Show Me The Money

President Obama has just finished declaring a cap on executive salaries for those firms so completely inept that they require the US taxpayers to bail them out of their financial mess. Apparently I'm not the only citizen outraged at the completely obscene levels of compensation for the lords of our economy. While I have no problem with paying generous salaries to the best and the brightest, these folks are clearly forty watt incandescent bulbs. Or less.

The average CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company made an average of $14.2 million in 2007. That does not include anything but salary. I find a number of places that provide a ratio between the aveage CEO and the average production worker. Although not all these sites agree on the actual number, the lowest I saw was 430, the highest was 633. That's 633 times the average worker's salary. Think about that. Mulitply your annual salary by 600 and see how happy that would make you! This is so far beyond nuts that I can't think of an adequate adjective to describe it.

Also on my list of unbelievable financial expectations would be Manny Ramirez. The Dodgers offered him 25 million for a one year contract. He turned them down. Let me restate that - they offered him 25,000,000 dollars for one year of playing baseball. And he turned them down. What the heck can you be thinking when twenty five million dollars is not enough for a year's work? This whole pro sports thing is a bit off the subject, but let's at least take a look at the numbers. The average player salary for the four major sports are as follows:

NBA - $4 million

MLB - $3.2 million

NHL - $1.9 million

NFL - $1.4 million

Not bad work if you can get it! Granted, there are a number of superstars that far exceed the numbers listed above, but remember, these are averages. And remember that the average CEO salary is considerably higher than the average sports star.

At least with sports you get to see - on public display - what your money is paying for. If the player does well, you get to see that. If he does poorly, you also see that. The Bozos in the Boardroom, however, are invisible to all of us. Regardless of their performance, they continue to take their huge salaries. Time to stop this. I heard one caller on a radio station this morning talking about a civil war. Nobody was laughing.