Do Wall Street and CEO salaries make you angry? No.

Do you think your anger is justified? Not angry.

Would you support rules regulating or capping compensation in private companies? No.

How can anyone think government-imposed salary caps on private sector businesses is good? The people who support this march toward state socialism and trying to remedy the perceived social injustice of large salaries fail to resognize that once you start down the path and give the federal government the power to regulate salaries, the federal govenment will never surrender that power. That leaves us all at the mercy and “wisdom” of the corrupt dirtbags we keep electing.

Today’s target is the CEOs, tomorrow it will be midlevel managers, and the next day it will be those who initially benefitted from the redistrubution of wealth from the COEs.

In the old days, individual people bought stocks and voted their shares. These days computers buy half the shares and computers don’t vote them. Company CEOs sit on each other’s boards and vote each other raises.

As long as some companies still owe their survival to the citizen bail out, yes I am all for salary caps. Stockholders should be the ones who determine if incomes are excessive for the rest. However many of these companies have no stockholders. Or blocks of shares are owned by their holding companies. And it is my belief that those are the corrupt dirtbags who keep electing our government officials.

Since I am in the bottom quintile, we are not talking about much, but to the extent possible, I boycott businesses and services who I feel are financially abusing society. Do I own stocks: yes. Do I manage them myself: better than the company running my 457k.

Note to CEO’s. Your reality is that there is an unfortunate public perception. The real reality is that you are paid too much. You must a.) take the money and smile all the way to your gated community and not really worry about what we think or b.) structure your bonuses, etc to reflect your actual worth. If you company did not produce any value for the customer or stockholder, you aren’t worth much.

Sports stars who do not generate ticket and advertising sales from average citizens are not paid as much as those who do. Of course, I do not go to live professional sporting events and I ignore most of the advertising.

@Jaime I, like you, don’t patronize companies I think are hurting us.

Also, on the salary cap issue I wasn’t directing my position toward the companies what have taken bail out money. Those that did are now beholden to Uncle Sam. “…they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather than Mammon, if they have anything to do with him, shall draw their chariot.” George Eliot.

Any control device by government leads to loss of freedom for all. This whole subject is really about a power grab by a group of people that believe in the supremacy of Central Government Control and not the supremacy of the individual. The founders of this country warned us of this. We should listen to their warnings and observe what is going on in those countries that have gone down this path. We are losing our country and everything it has stood for. I have heard that we have three groups in this country: the producers, the mochers, and the controllers. The producers are losing out to the moochers.

I see the Consumer Confidence numbers were not too good. This exacerbates the top heavy CEO financial reward “PR” problem. Folks, its either a.) or b.).

For Christmas, I am giving gift certificates to wonderful locally owned restaurants or buying items at local antique shops – very off the corporately owned RADAR. Other things I have considered is wine produced in state [small growers] or gift baskets marketed by our state’s Dept of Agriculture [small growers]. One family will receive a badly needed grocery store certificate, but it will be for a small independent grocer near them. Then there is always regifting.

So remember CEO’s, while you are chosing a.), I am also making choices.

The founders of this country also thought that “state” meant “sovereign nation.” Lincoln’s war changed that and gave us a mercantile central government.

Alan, you have totally forgotten the fourth group – the consumers. Whether you spend your hard earned money, or “mooch”, the price paid for those goods or services is set by the producers. And the producers have sent lobbyists to Washington to buy the controllers. That’s how it works in state government; I am close enough to observe that for myself. The producers realize that they have run out of paying customers, so they lobby the government to pay top retail prices to provide their product to the non-paying sector. Don’t blame the liberals for that. Liberals naively think the producers should provide these services out of the goodness of their hearts.

What is so interesting is the extent to which “large business” has recruited the public as unpaid lobbyists to shill for them. People, you are not protecting the entrepreneur or small business with all this uproar. Take a moment to observe who is paying for advertising time to sponsor the talk shows you watch.

@billwald
You need to go back and study your history. This was decided, by our founding fathers I must say, in 1787.

So today’s headlines say Wall Street is angry. Boo Hoo. If you are earning profits from selling the public a popular product and running an efficient organization which also gives stockholders good value, then you have a right to be angry. But the rest of you whose incomes are dependent on the shell game you play amongst yourselves, be grateful we did not strip you naked, send you out in the streets, and beat you with switches as we paraded you around the town. So you are worried that your brightest and best will leave the company? What were they the best at doing? Running the company well for the benefit of all, or putting coin in your pocket? Makes me think I will write some MORE e-mails to my congressmen to be LESS lenient regarding your sorry selves.

Alan, I got to thinking about a situation about 2 years ago, when a young legislator came up with an idea to save the state some money for the health care it was offering its public employees. I went to the hearings. The HOSPITAL lobby squelched that one, because they don’t care that dollar shifting is making the private sector pay, they didn’t want to see anything that would tamper with their bottom line. Since the hospital lobby contributes campaign funds to key legislators, that one never saw daylight.

Oh, and by the way, the young guy was a Republican, and guess what, the key legislators who were on that committee, the ones who put a lid on it – they were also Republicans.

I didn’t and don’t believe in “too big to fail.” Giving the bailout funds was asinine, and complaining now about how they are being spent is more of the same. As for the companies that didn’t take bailouts, how they reward their employees is their business.

@Nadja
Nadja, the one making the biggest stink are the ones who took the public money. I want them to plow it back in the company and get this over with as quickly as possible, so they don’t come back wringing their hands in poverty once again. The non-bailouts are in a different league. No one is regulating their incomes.

It’s true that CEO’s just vote raises for each other. If you had a group of waitresses or retail clerks get together and decide what they should be paid, what do you think would happen? If it’s a good idea for CEO’s, then it should be a good idea for everyone else, right? Let the shareholders decide directly!

When there’s a public bailout of a corporation, a requirement of getting the money should be that the entire board of directors should get the boot. So should the entire upper level of management. Don’t like it? Don’t take the bailout!