'Put a Cap on eye-popping incomes'

[muppet]

But that sort of bonus in a country of 4.3m, something is wrong.

[spurner]

Maybe they can legislate that every person in NZ has to get paid what the average national pay rate is...

And everyone has to drive a car with a value between $5000-$15000...

And legislate against paying more than $100 for a pair of shoes...

They say that smaller gaps in income distribution create happier and more harmonious societies, so imagine happy we will all be if we can get some of these points into law.

[Dean@Massiveaction]

Great idea Spurner. And if anybody earns too much money the state could take it off them and give it to people who aren't earning anything.
We could call the taking it off the rich "tax" and giving it to the poor "welfare"

[HermanZ]

Spurner,
Now you are being silly.
Dont need no legislation, come the Revolution he will be up against the wall with those bankers.

HermanZ

[revdev]

Sorry muppet, I'm struggling to see the connection between salary/bonus and population?

G

[AndyB]

People are driven by profit. It doesn't matter that you are a closet Marxist. You will still love your investment rising in value.
What I do worry about is the flip side of that coin - when price rises hit us in the pocket reflecting the need for large corporations to generate ever increasing profits.

As for the CEO's job I think it is more in making a spreadsheet and knowing the lingua franca of the economic genre rather than some outstanding talent or exceptional IQ. Frankly, I am not convinced any accountant is worth such a huge salary as five million NZD's a year. It's excessive.

[Gatekeeper]

But isn't that just about us being basically jealous of anothers success.

Depends what you base "success" on. For some it's obviously $$$ signs.
For me that's pretty weak.

[roseneath_rat]

You're surrounded by big buck honchos, what's you're view.

No, not surrounded by just wealthy folk, but I see good and bad business operators, wealthy and poor ones. I deal with a great deal of people of limited means, but almost all of them want to do something about their situation to improve it and earn more.

[muppet]

A bonus of $50m in America with a population of 300m equates to only 17cents per person.
However in NZ $5m bonus equates to $1.15 per person.
To follow this line of reasoning he should have only got a bonus of $731000.
Now who would be grumbling about him receiving that sort of bonus?

[CJ]

A bonus of $50m in America with a population of 300m equates to only 17cents per person.

I dont think we have anything to complain of in NZ.

The US government bails out the banks and then : http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/f...-bonuses200903

US basketball players probably earn more than all of telecom staff put together : http://hoopshype.com/salaries.htm

Or what about this guy, “The entire compensation package. . . was decided not by a compensation committee but by Mr. Schwarzman himself," and what did he decide??? Muppet I dont think you should open this one as you might have a heart attack : http://industry.bnet.com/financial-s...est-paid-ceos/

[muppet]

he got a raise last year of 200,000 percent

The backlash against such big raises is rising just like the backlash against gangs is rising in NZ.
2012 will be the watershed year for overpaid financial so called experts. See post no 835 http://www.propertytalk.com/forum/sh...t=2738&page=42

[Winston001]

But isn't that just about us being basically jealous of anothers success. Who says there is some limit to how much you should get paid?
I think it's just a socialistic culture issue we have imbibed from Helen. Earn what you can providing you aren't doing it dishonestly.
We all love the stories of the overnight sensations who sell their businesses for a fortune but we resent pepole who have found a way to get paid a fortune every year. Just drivel!!

Fair point. If Paul Reynolds can fool the board of Telecom into paying him $5 million, good luck to him.

And therein lies the problem - the governors of public companies have an Emperor's New Clothes idea of value. NZ companies however cannot do much about this in the face of world-wide acceptance of multi-million dollar packages. If there is change it will come from the USA and Europe. So far its just noise.

Incidentally the same protests were made at the time of the dot.com collapse in 2001 and what happened.......? Nothing.

Lets examine Paul Reynolds for a moment. The average single income is reportedly $48,000pa. Reynolds pay is 104 times the average income.

Ok, he's good at his job, worth rewarding. But is anyone actually worth 104x the ordinary person. 10x probably. 20x maybe.

Our Prime Minister in charge of an entire soverign nation receives less than one-tenth of the Telecom chief executive. Somehow that doesn't feel right.

[brettc]

Isnt this conversation moot anyway? Lots of us already try to limit our "personal" incomes as much as possible, funnelling profits into trusts and the like. All you would do by setting some sort of income limit would be to enrich the accountants and tax laywers who will spend the time channelling the funds.

Anyone catch that doco on Howard Hughes were he gifted all his income producing businesses to a medical charity? It was all funneled back via various means, but the headline was the business were "owned" by a medical charity.

[artemis]

A few (even one) bad decisions can knock millions off the value of a big or even medium sized company. A few years ago the share price of a multinational I worked for (EDS) dropped from around $US70 to about $US11. Top management were replaced and the turnaround began. However, the share price never really recovered and the company has since been bought out by HP, with a huge number of layoffs worldwide. And that is why we pay big bucks for good leaders - the consequences of poor leadership are dramatic and far reaching.

[Winston001]

...And that is why we pay big bucks for good leaders - the consequences of poor leadership are dramatic and far reaching.

Yes but there don't appear to be any dire consequences for CEOs who make mistakes. Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap was lauded in the late 1990s for his hatchet job restructuring various large corporations. He even came to NZ with Stormin Norman Schwartzkoff to tell us how world class CEOs succeeded.

He ruined Sunbeam but in the process in a little more than four years, Al made more than $100 million, ran two well-known public corporations, wrote a best-selling, vainglorious autobiography, and axed some 18,000 employees.

The golden handshakes currently handed out to CEOs etc because of the recession just emphasise that its all glory and no responsibility.

By all means make a million - a billion. But please, do it with your own money, not powerless shareholders. Bluechip anyone? Hanover?