hoover

Unintended Consequences of Four Government Policies

I disagree that enormous salaries must be paid to attract so-called superb talent for top executives. I would suggest its a bogus economic theory floated in the media and in academic circles by the very wealthy. Why do I think this? First, gross failure and incompetence have been obviously displayed by the overpaid heads of the biggest banks and auto companies. Obviously they are not paid for performance. Also, in the bowels of most big corporations (which I served for 33 years) there are talented people that perform most of the corporation's "thinking and managing" work. The range of pay in this large group of middle people (managers, engineers, supervisors, legal staff, buyers, department heads, project chiefs, sales managers, and many others) range from maybe $60,000 to say $300,000 or so at many corporations. If you look at manufacturing labor (another essential component) it may range from $25,000 to $50,000 or so. So, why do you have to pay $20 or $40 million (basically a lottery winner) for REAL talent for a hotshot CEO? The Chinese get talented very successful big biz CEO's for $100,000. Common sense tells me that CEO's are worth only a fraction of what they make and they should be fired regularly for incompetence like evryone else.