What a Curious Statement
Ellen Simon reported this morning in the Washington Times that business leaders are making more money. One statement at the beginning of the article caught my attention:
Business bigwigs pocket billions - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper
Compensation for America”s top chief executives has skyrocketed into the stratospheric heights of pro athletes and movie stars: Half make more than $8.3 million a year, and some make much, much more. (emphasis added)
Executives of companies help a business produce something. Athletes and other entertainers (yes, athletes are really just entertainers) do only that - entertain people, not produce something.
Why is it that when a business man or woman makes money for a company (including increasing the share price of its stock), they shouldn’t be compensated at a level comparable to people who sing or dance, or chase each other around a grassy enclosure?
What the online edition of this article didn’t include was a graph purporting to show that executive pay had shot way up since 1991. On page 8 of the print edition, the graph shows that pay in 1991 was about $5 million or $6 million per year. Now, according to the text, it has skyrocketed to $20 million per year.
What the text fails to note is that the chart shows that this is a drop of about 40% from the real peak in 2000 (ooh, wait, previous administration, please ignore). The real peak was at $35 million per year to which it had traveled at warp speed during the previous administration.
I wonder why that wasn’t mentioned.
Source: Business bigwigs pocket billions - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper
