of the world. So far stock holders and company executives have done well. In the future, hopefully these same companies will share this good fortune with the employees. Thankfully, these past 9 years I have contributed to the low employee participation rate.

Heck yeah. I am for the CEO and the newest hire making the same. We have to be fair.

GG ....... Bwaaaahaaaaaaa .......Merry Christmas!

Where is Robin Hood when he so dearly needed?

In the forest where he belongs.

Sandtrap - Any idea when CEOs and stockholders are going to share the munificence with us retirees who have no Wall Street portfolios? Am finally enjoying lower gas prices - but - I hate the chore of going food shopping! Grocery prices are outta sight! Cost of my healthcare is going up, too; and we may have to cut back on our level of cable tv if that price goes up higher! Am really looking forward to feeling the impact of the alleged improving economy! When will I?

Try this again.

CEOs Earn Nearly 300 Times What Their Workers Make | ThinkProgress

Ed - Am so glad to see that someone highlighted this topic. Every time it is brought up I have to ask some questions:
1.] What SHOULD that ratio of CEO to worker be?
2.] Why should it be as suggested?
3.] What basis did you use to determine what that ratio should be?
To date, no one has been able to come up with logical, factual, non-emotional information to answer to those questions.

As this author pointed out, "EPI’s data measure CEO compensation at the 350 biggest American public companies in a given year..." I have to ask - 'Why' and 'Why not use a sampling of CEO compensation from a variety of economic levels all the way down to the lowest paid?

I feel the questions to be appropriate, especially when the worker salary statistic is derived from "...the annual pay for workers in a given industry,..." Well. how screwy is that? Certainly not comparing apples and apples there? Why are such surveys not measuring compensation levels in a variety of industries? Such surveys suffer from a serious credibility problem.

Does anyone know that since CEO compensation analysis is coming from the biggest companies that the employee compensation analysis is coming from employees in the same industries that the CEOs manage?

And then there is the statement, "...executives are rigging pay in their favor." It fails to take into account those CEO salaries that are established by corporate boards and approved at annual stockholder meetings. I spent the first half of my career working in the field of corporate compensation and cannot recall ANY CEO who set their own salary! Of course, back in those dark ages, both employee and executive compensation was established using salary survey information that was both conducted by the corp and was published by leading compensation authorities.

I am certainly not as expert as you on matters of executive compensation, and could not answer your questions. I provided the link as to provide some context for the topic. It is clear that ceo comp as measured in this study has gone up pretty dramatically as compared to the average worker. According to the chart the ratio was 20 times in the mid 60s climbing to Almost 90 Times in the mid nineties before zooming upward to almost 300 times that of the average worker today. Do they earn that - are they overpaid? That is not a question I can answer. What I do know is the average worker has regressed in average earning power over the last twenty years, and that seems not to make sense in a time when CEO comp has risen so dramatically, and company valuations have risen overall. I don't begrudge anyone making as much money as they can if their efforts are honest, lawful, and ethical. At the same time there have been several cases of CEOs, such as the recent head of JC Penny, who nearly ran their company into the ground, while receiving otherworldly comp packages including huge buy-outs. I am far more interested in seeing average workers benefiting fairly for their contributions to their company's success, as the middle class is the biggest segment of our society and the driver of economic growth. As far as boards awarding the CEO comp packages there have been reports that many boards are staffed with cronies of the CEOs. I don't know if that is true, as I am still awaiting my invitation to sit on the board of an S &P 500 company.

njbchbum - your statements are right on target. Fortune 500 companies are not typical of the vast majority of businesses. The salary ratio of CEO:worker inmost businesses with which I am familiar is much lower. And your last paragraph notes the practices that I have seen most often used to establish wages and salaries on a company wide basis.

And while we are on the topic, I wonder what the salary ratio is for big union CEOs compared to average union members?

I really hope that wasn't a serious comment. Fortunately, others have provide some good insight on the lack of increase of compensation for employees.